Voices in Health and Wellness

The Evolutionary Mismatch: How Technology Disrupts Human Happiness with Dr Mike Brooks

• Dr Andrew Greenland • Season 1 • Episode 29

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What happens when our ancient brains collide with modern technology? Dr. Mike Brooks, psychologist and author of "Tech Generation: Raising Balanced Kids in a Hyper-Connected World," delivers a profound exploration of why we're struggling in a digital world that feels normal but is anything but.

Brooks introduces the concept of "accelerating evolutionary mismatch"—the growing gap between our evolutionary heritage and our modern environment. With humans now spending 50-70% of waking hours staring at screens (compared to zero throughout most of human history), our brains are essentially "screaming monkeys" overwhelmed by stimuli they never evolved to process. This mismatch manifests as rising rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and tribalism.

The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Brooks identifies the five foundations of human happiness—quality sleep, physical movement, good nutrition, time in nature, and in-person social interaction—elements we're systematically deprioritizing in our screen-dominated lives. "We've forgotten who we are," Brooks argues, as he shares how our suffering serves as a message that we're living incongruently with what truly makes us happy.

Perhaps most surprisingly, Brooks sees artificial intelligence not as exacerbating our problems but potentially helping solve them. Through his work with AI models, he's developed what he calls "the one question to save humanity": How do we reshape our world to reconnect human beings with how we naturally thrive?

Whether you're concerned about technology's impact on mental health, curious about evolutionary psychology, or simply seeking deeper well-being in a digital age, this conversation offers profound insights into our shared human experience and a path toward greater alignment with our nature.

Guest Biography, Contact & Social Handles 

 Dr. Mike Brooks, PhD is a nationally recognized psychologist, author, and speaker passionate about the intersection of technology, mental health, and human happiness. Author of Tech Generation: Raising Balanced Kids in a Hyper-Connected World, Mike blends science, philosophy, and practical insight to help people understand and overcome what he calls the “evolutionary mismatch” — the gap between our ancient brains and our fast-paced, screen-saturated world. As founder of the One Unity Project, he advocates using technology and AI to bring people together, solve collective challenges, and reconnect with how we naturally thrive. 

Name: Dr. Mike Brooks, PhD, PC
Title: Psychologist | Author | Speaker
Book: Tech Generation: Raising Balanced Kids in a Hyper-Connected World (Oxford University Press)
Website:  https://www.drmikebrooks.com

  • Blogs: https://www.drmikebrooks.com/blog
  • Speaking & Guest Appearances: https://www.drmikebrooks.com/speaking-engagements

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Dr Andrew Greenland:

Hello everyone and welcome to Voices in Health and Wellness. This is where we talk with forward-thinking leaders shaping the future of health, mental wellbeing and human performance. I'm your host, dr Andrew Greenland, and today we have Dr Mike Brooks joining us, a nationally recognised psychologist, author of Tech Generation, raising Balanced Kids and a Hyper-Connected World, and a passionate voice on how technology and society are colliding with our mental health. He spent years exploring how our modern environment interacts with the way we're wired as humans and what we can do about it. So, mike, first off, welcome and thank you very much for joining us. Where are you today, by the way?

Dr Mike Brooks:

I'm in Austin, Texas.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Wonderful. Probably hotter than where we are in in London, but it's pretty, it's pretty hot.

Dr Mike Brooks:

I guess it's uh 40, maybe 45 Celsius here. What is that? What does that translate? I don't know. It's 95 to 100 degrees.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

So a very red face on the little emoticon on Apple phone. I think would be the appropriate for that?

Dr Mike Brooks:

yeah, that's right okay so let's kick off.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

So, for listeners that may not know your work, how do you describe what you do and the mission that drives you?

Dr Mike Brooks:

Well, that's a great organizing question and some of that's been evolving. But I guess I've always been interested in happiness, well-being and also the big questions of life being, and also the big questions of life like how do we live in this world? I, you know, I'm a longtime seeker, scientifically and spiritually, and historically those used to be at odds, fighting, and I've kind of blended them over time and kind of made peace within myself. And I'm also I've loved technology from the get-go. So as a little kid you know I was, my generation ushered in the video game era and you know the birth of the internet and all that stuff was happening computers, personal computers and I carried this on in my blending psychology, which I had a love philosophy, psychology, well-being with technology. I did my dissertation research on the effect of video game violence on kids and as I followed, that used to be the big concern. And then, as things moved, I actually started a group practice in 2007 called the Austin Psychology and Assessment Center and what happened was to go speak to people. I was like, well, I'll speak about my dissertation in the video game violence. But as time went on, everything shifted to internet addiction and then social media and smartphone addiction. So I started speaking on that. One thing led to another and I wrote a book on it with my good friend and colleague, john Lasser, who's also a psychologist, and that was with Oxford University Press in 2018. And I continued to write and present on that.

Dr Mike Brooks:

Covid hit, which kind of like I really wanted and simultaneously, seeing what's going on in the world politically has greatly concerned me, like the tribalism, like you know, everybody's on their screens the hate, the outrage, the toxicity, the brain rot, the porn. You know. It's like on and on and I'm seeing all this echo chambers, filter bubbles and I'm like we're devolving into tribalism and the screens are part of that. And and then AI hit and I actually went through absolute existential terror when AI came out. Like I, I was getting an hour and a half of sleep a night and I explored my fears of AI with AI, which confirmed my fears of AI. But then I didn't stop there. I was like, well, what do we do about it? And I love, I absolutely love AI and I use like five models at once now and I just started using GPT-5 just dropped at once now, and I just started using GPT-5 just dropped.

Dr Mike Brooks:

So I'm like I have a YouTube channel talking with tomorrow where I talk to the AIs about, like, real world problems. And I'm like, why don't we just use AI to solve our real world problems, like you know, whatever it is, whether it's climate change or immigration, or personally, you know what can I? I'm having a problem. What can I do about this? And they're great at it.

Dr Mike Brooks:

It's all about asking the right questions. Do we want to create AI chat bots to addict kids to porn and have people algorithms, even better algorithms to addict people to TikTok and, you know, make us buy crap we don't need? Or we could use it to help solve homelessness, world hunger, what's going on in the Middle East? You know it's like, why don't we just use it to solve this power? You know that we have it's always about us, you know kind of a reflection. Our technologies are a mirror and a lens, so they both reflect and magnify the best or worst in us. And I'm like, why don't we just have it magnify the best in us? Why don't we just use it to saw and quit fighting and waste all our energy hating one another? So that led me to the One Unity Project, which is a nonprofit. Well, it's like in status of review but for final approval.

Dr Mike Brooks:

But the idea is kind of a best of both worlds. I don't think humanity is going to be replaced by AI at all. In fact, using it more gives me more hope for humanity because I see all the limitations of it. But when you combine the best that humanity has to offer with the best of AIs, we kind of yin yang, offset each other's weaknesses and augment each other's strengths. So as I was working with it, that's the experience I was having and I was like this could be fantastic. All we have to do is ask the right questions, you know. So that's what I'm devoted to and that's the birth of the One Unity Project the best of both worlds, where we just take the best that humanity has to offer, best of technology and AI, and use it to solve our problems, because we cannot solve our collective problems, we cannot solve our collective problems using divided approaches in an interconnected world. That's inherently impossible. So we have to. These are collective action problems and they require us working together. So that's what I'm on now and I hope that was a pretty good summary. And that's where and seeing my clients what I realized with that is like what we're suffering from is I call it accelerating evolutionary mismatch. So the famous Harvard biologist, eo Wilson this has been kind of my foundational thing, that it was in my book to some extent, but now it's even more so is he said the Harvard biologist.

Dr Mike Brooks:

The real problem of humanity is the following we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. Emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. So there's a fundamental mismatch between our evolutionary heritage and the world we've constructed for ourselves. So currently, for instance, we live about 70%, depending on 50 to 70% of our waking hours are spent on a screen of one form or another, when for 99.9999% of our evolutionary history it was zero, zero. That is a huge shift.

Dr Mike Brooks:

So we are all experiencing a false sense of normalcy in this world. We think this is normal, but we need to look at our lives through ancient eyes. And if we look at our world through ancient eyes, the world we're living in is absolutely bananas. If you dropped a Neanderthal in the middle of Times Square, I mean, basically that's what's happening at some primitive level of our brains is a very scared, screaming monkey. That's like overwhelmed by the world we live in. But we're so adaptive that we think this is normal when it is not. We need to think in an evolutionary timeline.

Dr Mike Brooks:

So the lives we're living are fundamentally mismatched with our evolutionary heritage, and that is the root of our suffering. All the other things we're treating are symptoms, and until we fix the mismatch, progress. Technological progress does not progress at a linear way. Biologically, we evolve at a very different rate than technology, and technology evolves at an exponential rate. And now we have AI and it's like going to be smarter than us within probably three to five years, or what the prediction markets have that we will no longer be the most intelligent species on the planet within a handful of years, and that's a big deal. So we need to, collectively, humanity needs to figure out how to deal with that, because that's a shared problem. So there, that's pretty much it. That's what I'm working on.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Amazing, mike. So you've clearly got a unique blend of psychology, writing and public speaking expertise. Tell me a little bit about your practice, because obviously you do see clients and patients. Give me some sense of what you're seeing, what you kind of, how you, how your work pans out, the kind of people that you're seeing, what are you working on and how the stuff you've just been talking about is impacting what's coming through your door yeah, yeah, and it's a great question because they're related, Like my practice, what I was seeing, and do you prefer Dr Greenland or Andrew?

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Andrew is very informal on this. Call Andrew. Okay, we're both colleagues and I'm Mike. Yeah, yeah.

Dr Mike Brooks:

So, when I've been working with clients, like the problems they're having, and you know, based on what I was understanding about evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology and this mismatch is that people were living lives that were so busy on this treadmill of life that keeps speeding up that we don't have time to do the very things that ultimately make us happy and I know you're into a more holistic, you know, and what I realized is what makes us happy? The foundations of happiness are baked into our DNA and our evolutionary heritage. We need, basically, five things are foundational, and if we don't have those pieces in place, all the rest isn't going to make much difference because we don't have the fundamentals. And that's good. Sleep, right. We got physical movement, embodied interaction with our environment. You got exercise, like you're gonna need some physical exertion, time in nature and in-person social interaction. Actually, I think exercise and physical are combined and nutrition would be the other. So you got sleep, physical movement, exercise, good nutrition, time in nature and in-person social interaction.

Dr Mike Brooks:

So those are the five factors, and now they're being encroached upon because the world now is so, we're intertwined with our technologies and we're living like these screen-based lives, and I'll give an example that hopefully your listeners will understand and it'll resonate with them is here's how crazy the world we live in is. When I was growing up, and probably you too, andrew you punished kids by sending them to their room, and now you punish them by kicking them off their screens and sending them outside. That is such a seismic shift in the way we relate to the world. I don't think enough people appreciate it, although they sense it on some level at the same time. So, like when we bemoan oh, I'm suffering a first world problem, oh, you know, I don't, you know I didn't get enough Instagram followers or whatever, it is a first world problem.

Dr Mike Brooks:

We have wrongfully trivialized first world problems because guess what problem our evolutionary ancestors never faced, not once a first world problem. So we didn't evolve to solve the very problems our lives are populated with today all first world problems, and they're like puzzles that our brains can't solve because our lives, historically, they were simple but brutal. You know, get food, water, shelter, safety, watch out for predators. You know, have babies. Take care of your children. That was it. You know you didn't have like my dream job, you know. And oh, I got to move away from my family to go to the university that I'd like to go to and it's like we never left our families. We think that's normal to leave our families. No, it's not. It's horrible. We're supposed to be in connection with our close, uh, friends and family every day. So I'm like I'm seeing, like the teenagers I work with teens and up and individual therapy and what I'm teaching them is this stuff about evolutionary mismatch. And the thing is people wrongfully blame themselves. What's wrong with me that I can't handle this? What's wrong with me here? Here I want to give everyone listening. You get a big get out of jail free card. Okay, it's not what's wrong with you, it's what's wrong with our world. We've created a crazy world and now it's driving us all a little crazy.

Dr Mike Brooks:

Why do we have a loneliness epidemic when we're more connected than ever? We're becoming disconnected, you know, from what truly matters, and I think it's a travesty and I think, if we Titanic, humanity is accelerating into icy waters right now and we need to make a course correction because we're going down the wrong path and we're going way too fast. We're adaptive, but we have our limits, so I think we're reaching way too fast. We were adaptive, but we have our limits, so I think we're reaching them right now. That's why depression is going up, anxiety, you have obesity epidemic. You know one thing tribalism. Polarizations increased. So I'm like well, I don't know that I can do anything about it, but Gandhi taught me to be the change I wish to see in the world. And I'm like well, I'm 56 years old, I'm just going to go out in the world and say something absolutely crazy Andrew, here it is. We need to work together. How about that? We need to stop fighting and work together.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Brilliant. So your book Tech Generation, which you've mentioned, tackles raising kids in a hyper-connected world. Really interested to know how has the conversation evolved since that book has come out.

Dr Mike Brooks:

Oh, what a stupendous question. I've had a few epiphanies and I wish they were in the book and I didn't realize them until afterwards. I mean one I didn't even name Evolutionary Mismatch. I described it but I didn't know the name of what I was I feel very embarrassed. Right after I got it published I was like, oh there's, so, that was one.

Dr Mike Brooks:

But what I realized is a couple things that actually in the research literature and you might I don't know if you read Jonathan Haidt's book, the Anxious Generation, but he caused a pretty big splash with his book but in the research there's quite a big debate of how much screens, how harmful screens, are to young people and stuff. It's actually not as clear cut as you might think or as much as the headlines would have us believe. But as I kept trying to understand what is at the heart of it, what I realized is we can't separate an individual's screen use from the world that's been transformed by them. So we're like fish swimming in polluted water right now and trying to do in the social sciences. We're trying to capture how much Instagram affects a teenager, or video Fortnite, a video game or a smartphone, but our whole lives are screen based. Now it's not. You can't separate out. It's so, so hard most of the research associating screen time with negative health effects. They use self-reported screen time and guess what they found is a horrible measure of screen time self-report. So you have a huge body of research on self-reported screen time. But all the wars over, you know how much is it affecting us. It's missing this greater point of that we're.

Dr Mike Brooks:

It's like we're breathing Beijing air and we're like coughing and stuff and going. Man, you know I've got these respiratory problems but you know I guess I'll have to see what medicines to take. And it's like, well, you know why you're having respiratory problems. You're breathing Beijing air. It's, you know, super polluted and that's why you're suffering. And you don't even know it because you've adapted to it and you think it's normal. And until you go to clean Colorado air and you breathe it in or somewhere in the Alps and you're like whoa, and you're like we don't know what. We don't know. We're so adaptive that we think these things we're experiencing are normal, like our kids growing up do not know the freedom from cell phones. They don't know it. They sell us that we've got all these fun things we can do and we think it's freedom and it's like no, we're tethered to them, we're shackled to our phones.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

We can't get away from them.

Dr Mike Brooks:

You know, even when they're not in our hands, we're thinking of them and our kids. They don't know the freedom of just going outside without having to, you know, do a selfie or check something constantly and I'm like, oh, this is so horrible. So it's like, at this environmental level, the whole structure of our society has changed and I think we need to remember and reconnect with what truly matters, because, at the heart of it, we actually know that our greatest happiness is in our social relationships. No one on their deathbed is going to say if only I had been on TikTok just a little bit longer. I wasted my life traveling with family and friends and seeing the world, but I could have been on TikTok. No one's going to do that. No one is. We all know that our happiest moment Like. If I ask you, andrew, what are some of your happiest moments in life? What are they? What comes to mind?

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Family and friends. Yeah, that's it, that's right.

Dr Mike Brooks:

That's what's important. You know, once we meet our basic needs air, food, water, you know those sleep then it's relationships are the heart of our happiness and you know the research on that is very physical and mental health and those were meant to be in person, outside, in nature, and we're not doing it, you know. And then we wonder why we're suffering. It's as plain as the nose on our face. We already know it. This isn't right, we're not living right and I think we need to reorient. We need to hit the reset button on this. It's systemic and it's societal. We can't just fix this one little thing here or there. We need to restructure society so that we can reconnect with what truly matters how we naturally thrive. We've lost connection with how we naturally thrive. So that's what I'm seeing in my practice and it's like now our world's it's so much.

Dr Mike Brooks:

If you're familiar with game theory, you know like you have to keep up with everyone else so well, I need to get a good score on my you know, college insurance exam, so I got to study you know hours. And I need to get a certain grade point average to get in the elite university. And if I don't do that, I need to pad my application. So I'm in student organizations and I'm doing sports and I'm doing this, and it's like man, we're not just getting to connect in the ways that we need to to be healthy and happy, and it's on a fundamental level.

Dr Mike Brooks:

And we're wondering why. And it's like unless I mean you're a doctor, we just treat the symptoms. You know, if someone has strep throat and you give them cough and cold relief over the counter medicine, it might reduce their symptoms, but they still have strep throat and they're going to suffer mightily and it could go really dark if they don't get to the heart of the problem. And that's what I'm seeing is we're treating all the symptoms but we're not getting to the heart of the problem, to the root of the problem. And the root of our problem is in our evolutionary roots and in evolutionary mismatch amazing.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

So I mean you've talked about the shifts in technology and society that you're seeing, that most concern you, but do you see any positive trends, whether it be tools, habits or cultural shifts, that give you hope that we can adapt?

Dr Mike Brooks:

Oh man, you ask good questions. I love it. I mean, you just teed the is actually. Yes, I went from this despair, you know, like oh my God, we're going to hell in a handbasket to, as I worked with AI models. And the greatest irony in perhaps human history is what if we could use AI to help solve the very problem? It's exacerbating Because it'll answer any question that we have. And I started doing that with AIs and I'm seeing other people do it. Why don't we? Just? They'll say, how do we settle an argument? Let's ask chat GPT. Okay, well, what, what? What are we getting at? I mean, jesus said you know, seek and ye shall find. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set us free.

Dr Mike Brooks:

What is the Chinese AI models? Name Deep seek. What are we seeking? Truth answers you can replace. The truth sets us free with reality. Sets us free. Now a spiritual truth becomes a scientific one. It's that easy Replace.

Dr Mike Brooks:

One word and this is a deep teaching of Buddhism too is that suffering comes from a misperception of reality, and our misperception is this is the world we're supposed to live in, and it's like we've forgotten who we are. And AI can help us outside of the tribalism, ego and the attention economy. We can seek answers with AI and now we can't believe everything it says. That's why I vet everything. Truth is not afraid of scrutiny. Truth isn't afraid of the light, because it is the light. So you know, any idea I come up with, ais can be too sycophantic where they oh, you're brilliant, you're brilliant, oh, yeah, I got great ideas. And it's like, well, it doesn't do me any good if my, my dumb idea is called a brilliant idea by an AI and then I go follow my dumb idea that that's a disservice to me. So you got to have, I use I call it an AI roundtable and I vet every, everything and I use the best of both worlds and I find all the time working with AI how much it brings out the best in me and creates better ideas in me. And I I catch things that even five AI models miss and I'll say, oh, here's something and they all go. Oh, my God, can't believe we missed that. And I'm like this is great, it's interactive, and many people are finding this same way in medicine. Right, breakthroughs in medicine.

Dr Mike Brooks:

And diagnosis is just let's diagnose and treat the illness. Right, you can just say what is society's diagnosis? What's the treatment? Why are we suffering, you know? And when we look at that, we ask AIs why am I suffering in my life? Why are we, on a systemic level level, suffering? Why don't we use AI to help us be happier and reduce our suffering and improve our well-being? It's right there. All we have to do is ask the questions, and I see people starting to ask the questions. All we have to do is ask the questions, and I see people starting to ask the questions.

Dr Mike Brooks:

I see a lot of people like me out there. So that's what gives me hope is like these conversations. These give me hope. A person like you, willing to open their mind and open up the channel to someone like me, and the listeners out there right now who are like going, does this connect with you? Does it make sense, you know?

Dr Mike Brooks:

Is why not just use AI to solve any problem, because it's there to help us we don't have. It doesn't have to be sentient, it doesn't have to be conscious, to help us expand ours. So that's what it's like. A lot of people are starting to do that and break through limitations that they used to have, but some people are going down rabbit holes. So you got to be careful, um, you know, but I think, uh, this is the direction I'm starting to see things move toward, so that gives me great hope, uh, for the future. Um, because I think, if we partner, you know, with AI as our assistant, and just work together, I mean, it's at our fingertips to solve these problems and I think we could, working together, create a world that not even John Lennon could imagine.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

So, in your practice, what's working well right now when it comes to supporting mental well-being in your patients?

Dr Mike Brooks:

Helping them. Here's what I am seeing and this is again a great question and one that I didn't quite put in my book and emphasize enough is Prioritizing the basics first, you know, is meet your basics first, you know, is meet your needs first. It's an afterthought for most people. Oh, I meant to go to the gym but I didn't have time to squeeze it in today. You know, I meant to get to sleep earlier, but I was binge watching a show, or I was working or whatever it is, and it's like we've got to prioritize those basics. If we do not, we will not be happy.

Dr Mike Brooks:

Suffering is the message to tell us that we're not meeting our needs. Well, it's a messenger and we got to listen to what it's saying and it's telling us all the time. Our suffering is telling us we're not prioritizing things right. And so that's where we should start every day, a checklist How's my sleep, my exercise and physical activity, my nutrition, time in nature and then in-person social interactions. Give yourself a scorecard every day, but make those schedule life around those five. Don't do it bass-ackwards, don't try to squeeze them in, because they are foundational on some level. We know it, we all know, if we don't get enough sleep. We feel like crap the next day If we drink too much, we eat too much of the wrong foods, and you know what it like, what it feels like how many people after they exercise here's the truth, everyone knows.

Dr Mike Brooks:

I'll ask all listeners here and you already know the answer how many of you have struggled sometime to go to the gym or work out and you had to kind of talk yourself into it? Or you know, push yourself. How many of you have struggled sometime to go to the gym or work out and you had to kind of talk yourself into it? Or you know, push yourself? How many of you, at the end of the day, go, gosh, I wish I wouldn't talk myself into exercising. I really regret exercising today.

Dr Mike Brooks:

And then, for the flip, how many of you say, man, I'm glad I got a good workout in, at least I got that in today. And you're like, yes, I did it. We all know the truth. Or a time in nature, or that time with a friend that you spent having coffee or a beer or whatever, and you went out instead of like just watching the tube, in that what you call it there is at the tube, the telly, the tube. But we know those things so we need to prioritize those is in the in-person social relationships, knowing that once we meet those basic needs, prioritize in-person social relationships.

Dr Mike Brooks:

So that's what I'm trying to tell my clients. The trouble is the world isn't set up for us. It's not conducive to living a healthy and happy life because we get sucked into our screens. It's so screen-based, and the attention economy doesn't give a rat's behind about us being happy. You know any more than McDonald's doesn't care about our waistline. You know any more than the attention economy cares about our mental health. They're just. You know, it's just the clicks, the algorithms, what gets the money force in the known universe. Our focused human attention gets taken from us and basically sold to the highest bidder, the most powerful force of the known universe. We're focusing on what makes them money because they've used these algorithms to hook us the dopamine, the clickbait. You know just one thing after all the hooks that they put in there that play upon the primitive areas of our brain, it makes it very, very difficult to resist the call of the siren here.

Dr Mike Brooks:

So that's what we're faced with, and so I think one thing that resonates with people, andrew, is when anyone goes to see therapy a therapist one of the questions is what's wrong with me? Why am I suffering? And now what I have found so liberating from my clients is there's nothing wrong with you. In fact, if you weren't suffering, that would be wrong with you. It's like putting your hand on a hot stove and wondering why it burns your hand. Well, it's on a hot stove. Your hand's not supposed to be on a hot stove, and that's what the pain is telling you.

Dr Mike Brooks:

The suffering is telling us that we're living incongruently with what truly makes us happy, but we end up blaming ourselves or those dreaded other people for ruining our lives. If only those people, those are bad people and if we vanquish them, then all will be right in the world and it's like the tribalism we devolve into there. But there's nothing wrong with any of you listeners. There's nothing wrong with us. What's wrong is the world, and if we start to reorient to what truly matters and prioritize it, that's what I'd say All your listeners prioritize what truly matters, and you know what truly matters if you ask within. Just think about when am I happiest, when am I unhappiest? Happiness is basically relationships going well, unhappiness, relationships not going well, once we meet our basic needs. And so if we reorient, prioritize and reconnect with what truly matters, I think that's the pathway to happiness and well-being, and each of us can make that choice and AI can help us. Ai can help us. That's the other.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Are there any mental health needs you think are still being overlooked in public policy or in the wider wellness industry in which we work?

Dr Mike Brooks:

I would say, is this what I'm telling now needs to be a starting point for every conversation Every MD is we need to understand evolutionary mismatch. I mean, you know, like repetitive stress, or next, chiropractors, I mean, the way we sit all day long is not good for us. You know all these things. And instead of treating the symptoms, people need to have a framework for understanding the nature of the illness, because the understanding of what's fundamentally wrong illuminates the path forward. So that's what I'd say is that's the conversation we need to be having worldwide, at all levels is start, and I'd say all MDs, start with teaching your patients about this evolutionary mismatch, about this evolutionary mismatch.

Dr Mike Brooks:

And you can ask an AI about it, and I've done it with blind AI models. If you ask listeners, ask this question to any AI model. What is the most important question humanity needs to ask right now? Ask that question to any AI model. That question led me five different AI models, blind, meaning they don't know me. I've asked them blind. They all landed on evolutionary mismatch as the problem. The convergence was like 90 to 95 percent.

Dr Mike Brooks:

All the AI models understand this. All you have to do is ask the question, and that led me to ask what I call the one question. I have a big article coming out next week on this that I've basically a lifetime in the making and it led me to take that evolutionary mismatch problem and I took it to all the AIs and I said what's the best way to phrase this so that people will understand it? And, andrew, we'll test it right now, because you haven't heard it and I want to see if this makes sense to you. Ok, the one question that, after I roundtabled what the most important question is and I actually got this from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Are you familiar with that?

Dr Andrew Greenland:

story. I don't know. I do know of it.

Dr Mike Brooks:

I'll tell it's all related here. I'll tell the quick story and it's a spoiler alert great book, and I think he was a Brit who wrote it Hitchhiker's Douglas Adams, and in it this alien race created this supercomputer. Deep thought, and they gave it this one question to answer. Is is said what is the answer to life, the universe and everything? And it took deep thought, a million years or something. It's like okay, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to answer this one question that you asked. And, uh, so it took a million years and basically a whole cult developed, you know, waiting for the one, the answer to the, the greatest question, and finally it comes online and deep thought is like, well, I have the answer. And they're like, yay, and it said, but I don't think you're gonna like it. And they're like what? No, tell us. It is like really I don't think you're gonna like the answer.

Dr Mike Brooks:

And it's like, oh well, tell us, he goes. Okay, well, I'll tell you the answer to life. The answer, and it's like, oh well, tell us, and he goes, okay, well, I'll tell you the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42, 42, 42. So, but that got me thinking. So then the joke was they didn't ask the right question. That's what deep thought said. It was like, well, you didn't ask the right question, but the answer is 42. And they were like well, what's the right question? It's like, well, that'll take another million years for me to answer. And I'm like wait a second, we have AI, we can just ask AI. So that's it.

Dr Mike Brooks:

What's the most important question for humanity to ask right now? They all said five models, some version of evolutionary mismatch. Then I did another blind review roundtable and I asked what's the best way to phrase it, and here's the way they all converged on this is the best phrasing of the one, and I call it the one question we need to ask to save humanity. So that's it the one question we need to ask to save humanity. And then I want you to judge it as a fellow human being. You ready for this, andrew, you're going to be like the AIs. You're a smart guy and this is what you do. How do we reshape our world to reconnect human beings with how we naturally thrive?

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Love it.

Dr Mike Brooks:

I mean that right, that you know how do we reshape our world to reconnect, reconnect human beings with how we naturally thrive. And I was like, oh, that's a juicy question. Now we don't have to wait a million years. We can ask not just one AI, ask five and they will tell you. And I had them rate it one to 10. How critical is this? They all rated it a nine to 10 blind ratings. They said it's absolutely urgent that we answer this question for humanity's future. So I was like, well, I'm going to put that out into the universe. And Andrew, this is the first show I've been on to put it out into the universe. So you know, I feel very.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

You heard it here first, scott, yeah.

Dr Mike Brooks:

You'll be hearing more of it and I want all every listener go ahead and ask any AI model that what is the most important question to ask that humanity needs to ask right now?

Dr Mike Brooks:

And that led me to this one version of this question of how do we reshape our world to reconnect human beings with how we naturally thrive, and say human beings with how we naturally thrive, and say AI, give me your honest, objective answer to this question and then drop it and see what happens and you will see it's on one to 10 in importance. So that's where I'm at and I think that's where healthcare needs to start, is the foundation, and then everything springs forth from there. You have the home base. How are you doing on these five items? And yes, we have real world problems, but if we don't meet those needs, we're not going to be able to attend to the real world problems, the day-to-day stuff, if we haven't met our needs. And so that's the starting point I think we have and I think humanity needs to have a very serious conversation and ask the one question, because if we don't answer that, we're heading down the wrong path right now.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Mike, on that note, I'm going to thank you very much for your time. It's been a really, really fascinating discussion, very, very deep and meaningful. I'm very happy to put the information about your book and anything else you'd like in the bio, so anybody listening to this can obviously tap into your resources. But I do appreciate your time. It's been really interesting and this is going to relate to, so this is going to resonate with so many people. Yeah, really really really good, good listening. So I really thank you very much for your time this afternoon.

Dr Mike Brooks:

Thank you, and thank you listeners because I think you said this, andrew is that you know that it'll resonate with people, or people, because I think, on some level, andrew, we already know this, everybody knows it on some level that this isn't right the way we're living and we need to do things differently the way we're living and we need to do things differently.

Dr Mike Brooks:

So, thanks so much for this opportunity and I see you ask really good questions too. You said you were like, well, I'm going to make this about you. So you just said and then you I mean your questions is like I want to support you also in this and I will link this interview, I will embed it in my article so I'll make sure that people can get to you because I can see the good work you're doing in the world and trying to make a difference.

Dr Andrew Greenland:

Amazing. Thank you, mike, I'm going to yeah.