Beat Your Genes Podcast

In this replay of Ep 202, the questions are:   1. I’ve been married to a 90% disagreeable man for 42 years. Many times I’ve packed my bags but never followed through. I dream of being on my own, doing the little things in life without being questioned. As he has gotten older his drinking has become a problem. Every year finds me more depressed. How to know when to go? 2.why do men flirt? I am falling for a guy who is a huge flirt. I see him flirting with me and with other women, and he has a long distance, long term girlfriend who he is faithful to. Why does he flirt so much? Why am I falling for him even though I know he doesn't mean anything serious by flirting? 3. How do you deal with toxic and controlling parents who like to believe that they are doing RIGHT by continuing to control your life well into your adulthood ? Is it normal to feel that you have a hate relationship with your mother because of lack of support and love to you? As a daughter it feels awful to feel it this way but I can’t get over the fact that having a distant and uncaring mother has driven me into agreeing to marry a person who is totally different to me in personality. Even to this date my mother still emotionally blackmails me to not get a divorce by using her health as a reason. You can divorce your spouse but how can you ever divorce your mother and get over it without feeling the guilt? 4. A friend of mine is having some troubles getting in touch with his friends regularly. He always thinks, if I (or anyone else) doesn't contact him first, I don't like him anymore. It seems to me like he is suffering from some kind of inferiority complex in that sense. How do you explain such a behavior in an evolutionary sense or to broaden my question, why do people suffer from inferiority complexes and how can they try to overcome such feelings?

In today's show, Dr. Lisle answers:  My daughter was recently informed by her therapist that self esteem is created in the first five years of life. My daughter feels now that I failed her in This regard as I was the primary caregiver.  Essentially she feels her unhappy life is now my fault. Why do so many therapists focus so very much on upbringing and early life experiences vs genetics? I have a highly ambitious streak but can’t seem to string together any consistent action since I graduated university and settled into a job.  My concern is, am I doomed to mediocrity? What use would it be for me to have these feelings of missed opportunity, boredom at work and the desire for more if I have a personality that checkmates all my efforts. Dr Howk suggested in a previous episode, without high conscientiousness it is very unlikely one will be able to create any lasting habits/ stick to the fundamentals. Is there anything I can do because as Dr Lisle says we can’t change our nervous system? Am I doomed to live a life of what could have been? Dr Lisle has spoken on previous episodes regarding running an experiment in order to engage your self esteem mechanism and feel the pride that comes with doing a good job. This pride will supposedly allow you to get on a path of self improvement. I could see how this process can be effective at turning off the feelings of frustration that come with doing a mediocre job. However in a previous episode Dr lisle also mentioned that boredom is a sign that you are not learning much at work and a signal for you to use your time more productively. How then does doing an excellent job and improving your self esteem signals bear on tasks you find boring? Can doing a good job and improving your self esteem signals make these tasks that are the “right of passage” as a junior employee feel less like drudgery? Copyright Beat Your Genes Podcast Host: Nathan Gershfeld                               Interviewee: Doug Lisle, Ph.D. Podcast website:  www.BeatYourGenes.org True to Life seminars with Dr. Lisle and Dr. Howk : www.TrueToLife.us   Intro & outro song: City of Happy Ones · Ferenc Hegedus

In today's episode, Dr .Lisle and Dr. Howk weigh in on current events.

In today's replay of episode 198, the Dr's discuss: 1. I think that you are absolutely right when you say that happiness comes from esteem, earned in the right way from the people that matter. It's really beautiful to me how that works. But on the other hand, I occasionally meet women who impress me a great deal, strictly based on their DNA- i.e., above-average looks, brains, and personality. Or, as you might expect, even just well above average looks. So my question is, how can attraction be such a profound emotional experience when so much of it is purely on the basis of DNA, and nothing that has been done to earn it? And in fact people are more impressed with someone when it appears that they are not trying? Is how we feel about ourselves based on what we earn, but how we feel about others mostly just a matter of their DNA? 2. How does IQ affect relationships? Specifically, a male having a greater IQ than his female partner, at what point would this cause problems in the relationship and how? 3. I am a recently single 30 year old male, and I’ve been hitting the online dating apps once again. With my more finely tuned evolutionary lense thanks to your podcast, I’ve noticed something interestin.  It seems as though most of us, while we want to put our best foot forward in order to increase our chance of success, we still can’t help but leak potentially market-limiting queues. Is it simply that we are programmed to be honest so that we don’t end up wasting our time with people who wouldn’t find these market-limiting interests appealing? Is this a simple energy conservation cost-benefit analysis?

In today's show, Dr. Howk dicusses: 1. I am a fairly successful artist in his late 20s (definitely another Jimmy the Guitar player). My Big Five is highly distorted (O-98, C-75, E-98, A-15, N-98), which has gotten me in all sorts of trouble but luckily, my high IQ has kept me on the right track. Your podcast and website have helped me in almost every arena, but I can't shake my Jimmy gene. I find myself "falling in love", but losing interest just as quickly. This has caused many unhappy romantic relationships, sometimes even when I desperately want them to work. How can a Jimmy who would love to pair bond beat his genes? Is there a ten paid dates rule for men? What is the right environment, if I can't change my personality? 2. I'm a young male adult (~20), and I truly enjoying studying, working out, training, and just overall being productive. I know it's because I'm trying to gain mate value and climb social structures, but I truly enjoy it.  Now, I recently aquired a girlfriend, and I've found that I'm more attracted to bouts of watching youtube videos for a few hours at night before I go to bed, or just generally not being productive. I've had problems here and there, but most of the time I avoid the temptation altogether and it works well. But the energy to stop relaxing and start working once I'm there is more than I'm willing to muster, it seems. It may be that this is just how I feel right now in life, and in a month or two I'll be more productive again, but do you think it's possible that now I have a mate, my brain doesn't believe I have a serious need to climb structures and gain skills? If so, that is seriously depressing.

In today's show, Dr. Lisle answers the following questions:  1.  Our adult son is still living at home to save money to buy his own place. This year he was riding his motorcycle without insurance for short rides. We chose to put a wheel lock on his bike until he gets insurance. Since then he basically ignores us. How can we get through to him and put an end to this 'stand off'?  2. My partner is 44 and has never had a serious job for more than a couple of months. He hates authority and always complains about having superiors or work being “dull”.  I've been the main breadwinner for many years and I am fed up. The thing stopping me from throwing out his stuff and changing the locks is the fact that we have a 10-year-old child. That, and the fact that my partner has a bad temper when pushed. How do I get out safely? 3.  My son is 14, and his personality is not very charming. He says very mean things to me, he is violent towards things and sometimes me, he has a hard time making and keeping friends. He is selfish in a way that is ruthless. Our dog is terrified of him. I don’t know how to deal with him anymore.Give me advice on how to be a better mother and how to cope please. 4. I am having a major personality clash with my mother-in-law. She is extremely religious and insists on praying for me and my husband regardless of what we are up to or going through. Every success is owing to her prayers, and every failure, she claims, is *in spite of* her prayers.  She has been a major point of stress for me since getting married three years ago. Her brand of undermining, theological interference really bugs me. Do you prescribe some disagreeable distance, or perhaps something else? I want to be a pleasant daughter-in-law but find myself feeling nothing short of hateful for her godly gaslighting. HELP!

In today's replay of episode 197, Dr. Lisle disusses: 1. Does the myelin sheath development also apply to more purely mental abilities like reading and comprehension, or the ability to imagine and come up with inventive solutions to a problem?  For example, how much can learning and practice be helpful in growing infants and children? Will a baby that is spoken to for 5 hours a day learn to speak significantly faster than one exposed to only an hour of language a day? Or are parents kidding themselves when they spend so much effort to give their child an edge in cognitive development? 2. I'm a private person: I cringe when people air their dirty laundry or have what to me are very private conversations in the facebook comment section. I don't signal affiliation or loyalty the way most people do, and tend to minimize advertising even when it would be seemingly beneficial: I recall declining someone wanting to write an article about me back in high school because "it's nobody's business". I realize I'll always be like this, but the way you and Geoffrey Miller talk about advertising opened it a new perspective. Do you think I'm missing out, and if so, how could I improve where it matters? 3. How do scientists go about measuring genes? How do they identify and associate them with human behavior? Is this something they can see with Petri dishes and a microscope? What would a behavioral scientists day look like?

In this epsiode, Dr. Howk and Dr. Lisle discuss current events.

In today's episode, Dr. Howk and Dr. Lisle discuss current events.

In today's replay of episode 207, we go over these questions: 1. I understand from evolutionary psychology that certain market distortions, like a large number of females in college, or a small number of males in elderly age affect the quality of partners we're willing to date. What I am not sure about is how this calibration changes subjective experience. Do people only change their behavior to attain a partner, or do they also feel more attracted to people of perhaps lesser gene quality? 2. When I was in my twenties, I used to go to bars and wait in line to get in during the winter. In Montreal, winters can be very cold but one would always see girls waiting in the cold with no proper clothing. These happened to be the sexiest girls. My buddy would be impressed with them, saying that they seemed to have a supernatural ability to beat the cold. My question is: do you think that exhibiting the capacity to sustain a noxious stimulus can be used as a gene quality signal? Do you think that smoking can also viewed in this way? It is obviously a pleasure trap, but smokers may want to send the signal: "Look how high quality my genes are, if I can get away with smoking with impunity" 3. I am an introverted married woman in my mid forties. I have a friend who is single and in her early 60s. She frequently asks me and a small covey of women (who all happen to have mates) to go out dancing, to dinner, etc. via group texts. As I refuse to go to nightclubs, I occasionally join them for dinners (maybe twice a year) but refuse to go to nightclubs. My question is, Does a woman increase her chances of finding a mate if she surrounds herself with other women? Is she attempting to create a lure of sorts? I don’t want to continue to be uncooperative about assembling with the group if this is something that could potentially increase her chances at finding someone.