Kevin J. Mitchell, "Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will" (Princeton UP, 2023)
New Books in NeuroscienceShow Notes
Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency--or free will--is an illusion. In Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will (Princeton UP, 2023), leading neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell presents a wealth of evidence to the contrary, arguing that we are not mere machines responding to physical forces but agents acting with purpose. Traversing billions of years of evolution, Mitchell tells the remarkable story of how living beings capable of choice arose from lifeless matter. He explains how the emergence of nervous systems provided a means to learn about the world, granting sentient animals the capacity to model, predict, and simulate. Mitchell reveals how these faculties reached their peak in humans with our abilities to imagine and to be introspective, to reason in the moment, and to shape our possible futures through the exercise of our individual agency. Mitchell's argument has important implications--for how we understand decision making, for how our individual agency can be enhanced or infringed, for how we think about collective agency in the face of global crises, and for how we consider the limitations and future of artificial intelligence. An astonishing journey of discovery, Free Agents offers a new framework for understanding how, across a billion years of Earth history, life evolved the power to choose, and why it matters. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/neuroscience
More from New Books in Neuroscience
Embodied Intelligence: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Natural, Artificial, and Hybrid Systems (MIT Press, 2026) explores a radical transformation taking place in intelligence research. Rather than focusing exclusively on brains and computer code, the book examines the important role that embodiment plays in producing intelligent, goal-directed behavior.
Once dismissed as unscientific, psychoanalytic therapy is proving to be among our most effective medical treatments of any kind - outperforming psychiatric drugs and rivaling vaccines in its power to prevent and heal. Why does it work so well?Perhaps because one of the most controversial figures in psychology was right all along. Neuroscience now confirms much of what Sigmund Freud conjectured over a century ago: our deepest struggles stem, not from chemical imbalances, but from buried memories and unconscious conflicts that no pill can touch.Using enthralling case studies and cutting-edge brain science, pioneering neuroscientist Mark Solms makes the case that psychoanalysis should resume its position as our master theory of the mind. Yet modern research also reveals where Freud got important things wrong. Could correcting these errors make therapy even more effective?As psychiatric diagnoses soar and standard treatments continue to fail many patients, The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing (Pegasus, 2026) offers a revolutionary hope: a real science of healing, rooted in the radical idea that our suffering arises from truths we haven't yet faced. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/neuroscience
Today I’m speaking with neuroscientist Stave Ramirez about bullshit and memory. Steve is an associate professor at Boston University, where he runs a lab dedicated to uncovering the mysteries of memory. How memory works, and importantly, how it doesn’t, are crucial questions for understanding everything from the validity of eyewitness testimony to understanding how people overcome traumatic experiences. While the science on memory is far from settled, researchers like Steve are pushing the frontiers of the field forward to better understand how memories are created, stored, and altered. If we can better understand how memory works, we will be better able to understand ourselves. To help us avoid the pitfalls of the bullshit that surrounds the science of memory, I’m pleased to speak with Steve Ramirez.
Make Your Brain Work By Amy Brann Neuroscience expert, author, consultant and global speaker
In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Ingrid Piller speaks with Frank Stahnisch, Professor of the History of Medicine and Health Care at the University of Calgary in Canada, about his new book Great Minds in Despair – The Forced Migration of German-Speaking Neuroscientists to North America, 1933 to 1989 (2025, McGill-Queen’s University Press).