Interlude X: Hormones, Hierarchy, and the Architecture of Desire

What if your most “rational” decisions were already scripted by your bloodstream?

In this interlude of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey traces the hidden hormonal currents shaping risk, loyalty, ambition, and status. Drawing on the fieldwork of Robert Sapolsky among Kenyan baboons, Anna Dreber’s research on traders’ testosterone surges, Carsten de Dreu’s discoveries about oxytocin’s double edge, Wolfram Schultz’s dopamine experiments, and anthropological studies from Kristen Hawkes to David Hazlerigg, this episode reveals how biology and culture braid into one force.

Testosterone asserts, cortisol constrains, oxytocin binds, dopamine drives - together forming the unseen scaffolding of our choices. By the end, you’ll never look at “free will” the same way again.

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