Becoming Wise

The Daily Opportunity in Randomness | Leonard Mlodinow

The physicist Leonard Mlodinow changes how we think about the agency we have in shaping our own destinies. As a scientist, he works with principles like Brownian motion, by which Einstein helped verify the existence of molecules and atoms. As the child of Holocaust survivors, he dances with the experience we all have: that life never goes as planned, and yet the choices we make can matter. “The course of your life depends on how you react to opportunities and challenges that randomness presents to you,” he says.
Leonard Mlodinow is a physicist and the author of several books, including “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives,” “Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior,” and his latest, “Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Constantly Changing World.”
Find the transcript at onbeing.org.

The Becoming Wise podcast offers depth and discovery in the time it takes to make a cup of tea. Each episode is curated from hundreds of big conversations with wise and graceful lives. Reset your day. Replenish your sense of yourself and the world. On Being Studios is the producer of On Being, This Movie Changed Me, and more to come. Krista Tippett is the author of the New York Times bestselling Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living. President Obama honored her with the National Humanities Medal for “thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence.”