The Long Way Back to Ourselves

1.6

The Stone Age Mind in You, and the Limits of That Explanation

This episode examines how much of your daily discomfort is a calibrated response to a world that no longer exists, opening with the body's stress reaction to a mildly critical work message at 3 a.m. It uses Daniel Lieberman's concept of "mismatch diseases," and cites Robert Sapolsky's baboon research to show why humans, unlike zebras, can keep a stress response running for months over an imagined threat. It also corrects the shortcut of treating "Stone Age brain" explanations as automatically true, citing Joseph Henrich's finding that psychology research draws on a narrow slice of humanity. It closes by arguing an outdated instinct is not excused, but can be redesigned around instead of blamed on yourself.