Beat Your Genes Podcast

In today's show, the dr's discuss: 1. Current events re: Roe v Wade 2. There is so much about “body positivity” on the media and women growing their body hair out especially. On social media I read mainly positive comments on this, but especially from women, while some men are making rather jokey comments. I was just wondering what might be the motivation for women who keep saying stuff like “good on her”, “if only I was braver, I’d do the same”, etc…?? Like they’re all claiming that removal of body hair is forced on us by recent culture. Is it though? I personally as a women hate my body hair and have removed it since before puberty. To me it actually feels "natural" to remove it. So I wonder if there is any perspective on this specific topic from the evolutionary psychology perspective? 3. What is your erudite opinion on why the ‘blank slate’ model seem to particularly appeal to certain "character types" more than others

In today's show, the drs discuss 1. I am worried about my daughter. She graduated with a perfect gpa while also modeling. After her degree, she moved to pursue modelling but she soon developed an eating disorder and quit.  Subsequently, she attended medical school but dropped out due to an illness caused by stress. She moved back home but she doesn’t want to work or go back to school. In fact, she barely leaves the house. Whenever I try to talk to her about it, she starts crying and we never get anywhere. I hate to see her waste her life like this. Please help, I don’t know what to do to help. 2. Any thoughts on autism or Asperger’s, particularly in women? I am a 35 year-old woman who has struggled in life in very specific ways. I’m trying to figure out if my issues are related to being on the spectrum or if they are simply a result of the combination of my big 5. 3. I find friendships draining, and the cost of friendships are not worth the payback. My concern is that there is pressure to make and maintain social connections, for example Dr. Dean Ornish believes social connections are one key to reversing disease. My concern is this pressure could cause unnecessary anxiety for some people, who become anxious trying to keep connections, when they could be just as happy without them. 4. I’m trying to follow your 10 paid dates strategy, but men just don’t pay anymore! Isn’t this a slightly archaic expectation or do I need to lower my standards? I’m 40 and would very much like to find the right man and have a kid while I still can. I’m athletic, a solid 9 physically, of high intelligence, relatively successful and highly agreeable. I’ve been on dating apps for over a year and been on countless dates. The only man who paid for our date knew about the 10 paid dates strategy and was honest enough to tell me he’s only interested in casual mating.

In today's show, the Dr's discuss: 1. Are attachment styles just the last trend in psychodynamic nonsense? Or is there some legitimacy to it? 2. I wanted to get your perspectives on the trait of confidence. Do you view confidence as a combination of Big5 traits? Is there such a thing as internal confidence or is it all driven by market feedback with respect to mates, friends, and trading partners? I'm particularly interested in understanding if there are ways to help children feel more confident.  3. Please can you help me with 'Imposter Syndrome'? I was recently offered, seemingly out of the blue, a stellar opportunity to work at the highest tier of my industry that I am yet to complete training in. I am HC, HA, HN, above av intelligence. After weeks of stress & emotional turmoil, not to mention hard work, I pulled off a great presentation and have been flooded with esteem & positive feedback & people wanting to work with me. Not soley because of the presentation, but my name must be getting 'out there' in my field. I am in a permanent state of bewilderment & anxiety. I cannot seem to internalise, accept as true and enjoy my 'success.' I feel like a fraud and that my new clients are overestimating me and will be disappointed. Please help, these feelings are crippling and are inhibiting me moving forward. NB This is my third career and I have not experienced anything like this before.

In today's episode, Dr. Lisle goes over:  1. What would be the stone age benefit for women to seek only compassion and not direct help or solutions? 2. I grew up in a household with parents who successfully left their home countries and “made it” as engineers in the US. I grew up with the expectation that I would follow their trajectory - I completed a bachelors, a masters, and was always “en-route” to medical school. Post-graduate school though, things started to look a little differently for me. I lost academic steam and I fell into mystical, artsy land. Recently, I feel like I woke up from a pity-party slumber. I am getting back on the path to medical school. The problem? I am torn. I find myself battling 3 different lives: a life of sacrifice to others through usage of my scientific aptitude, a life of being a jester and using my charm to brighten people’s lives, and a life of solitude in pursuit of philosophical truths. So what do I do? Why have I been torn in this position for the past 3 years since graduate school? Am I stuck in black-or-white thinking and can do all three, or have I subconsciously ran a cost-benefit analysis and have determined certain routes aren’t worth it?  3. My sister is in need of bone marrow. As her only sibling, I would be ideal for this and have a 25% chance of matching. But this comes with serious risks for the donor. Unlike my sister, I take good care of myself, eating a whole foods diet. I am not on any medication and avoid taking even aspirins. Also unlike my sister, I am vehemently opposed to taking the vaccine. However, my doctor says that I will likely be forced to take it if I want to be her donor. I could postpone a decision and simply find out if I'm a match, but if I am, I will feel compelled to continue going down this road, a road I'm not sure I want to go down. How do I make this decision?

In today's show, the doctors discuss:  1.  I have been married for 8 years to a man who is a federal government employee. He is very responsible and reliable. Now, since the pandemic, he has been working from home 4-5x/week. I have notice how lazy he is. I workout, eat clean, do the cooking and all the cleaning. I find myself getting so irritated when I am with him. He is overweight and growing. He literally sits watching TV or reading articles on the computer and eating crap during working hours. I do not understand why my habits are not more influential.  My question is, how can in manage my feelings of frustrations and irritability. I border lack of respect and even attraction to him, am I being too dramatic.  2. I am in a relationship for about 4 years now.  I am an agreeable introvert she is disagreeable introvert.. we both like spending time together and doing things, but our sex life is not great, she has some medical reasons and penetration is painful.. and this is something that comes up every now and then, she confessed previous relationships ended because of this, i can feel it most times she is not enjoying having sex, but she puts up with it.  My question is, is such dynamic possible, can a relationship survive long term, my sex drive is quite high, i'm 30, she is 28.. i feel like we should make it work but dont know what are the odds of this, i find myself reaching out different outlets to express my needs.   3. How can I tell if my boyfriend is in love with/is really interested in his 'female friend'? How often would you say intuition is right in these situations? 4. Is it possible to be an agreeable highly testosteronized male?   What would such a male look like?  This confuses me bc I often think of highly testosteronized as a dominance climbing, aggressiveans & competitive and so am wondering how these traits co-exist.

In today's show, Dr. Howk discusses:  1.Should I be worried if my boyfriend's career is a higher priority than me and our future family? If I was the love of his life would his career still be more important than me? He is 40 and a financier on wall street.  2. What are the ways women abuse men? Is the silent treatment, inducing jealousy, withholding intimacy, considered abusive? I’m a woman and I found myself doing these things in a toxic relationship in which my partner called me abusive, which made me wonder if I was. 3. You've only briefly touched on video games on the podcast, and I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on the psychology behind them. What do you link their popularity as an entertain medium / form of escape to?You've only briefly touched on video games on the podcast, and I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on the psychology behind them. What do you link their popularity as an entertain medium form of escape to? 4. I am a 35 year old female who is afraid to talk to men. I am so nervous when talking to the opposite sex that it is affecting my work and studies, to the point where I chose to pursue a professional degree in which the majority of students are female. I avoid interacting with males wherever I go; I always choose female doctors or dentists and only speak to female salespersons when in a store. At 35, I have never been on a date, which my friends (who are female) and family think is weird. I have never been traumatized by a man, never been raped, and had a good childhood. I know this is not normal and would like to overcome this. 5.I am a student in my 3rd year of a bachelor of psychology. No matter the subject, the courses always manage to devote a section to gender theory. Its taught as a fact that gender is a series of norms socialized into us and have no basis in biology. Where does evolutionary psychology fall on gender theory?

In today's show, the Dr's discuss: 1. can you illuminate us a bit about the nature of sexual disgust. I am currently seeing a man who is very much in love with me and is a good match for me in general. I like him very much and can imagine him as a future partner. However, I hate being touched by him. I feel so grossed out by it,it doesn't turn me on at all and so I avoid physical intimacy with him. Is there any way to get over this or should I just quit? 2. My ex that I was with for one year that's 60 pounds overweight and objectively a 4 cheated on me even though I'm 108 pounds with about a .7 hip to waist ratio and at least a 7. Why would this happen? I dated him because I thought he would appreciate how much more attractive than him I was and thus treat me well and not cheat on me at the least! The girls he has dated before me and cheated on me with were less attractive than me. He even said they were only 'okay'. He told me he makes seven figures but I estimate it to be $200,00 which is still great so maybe that's why he thinks he's so great and better than me? He showed me the ring he was going to propose to me with as a last ditch effort to get me to not break up with him which was apparently $80,000. My guess is that it's actually around $15,000. Other than that, he doesn't seem interested in marriage in general even though he's 41. Is he just naturally a short-term mater unless he's insanely rewarded? If he really valued me wouldn't he not risk losing me over some random girls? Please tell me what I'm doing wrong and what's going on, I have an open loop about this and I feel like I can't stop thinking about this until I understand every small detail so I can avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

In today's show, the Dr's discuss:  1. My male friend told me he married his wife even though he was in love with an ex-girlfriend because he could trust her to be loyal whereas he couldn't trust his ex. How often do men do this? How good/bad of a situation is this for the wife who wants a reliable husband and father until death does them part(she might be concerned about him having an affair with the ex)? 2. How do I assess how to stimulate/encourage my brain's moods of happiness? 3. I’ve always been quite anxious but this feeling has worsened in the past two years. I always feel a sense of insecurity about the future as well as inferiority to everyone. I question my decisions and my capabilities. Is it a real fear that signals that I’m not “contributing to the village” or is it just my personality?

In this episode, Dr. Lisle discusses:  1. Is jealous and controlling/possessive behavior a sign that a romantic partner loves you or is just a something to do with their personality? 2. Does crystal clear usually only work with honest people? I suppose a dishonest person would lie and manipulate during the crystal clear, therefore the best outcome of the conversation would be finding out the truth despite their dishonesty and/or terminating the relationship because of the realization of their dishonesty and that it carries too many costs. 3. How common is it for men to be successfully deceived about a woman's promiscuity? How easy is it for men to correctly 'sniff out' a woman's promiscuity? How common is it for women to lie about their promiscuity?

In today's show, the doctors discuss:  1. Dear Doctors, my husband and I have been married for 5 1/2 years now, and have an amazing relationship. We agree on most things, enjoy spending time together, have great communication and have very infrequent arguments. One thing (probably the only thing) we do argue about is my sex drive and my husband’s penis size. If my husband had it his way, we would have sex twice a day, every day and for me there is about a 10 day window every month where I actually want to have sex and the rest of the month I have absolutely no desire. My husband believes it is because he has a “small penis” even though he is the one who noticed my sexual desire peaks around my ovulation window. When we do have sex it is amazing and we are both fulfilled. No matter how many times I tell him he satisfies me and it has nothing to do with him or his size, he does not believe me. When I do engage in sexual activity outside of my “window” it is solely for him, and he can tell that I do not enjoy it. He immediately thinks of his penis size and gets depressed about it and he truly believes if he were bigger I would want him more. How do we move past this as a couple? 2. How does a woman prevent herself from cheating on her ‘horace’ husband with a ‘jimmy’ and losing his fathering to their children if she’s not in a magic 10% relationship? 3. The recent episode about current events was alarming. I understand the basics of what's happening, but is the gravity of the situation being exaggerated by the doctors? Could they be falling into the trap of being the wise prophet foretelling doom in the stone age? That concept has been discussed on the podcast before so I'm curious their thoughts on it now.

In today's show, Dr. Howk discusses: 1.  I grew up facing a lot of turmoil; I had a physically and sexually abusive father, I left home and was homeless from 16 to 18, and dealt with a lot of tumultuous grooming situations at a young age, and so forth. However, I was dealing with it really well up until 20 when I started to take therapy; while simultaneously moving to a tiny city that was very into “woke” culture. I feel as though it may have exasperated my victim mentality, but I am unsure. I want to know, was the victim mentality trait already integrated within my genetics or does woke culture and modern therapy have enough influence to exasperate that mentality?  Does it matter the severity or weight of what you went through when it comes to coaching yourself to leave the victim mentality? 2. How do I cope nondestructively with stress?  As a quite emotionally unstable yet conscientious person, I find myself stressed a lot of the time. In the past, my way of reacting to stress has been reaching for food. I learned that I stress ate because my body was seeking something to increase my chances of survival and reproduction during an uncertain time. More recently, after successfully stopping myself from using food to alleviate stress, I have turned to impulse shopping. This also makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, since the things I buy include jewlery, hair and nail appointments, and clothes, which all enhance my physical appearance and also increase reproductive success.  I was wondering if there is something I could effectively do to soothe stress in the moment that won’t make me gain weight or break my bank account. 3. If I had to put a label on it, I identify as a bisexual female. I’m overthinking applying the EP concepts that I understand so well when it comes to dating women. For instance, do the 10 paid dates still apply with two women?

In today's episode, Dr. Lisle discusses: 1. Why do men sometimes pair-bond/fall in love with obviously promiscuous women(promiscuous reputation, clubbing/partying often, always scantily clad)? Maybe I'm having a hard time understanding because I'm a young woman. I would love to hear your thoughts! 2. What pair-bond behavior do highly testeronized men show? My boyfriend of 1 year remembers minute details about me, pays for all our dates, sends me food when he's not with me, and has bought me a new MacBook Pro, iPhone, Tiffany's jewelry, flowers every month, and teddy bears but he is not very verbally or physically affectionate. He has never initiated sexual activities with me either, although I can tell he enjoys when we do them. He's very jealous and possessive, insulting other men's abilities and intentions with me and always telling me to dress more modestly. In addition to not being verbally(as in compliments, sweet-talking, baby-names) and physically affectionate, he's easily irritated with me, curses and yells at me when he's angry, and dismisses my thoughts and opinions. He has proposed to me with a $20,000 engagement ring but I am hesitant to get more invested in this relationship but I am extremely confused about how he feels about me. If this is the pair-bonded behavior of a highly testeronized man maybe I am more compatible with a man who's closer to the middle of the bell curve. Your thoughts would be appreciated! 3. Dear doctors: could you please speak on what it is like to have a romantic relationship with a person with low emocional stability? I have started dating a man who describes himself as having low emotional stability. Although he is very sweet and loving, I do wonder how high the cost will be to maintain this relationship. I am very emotionally stable and as such I'd like to know what to expect.   

In today's show, the Dr's discuss: 1. I listened to Dr Howk on pseudo esteem where you say:  If you are highly agreeable, highly conscientious and not that emotionally stable - being on social media comes with a high price for you psycolgy.  I teach workshops for companies and I get graded every time from each students.   I get 5 from 95% of the students but sometimes I get a 2 or 3 and I can tell right away before I get the evaluation who in the crowd will grade me low.   How do I stop trying to please the one disagreeable person and not feel bad for getting a low grade? When I have a disagreeable person in my workshop I feel like I have to work twice as hard to turn him or her over to my side. It feels like Im spending 1000 dollars on a 100 dollar asignment and Im drained.  My boss allways sees the evaluation and I feel the need to explain my self if a person gave me a low grade.   My boss uses the good evaluations as a selling point to get the companies to buy more workshops at his school.   2. Do you ever talk about abandonment/rejection issues? Examples: my mother divorced my father when I was seven years of age in 1959 and my mother was murdered in 1968 leaving behind 7 children. 3. I was put on psychiatric drugs when I was 13 because of anorexia and being miserable about being bullied at school. The drugs messed me up. I can see it now that I have not used them for years. I was on various types of drugs around 10 years. I now know how damaging and useless those drugs are and I know my cognitive abilities have been damaged because of them. I also now realize just how much damage psychiatry has caused to my life overall. I'm extremely angry and bitter. I'ts incredibly painful to think about what has been done to my brain and what potential has been stolen from me. I dwell on my anger and bitterness everyday and it's unbearable. How can I cope?

In today's show, the Dr's discuss; 1. How would you raise a child? Specifically for the first year? All that whining and crying, and getting barely any sleep for the first year. Is there anything parents can do? Or if nothing, if someone has the finances to, would you recommend a nanny or something similar? 2. Do obese people have differing psychologies? I would assume obese genes wouldn't survive to reproduction in historic times before agriculture (in terms of extreme obesity), so do you think that has any impact upon psychology today? Also, are there any groups of people that have differing psychology from the average of the human population for reasons similar to the question? Or just at all? 3. Is it genetics how much sleep someone needs? Do some people just naturally need more sleep even when diet and exercise and stress levels and everything is in the right place? Do introverts need more sleep and rest because their nervous system works differently? 4.  I have been working on that with my family members who are very difficult, unpleasant and disrespectful toward me. While it does help considerably with the day to day dynamics, I often still feel guilty about pulling away, and think that I need to explain myself to everyone (although I haven't). Why won't my inner critic give me esteem for separating myself from the disagreeables? 5. Why is there is such heated fight over a woman's decision to have or not to have a child? Most actions to enforce antiabortion laws are taken by male politicians. What is it to them if someone's offspring appears on the planet Earth against their mother's wish? 6. I would like to hear your thoughts on people having paranoia. In the Internet you hear all kinds of reasons for why people have them. Is it mainly genetics and personality? Can you treat paranoia and if so, how?

In today's show, the Dr's discuss: 1. How do you explain, in the context of evolutionary psychology, women who pursue polyamory? It seems like they are doing a good job of beating the instructions dealt them by their genes. Alternatively is polyamory is just the new, politically-correct way of cheating on your spouse and potentially ending an unwanted relationship? 2.  I am a female from Canada trapped in the country for now.. Currently, with the vaccine mandate, I can't sit inside a restaurant or even join an outdoors sports group. This makes meeting people and dating rather impossible. Should I try my luck just to get out into the market. If so, should I display my vaccine status? My date will find out pretty soon when I say I can only go on a hike date.  3. I've been in a "magic 10%" relationship for almost 2 years. He treats me like a princess, but what robs me of peace of mind is that he has a sister my age who is a single mother. She often asks him for help, money, babysitting, at some point she even asked him to live with her. He refused, but felt guilty afterwards. Is me sharing my man with his sister a sufficient reason to break up? It feels bad both to be in this relationship as well as to end this relationship. It makes me feel guilty as well, because there is not much of partners fault. Is there anything that can be done? 4. Does having a surrogate mother drive a subconscious rift between husband and wife because certain neural networks were not tripped in the female brain? And is there any solution that can trip these circuits so the natural attachments are made? 5. I’ve learned about the harsh realities of being a new parent and the incredible lack of sleep involved. If sleep is so vital, why would nature design such intense sleep deprivation for mothers when raising young children? It seems so counterintuitive.