Imagine an ultra-rational, emotionless, being who always makes judicious and perfectly calibrated decisions. Picture someone like Plato, Descartes, or maybe Spock. This is who you would want managing your investments, right? Wrong.

People who suffer damage to their emotional centers lose the ability to make complex decisions in personal and professional life. How can this be? What is the relationship between reason and emotion in the human brain?

This is what we'll discuss in today's episode based on Descarte's Error by Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist at USC.