Rachel Yehuda: The Biology of What We Carry
1/22/20261 hr 32 min
In this episode, Trevor and Eugene unpack intergenerational trauma with psychiatrist Rachel Yehuda. Turns out, trauma is inherited, passed down through generations, but don’t fear! The three turn the heavy science of PTSD into a profound conversation about meaning-making and we learn that where trauma can be passed-down, so can resilience.
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First 90 secondsTrevor Noah· Host0:00
[upbeat music] I think for most people, you know, when we think of trauma, we think of, like, a bad memory, like a flashback, a nightmare, a story, et cetera. And I think one of the more le- revolutionary ideas that you were part of putting forward was: trauma is less of a psychology and more of a biology. And a lot of people, you know, butted up against this. They went, "No, this is, this is all happening only in your brain, and it's a thought," and you found that there was something that was actually happening in the body. So you know, when you talk about trauma as biology, not just psychology, what does that mean for the person who's living with it?
Rachel Yehuda· Guest0:35
Mm.
Trevor Noah· Host0:36
How does that present?
Rachel Yehuda· Guest0:38
Well, um, for the person that's living with it, the... It's very hard to separate out psychology and biology, and I don't think that I've been able to separate it out in my mind.
Trevor Noah· Host0:51
Wow.
Rachel Yehuda· Guest0:51
Um, one of the earliest debates in the field of psychology, what launched the field of psychology, was really the question of: Do we feel, um, fear, and then our bodies have a fear response?
Trevor Noah· Host1:03
Yeah.
Rachel Yehuda· Guest1:04
Or do our bodies have a fear response, and we interpret that response and say- That's fascinating. "Oh- Mm-hmm ... I, I must be afraid," [chuckles] right?
Trevor Noah· Host1:12
Yeah, yeah.
Rachel Yehuda· Guest1:12
And to this day, one could argue it both ways. That was a very famous debate. Um, what we have found doing neuroscience studies with PTSD, with people that have PTSD, is that you can see traces of their