BROADCASTS.com

It\u2019s not an exaggeration to say that \u201cclock time\u201d runs our lives. From the moment our alarms go off in the morning, the clock reigns supreme: our meetings, our appointments, even our social plans are often timed down to the minute. We even measure the quality of our lives with reference to time, often lamenting that time seems to \u201cfly by\u201d when we\u2019re having fun and \u201cdrags on\u201d when we\u2019re bored or stagnant. We rarely stop to think about time, but that\u2019s precisely because there are few forces more omnipresent in our lives.\n\n\u201cYou are the best time machine that has ever been built,\u201d Dean Buonomano writes in his book \u201cYour Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time.\u201d Buonomano is a professor of neurobiology and psychology at U.C.L.A. who studies the relationship between time and the human brain. His book tackles the most profound questions about time that affect all of our lives: Why do we feel it so differently at different points in our lives? What do we miss if we live so rigidly bound to the demands of our clocks and appointments? Why during strange periods like pandemic lockdowns do we feel \u201clost in time\u201d? And what if \u2014 as some physicists believe \u2014 the future may already exist, with grave implications for our ability to act meaningfully in the present?\n\nWe discuss what time would be in an empty universe without humans, why humans have not evolved to understand time the way we understand space, how our ability to predict the future differs from animals\u2019, why time during the Covid lockdowns felt so bizarre, why scientists think time \u201cflies\u201d when we\u2019re having fun but slows down when people experience near-death accidents, what humans lost when we invented very precise clocks, why some physicists believe the future is already determined for us and what that would mean for our ethical behavior, why we\u2019re so bad at saving money, what steps we could take to feel as if we\u2019re living longer in time, why it\u2019s so hard \u2014 but ultimately possible \u2014 to live in the present moment and more.\n\nMentioned:Don\u2019t Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel L. Everett\n\nBook Recommendations:\n\nNoise by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein\n\nWhen We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut\n\nThe Age of A.I. by Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher\n\nThoughts? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. (And if you\u2019re reaching out to recommend a guest, please write \u201cGuest Suggestion\u201d in the subject line.)\n\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of \u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d at\xa0nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at\xa0https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.\n\n\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rog\xe9 Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta.