Sep 15, 2026 · 1h 47m
Listen from 55:36
Listen at 55:36
Parenthood exposes the brain’s conflict with modern life
Fathers Lose Testosterone When They Raise Their Kids | Aldrich Chan, Psy.D.
The conversation connects parenting, social support, predictive brain function, and evolutionary mismatch to a broader account of how people can live more coherently.
- 1Chan’s SAD framework links separation from nature, alienation from evolved conditions, and discord between beliefs and embodied drives.
- 2Intuition emerges as learned predictive processing, while the brain actively constructs perception from attention, development, genetics, and experience.
- 3Transformation depends on embodied relationships, curiosity, play, and community support rather than insight or self-discipline alone.
Don't miss
Chan’s closing recommendation that parents accept trusted community support through alloparenting rather than raising children in isolation.
The brief
Aldrich Chan, a neuropsychologist working across brain assessment, memory, and mild cognitive impairment, opens with a framework for modern disconnection: separation, alienation, and discord.
The SAD theory argues that humans remain continuous with nature while living in environments that mismatch evolved nervous systems, producing tension around technology, sedentary life, and caregiving.
Chan reframes intuition as learned predictive processing rather than mysticism, showing how unconscious brain activity helps shape perception, values, and decisions before conscious awareness.
His seven principles—creativity, process, relationship, wholeness, equilibrium, spontaneity, and transformation—offer a return path based on flexibility, flow, play, and embodied change.
The closing parenting advice is practical and consequential: accepting trusted community support through alloparenting may be healthier than trying to raise children in isolation.
Books & mentions
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