Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. Today, a holiday treat, a bonus episode from people I mostly

admire, one of the other shows we make here at the Freakonomics Radio Network. It is an interview show

hosted by Steve Levitt, my Freakonomics friend and co-author, who is an economics professor

emeritus now at the University of Chicago.

On this episode, Levitt interviews David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and author of several books,

including LiveWired, The Inside Story of the Ever-changing Brain. It is a fascinating conversation.

You are going to love it. To hear more conversations

like this follow people I mostly admire in your podcast app. Okay, that's it for me. Here is

Steve Levitt. I love podcast guests who changed the way I think about some important aspect of the world.

A great example is my guest today, David Eagleman. He's a Stanford neuroscientist whose work on brain plasticity has completely transformed my

understanding of the human brain and its possibilities.

The human brain is about three pounds.

It's locked in silence and darkness.

It has no idea where the information is coming from because everything is just electrical spikes and also chemical releases as a result of those spikes.

And so what you have in there is this giant symphony of electrical activity going on, and its job is to create a model of the outside world.

Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.

According to Eagleman, the brain is constantly trying to predict the world around it.

But of course, the world is unpredictable and surprising, so the brain is constantly updating its model.

The capacity of our brains to be ever-changing is usually referred to as plasticity,

but Eagleman offers another term, live-wired.

That's where conversation begins.

Plasticity is the term used in the field because the great neuroscientist or psychologist,

...