Choice, responsibility and free will
4 episodes of The Truth Hurts on this topic, each with its notes, key points and the questions it answers.
Episode 95 · June 12, 2025
Do Nothing: When Not Reacting Is the Better Choice
You have to get more done, even when you can barely stand up anymore. The way Gili sees it, that's not a strong work ethic. It's an automatic pattern running in the background, and you never notice you're repeating yourself at all. The fear of stopping is an ancient fear of shame, not a real choice you made. And the paradox is that the person who knows how not to react, and isn't frightened by the quiet, is the one who's really in control of their own life.
Episode 94 · May 22, 2025
The One Person Who's Always There: You
The same fight, the same feeling, the same moment when you come apart, over and over, as if life insists on repeating itself. Most of the time it isn't accidental. According to Gili Man Wolner, what runs it is a childhood story, a small trauma or a big one, that turned without our noticing into a belief that dictates how we react today. The subconscious loves what is familiar even when it hurts, and that is why it is so hard to break the cycle. The question is not how to escape the pattern, but how to learn to love the part of you that is still holding on to it.
Episode 35 · November 30, 2023
Free Will: Where Choice Begins
Reality right now presses in from every direction: a threat from the north, a threat from the south, and the feeling that close to half the world is against us, until even the dream of getting out and going abroad stops being any comfort. Gili argues that it's exactly this pressure that has brought up a conversation that was marginal for years: who we are, as Jews and as Israelis. From there she moves to a question that has been with us for much longer. Do we have free choice, or, as she sees it, is our reality a direct product of our own deepest wants, even when that sounds completely out there?
Episode 4 · April 13, 2023
The Will to Receive: The Force Behind Creation
You always want one more thing. A little more recognition, a little more quiet, a little bit more, and the moment you get it the next want is already waiting for you. Gili explains that this wanting isn't just another feeling that rises and fades. According to Kabbalah it is the actual material that all of reality is built out of, in inanimate matter and in us. The way she sees it, every want that comes up in you points to something you're missing right at that moment, and that holds for wanting food just as much as for wanting appreciation or control. The question she invites you to ask isn't how to get rid of the wanting. It's which wants are really running you.