Do we have free will?
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Shot on 4 April 2026.
Answers If you could ask people around the world one question, what would you ask them? · see how other cities answered →
Two fans outside Andrew Callaghan’s Channel 5 show in Denver argue about free will for three minutes. One thinks it is real, one has just read Sam Harris and is not so sure, and the interviewer is in the middle.
The first answer is about choosing your response. “I think we get to choose how we see our reality and we get to choose how we respond to our perception of reality.” He is careful not to make it sound easy: “Grief is real. We have learned helplessness. I’ve struggled with that shit But I think we have a choice.”
The second answer is the book. “had you asked me this two months ago” he would have agreed; the book was “Free Will, Sam Harris,” and the case he has taken from it is that “our actions are not that they’re predetermined, but that we are internally reacting to things,” the brain deciding the words before the mouth justifies them. The first man pushes: “You can choose to stop justifying right now.” “I don’t think so, man.”
The interviewer offers himself as the low-stakes example, procrastination and a lack of follow-through, and the second man will not let him off that lightly: “It’s different than that, man.”
It ends on the question for the world, from the man who thinks we choose: “Why aren’t you doing what makes you happy?” And the honest reply from the other: “Because I don’t know that answer, man.” Filmed by Maceo.
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