{"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":"Why Your Bad Moods Are Never Random","slug":"why-your-bad-moods-are-never-random","published_at":"2026-06-03T19:41:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/beat-your-genes-podcast-601101/why-your-bad-moods-are-never-random","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/beat-your-genes-podcast-601101","url":"https://eac5122b-64de-4568-a1e6-e7d246a15c9d.libsyn.com/why-your-bad-moods-are-never-random","audio_url":"https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/eac5122b-64de-4568-a1e6-e7d246a15c9d/BYG_383_Audio.mp3?dest-id=3904317","summary":"A listener noticed their kid gets dissatisfied after too much screen time and asked Dr. Lisle a deeper question: when your mood feels off, is it always worth analyzing, or are some bad moods just random? Dr. Lisle's answer is blunt. Moods are never random. Every one is your brain running a cost-benefit calculus on your relationship to your environment, and the cause is always there, even when it is buried under complexity or driven by something purely chemical like hunger, sleep, or hormones. 0:00 Intro clips 0:42 Why your kid melts down when screen time ends 3:34 Supernormal stimuli creeping in 8:00 The potato chip trap of one more video 12:38 Why nobody finishes an hour long show anymore 21:12 How your feelings actually work 31:37 Can you get better at reading your moods? 49:12 Can you become more introspective as you age? 57:00 When the cause is chemical, not circumstantial 1:07:36 Final thoughts Beat Your Genes is co-hosted by evolutionary psychologist Dr. Doug Lisle, PhD and Dr. Nathan Gershfeld, DC. New episodes every other week. YouTube: youtube.com/@BeatYourGenes beatyourgenes.org Doug Lisle: esteemdynamics.com Nathan Gershfeld: fastingescape.com X: @BeatYourGenes Intro and outro: City of Happy Ones. Ferenc Hegedus. Licensed for use. Copyright Beat Your Genes Podcast","meta_description":"A listener noticed their kid gets dissatisfied after too much screen time and asked Dr. Lisle a deeper question: when your mood feels off, is it always wo…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":4161,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/beat-your-genes-podcast-601101/episodes/why-your-bad-moods-are-never-random/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/why-your-bad-moods-are-never-random.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}