{"podcast":{"title":"Beat Your Genes Podcast","slug":"beat-your-genes-podcast-601101","podcast_index_feed_id":601101,"rss_url":"https://feeds.libsyn.com/462585/rss","website_url":"https://beatyourgenes.org/","image_url":"https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/6/8/3/c/683cf337d8321d22bafc7308ab683e82/300DPI_JPG.jpg","author":"Nathan Gershfeld","episode_count":402,"summary":"Evolutionary psychology with Dr. Doug Lisle, PhD and Nathan Gershfeld, D.C. Most psychology advice treats your brain like a broken machine. Beat Your Genes starts somewhere different: your instincts aren't broken. They're just optimized for a Stone Age environment that no longer exists. Dr. Lisle - Evolutionary psychologist, former Stanford lecturer, and co-author of The Pleasure Trap - has spent decades developing frameworks that explain human behavior from the ground up. Nathan Gershfeld, D.C. - trained first as an electrical engineer and then spent 14 years as a Doctor of Chiropractic. He brings a systems thinker's curiosity to every conversation. He mostly lets Dr. Lisle talk. Topics include relationships and attraction, self-esteem, personality, depression and anxiety, willpower, the ego trap, and how pushy people exploit agreeable ones. 380+ episodes. New episodes every other week. New here? Start at beatyourgenes.org/start-here","last_synced_at":"2026-07-10T22:20:18.136355+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/beat-your-genes-podcast-601101"},"episode":{"title":"371: Evo Psych Didn't Ruin Anything, You're Just Focused on the Scary Part","slug":"371-evo-psych-didn-t-ruin-anything-you-re-just-focused-on-the-scary-part","published_at":"2025-12-11T03:18:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/beat-your-genes-podcast-601101/371-evo-psych-didn-t-ruin-anything-you-re-just-focused-on-the-scary-part","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/beat-your-genes-podcast-601101","url":"https://eac5122b-64de-4568-a1e6-e7d246a15c9d.libsyn.com/371-evo-psych-didnt-ruin-anything-youre-just-focused-on-the-scary-part","audio_url":"https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/eac5122b-64de-4568-a1e6-e7d246a15c9d/BYG_371_Audio.mp3?dest-id=3904317","summary":"0:00 Teaser Clips & Intro 02:42 Q1: Listener struggles with finding meaning and motivation after embracing an evolutionary-psychology worldview that feels deterministic and uncomfortable. 7:03 The start of psychotherapy 17:00 Life problems are competitive 33:10 You're not better off not knowing about human nature 49:07 Everybody knows the truth, deep down 1:05:04 Final thoughts Q1: This podcast has ruined my life. Well, not exactly, but it certainly hasn't helped. Yet, like passing a car crash, I cannot look away. My desire to understand the true nature of our existence seems to supersede the delusions that I might otherwise be comfortable with. With each episode comes a new insight that I previously wouldn't have had swimming around in my head, but I'm still enamored with the biological and philosophical implications of Dr. Lisle's approach to our evolution. But because these ideas are uncomfortable, they tend to put me in a place socially, and even in my own head, that isn't exactly producing satisfaction. I have always been afflicted with the idea that, much like buying into a religion, accepting the fantasies that we humans have constructed to deal with these hard truths would lead to a happier existence. Yet, I can not unknow or unthink these things. If I never had listened to this podcast, I might consider therapy, or medication management for my angst, and maybe they would have helped me a certain percentage, but now I am fully on board with Dr. Lisle's approach and know deep down his are the only real answers to life's modern problems. Even though there's still a small part of me that questions how immutable his advice seems, I can not steer myself into a satisfactory mindset. Unfortunately, all of this has caused me to devolve into somewhat of a determinist, r…","meta_description":"0:00 Teaser Clips & Intro 02:42 Q1: Listener struggles with finding meaning and motivation after embracing an evolutionary-psychology worldview that feels…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":4044,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/beat-your-genes-podcast-601101/episodes/371-evo-psych-didn-t-ruin-anything-you-re-just-focused-on-the-scary-part/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/beat-your-genes-podcast-601101/371-evo-psych-didn-t-ruin-anything-you-re-just-focused-on-the-scary-part.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}