All episodes of EconTalk

EconTalk · 2025-12-15 · 92 min · 16,047 words

Free Will Is Real (with Kevin Mitchell)

Listen to the original audio · Transcribed with NVIDIA Parakeet · Timestamps stay in sync with the live audio

Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econtalk.org.

We'd love to hear from you. Today is November 12, 2025, and my guest is neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell. His latest book is Free Agents, How Evolution Gave Us Free Will. Kevin, welcome to Econ Talk. No, thanks very much.

Thanks for having me. This is a deep, subtle, nuanced, fresh look at a very old question, the question of free will versus determinism. But it's much more than that. It's an overview of evolution. Uh, it's an overview of how evolution created increasingly complex life forms here on Earth.

That is the first couple of minutes. The rest is $1.49.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (92 minutes, 16,047 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.

get it now

Ready in under two minutes.

pay once · credits never expire

monthly · cheapest per episode · cancel any time

One episode is up to 4 hours of audio; a longer one counts as one more for every started 4 hours. Secure checkout by Stripe. Paying once needs no account: we create one from your email. By paying you agree to the terms.