A Night with Chance: What I Learned from Sapolsky, Eno, and Bottura in a Bar

On a rainy night, I walked into an almost empty bar, looking for something more than a drink: a break, a bit of calm. The rain tapped against the windows, and the low murmur of music filled the room. I had barely sat down when I noticed a familiar figure in the corner, talking to two other people. I approached them, almost without thinking, and there they were: Robert Sapolsky, Brian Eno, and Massimo Bottura. The three of them together, as if chance had conspired in my favor.

They looked at me with curiosity, and Eno, with a calmness that seemed to envelop him, motioned for me to join them. “Chance is a good starting point for any conversation,” he said with an enigmatic smile. Without thinking much, I sat down, unable to process the improbability of this encounter.

Sapolsky, always in a calm, almost paternal tone, began to speak about his studies. “Did you know that the human brain is wired to detest the unexpected? When we face unpredictable situations, stress skyrockets brutally. Studying primates, I realized that the stress of not knowing what will happen is far more devastating than any other form of pressure. It consumes us.” He paused, and his words hung in the air. “And yet,” he continued, “it’s in uncertainty that we find the opportunity to adapt.”

“Adapt?” Bottura chimed in, with a sparkle in his eyes. “Cooking has taught me that perfection is boring. My best dishes are born from accidents, like the famous 'Oops! I Dropped the Lemon Tart.' It was a mistake that I transformed into something beautiful. In Italy, we say that beauty lies in imperfection, in embracing what we didn’t plan.” He looked at us intently. “That’s what gives soul to every dish; allowing the unexpected into the kitchen and making it your ally.”

Eno listened, amused, and then added: “In music, it’s something similar. Sometimes, when you try to control every note, every sound, the result is rigid and cold. That’s why I created the ‘Oblique Strategies.’” He took a small deck of cards from his pocket and showed us one. “Each card has a random suggestion. ‘Change the speed,’ ‘Reverse the melody’... Chance is a tool, a teacher guiding you to territories you can’t foresee. Without it, how could creativity keep its essence?”

The conversation flowed among them as if they were weaving a single story, with chance as the common thread. Sapolsky reminded us that our perception of free will is somewhat illusory, that we are shaped by genes and circumstances we didn’t choose. “But that allows us to be empathetic,” he said. “If we understand that others are influenced by factors they can’t control, we can see them from a broader perspective.”

Eno nodded, thinking aloud, “It’s the same in music. Sound evolves, changes, and in those changes, in those moments we don’t control, we discover who we are. Each work is different because we never know how it will sound in space and time.” He told us how, in his album Music for Airports, he let notes combine randomly, creating an atmosphere that never repeats the same way twice.

And then Bottura, with his vibrant energy, spoke about his love for imperfect ingredients, the ones others would reject. “In my kitchen, a crooked tomato is a gift. It represents the unexpected, nature itself. There are days when I don’t know what I’ll find, but that uncertainty challenges me to create something new each time.”

For them, uncertainty was something almost sacred. It wasn’t a threat but a challenge. Sapolsky led us to see how the brain, despite its desire for stability, learns and adapts in moments of chaos. Eno reminded us that art can feed off mistakes, that every dissonance is an open door to experimentation. And Bottura showed how imperfection can be the key to making something truly authentic.

At the end of the night, I felt that chance, like an invisible fourth guest, had marked every word, every pause, every story. We said our goodbyes, and Eno handed me one of his “Oblique Strategies” cards. As I read it, I smiled: “Embrace the mistake.”