What can Arthur Schopenhauer teach us about living with less suffering? Known for his stark pessimism, Schopenhauer believed life is marked by pain—but he also offered practical strategies to make existence more bearable.

In this episode, we explore his advice on keeping a polite distance in social life, ignoring the trap of reputation, embracing solitude and intellectual pursuits, and seeking peace by wanting less, not more.

We also discuss his emphasis on health, compassion, and acceptance of aging and mortality, uncovering timeless insights for navigating life’s hardships with clarity and resilience.

Is time real, or just an illusion? This episode explores insights from physics, philosophy, and neuroscience on the nature of time. From Einstein’s relativity and the block universe to research showing how the brain constructs temporal experience, we examine how science and consciousness shape our sense of past, present, and future.

Do you really choose what you do? We all feel like we're in control, making conscious decisions every day. But what if that feeling is just an illusion? This episode dives deep into the fascinating and unsettling question of free will.

We'll look at the latest science, from the unconscious brain activity that happens before you're even aware of a choice to how easily your decisions are manipulated by forces you don't even see. We'll explore why, even if free will isn't real, our belief in it might be one of the most important parts of being human.