CrowdScience listener Leo gets stressed when his young children start screaming at the same time in the middle of the night. He wants to know why we haven’t evolved to deal with the stress more effectively. The challenges of bringing up a family are nothing new and we don’t face the same dangers as our ancestors, so why do we still react as if it’s a life-threatening emergency? Caroline Steel finds out what stress is for, what it does to us and whether we have in fact evolved to manage it.

Contributors:

Tashfia Ahmed, biomedical engineer, post-doctoral researcher, City University, London

Presenter: Caroline Steel

(Image: Frustrated father holds baby in his arms. Credit: Jamie Grill / Getty Images)