Ep. 2 – Synapse and the Soul

FAITH STULTS:
The human brain is the most complex structure in the known universe. Eighty-six billion neurons, trillions of connections— a mystery we’re only beginning to understand.

JESSE EUBANKS:
So it makes sense when you think of a brain… you probably think of power. The supercomputer running everything you do.

FAITH STULTS:
But power isn’t the same as tough. The brain is fragile—shockingly fragile.

DIANE LANE: “Neurons don’t have the capacity to store energy… after six minutes without oxygen, they die.”

FAITH STULTS:
Six minutes. That’s all it takes for your memories, your personality, your ability to move or speak… to disappear.

DIANE LANE: “That’s why it’s really critical when a stroke’s happening to get care immediately. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
Diane Lane is a neuroscientist.

FAITH STULTS:
She spends her life studying brains—how they fire, how they fail.

DIANE LANE: “ There’s nothing that can be done for the cells that have already died, but you wanna try and prevent that spread. The problem too is once that happens, they release a lot of chemicals that causes something called penumbral damage where then the, cells in the area, the neurons in the area also start dying and it just keeps growing.

JESSE EUBANKS:
So when the unthinkable happened— Diane had the ability to do more than just stand by and wait for updates.

DIANE LANE:  My mom had a stroke and when I looked at all her MRIs and… where she had neural damage…

FAITH STULTS:
She discovered her mom hadn’t had just any stroke.

DIANE LANE:  “She had a stroke in her basilar artery… 

FAITH STULTS:
The basilar artery is the brain’s power line.  Block it… and it’s like cutting electricity to your whole body. 

DIANE LANE:  which, it’s usually fatal.

FAITH STULTS:
Diane could see the damage.She knew exactly why her mom—

DIANE LANE: was paralyzed and couldn’t speak.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Her mom wasn’t elderly.

DIANE LANE:  She had it when she was 50, so she was relatively young.

JESSE EUBANKS:
But it was clear her life had just changed forever.:The road back toward any type of normal was long. Half a decade passed.

FAITH STULTS:
She couldn’t walk. She couldn’t speak. But eventually, very slowly, things started changing.

DIANE LANE: She regained those functions over years. It took her a long time, but she was very determined to overcome it.

FAITH STULTS:
What Diane was watching  is something scientists call neuroplasticity. The brain can’t regrow dead neurons. But the circuits that remain can slowly rewire—forging new pathways, rerouting signals, sometimes even recruiting whole new regions to take over lost functions.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Like rerouting traffic when a bridge collapses. It’s not quick. It’s not perfect. But it’s one of the brain’s most astonishing powers: its ability to adapt. Astonishing as it was, there was no way around this simple truth: Diane’s mom wasn’t the same person. 

DIANE LANE: … her personality changed dramatically and the sad part about it is that she was aware of it, so she felt like she had to apologize because she said, I know I’m not responding the way I used to. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
For Diane, the scientist and the daughter suddenly collided.

DIANE LANE: And, and as a neuroscientist, that really made me think, because I never really thought about her as her neuroscience functions, but as mom, right? …you know, she was cuddly and supportive and, you know, all these things. And now once that left, it, it made me think, wow, it, it really is the function of our brain to a certain extent. 

DIANE LANE: But she was still my mom.

JESSE EUBANKS:
It’s a strange kind of grief. To lose someone… while they’re still here. To love them… while wondering if they’re still them.

FAITH STULTS:
If an injury to our brain can change our personality, our memories, our beliefs—we have to wonder: Is my brain me?

JESSE EUBANKS:
Tonight on Wonderology, we’re asking if three pounds of gray matter decides who we are…

FAITH STULTS:
If changing our brain permanently changes us. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
And whether there is something more fundamental to who we are than the neurons firing inside our skulls. I’m Jesse Eubanks. A storyteller and journalist.

FAITH STULTS:
I’m Faith Stults. A science educator.

JESSE EUBANKS:
So…let’s get curious.

JESSE EUBANKS:
To ask, “Is my brain me?” we first need to explore the brain. Not in a book.
Not in a diagram. But up close. So, to begin our journey, we’re joined by Jim Stump. He hosts the BioLogos podcast, Language of God.

JIM STUMP:
Hey there.

FAITH STULTS:
A few months ago, Jim and his colleague Colin Hoogerwerf hit the road. They were chasing a question. One that starts in the brain. What exactly is a brain and what does it do? 

JESSE EUBANKS:
And today, they’re letting us ride along. To the University of Notre Dame.

JIM STUMP:
Glad to have some company. We’re there to meet Diane Lane, the neuroscientist from earlier.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Where do we start?

JIM STUMP:
 Well, we started in a neuroscience lab. It’s bright, clean, quiet.

We walk in and right in front of us on a black resin lab table in front of us—
plastic tubs. Some labeled: Brains inside. And sure enough… there are.

DIANE LANE (Tape): Well, well, because it is just the paraformaldehyde, uh, you don’t want that on. 

JIM STUMP (Tape): It hurts us more than it hurts the brain for us, et cetera.

DIANE LANE (Tape): Yeah. It’s the only thing keeping the brain together anymore.

JIM STUMP:
And, of course, when you realize you are looking at organs from real people, the first thing you have to ask… 

JIM STUMP (Tape): What do you know about where these came from? Do we know where? 

DIANE LANE (Tape): Um, I don’t know too much other than we do know age, um, at time of death and whether it’s from a male or a female. But that’s pretty much all.

JIM STUMP:
As we get settled, she quickly lights up, like she’s about to share a secret.

DIANE LANE (Tape): I can’t help myself. I diagnose these brains and I’ll show you some things that I noticed about this one…

JIM STUMP:
She pulls out two jars.

DIANE LANE (Tape): Uh, so I’m gonna start with these two brains…

JIM STUMP:
Then another.

DIANE LANE (Tape): however, there, there’s a really cool one. Um, well I might as well just pull it out as well as I’m pulling these out and this is, uh, a whole brain with the spinal cord still attached.

JESSE EUBANKS:
What?!

JIM STUMP (Tape): Oh my.

DIANE LANE (Tape): Um, and so it’s, it’s just strange to see, even me as a neuroscientist every time I see this, it’s, it’s just very bizarre to see…

JESSE EUBANKS:
 Okay, so she, she pulled out these brains. She pulls out one that’s got a spinal cord still attached, which is, I’ve gotta imagine is like, visually shocking. Can you describe it for us?  

JIM STUMP:
 So there’s this really weird sort of paradox in my mind and thinking about this experience because obviously I bring to the experience what I know these things are right.

But. If I hadn’t had that, they’d look so like ordinary, like these hunks of meat sitting out on a butcher’s table. But then you start to pick at ’em and pull ’em apart, and you know that they’re full of these neurons and these remarkable things that are what makes me me. And you’re just amazed to be holding this in your hand.

 

DIANE LANE (Tape): Okay, this one has everything still a little bit more intact, so I can talk to you about, let me just get the excess paraformaldehyde off so we’re not breathing so much of it.

JIM STUMP (Tape): How long ago was this person alive, do you know?

DIANE LANE (Tape): Um, so we obtain these at different time periods, but early two thousands. Um, generally is, uh, like 2005, 2011 is roughly when, so. Sorry, I’m making a bit of a mess here. But this is the whole brain with the spinal cord attached.

JIM STUMP:
She points to the base of the spinal cord. Long strands dangling from the brain.

DIANE LANE (Tape): And the interesting thing about the bottom of the spinal cord is in our body it is like this, it’s just these strands of neurons coming down. 

JIM STUMP:
It looks a bit like the back end of a farm animal.

DIANE LANE (Tape): And that’s why it’s called cauda equina… 

JIM STUMP:
Latin for horse’s tail. 

DIANE LANE (Tape): …because it looks like a horse’s tail to the early anatomist.

JIM STUMP:
She has us put on gloves,  which I had assumed was to protect these very delicate organs. But no, it turns out it’s to protect  our hands from the formaldehyde that the organs have been sitting in.

JESSE EUBANKS:
 That is not at all what I thought you were gonna say. I completely assumed that it was because of, you know how delicate these things are. Nope. Okay, so, so you’ve got it in your hands. Like, what does it feel like? 

JIM STUMP:
 It is heavier than you think it’s gonna feel. And some of that is due to the fact that it absorbs some of the formaldehyde over the years.

Normally our brains weigh about three pounds, right? But it’s small enough that, that even that three pounds is really dense and it’s, it doesn’t feel like this delicate organ. It feels like a glob of flesh and it’s kind of firm, but it gives to it a little, and the, the best analogy I could think of even when I was poking at it was this is kinda like a gummy bear. Not the stale ones, but the really fresh ones that still have some give to ’em. Then Diane draws my attention to this one part in particular, 

DIANE LANE (Tape): Um, these are the meninges, they’re the covering of the brain and they’re incredibly tough. Now don’t try and tear it, but just put some tug on there.

JIM STUMP:
She has us tug at it.

JIM STUMP (Tape): Oh yeah.

DIANE LANE (Tape): And you can feel, uh, it’s like leather, right? Um, and that’s because our brain sits in a cranium that’s actually very rough… Do you mind handing me a couple of paper towels just so that I’m not dripping everywhere?

JIM STUMP:
So that was one guy’s brain. But every other jar on this table has a brain that once belonged to a person with a name and a story.

 

DIANE LANE (Tape): But some of these have been donated just specifically, um, from people who have affiliation to Notre Dame… You know, we have to be respectful that this once was a person who had a life.

JIM STUMP:
 When you’re holding a brain, it starts to, uh, raise some unsettling questions. You can swap out a heart or lungs or a gallbladder, and it’s still me, but this organ, replace it, and who am I? 

FAITH STULTS:
The brain is the biological foundation of our identity. Alter the brain, alter the self.

JESSE EUBANKS:
You know that you’re saying that. And actually, I’m literally sitting here going like, that is so true. Like if, if you had to like dissect like an arm, a leg, even a heart, nothing, nothing hits that same way as the brain.

JIM STUMP:
 If I were to hold up somebody’s heart, you wouldn’t go, oh, that’s that. I mean, you don’t have that same sort of reaction. And again, there’s nothing in the visual sort of experience of it. It’s what we bring to this. Knowing that this organ between our ears is a lot more central to who I am then is my liver or even my heart.

JESSE EUBANKS:

 And if my brain shuts down, does the essential part of me vanish ?

JIM STUMP:
  Or ask that the other way. Put my brain in a different body. Would it bring the same memories, the same quirks? Would that still be me?

FAITH STULTS:
How much of me is biology? And how much is something else? Where does the Christian view of the soul fit?

JESSE EUBANKS:
These aren’t just science questions. They’re questions of the self.  So we’ve looked at what the brain is, and to begin answering these questions, we need to move on to the second part of your mission. What does the brain do?

FAITH STULTS:
The human brain is three pounds of soft tissue. Mostly water, fat, and protein.

It sits inside your skull, plugged into the body through the spinal cord. Every heartbeat sends it fuel. Every breath feeds it oxygen. Inside are billions of neurons—tiny cells carrying signals.

DIANE LANE (Tape): “There are glial cells in there… immune cells… oligodendrocytes which make the myelin around the neurons  So there’s a lot beyond just neurons. 

JIM STUMP:

 You can maybe think of your brain kinda like a spider’s web. A web is a a network. And so we have these strands, these neurons that are all connected and you touch one of them, one single thread on the web and the whole thing trembles.

That’s your brain. 

FAITH STULTS:
Lots of activity. Lots of interconnection. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
And when the whole web lights up— that’s electricity in motion. You stub your toe. You hear a joke. You fall in love. Every one of those moments rides on neurons firing in patterns.

FAITH STULTS:
Each spark leaps a microscopic gap. It lands on the next neuron. And the signal keeps moving. And it’s not just a few of these. There are more than 85 billion neurons firing in your brain. 

JIM STUMP (Tape): “and each of those has how many connections to other neurons?  

DIANE LANE (tape): “I mean, infinite. It depends on the branching of the dendrite.”

FAITH STULTS:
One neuron can link to an endless array of others.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Altogether, the network holds more connections than stars in the galaxy.

FAITH STULTS:
Billions of sparks, firing in patterns, all at once. Somehow, that’s what makes the outside world show up inside your mind.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Which is wild. That pain or joy or memory— all of it is electricity running through tissue.

FAITH STULTS:
So the brain isn’t a filing cabinet. It’s a living web of constant activity.

JESSE EUBANKS:
So advanced that even our best computers can’t quite mimic it.

JIM STUMP:
 So think a little bit about the ways this web shows up in ordinary moments of life moments you might barely notice.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Take pain. You’re walking down the street. Your toe clips the curb. Wham. Your shin smacks concrete.

JIM STUMP:
Instantly the web shakes. Signals fire across the strands. Some shout—move the leg. Others shout—pay attention. But the loudest cluster sparks the feeling itself. That’s the surge that makes you say—ouch.

JESSE EUBANKS:
And it’s not just broken bones. Some of the same brain regions that register physical pain also light up when your heart breaks. When someone leaves. When grief knocks the air out of you.

DIANE LANE (Tape): “For instance, if you’ve ever lost someone or, you know, with students, broke up with someone, sometimes you feel pain… and yes, it is, because… emotion’s going to that descending pain system… and it can activate the neurons that augment pain.”

FAITH STULTS:
That’s why sorrow feels physical. Because to your brain, hurt is hurt. Different causes. Same trembling web.

JIM STUMP:
The closer we look at the brain, the more it resists simple answers. 

 The natural reflexes of life, the mundane, ordinary parts we take for granted, a laugh, a memory, a flash of pain. These turn out to be complex and layered and mysterious. 

JIM STUMP (Tape): “Sometimes when I’ve gotten into this, people talk about this—this thing right here is the most complex physical system we’ve ever come across. Way more than any computer. 

DIANE LANE:And I am still intrigued. Every time I look I’m like, oh, how does this work?”

JIM STUMP:
And here’s one last thing Diane told us—neurons like to take the same routes.

DIANE LANE (tape): the way connections in the brain develop is through our experiences…  pretty much all neurons act this way… the more a pathway is activated, the more it becomes strengthened.

JIM STUMP:
Neuroscientists summarize that with, “What fires together, wires together”

DIANE LANE (tape): let’s say every time you see a person instead of smiling, you grumble at them. Um, and. Somehow it gets rewarded. That shapes your personality now that you’re kind of a grouchy person because somehow that was getting rewarded and those pathways fire more.

JIM STUMP:
So the brain doesn’t just respond to life. It rehearses. It repeats. And over time—it builds a version of you.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Which means:  what we do most profoundly shapes both who are and who we are becoming.

JESSE EUBANKS:
That rhythm of the brain — patterns repeating, building us over time.

That’s going to matter for where we go next. Jim, thanks for joining us

JIM STUMP:
My pleasure. Thanks for coming along. 

FAITH STULTS:
Every memory you’ve stored, every habit you’ve built, every burst of creativity,
every struggle you carry—all of it depends on this three-pound organ.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Take the brain away, and everything you call “you” seems to disappear. 

FAITH STULTS:
So… if our brains decide so much of who we are— what happens to us when they change?

JESSE EUBANKS:
When we return, a man fights to change his brain— and in the process, make himself into someone new.

We’ll be right back.

 

JESSE EUBANKS:
Welcome back to Wonderology. Jesse Eubanks.

FAITH STULTS:
Faith Stults. Before the break, we stepped inside the brain itself— a living web of billions of neurons. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
A web that holds our memories, our fears our love, our quirks. So if who we are lives inside that web— what happens when the web changes?

FAITH STULTS:
That web of neurons is always changing. Our brains are never static.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Sometimes that change comes suddenly.

FAITH STULTS:
A head injury. Dementia. A stroke.

Like Diane Lane’s mom—sudden, irreversible. And that opens questions we’ll return to in a bit. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
But other times, change creeps in slowly, like water cutting through stone. Habits repeated day after day. So normal, we stop noticing.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (Tape): Yeah, you know, the single moment… could have been a hundred moments.

JESSE EUBANKS:
This is Carlos Whittaker.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): …because we all get that notification on Sundays if you allow your phone to send it to you… Where it slides across your screen and it says, you’ve averaged however many hours and minutes a day this week on your phone. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
Carlos lives in Nashville. Speaker. Writer. Creator. Always on the move.

But right now, he’s staring down proof he doesn’t want to see.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): Um, so I always get that moment every Sunday. Like it, it comes across… But we, we just swipe it away. 

FAITH STULTS:
For Carlos, the phone isn’t neutral. It’s a lifeline. And a trap.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): Instagram was number one. That was by far above and beyond anything else… that was my, you know, uh, drug of choice… 

JESSE EUBANKS:
Every Sunday, the same report. Seven hours.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): Oh that sucks. It’s horrible. And then you just don’t think about it again.

JESSE EUBANKS:
He’s been telling himself it’s not a big deal.

JESSE EUBANKS:
At home, life is full. A busy, loving family. But rarely the fully present version of Carlos. 

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): my phone, I didn’t even think was a bad thing. Like, I didn’t even think it was affecting me.

JESSE EUBANKS:
But it is.

FAITH STULTS:
Screens hijack the brain’s reward system—the same circuits drugs and gambling activate. Every scroll. Every ping.A hit of dopamine. Then the crash. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
And the only way back up– more screen.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape):  So I was like, well that’s two entire cycles of the sun a week that I’m looking at a screen that’s horrible.

JESSE EUBANKS:
He keeps going with the math.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape):   If I live to be 82 years old, uh, my math. Told me that I would end up spending more than 12 years of my remaining life, uh, looking at a screen. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
 But for Carlos math and research aren’t enough. He wants to know what he’s already lost.

FAITH STULTS:
 So he finds a neuroscientist. He goes through hours of standardized cognitive testing, recalling number sequences, recognizing words and faces, reaction time drills 

JESSE EUBANKS:
When the results come back, one number hits hardest.

FAITH STULTS:
Carlos’s working memory lands right in the middle. Dead average—the 50th percentile for men his age.

JESSE EUBANKS:
For someone who’s built a life on quick wit and sharp recall, average feels like decline. Like he’s become someone he doesn’t want to be.

FAITH STULTS:
Sometimes our brains refuse to change. They hold us hostage—injury, disease, decline.

JESSE EUBANKS:
But Carlos is different. His brain isn’t collapsing. It’s adapting—to screens, to scrolling, to distraction. And if his brain has already been reshaped—
then he has been reshaped too.

FAITH STULTS:
So Carlos decides to fight back. To see if his brain can change again. And in the process, whether he can change too.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): “And so I said, if I really want to do something, let me do it.”

JESSE EUBANKS:
So he makes a plan. Not a vague resolution. A concrete experiment.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): “I wonder… Are there any subcultures in America that aren’t struggling like I’m struggling with my screen?”

JESSE EUBANKS:
Seven weeks. No screens. Two weeks with monks. Two with the Amish. Three at home.

FAITH STULTS:
Carlos wants his brain back. But he doesn’t realize yet what not looking at screens
is going to cost him.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): “Next thing you know, I was booked for 14 days… to live at the monastery.”

JESSE EUBANKS:
He arrives. Steps out of his car. Hands his phone to a friend—like leaving a weapon at the door.

FAITH STULTS:
And walks into a world without screens.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): We are the first generation… to not have access, regular access to solitude… and when silence is reintroduced into our life, there is a moment of being terrified. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
That terror hits instantly. His brain, wired for stimulation, goes haywire.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape):  I couldn’t make the thoughts stop in my head. I look at a bird and I’m bored, you know. I take a walk; I’m bored. And so the silence, the first day was like super loud. Literally my body was like detoxing. I was coming off of whatever this drug is literally like my heart was palpitating. 

FAITH STULTS:
Boredom turns to worry.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): I looked in the mirror and I saw this like mole. Like a new mole on my cheek and… I immediately reached into my phone because I wanted to like Google… like, what is this?… I’m like, do I have melanoma?

JESSE EUBANKS:
But there is no phone in his pocket. Days later, the mole finally fades. But the panic doesn’t. It shifts.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): they were just these gigantic questions… I had to like start digging into, you know, who is God, right? I mean, I’m telling you, when we don’t have these screens in front of us that allow us to get simple answers to probably way more complex spiritual questions than we give those questions credit for, you can, you can go south really fast. And that’s what, that’s really what happened to me.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Silence begins pulling hidden things to the surface.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): So again, being alone in your thoughts without access to information, um, just like every other human being did from, you know, 1973 to the dawn of time… I just had to sit with not knowing something and not knowing something, uh, was scarier than I thought it would be. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
Because without his phone, Carlos is left with the one place he can’t escape— his own brain.

CURT THOMPSON (Tape): what we’re really saying is that I don’t have any tolerance for me. 

FAITH STULTS:
This is Curt Thompson. Psychiatrist and uthor of The Soul of Desire.

CURT THOMPSON (Tape): … when I’m bored… those are abstract words that I’m using to talk about my perceived internal state of affairs. It’s me that I cannot tolerate.

FAITH STULTS:
He says that when we can’t bear ourselves—our own thoughts, our inner life—the brain panics.

 JESSE EUBANKS:
And most of us don’t stay with that panic. We run.

FAITH STULTS:
We grab at the quickest fix. Anything to quiet the feeling that we can’t stand being us.

CURT THOMPSON (Tape): In many respects, Adam and Eve took the fruit… because they… couldn’t tolerate themselves…

 JESSE EUBANKS:
We don’t know how to sit in our own skin. In our own minds. We want solutions fast.

FAITH STULTS:
But that’s not how Jesus lived.

CURT THOMPSON (Tape): in Matthew 11… he says, all things have been handed over to me by my father… He did not say I have taken all things… he had to wait for things to be handed over to him. Like this powerful picture of humility. 

FAITH STULTS:
Jesus waited. For things to be revealed. For life to unfold.

CURT THOMPSON (Tape): we have a hard time waiting for things to be handed over to us. And so… my phone is always going to be available to me.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Which is why something as small as— not being able to Google—can send Carlos’s brain into a frenzy.

FAITH STULTS:
Because the body reacts first.The pulse quickens, the chest tightens—long before the mind finds words for what’s wrong. The body knows what the brain is still catching up to.

JESSE EUBANKS:
After a week at the monastery, a new rhythm starts to form.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): So the first few days were horrible, but then… Suddenly, I was like, I think I get it… I’m beginning to understand why some of these men would make a choice to, every single day, do the exact same thing… there was an order to the silence… And I suddenly began to fall in love with the silence… silence was beautiful. 

FAITH STULTS:
He gets used to the quiet, used to life away from screens, used to being alone with his own thoughts.

JESSE EUBANKS:
He spends two weeks with the monks. Stillness. Prayer. Silence. Then—a sudden jolt to his experiment:  An airport. 

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): “Flying without a phone… we just don’t do this anymore, right? … I’m like looking down, trying to not look at screens. I go to a urinal, there’s a screen in front of the urinal… they’re everywhere.”

JESSE EUBANKS:
Next stop: the Amish. 

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): “I became a sheep farmer as much as I could in 14 days… All they do is talk… and work, and talk, and work. I said… why do you guys just talk? Like, like, you know, and he literally looks at me. He’s like, Carlos, we don’t have Facebook. 

FAITH STULTS:
From monks to Amish. From silence to community. From stillness to labor. Four weeks of discovery.  Then three more at home with his family.  

JESSE EUBANKS:
Seven weeks. No screens. Now it’s time for the test. The question hanging over his journey isn’t just about his brain. It’s about him. If screens once reshaped who he was—is he stuck that way? Or can people really change?

FAITH STULTS:
To find out, Carlos went back to the neuroscientist and retook the tests.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): “I went from the 50th percentile of memory of men in America. To the 99th percentile of memory. 

JESSE EUBANKS (tape): What?! 

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): Yes. So that was the kicker. I literally went to the 99th percentile. I was, I was remembering he, it would spit out like 27 numbers and letters in a row. And I’d have to wait for 30 seconds. And then I’d type him back in like a freaking machine, you know? And so like, literally that was the thing for me is when I went from the 50th percentile to the 99th percentile. I was like, that’s it for me. I can’t get back on my phone like I used to. So that, that was the kicker.

FAITH STULTS:
The doctor told him his brain’s transformation was astounding. 

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): He said he saw about five years of healing in those seven weeks.

JESSE EUBANKS:
And it matters that this was a memory test.

When we’re distracted, memory disappears. But when we’re paying attention—
things stick. Carlos’s scores don’t just show a stronger brain. They show a more present Carlos.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): “my daughter looked at me and she said, Dad, this is the purest version of you I’ve ever seen… the night before my wife’s crying… she’s just like, I’m just going to miss this version of you.”

JESSE EUBANKS:
Carlos shows what’s possible. The brain can adapt. Change is real. And if the brain changes—we change. 

But, not every story bends that way.

FAITH STULTS:
Diane Lane’s mom. Her stroke didn’t rewire her brain. It stripped it. Neurons died.
Pathways vanished. And much of what she lost—no amount of practice could bring back.

JESSE EUBANKS:
For Carlos, plasticity opened a door. For Diane’s mom, fragility slammed it shut. One brain adapts. Another collapses. Side by side—they tell opposite truths.

FAITH STULTS:
Both are real. The brain is resilient. And the brain is fragile. Plasticity and fragility coexist.

JESSE EUBANKS:
So if that’s true— if our lives rise and fall with our brains… are we nothing more than what they permit?

FAITH STULTS:
We have to go further. Beyond neurons. Beyond scans. To a question buried underneath it all: Is there something more fundamental to me— than my brain?

JESSE EUBANKS:
When we return, we dive into the mysteries of the soul. We’ll be right back. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
Wonderology. Jesse.

FAITH STULTS:
Faith. Today’s question: Is my brain me?

JESSE EUBANKS:
We’ve been inside the brain—billions of neurons sparking like a web of light. 

We’ve seen how when the brain changes, we change.

FAITH STULTS:
Which leaves us asking— Am I nothing more than what my brain allows? Or is there something deeper? Something beyond biology. Something more to me—
than my brain.

JESSE EUBANKS:
If you ask most Western Christians this question, they’ll likely give you one answer: 

FAITH STULTS:
And while most Christians wouldn’t equate their beliefs about the soul
with Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol, that’s still the picture most of us carry. A glowing mist. A see-through body. Something detachable. Something that floats away.

JESSE EUBANKS:
This is how we imagine people after they die. Not a brain. Something else.

ERIC SCHWITZGEBEL (Tape): There’s an immaterial soul that is connected in some way to your brain, but isn’t the same as your brain. 

FAITH STULTS:
This is philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, author of the book Perplexities of Consciousness. He says people have long believed in two selves: one material,
one immaterial.

ERIC SCHWITZGEBEL (Tape): And if you think there is an afterlife. Then that soul kind of continues to exist after your body and your brain decay. And maybe it can exist in heaven in a disembodied form, or maybe it gets put into a new body or who knows exactly how that goes, right?

FAITH STULTS:
In this view, the “real you” isn’t neurons firing — it’s the immaterial self. 

The part that remembers, that loves, that carries your values forward.

ERIC SCHWITZGEBEL (Tape): But you are that soul rather than the flesh and blood brain. And what matters to its being you is not what it’s composed of. What matters is that it’s going to have the same reactions to your loved ones that you would have, and it’s going to have the experience of remembering good times, and it’s going to have the same values and all the psychological stuff.

FAITH STULTS:
That’s the comfort: the “me” I know, lifted out of my body, still loving, still remembering.

JESSE EUBANKS:
But Eric says if you follow that idea too far—it gets weird.

FAITH STULTS:
Because when people talk about “the soul,” they’re often just circling the same questions we ask in psychology.

ERIC SCHWITZGEBEL (tape): multiple personality or dissociative identity disorder 

FAITH STULTS:
Or when we watch sci-fi.

ERIC SCHWITZGEBEL (tape): transporters in Star Trek.

FAITH STULTS:
It’s the same puzzle underneath: What counts as me?

JESSE EUBANKS:
Is it simply wherever our consciousness resides? 

ERIC SCHWITZGEBEL (tape): “Look, if I could somehow take my consciousness, my behavior, my interaction with the people around… and instantiate it in something other than a flesh and blood organ, wouldn’t that still be me?”

JESSE EUBANKS:
So where did we get this idea—that the “real me” is a ghost just driving a body?

FAITH STULTS:
Plato called the body a prison. Descartes called us “a ghost in the machine.” Over time, sermons and hymns repeated it until it felt biblical.

JESSE EUBANKS:
A lot of people point to the New Testament words of the Apostle Paul,
who often contrasted the flesh and the spirit. 

But scholars point out, that wasn’t Paul’s point. When he said “flesh” and “spirit,”
he wasn’t splitting body from soul. He was contrasting a life turned inward with a life opened toward God.

FAITH STULTS:
Still, those streams merged— Greek philosophy from one side, a misread Bible from the other— and that became the Western default: you’re a ghost in a body.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Then a new idea emerged. Forget the soul. You’re actually just a brain.

FAITH STULTS:
And that’s how we got stuck between two thin options.

JESSE EUBANKS:
But what if both sides have missed it? Let’s take a different look. An ancient Jewish look.

Marty Solomon (tape, BEMA Ep 21): …your soul is, in the Hebrew mind, it’s the essence of your being. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
This is Marty Solomon. He hosts the BEMA Podcast, helping people see the Bible through its Jewish roots.

FAITH STULTS:
And in that world, the soul isn’t a ghost driving a body.

Marty Solomon (tape, BEMA Ep 21): It’s not your body, it’s your body and your spirit and your—today we would use things like our emotions and our intellect and our consciousness, and we would have other words for them, it would be body and spirit, but your soul is all of it. Your soul is you… 

FAITH STULTS:
A soul isn’t something you have. A soul is something you are.

Marty Solomon (tape, BEMA Ep 21): everything you can think of that makes “you” you. All of it combined, the sum total of that is your soul.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Which means this: when Jews talked about the soul, they meant an embodied life.

Not a ghost in a machine. A whole person—material and spiritual woven together.

More than a body, but never apart from the body.

FAITH STULTS:
And if that’s true, death creates a problem. What happens to a soul without a body?
The Christian answer is resurrection. Not escape, but embodied life again. The spiritual and material reunited. Embodied like Jesus.

JESSE EUBANKS:
And this is where those earlier questions come back. When someone’s brain breaks—when memories slip away, when personality fades, when brains never fully develop— is there still a real “them” inside?

FAITH STULTS:
If the soul is just a ghost floating off somewhere, then the body doesn’t really matter. And if we’re nothing more than our brains, then when the brain goes, the person is just… gone. But if the soul is the whole embodied person, then resurrection means God makes us whole. Even when disease or injury kept us from ever being whole in the first place.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Resurrection isn’t about leaving the body.
It’s about continuing through it.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): it was hard. It was… I even use the word terrifying.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Which brings us to why resurrection isn’t just theology. For Carlos, it’s personal. Let’s rewind. Back to his second week at the monastery.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): I was reading my Bible, and I think I was reading one of the Gospels, and I was reading about the Resurrection. And it just felt like a fairy tale, all of a sudden.

FAITH STULTS:
If resurrection is a fairy tale, then maybe you really are just a brain. Just a body. Nothing more.

JESSE EUBANKS:
So Carlos does what you do in a monastery. He takes it to confession. To a monk named Father Francis.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): I was crying and telling him like, I don’t know if I believe in the resurrection anymore. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
Carlos expects answers.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): And he just kind of has a smile on his face looking at me. 

FAITH STULTS:
Father Francis doesn’t argue. He doesn’t quote verses. He simply says—

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): Carlos… Your God has become too small. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
Which brings us back to that ancient Jewish picture of the soul. Because in that world, doubt isn’t about winning an argument. It’s about whether your whole self—
your soul—is still open to God.

Marty Solomon (tape, BEMA Ep 21): That’s the test of the soul. Does God have you or does God only have you when He meets your demands? That’s the test of the nephesh.

FAITH STULTS:
Nephesh. The Hebrew word for soul. Instead of answers, Father Francis gives Carlos an invitation.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape):  He said… There’s a storm coming. I want you to hike up the mountain. I want you to go to the cemetery, and I want you to watch the storm roll in. And I want you to do one thing… I want you to behold.

FAITH STULTS:
Behold. Not prove. Not explain. Just—behold.

JESSE EUBANKS:
So Carlos climbs. The storm breaks open the sky. And in the thunder and rain,
he feels it— a soul alive, neurons firing, all caught up in something bigger.

CARLOS WHITTAKER (tape): God is way bigger than this tiny little box that I’d placed him in, my entire life. Gosh, I’m so small.

FAITH STULTS:
So is my brain me? Yes—without it, nothing else is possible. And yet…

JESSE EUBANKS:
The brain can’t explain everything. There’s something more to us. 

Back in the lab at Notre Dame, Diane is holding a brain in her hands. 

DIANE LANE (tape): “I don’t know what death is… And I don’t know why it all stops, but… fundamentally I think there’s something different between this” 

She motions to the brain.

DIANE LANE (tape): “…and equipment.”

FAITH STULTS:
Not a ghost in a machine.

Not a brain alone.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Science and soul. Neurons and meaning. And this is the hope of the Christian story: that even when neurons falter, the soul is not erased. That resurrection isn’t escape from the body— it’s God making all things new.

FAITH STULTS:
We are people of measurable biology, and immeasurable hope.

FAITH STULTS:
Your journey into wonder doesn’t have to end here.

If today’s episode sparked something in you—
we’ve got more.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Check out Science With Faith— our exclusive aftershow, where Faith unpacks the deeper layers of science and faith behind each episode.

FAITH STULTS:
Or dive into Everything From Nothing— our special miniseries hosted by Jesse  exploring evolution and Christian faith.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Both are free and waiting for you at wonderologyshow.com. That’s wonderologyshow.com.

If you’d like to hear more from Jim Stump, check out the Language of God podcast from BioLogos—their Uniquely Unique series on being human, including the episode on biology and the human brain.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Special thanks to Jim Stump, Colin Hoogerwerf, Carlos Whittaker, Diane Lane, Curt Thompson, Eric Schwitzgebel, and Marty Solomon. Wonderology is a production of Christianity Today in partnership with BioLogos. 

FAITH STULTS:
It’s hosted by Jesse Eubanks and Faith Stults. Today’s episode was written by Jesse Eubanks. Science fact-checking and guidance from Faith Stults, Jim Stump and Colin Hoogerwerf. It was produced and scored by Jesse Eubanks. Our associate producer is McKenzie Hill. 

JESSE EUBANKS:
Editing by Rachel Akers. Additional editing and all sound design by Mark Phillips at Windhill Studios.

FAITH STULTS:
Erik Petrik and Mike Cosper are the executive producers of CT Media Podcasts.
Matt Stevens is our senior producer.

JESSE EUBANKS:
Wonderology is generously funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
Explore the profound questions of life that inspire awe and wonder by visiting templeton.org

FAITH STULTS:
If you enjoyed this episode, send it to a friend, and leave us a rating and review to help more people find the show.

JESSE EUBANKS:
God invites us to experience the awe of all He’s made—both the known and the not-yet known. So let’s get curious.