What If You Are Living Someone Else's Life?

This morning you woke up and made a choice. Or did you? Science suggests that most of what you call your personality, your preferences, your ambitions — was quietly assembled for you long before you had any say in the matter. In this video, you'll discover how psychologist Paul Bloom's infant research, Pierre Bourdieu's concept of the habitus, Daniel Kahneman's two selves, and epigenetic findings from Michael Meaney's lab all point to the same unsettling truth: the life you are living is partly yours and partly a relay — a baton passed through hands you never saw, carrying momentum from directions you never chose. The distance between realizing that and doing something about it is the distance the rest of your life can be spent exploring. If this made you think, drop a comment below — when did you first feel like your life had been assembled without you? Subscribe for more videos that take the science of being human and turn it into something you can actually feel.