Great show. I have to admit that I was, at first, a bit thrown by the wackiness of the first story but I've been dwelling on his approach to time since (that story made me think of this amazing exercise in time, travelling through time in one take: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J--TDEHizVA). But what has really got me thinking is the finger wiggling story. I agree with Jen (above) - I think it's more a matter of lag time, like seeing a jet before hearing it. A musician's hands often know the instrument without conscious thought. I was trying to demonstate how to tie a knot to my son earlier this week and I had to let my hands do it first before my mouth could explain it. There must be more to us and our brains than 'cogito ergo sum'.

Does anyone know where to find more info about the original experiment (or any subsequent ones) regarding monitoring brain signals and moving one's finger? I've tried googling it, but maybe I'm wording it wrong or it's just getting buried in other irrelevant sites.
If anybody knows, I'd really appreciate it!

Thanks!

Before getting freaked out by the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics as presented here, it may pay to be aware of the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interpretation). This does away with the many-worlds hocus pocus, and is (at least for some of us!) a far more intuitive and logical way of interpreting the physics.
Great show, as always! :)

Is there a way for Radiolab folks to list the musical excerpts of episodes? There is an electronic music segment at the end of this section that is fabulous. How do I find it?

I think there's a reasonable explanation for the Free Will experiment. Is it not possible that there is a lag between thinking something in the brain and experiencing that thought in your brain?

Another way of thinking about it is that there is a lag in the point at which we experience (process in our brain) an event to when that point of time actually happened. I.e. everything happens a tiny bit before we perceive it happening.

I think for this to be possible, though, you have to experience external events faster than you perceive internal events (external events, like the sound and light from the blip on the brain wave machine, internal events = thinking something before you experience yourself thinking about it).

Free will? Hmmmm. Maybe I misunderstood the finger-wiggling experience, but it sounded to me as if the movements were all predicted by brain activity occurring a significant time before the actual movement. This cannot be true for all movements, however, because people can demonstrate reaction times faster than the second lapse between the blip and the wiggle.

What if somebody tells you wish finger to wiggle and you quickly comply with the instruction? Would the early signal from the brain be able to predict which instruction was coming? I doubt it. But still you would be able to comply with the instruction in less time than the lapse between the blip and the wiggle.

Listening to notion of "not having free will" got me thinking .. about you missing one imp point. You are looking at our universe in 1 dimension but it is infact multiple dimensions.

So "maybe" as you put it, all the moments are in fact frozen BUT in a multi-dimensional picture, so you still have the free will so choosing the 'fork on the road' but what happens if you decided to go left instead of right is frozen! And in some other universe at the same moment you (from the other universe) might choose to take right while u in this universe took left.

Am I making sense?

I enjoy the earlier science episodes much more than the current. This is not to say I do not enjoy the new ones too.

I had a thought about the finger twitch and explaining free will: Our free will determines what we want but our brains determine when.

The finger twitcher decided they wanted to twitch there finger but they are unable to decide when it is done? Just a thought

I wonder if people who mediate have a shorter time between bleep and twitch...

The fact that my brain signals my choice long before I wiggle my fingers, while extremely fascinating, does not lead directly to a conclusion that I have no free will.

A) I can imagine an experiment that would show that the time is sufficiently long to allow me to change my mind (if I choose to), and

B) Free will can happen before I become consciously aware of it - that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I don't see why no time or all times happening simultaneously leads to the conclusion that there is no free will.

I understand the interest in trying to puzzle out if time exists or not, but I don't see why removing time from our life equation removes free will.

It's still your decision to move your finger, it's still your decision to have chocolate or vanilla. Removing time from the equation just means you don't know in which order your finger wiggling or your vanilla decision happened, or perhaps it means it happens all at once.

Time is just the order of things. It is sequence. It helps us understand change. I don't see any particular reason why having time in our equation equals having free will.

(Clarifying, the other "me's" don't think how I think, live where I live, nor does the ice-cream shop exist in their universe because it's owner is the descendent of the man who thought that he IS going to test that flying machine of his afterall- history is changed, but there's no ice-cream in the neighbourhood! -if anyone had even stumbled upon the idea of ice-cream, they eat yogurt- it's huge in those universes)

How can quantum physicists say, "there's another me that's eating vanilla/chocolate ice cream"? It seems they're totally ignoring the fact that our ancestors made a choice to procreate with a certain person. So if my great great great grandpa said "I'm going to have little Kedziors with THIS person and not that" and then repeat that for every choice of partner, then my genetics would have been so radically changed that I wouldn't even be the same person anymore. Needless to point out the choice that most couples make together of how many children to have- meaning certain great aunts/uncles/neighbour WOULDN'T EXIST! Being the fourth child in a family, it's rather likely that I WOULDN'T EXIST! (Therefore my children wouldn't either) Maybe one of my ancestors considered being a priest and said no (he was leaning 65% that way). Good thing too, because that would've erased my family tree! Simple answer- I'm the only me in all of the Universes.

Good Brain Food.

Did the release date get postponed, or am I missing the link somewhere? Love the show, Im waiting to complete my collection.

Also, common sense is bunk. It is a blanket term for what is invisible to society at this moment. It was common sense in Hegel's or Nietzsche's time that women were less than men. It was common sense in 1760 that different races equaled different brain capacity. I always wonder what's invisible now, what in 200 years will be common sense that we can't even begin to see.

Maybe there can be free will and all moments existing at the same time simultaneously. Choice could somehow play into the universe, or the universes, and the universe(s) would do the same into choice. Frozen moments and choice, at the same time.

Awesome! Thank you so much!!! I'm totally looking forward to it! I remember the section in the show about free choice and the illusion of wiggling your finger really throwing me for a loop when I listened to it originally, and now I can be thrown again!

Thanks!

~Steve

Hi Andrew and Stephen,

Sorry for the confusion. Here's how you can get a hold of Season One. Pasted below are links that will take you to archive pages where you will find links to download a specific episode. Currently, due to rights issues, only "Who Am I?," "Time," and "Stress" are available this way. But "Beyond Time" and "Emergence" will be released via Podcast later this summer (dates pasted below). Again sorry for the confusion and thanks for listening!

Who Am I? can be found here: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/05

Time and Stress can be found here: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/04

Season One (Podcast release dates):
"Beyond Time" July 31, 2007
"Emergence" August 14, 2007

Andrew,

If you subscribe to the Radio Lab podcast through iTunes, back episodes from Season 1 are available for download. Just open iTunes and search for Radio Lab in the Podcast directory.

Radio Lab

Where's the podcast of this show?? This is the one which got me interested. Now all of my kids and my friends listen to it and talk about it. One of the great radio experiences--ever. Thank you.