The Neuroscience Of The 7 Deadly Sins - Dr Jack Lewis - #182

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, my beauties. Welcome back to Podcast Land. My guest today is Dr Jack Lewis, and we are talking about the science underpinning the seven deadly sins. Dr Lewis is a neuroscientist, which means he understands how the brain works. And his most recent book looks at why we do the things we know we shouldn't. Seven deadly sins have been defined for hundreds of years, and yet we all still fall prey to them. So expect to learn the underpinnings of our willpower, neurosciences explanations for why we tend towards sinning, whether we have control over what makes us sexually aroused, a justification for punching someone in the face, and much more. Do need to give a tiny warning that there is a little bit of discussion with regards to paedophilia in this podcast. And if that is something that makes you uncomfortable, go and check out one of our other episodes. I also need to give you a warning that this episode is two hours long. I was just having far too much fun with Dr Lewis, you know, and we got a bit of a bromance thing going on, and time ran away from me. So, yeah, strap yourself in. In other news, if you listen very carefully, just listen. Can you hear what that is? That is the sound of the ultimate life hacks list careering its way towards us like an articulated lorry about to side swipe you into a world where your entire life has been upgraded. That's right. This Monday, the ultimate life hacks list launches and it will be free at least next week. So don't forget on Monday, the 15th of June, check out the pre-roll to the podcast or head to my socials at ChrisWillX to find out how you can get your copy of the ultimate life hacks list. But for now, it's time to learn about the science of sin with the wise and wonderful Dr Jack Lewis.
We're talking about sin today, all the sins. Are you sinful today? You feeling sinful?

**Jack Lewis** (2:15)
No, I've been pretty virtuous, to be honest. I mean, lockdown sort of stops people going out and doing things that might get them in trouble. So I've been boringly virtuous.

**Chris Williamson** (2:29)
How sinful can you be during a pandemic, you know?

**Jack Lewis** (2:34)
Yeah, I mean, if you take the drop in A&E visits, it's just you can't even hurt yourself if you stay indoors.

**Chris Williamson** (2:45)
You put those little foam cups on all the sharp edges in your house.

**Jack Lewis** (2:49)
Exactly.

**Chris Williamson** (2:50)
And you make sure that you take the steps carefully. That's it.

**Jack Lewis** (2:53)
And particularly during the period where the DIY shops were closed, it's like, I mean, how's anyone gonna chop their finger off in a bank holiday if they can't go and buy a scalpel?

**Chris Williamson** (3:02)
limes. Putting limes for mojitos, that's how. That's how you do it. So talking about sin, the science of sin, your new book, Science Of Sin, Why We Do The Things We Know We Shouldn't. So why do we do the things that we know that we shouldn't?

**Jack Lewis** (3:22)
Because we're human. Too short an answer.

**Chris Williamson** (3:26)
No, I mean, it's just a longer book than that. It's just loads of pages in this.

**Jack Lewis** (3:32)
No, you know what? I'm usually very wordy. So my news resolution is to be more concise. That was perhaps too concise. No, so the thing is, humans are driven by instincts, amongst other things. And those instincts, if you take the ones that are covered by the seven deadly sins, the important thing to remember is if you were to abolish any of those seven things, it would be curtains for humanity. We need a modicum of all of the seven deadly sins in order to function properly as individuals, as communities. It's just when any of those seven categories of behaviour go to excess, that they are at its core antisocial. Now, I'm not a religious person. I spent a lot of time sort of singing hymns at school because both my primary and secondary school were Church of England, but I didn't really believe a word of it. I just thought, you know, I was always more inclined to sort of the scientific approach. Let's look at the evidence. If there's evidence to support it, you know, more evidence to support it than to refute a hypothesis, then you believe accordingly. But with, I don't know, there was so much stuff in the Bible that was sort of clearly outdated that I thought, how can people still buy into this? Like, I realise it gives people a lot of hope and it gives them a sense of community, but the concept of believing, like a literal interpretation of the Bible in a post-Enlightenment time, it just seemed bunkers. But, the more I looked into it, having sort of got my PhD in neuroscience and scanned a lot of brains and sort of got much clearer on what we do and don't know in terms of human knowledge, modern wisdom, I realised that actually there's an awful lot of stuff in those ancient books of religion, Bible and others, which you shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because, for me personally, just because I don't believe in the supernatural doesn't mean that there's not something to be learned if you read between the lines. And that's what I was sort of correcting the error of my ways.