Ancestral Grief

The Emotional Algorithm · Nov 1, 2026 · 3m

Some grief arrives before we have words for it. It may surface as a family’s silence around a migration, a loss no one discusses, or a feeling of responsibility that seems older than our own story. In this episode, we’re exploring ancestral grief: how painful experiences can echo across generations, what psychology and neuroscience can—and can’t—tell us about those echoes, and how we might begin to respond with care.

First, inherited patterns don’t require us to believe that memories pass directly from one generation’s brain to another. They can travel through ordinary, powerful channels…