This podcast is brought to you by the Albany Public Library main branch and the generosity of listeners like you. What is a podcast? God daddy, these people talk as much as you do! Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning.
Hey everybody. This is Razib Khan with the unsupervised learning podcast. And I am here with Carol Hooven, who has a book out "T the story of testosterone, the hormone that dominates and divides us" and I read the book, it's really good book I recommend it to everybody. But um, first Carol, can you introduce yourself and give us some background?
Sure. Um, I am a lecturer and co director of undergraduate studies at Harvard in the department of human evolutionary biology. And I got my PhD at Harvard, actually, later in life that was in 2004. My PhD was in biological anthropology. But I actually did my work in cognitive - I think it was cognitive neuropsychology. It's complicated. But anyway, I Yeah, so I've been at Harvard for a little over 20 years, and I don't have a lab and I don't do my own independent research, other than that, that I need to do for teaching and writing. Which I love. .
Yeah. You know, I So you mentioned that. And I'm curious. So just just for the listener out there, you know, at a research one university like Harvard, you know, there are different types of faculty, obviously, some faculty are adjunct to then you have the tenured professor. And one thing when, when people are undergraduates, and maybe people outside of academia, in general, don't realize is that these sorts of universities, a lot of professors, teaching is pretty secondary for them. And their primary, quote, job is to do research and publish papers, and basically just produce stuff that is supposedly new scientific findings, and, you know, and whatnot. And so why did you just decide to, you know, why do you decide to do that? Not that track, but the more of the teaching track, which, you know, I mean, you got trained at Harvard under Richard Wrangham. You know, it seems like you would want to be a research professor, was that your original goal? And then you know, there are some things have changed. I mean, what happened there?
Yeah, I'm glad you're asking about this. Because first of all, undergrads, and most lay people have no idea how any of this works. And it is important, once you get into academia, it turns out to be incredibly important. So you asked what my goals were. So I was a person who, not that I ever did mature, but the maturing that I did most occurred in my after my 30s. And I really didn't know what I wanted to do, I kind of knew I wanted to go to grad school after college, but I just really did not have my shit together. I actually did great in college, but in terms of just maturity and personal responsibility, and focus that was lacking. And, uh, and I recommend this for a lot of my students, I don't think you need to know what you want to do when you're in college. I think you should, you know, it's cliche, but take risks and explore and travel and travel was just hugely important for me, during and after college, and just reading and taking classes and being curious about the world. I'm sorry, I'm getting sidetracked. But the point is, I didn't really ever have a goal of my... sort of a very long term goal. When I made the switch from just having a regular job, I just had a job that's not really worth describing here for about 10 years. And I knew I wanted I eventually just became intensely curious about the evolutionary forces that shaped human behavior and that shaped everything that we see on the planet and I just became obsessed with that and wanted to figure out how I could just do that. I didn't know what I wanted to do after that, I just wanted to learn as much as I could about that topic. And so yeah, so I quit my job and applied to Harvard and didn't get in and then went out to Uganda studied chimps for what was supposed to be a year and then reapplied while I was out there and then did get into the program but again, I didn't know what... I didn't what - just wasn't that concerned. And there's a lot of reasons that do in fact have to do with privilege where that I wasn't so concerned. You know, I don't have it didn't have a trust fund or anything, but I just didn't fear that I was going to be destitute or something. So I just wanted to go do this because I loved it. And then I was gonna see what happened afterwards. So after I completed My PhD in 2004. And that PhD was on testosterone and sex differences in cognition, primarily, spatial ability, which I didn't actually end up writing about in the book, which is kind of weird. But there are some good reasons for that. So after I finished that PhD, I just I had loved both research and teaching, the part of research that I really loved, was not the lab work that I had to do. In analyzing saliva samples, I found that tedious and I was terrible at it. I really loved investigating the literature, analyzing data, trying to figure out what it meant writing about it. And I loved teaching undergrad. So as a graduate student, normally you have to, to sort of earn your way in Harvard has a in most elite schools will have a fully funded, or many elite schools will have a fully funded PhD program. As part of that you have to teach undergrads, I loved it. But I really didn't want the responsibility and stress of my own, running my own lab. And I, that's just a huge responsibility. And it's extremely competitive and the 10. So to be a tenure track, Professor, especially at Harvard, you got to be one of the top researchers in your field on the planet. And that was not going to be me, I didn't have that kind of ambition. I don't know if I had the ability. So I just wanted to stick with what I loved. And I got a job where I could just stay teaching, and be involved in what I loved and doing, you know, writing about and teaching about and getting into the literature and going to talks and being in that environment. But at most universities, there are not, you're not able to stay on as a lecturer indefinitely. And Harvard has a three year limit on lecturers. So you could be... so people like me, who love teaching teach a lot of classes at places like Harvard, in fact, sometimes the bulk of the classes, it depends. And the bigshot professors are sometimes incredible teachers, and they're very devoted and very talented. But a lot of them also are very focused on research and writing and other things that just don't have the time or energy or perhaps interest in devoting you know, a lot of energy to teaching. But that's what I wanted to do. And Harvard has had a special...
sort of set of positions that were PhD level positions in the life sciences that were like permanent lectureships, because I also do, I'm responsible for the undergraduate concentration. So there's like a administrative part that's piggybacked on the lecture, lecturer part, which is why I got to stay. It's not because I'm number one in my field or anything, and I wasn't going to be but I did want to stay at Harvard. So I have a long answer. But so yeah, you've got temporary lecturers who come and go, they teach a lot of classes, you have very few people like me, who are able to stay on in non what's called ladder faculty positions, or tenure track positions who don't have we do not have our own labs, then there are ladder faculty who are not yet tenured faculty, who are trying to get tenure and public, you know, publish or perish. And I did not like that process as the publish or perish process for just trying to get stuff published as a grad student. And then there are the senior tenured faculty who are there and supposedly cannot be fired, and have, you know, lifetime job security.
Yeah. You know, I have to say, I tell my friends this and people that want to go into academia. You know, I, I've done a lot of things in my life. And I have to say, academia was probably the most futile environment I've ever been in, in terms of the stratification and yeah, the different streams. And also, I mean, to be entirely Frank, I don't know if this is really obvious to people outside, but you know, your lineage, your pedigree is incredibly important in terms of the jobs, you get the colaborations you can get. And so this whole process where a lot of people, I mean, most people drop out, it's not like medical school where I think like 95%, end up getting MDs, you know, there's massive dropout. I have a friend and, you know, just you know, I have several friends like this actually, where they're, they're quote staff scientists, because, you know, he probably could have been a tenured professor, actually, both of them that I'm thinking of right now, but they hate like leading writing grants, they would rather analyze data and stuff like that. So they make they make a good living, you know, but they don't have to... the responsibility of organizing grant writing. and then, like my my advisor. Well, I had two advisors don't get into it, but my first advisor she told me straight up she enjoyed... she loved writing grants. It was just a big thing for her. She enjoyed it. And I was like, Okay, you're in a job where you love what you do, you know, because a lot of professors, they don't like writing grants that much, but she liked it. Where were you for your PhD? UC Davis? Okay. Right. Yeah, yeah. So and I met, you know, I met, I met a lot of cool people there and Sarah Blaffer-Hrdy actually, so that was great. She's great. So just it was, it was interesting to see. And some of you might know this, and some of you might not, but academia is actually one of the most hereditary jobs in the United States. And I've had friends from where their family is not academic. You know, a friend of mine, like he grew up in Marin County, I think his dad's a lawyer, is an upper middle class guy. And, you know, he mentioned, he's an industry now, after his PhD. And he said that, you know, now that he thinks back to it, his friends who had family that were academia, they just had a leg up in terms of like, knowing a lot of things ahead of time, as second nature, whereas he kind of had to figure it out in the first couple years of grad school, because, you know, they teach you enough, so you can pass your qualifying exam and publish your papers. They don't give you kind of like the tacit social cultural knowledge. And that's a special thing that comes with your family connections and your background. And you know, to me entirely Frank, it makes a difference. And I see why academia is a hereditary profession. I mean, not totally, but the correlation between your parents being academics, and you being an academic is apparently like, I think it's one of the top three professions in the country. And I think that would surprise a lot of people. And I think more people need to know that
professions in the country where there's in terms of the strength of the correlation. Yeah, yeah. So my, I grew up with a my stepfather, who was a professor at Brandeis since I was three, so I definitely had that environment. But I also, yes, there's the effective knowing how to navigate academia, but there's also just the kinds of conversations that I grew up with, and that sort of, and it my husband is an academic, and we're just constantly showering our son, you know, that's the environment that he's growing up in. He's awash in it, you know, we're always talking about, my husband is a philosopher, and he's getting into sex and gender, and my poor kid has to care about it constantly. But that's definitely shaping his the way his brain is developing and his interests. And yes, he's going to know, he hears about everything that we're both dealing with at work all the time. So it's two different kinds of forces. There's the practical part of knowing what to do, but then there's just his little, you know, developing.
Yeah. You know, it's not just academia, obviously, like, I have a friend who is a doctor. Yeah. And he said that, um, well, he basically, I mean, he didn't, I mean, he said that they actually did tell him because they were pretty candid, in terms of his application to one medical school. I mean, he, he's, you know, he's a fellow now. So he's gone through the whole process. They actually were explicit to him that him coming from a family without MDS would would be a knock on him. They explicitly looked at that
Is that still the the case? I wonder if that's still the case, I have mostly pre med students. And....
yeah, this was 2000, like, 2013. So I bet you...
Things are changing. But
yeah, yeah. And you know, they are changing. But a lot of it is also implicit. You know, I mean, this is human nature. This is human nature, like, unless you have like, explicit systems to compensate for it. You know, this stuff just works its way in. And, you know, this kind of like nepotism, these sorts of things are relatively common. So going to your book, though, so obviously, like, you know, I enjoyed the book, it's got, like, you know, it's got a lot of information. I think that what I told my wife is like, you know, I kind of knew on the high level, a lot of this, like, obviously, testosterone matters. But there's all this detail in there. And I think that's great. Because facts are good. I do have to say, you know, I think you you mentioned some of these books. You know, I think there's "Testosterone Rex". There's other books, they've been like, pretty well reviewed from what I've seen, and I'm going to be entirely Frank, when I saw the positive reviews, I just shrugged, because I just assumed, oh, well, there's some ideological reason, because, I don't know. So as someone with a biological background, and I left academia in 2016, there's been a lot of changes when it comes to sex and gender. I was already getting the sense that sense. So I will tell you, in 2014, I had lunch with the journalist Chris Mooney. And I've known him for 20 years in various circumstances. And he wrote a book called "The Republican War on Science". And I told Chris, I'm like, Yeah, but you know, I strongly suspect liberals in the left are going to attack sex differences. And I remember he literally laughed at me, because he said, Oh, I think the science wars are over. That's done. You know, I'm not worried about that. And I don't know how confident I was of my view but I was hearing things and I was seeing things and I was suspecting that this was going to happen. And I think it has happened because there just seems to have been a really, really huge sea change in the last five years. And it's really weird. I don't know, your your PhD advisor wrote "Demonic Males", I remember reading that. It's a great read. And, you know, in the late 20th century, early 21st century, sex differences were just taken for granted. And, you know, there weren't explanations of what sex and gender was. Although I have to say, I read some of Carol Dreger stuff on intersects, and those issues in the late 90s. And she was really ahead of her time in some areas, which I don't know if a lot of people know this. But in any case, there's been kind of an ideological transformation I feel. And my prior for a lot of this is I just, you know, I'm gonna be totally frank, I just don't trust people. Because there's a lot of ideology. And the idea that testosterone doesn't have an effect. seems ridiculous. And it seems ridiculous that you just your personal stories, I'll tell you a personal experience. When I was in graduate school, I decided to start lifting with a couple of friends of mine. And one of them was a guy. And the other one was, as you say now, a cis-woman, and after a couple of weeks, she said, I don't really want to lift with you guys, because I'm kind of sick of seeing your immediate gains. And I'm working at least as hard as you. And you guys are not working that hard. But yeah, and I'm seeing like, what's happening to you? And I was like, yeah, it can be kind of, because, you know, the thing that I would say about exercise is, you know, positive results are super reinforcing. So she was she was, like, I'm not getting the same positive results as you and we kind of all knew why. And, you know, she's like, I just want to do my own thing and figure out my own program, because I just don't want to, like, you know, it's just, it's just different. You guys were like, out of shape schlubs Two weeks ago, and I'm already seeing the results. And she was just straight up just kind of jealous, you know, not that she wanted to get like, jacked, but, you know, she was having to work pretty hard to kind of like, get the tone that she wanted. Whereas like we, you know, we were I mean, we would dick around, okay, like, you know, it's just like, we're not as focused.
Yeah, just since you said Dick. Can I just interject something? And then, did you want to follow up? And just...
No, no, no, no, that's, that's I was just saying, like, I remember thinking that I was like, yeah, like, that makes it you know, just like our gender, our sex, whatever makes a huge difference,
let's just call it sex, because that's what we're talking about is the biological sex, but I just want to link dick to muscle and make that connection very clear. And testosterone, right, testosterone makes the dick and it makes the muscle and it makes men want to use both, it makes the sperm, the sperm comes out through the dick, you have to be motivated. From an evolutionary point of view, we're all motivated to maximize our reproductive success, I think everyone probably knows what that is, but roughly the number of offspring you're going to produce. During the lifetime female females have... mammals have to use their own bodies to grow and nurture and feed the offspring, males do not, they just have to produce the sperm, they have to use their entered their reproductive energy budget, to have the right to get their sperm into the reproductive tract- in mammals - of a female. So that requires the muscle and the motivation to use it. And the motivation to want to acquire mates and have sex with them. So it's a package and it is testosterone that does all of those things. And it starts its effects in utero, which is where the reproductive system is developed. But it also - and people don't appreciate how potent testosterones effects on the brain on the developing brain that come from the testes of the little male fetus. What as it's developing in its mother, that high male testosterone shapes the brain to promote the sexual and competitive, potentially physically competitive, you know, male/male competitive behaviors in adulthood. And then you get this whole other suite of changes in puberty. But the point is that your anecdote is so clear, and people know that testostrone, or people do you know, in some of these books that I criticize, in my book, they're even disputing that testosterone potently, you know, increases muscle growth. But the point is that it's a reproductive hormone. And it affects the way that the energy that we take in from the environment is converted into offspring. And one of the things that does is take a lot of that energy and cause it to be invested into muscle. And in females, estrogen causes more of the energy we take in to be deposited as fat because that is adaptive for us because we have different reproductive strategy. So I just want to make that broad point that it's a reproductive hormone. Men have, you know, 10 to 20 times as much testosterone as women, women have much more estrogen than men. And these shaped the way energies used in terms of the investment in our bodies, and in our behaviors in a way, you know, that help us to interact with the environment, social, ecological, etc, that tend to maximize reproduction. So just to get that out there, and just to show how you can apply that whole framework to thinking about your experience in the gym, you know, something is sort of tangible as that and seeing muscle growth. What is that? Why is that happening? Why do we have that difference? There's such a good reason. And it's so interesting. Because it's such a powerful little molecule.
Mm hmm. What so I want um, so one thing that I wonder about, is, in terms of, say, sex differences, so for example, you know, many years ago, how many years ago, let me think... maybe like it was 2015, or 16. You know, I decided to, like, you know, repost a figure from a paper about grip strength. I think it was a fencing team in Germany, you know, what I'm talking about, and I like posted it on my blog, and then it got onto like, the front page of reddit at some point, and it still circulates, you know, like, I mean, I,
Do you remember what the statistics were?
Basically, the statistics were that I think it was like, the median man was as strong as like, you know, like the top German Olympic fencers. And the weakest men overlapped with the fencers. I mean, it was it was,
yeah, grip strength. And it's not ... it's... and that there's also the similar statistics about throwing capacity - which is fascinating. But grip strength is massive, massive.
And, you know, I gotta be honest, like, I was surprised, like, I hadn't thought about it. And, you know, I posted that and it became like a big meme. And it's still posted like repost, or like sometimes like my original finger that I add the I added notes, like I added extra, like text notes. So I know that they got it from me, and people repost it. And I got an email from a friend of mine, to be frank and ex friend now. But back then we were still friends. But and so I will divulge that the person has a background in statistical genetics, and, and physics, so I'm never a quantitative person. But um, they were not happy with me posting that figure because they they were saying, Well, you know, there was some overlap. And I think you're overstating the difference. And I was like, Well, I mean, I just posted the finger. I don't,
is it a woman?
No, no, it was a guy
would be unlikely for it to be a woman, I hate to say just based on the description of the person's job or
yeah, conditional probabilities. Yeah, it was a male.
That's very male bias. But it wouldn't be surprising for it to be a woman to criticize the finding that there are very large sex differences where males are bigger, faster, stronger, smarter in any particular respect. It is typically women who are going to go after that, unfortunately, kind of finding.
Yeah, and, you know, I knew on some level, I mean, this is like, not my field. Like, I don't work in biomechanics. You know, I'm not an evolutionary psychologist, I just assumed that there was a sex difference, but whenever I see the upper body sex difference, and I think like, I saw some quantitative numbers in Epstein's book about sports. And there's a huge difference. And, you know, an acquaintance of mine, I was talking about sexual dimorphism once and I kind of under did it, and he claimed like, well, actually, if you look at muscle mass, there is actually a huge difference. And so just like looking at Raw size, because you know that women are higher body fat percentage, you're understating it. So like, there's this huge difference. It's empirically true, like dropping a ball in Newtonian mechanics. You can just, you know, demonstrate it yourself. Like, you know, like, so I have like, you know, I have my, you know, my, maybe I should say that my wife is about the same height as me. But she's pretty athletic person, but
I have no idea how tall you are. Five, eight. Okay, why do you say that your wife's the same height?
Well, when we arm wrestlers something,
you blow her away? she's
she's like, it's like, "I'm engaging with an alien." Like, she's like, "You come from another planet", you know, is what she says in terms of like,
she lifts weights and all that...
Well, I mean, she's athletic. Let's just put it this way. Like if she was male, I Yeah, I mean, she's Yeah,
can I just pause and say that, the claims that, you know, people want to try to pick apart the evidence to undermine the point that males are due, almost every male can just blow away almost every female in strength, or in adults, or sorry, men and women in strength and power. If - you can quibble about exactly what the precise male advantages if you're talking about just muscle mass, are you talking about upper body strength, lower body strength, power, or grip strength, but what's involved in punch, you know, that there's like punching, where a guy can punch, I forget how many times harder than a woman. But it there's just no contest. And that is the point. And there's just no reason to undermine that main point. And that's what many people are trying to do, because they want to show that we're equal, not just the same, not just in terms of behaviors and capacities, but also, you know, these various aspects of phenotype, which is ridiculous. It's a losing game. Like, that's just not it's much easier and simpler to show in terms of strength and power, it's much harder to show in terms of behaviors, it's much more complex. But the same principles apply, you just need to stop. And I'm actually I should say, you mentioned Cordelia Fine, and "Testosterone Rex", and that was poorly reviewed by many experts in the field. But it was extremely well reviewed, and in fact, won a very prestigious award,
I remember that.
It was well read. It's beautifully written. It's funny, it's clever. And it makes a point that is worth making. But I'm actually, right now involved in a exchange that's going to be published on Aeon? is it Aeon or... And I think it's really interesting, I really like her. I'm en joining, interacting with her, we totally disagree. Like she acknowledges most of the evidence, we sort of bizarrely agree on a lot of the evidence, but the way she interprets it, and this is true of, so I give her credit for at least acknowledging the evidence, but she thinks it doesn't support the idea that testosterone is really important. And is this really powerful, fundamental driving force in sex differences? And I think, of course it does. And here's how this works. And let's look at a lot let's look at the non human animals in a comparative perspective. And place humans, you know, in that group, obviously, I mean, not of non human animals, but just of animals that are designed by evolutionary forces to maximize reproduction.
So I, you know, one, one hypothesis that I have for why we are here, and... is, you know, I obviously, accept, quote, unquote, accept sex difference, somebody just seems like, Okay, we have two sexes, they're specialized. Why do males exist, there's a two fold cost of sex, I don't get into the evolutionary genetics. There's some reasons for that. But we're specialized, we're different. We're dimorphic. Um, this is not true in all species, but it's true in a lot of species. So this kind of a background assumption when I'm thinking about things. And then like, this whole moment about sex, gender, and the differences or lack thereof, are cropping up. And I do wonder, when we were predominantly rural society, and people did manual labor, you know, would they have like, you know, like, I'm having a discussion with now a tenured professor in evolutionary biology, about how I supposedly overstated sex differences. And just my friend who was angry at the fact that I posted that figure.
Oh, who was that friend? Or you don't want to say,
I don't want to say cuz he's not he's not an evolutionary psychology. So you know? Yeah. So it's not so there's no, there's nobody, you know, it's just someone I know, from evolutionary genetics. And he did acknowledge me in one of his papers. For some conversations, I don't know I, you know, we were friends, we would call each other friends. But I'm, I've kind of stayed in place while other people have changed in academia. So some people have had to make decisions to disassociate and he was one of them. You know, but, you know, he's, uh, he's not the most athletic guy, and I just started thinking, I'm like, he's small, and he's shorter than me. Like, he's actually pretty short. I was just like, I wonder if it's just more plausible for him. Like, we don't do physical things that much. You know, especially like, professionals, white collar professionals. It's definitely not socially acceptable to engage in physical violence with your spouse, if you're a man, you know, and a woman is like, I mean, how would you think a lot of people
You know, but it is socially acceptable. In fact, it's encouraged in many parts in many other cultures. It's just not here.
I'm going to intro for saying this my family South Asian, so trust me, I know about that.
Yeah. But I mean, I think that's important because we have to realize that that behavior is expressed in a big way in many, many cultures. And we tend to be referred to our own as the standard but it's not and it where it's accepted there's something exceptional about the fact that men aren't beating the crap out of each other all the time and are to be explained and that men aren't trying to control female sexuality through physically coercive means, you know, everywhere on the planet, we that's valuable information that we need to acknowledge and study. And that's part of what why I wrote the book, because I think it's important to try to figure out how to explain these cultural differences. So it's not just testosterone, that's, you know, forcing the expression of certain behaviors are obviously highly malleable, dependent upon the environment. But anyway, sorry, interrupted,
Np, no, no, it's all fine. So a one thing that I noticed her, you know, I mean, your book had like, really good reception, in my opinion for you know, like, you're on so many. I mean, you're on TV, you're on the podcasts. You're all over the place. But you got a, you know, some blowback, I think, from academia, I didn't follow all the details. I saw some of it the usual stuff.
I didn't get any blowback for the book. Okay, blowback for being on Fox and Friends.
Okay, so that was the that was the that was the only thing.
I''m experiencing that in as we speak. And I'm actually not I am taking next... I was told to take next week off, which I've never done, because it's been incredibly difficult. It's just, it's brutal. And I'm, well, I don't want to complain. I don't want to say,
Wait wait, so this is all just because you went on Fox and Friends.
Yes, this is no one has criticized the book. I mean, I had a review. No, I've had all, you know, very positive, even rave...
I mean, you got really great blurbs, that's for sure.
Well, like Wall Street Journal gave it the review of my dreams. And there was a great review in The Times of London with like, very minor criticism, but there been zero, serious or really, any criticism of the book. It's what I said on Fox and Friends that is caused a mountain of problems. And I would say it again, even though I might, you know, have said things slightly differently. No, it's not the book. It's coming anywhere near certain aspects of trans activism / slash ideology.
Okay. Yeah. Can you can you for the listener? Can you just recap what you said?
Yeah, so anyone can see it. And if you just Google me, you'll see actually, that that I was accused of transphobia by a graduate student in my own department who represented herself. And she was in fact, the director of our internal - that means within the department, - diversity. I don't know if it's DIA diversity, inclusion and belonging. Committee. So I went on Fox News, because people your listeners might know who Katie Hertzog is, she's a journalist. She has a podcast "blocked and reported" with Jessie Single, she wrote, she did it, I thought a really excellent investigative piece for Barry Weiss's substack. And she's the I think it was a two part piece. And she was looking into trends in medical school education away from using certain terms and teaching certain concepts about biological... I'm going to say biological sex, although I think that's redundant, but it does make it more clear what I'm talking about. And those problematic terms are pregnant with things like pregnant women, which I did not comment on at all in my four minute appearance on Fox and Friends. She talked about that. And she talked about the terms male and female and how these are becoming considered sort of offensive terms, in some respects, in medical school students are complaining and sort of forcing their professors to apologize for saying things like male and female and pregnant women, etc. So I was quoted in that article, and then for various reasons, Katie was not able to appear on Fox News, but or Fox and Friends, but they wanted me to come on. And I thought, sure, I want to talk to I'll talk to anybody about my book and my thinking, and I think it's important to talk to people you disagree with. I mean, and I do not think that all Trump voters are horrible scumbags. I want to learn about who they are and what they think and I want to communicate with them. And the people who are criticizing me think... seem to think that all Fox News viewers are horrible bigots, that Fox News itself, which I don't watch is bigoted. And that what I said, and various things happened at - Sorry, I'm kind of rambling about it, but a few different things happened at Harvard... one very recently. So what I said on my four minute, appearance roughly was that I tried to say that Sex, male and female are excellent, adequate, meaningful scientific terms that we should retain, they're clear. And there's just nothing wrong with these terms. The people are confused now about what male and female are and how many sexes there are and how what sex is. And this is because of ideology and politics, infiltrating science, which I think is a very, very bad trend. And I said that sex is defined by basically the body plan for the kinds of gametes one is going to produce in mammals that is eggs and sperm.
And then I went on, and I said, and there are two sexes, there are male and female, and it's about eggs and sperm. And then I said, but these facts of biology have no impact on how we treat people. And of course, we can treat everybody with respect, and we can respect everybody's pronouns and their gender identity. So I went on to say all of that, yeah. And then I to say that people who say what I'm saying that there were two sexes, and that they are material realities, that people are offended by this, that people are getting canceled, people are getting shamed, and bullied into changing what they teach in the words they use. And I said, I think this is a disaster for Education and Science, communication, etc, that this is not the way forward, and it's divisive. And then that, of course, did happen to me. Exactly what I said, happens to people who say this happened to me, I was, you know, I asked for it, right, I said, thet male and female are real. But I felt you know, what, someone has to just come out and say this, it's ridiculous that we can't say this, I'm going to say it come what may. And what came was very, is very, very difficult. So someone in my own department tweeted out that this was transphobic and harmful to undergrads, and what are we going to do about me, and then this, you know, caused huge problems for me at Harvard, a huge problems for my department. And then a second thing just happened in advance of this talk I gave at Harvard resume talk with Dan Gilbert, a psychology professor, he interviewed me for the Harvard museums of science and culture, which went very well and got great cover coverage in the Harvard Gazette. However, in advance of that, another grad student in another department, who happened to be a trans woman wrote an email essentially, taking a bunch of quotes that I things that I had said, you know, from my gazillion hours of podcasts and articles, etc. That did make it look like I am out to get trans people. And I don't believe that I've ever said anything anti trans, I have a lot if you read the chapter on trans people in my book, I'm super sympathetic to the issues that transgender people face, I want to help them I want to support you know, their rights to live lives like everybody else, just to go through their life and express themselves as they see fit without harassment and with you know, adequate health care, etc. Of course, I believe in all that strongly. But what you cannot do is, is challenge any aspect or try to have a discussion of any aspect of certain components of some trans activist ideology, you know, some things, many, many things are just off the table not allowed to be said not allowed to be discussed, certain words are not allowed to be uttered. And I don't like that. I mean, I totally disagree, that we shouldn't be able to raise questions and have conversations about some important issues. So the other thing that happened was this email was sent around by the department chair, who does not know me, this super critical email saying that I was transphobic was just sent around by the chair to the entire department. And this is unheard of like this is my reputation being disparaged by a chair of a department who doesn't know me, because she was nervous about her own grad student in her own DIB. Committee in her own department people it's nobody no individual's fault here. People are trying to do the right thing. A lot of people are just scared and just reacting in the way that they're encouraged to react given the massive CIB infrastructure in universities and other institutions now. And so I'm just going through that and it sucks but many people Kathleen Stock is going through this in the UK right now, in really, really hurt she has to have bodyguards, because, you know, and she's a good person who's just trying to do her work and she want to raise she's raising some questions and has some philosophical viewpoints and you know, you don't have to agree with her but you should be Be able to challenge the evidence and the arguments that's not happening. Oh, sorry,
No, no, no, no, no, this is this is all I mean, it's important. This is this is the world we live in. And, you know, let me give my, my perspective on this. Because, you know, I, unlike you, or like my friend, Colin Wright, who I've had on this podcast, I don't really like focus on this topic. Because, you know, I've always been interested in biology and evolution. And I read certain things. And, you know, I know what biologists used to say, in 2015. And I doubt that the literature has totally transformed in six years. So I just assumed this is something to be frank , ideological, and I have friends who are, you know, still in academia, doing evolutionary genetics, and I can show you the DMs and how they've transformed over five years in terms of their views on things. And I don't know what's going on, I assume that it'll change at some point. And if it doesn't, we're going to have some problems. Because none of this I mean, a lot of it. I mean, basically, somehow, the biology that I was taught from, say, like in graduate school, from 2011, to 2016, has been totally overturned, at least rhetorically on the surface. And I just don't think that's true. I think something else is going on here. And I don't know, I mean, this, this seems pretty anti intellectual in a lot of ways. But I think the argument that the the people that were criticizing you would make is, people have to be careful, because, like, you know, I'm trying to, like use their words, but it's like, you know, their identity, their existence, is being questioned. Right. So, I mean, that that's the kind of argument that they make,
Well, that somehow they're being erased by my - people saying that sex is material. Yeah. And that's obviously incorrect. I can... but it's understandable because the - I I'm not sure that I want to get into the exactly what the tactics of some activists are, but one of one of them is to attempt to require other people to buy into a certain reality that on the surface in some way would seem to be necessary to legitimize their identities, and it's not necessary, we can legitimize and support trans identities and acknowledge that there are two sexes and it's real, because gender is something I don't you know, the terms gender and gender identity, have their own issues, but gender expression, how you feel how masculine or feminine you feel, can be, you know, of course, it's associated with sex, but it can be disassociated. And it you can, you can have total flexibility in how you identify and how you feel and how you behave, that doesn't really have to have a lot to do with the kind of gametes that you're designed to make. However, that is the tactic that many people are using to try to gain certain rights. So this is difficult because A, it's, it's not true. And B, you don't want to hang your rights on a program that is going to crash, right? It just can't stand because it's just not true. You want to use reality to support people's human rights. And that's not the way this is going. And I'm trying to push back on that. But you're right, that is the argument. But the other argument is that you should definitely shouldn't say this on Fox News. Because these bad people are going to misunderstand and whose read basically use reality to prop up their efforts to diminish the rights of trans people. And it's complex, you know, it's more complex than that you can do justice to and a four minute appearance. So it it's these are complicated issues. I understand why people are upset, but I'm, I It's, these are conversations that need to happen. It's not going this, you know, what I'm reacting to is people telling me that I cannot say certain things, we cannot have certain discussions. I'm just being bullied and called transphobic, as are so many, mostly women, who are trying to speak out about this stuff, or do their science, I think you should be able to do your behavioral genetics, I should be able to do my work on testosterone that I love. My undergrads are awesome. The undergrads are open and you can have discussions with them and they listen and they challenge and it's amazing. And it's the - everybody else who's embedded in the institution who is behaving... I've been disgusted. I have to say, and I hate to say that about my own institution, but I'm so unimpressed by the lack of integrity and it's - they're just very Few people who are willing to stand on principle and fight for what they know is right and believe in and people are just caving all over the place just to save their eye to under again, it's understandable save their what they think is their reputation or the reputation of the institution or just save their own asses basically.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, um, I mean, let's take a quick, short digression into this, because it's pretty disturbing to me, I've seen it.... And I mean, maybe it's social media, I don't know what it is. So you're saying, you know, people are offended, they're upset, um, you know, academia in the United States. It's upset a lot of people in a lot of ways, you know, I mean, if you talk to say, the type of people that would watch Fox News, their stuff that comes out of academia that just really enrages them and is against their morals and stuff, like this was just, that's a feature, not a bug. I mean, that's, that's the way it was back then. And, you know, you're talking about, like, you know, the field that, you know, you have some associations with, in some ways, you know, your, your mentor, Richard Wrangham, "Demonic Males", there's other things relate to evolutionary psychology that have angered people on the left as well. And that's just how it is, you know, you know, Steve Pinker like, has written things that have offended many people. So it's a little weird that being offended, is like such a big deal. But it's not just being offended. It's also there's guilt by association. So I have to be frank, you know, I tell people who don't know, academics or don't know, academia and what it's about, you know, because they have an idealized vision of the ivory tower. And I'm like, you know, I'm gonna be entirely Frank, I feel like it's a lot like middle school now, in terms of the way people snitch on each other. And so I'm gonna tell you an example. I mean, I have a lot to say,
I was just saying that to my husband, I was like, What grade are we in here, you get what he says something you don't like, and you go tell on them. And you're looking around for people to tell on and to monitor, and then that person is going to get in big trouble, that person's getting sent to the principal. So the whole organization is designed. So again, I don't blame any individual because everybody's a little cog in this system here. And this is, if you're going to spend it, I don't know what the budget is at Harvard for the DIB infrastructure, but of course, they have to use it, people are being conditioned to use it to complaint administration, instead of like, argue with evidence, it but it's fucking ... Harvard University, we're not trained to change, you know, training our students to think critical and, and, and instead of just saying, I'm upset, I'm going to go try and call this person names. Why do we not saying No, nobody's standing up and saying that is wrong, what happened here is wrong. What we're here to do is teach you how to think and how to write and how to speak and how to research etc, etc.
Wait, can further for the listener, can you can you just say what DIB is Oh, sorry.
Well, there, there's diversity, equity and belonging, or diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, but is a mass growing massive and growing infrastructure in large institutions, including publishing, corporations, journalism, corporations, academia, and is spreading to all parts of the planet as far as I can tell. But and there's a lot of good that has come from some of this right in, you know, recognizing the way that various groups are suffering or are underrepresented in ways that can be changed and addressed. But the overall effect has been to squash... to make people scared of saying, teaching, saying or teaching the wrong thing. breaking some rules offending anyone, and this is now true of my undergrads who, first of all very few of whom are conservative, which is too bad. I wish there were like 50% conservative students who felt that they could speak up in the classroom, they do not, you know, if you don't have the progressive viewpoint, you're keeping your mouth shut, whether you're faculty, or students. And this is bad for education. It's bad for science. It's bad for our country and our competitiveness. So sorry, you got to stop me because I just go on...
No, no no, no, it's all good. I get this. They're here to listen to you. Not me. They hear me enough.
We're supposed to be talking about testosterone. And...
let me like, let me tell you a story just to illustrate for the listener, like what is going on and like, let's say how social media is affecting, so I have a friend he's a tenured faculty. And I just retweeted something about the GRE - I'm, you know, so you know, conditioning on the collider, blah, blah, blah, rage restriction, the usual stuff, no one cares anymore. Like they're getting rid of it. So whatever. But I figured, like, I'm gonna still say what I believe. You know, and yeah, like that. Well, not always good, but it is what it is. I'm still gonna do it. So my friend DMs me and he's like, Yeah, you're totally right about the GRE. I I can't like like your tweet because I liked. I liked "so and so", a mutual friend, his tweet. And my wife was asked at a departmental meeting by a colleague why I liked that tweet. Yes. So,
No, but I just have to say that people are going through my tweets. And at the beginning, when my book before my book had come out, I was very careful about should I like this person who's tweeted by this person who is perceived as a transphobic. And I really thought carefully about all that. And now I'm just like, Fuck it, I need to stand up for what I believe in. I need to express you know, I cannot be so worried about how I'll be perceived. And maybe that's partly because there's I'm already in you know, because of this FoxNews thing saying there are two sexes, I guess, you know, super transphobic. But I do increasingly think that we more people need to say fuck it. I'm going to say what I believe because if there's some critical mass here, that is what is going to make the change if but if you know so many people are are staying quiet just like your friend because they're it's guilty by association. But that is ridiculous. Of course. You don't have to that doesn't mean that you agree with what that person everything that that person said. Like most of the tweets that I'm liking lately are just in favor of people who are pushing to have discussions or pushing to say this. I have a right to express this view.
Yeah, I mean that okay, like I've mentioned this before on the podcast, so the listeners will know this story like this. Some there's some weird stuff. I told this to Kat Rosenfield. Many years ago, I tweeted something. And it was about growing up in the 80s. And it went viral. And it was like a pretty like it was moderately conservative, like I tend to lean to I mean, I lean to the right. But like 10 days later, somehow it got to Ann Coulter. And she retweeted it. got like a bunch of people like how do you feel about the fact that Ann Coulter retweeted what you said? Yeah. And I was like, What the fuck do I care if Ann Coulter retweeted me? Right? I still
have a huge audience, right?
Yeah, so I was just like, it was just like, Why do you care? I mean, like, why does it affect what you should believe, based on what other people agree with you about what you believe, like it started to get, like the layer of like, meta analysis is like out of control here.
But people cannot see that. You might actually agree with Ann Coulter about some things. And that's possible, just because, like, from my point of view, I disagree with I don't know what humongous percent of things that she says, But I very well might completely agree with 5% of what she says. And that's okay. But we're not allowed to do that anymore. We're not allowed to be nuanced, you know, I am now a transphobic. Human being, because I said one thing about there being two sexes, instead of like, my entire body of work, and all of my teaching and associations have, you know, are irrelevant, right. So then you're just labeled. So like, Ann Coulter, yeah, is just labeled, like maybe, you know, immoral, horrible human being instead of like, considering what she's, what her views actually are. And maybe some aren't so horrible, that we're just seem to not to be capable of that anymore.
So I mean, you know, your book is his biological anthropology. Right. And so, as you said, like, you know, it's gotten like really good blurbs, like it's a good book. I mean, I'm not just saying that, like, you know, what I like about your book. So some books are small. I think your book is pretty dense. And I'm a nerd. So I like that. There's a lot of literature cited. And
there's stories, a lot of good ... the general...
No, no, no, it's good narrative. It's a good narrative. It is not just an academic book, but I like the fact that you get into the nitty gritty of the science, like what I like, as someone with biological training, just assumed and suspected, like, you kind of lay the - you flesh it out, you know, you deconstruct various things, you review the literature. So it's a really good review of that sort of thing. And like, you know, it goes from biochemistry to Behavioral Ecology, like you kind of span the gamut. And that's, that's pretty intense. So there's some biological facts you put out there about like sex differences, maximization? You know, I guess, like, what is what what surprised me in there? I wasn't entirely surprised. But some of this stuff goes, you know, before puberty, because I feel like, I feel like people tend to focus on puberty because that's when the differences become really salient. But some of this stuff goes before puberty. And you know, I got I got a son and I got a daughter. I got two sons. Nine, seven and four.
Who is what?
Girl boy boy.
Okay, so you have a nine year old boy. Yeah, so we is going to be happening.
Yeah. So she doesn't hate me yet. But soon, but uh, you know one thing that you know I always joke is like if we had had a son from We might have spaced it out more. I'm not necessarily saying it's more work, but you know, there's more teeth knocked out.
Totally More work.
Well, I don't know. Okay, yeah, you maybe you were a piece of work my daughter's like, my daughter's like pretty like, you know, she was way easier than because all my son's well, especially, you know, there's some variation within people too, right? Even within the sex. It's like, you know, my my first son. He's like, knocked his teeth out like he's just like, violent. You know, these are the cliche examples that people always tell. So we don't have we don't have guns. We don't have gun toys. Okay,
But would you if they wanted them?
I would. I don't get to make that decision.
My kid never had - my boy. He's 12 Griffin. He never had any interest in any of that violent stuff. Except for rough and tumble play. Like, is what boys do - boys do that Yeah.
Well, so. So my son like goes to a friend, my daughter's friend actually. His house. He's a boy. And he's an only child. So he has all these toys. And he has a lot of toys that he doesn't play with because he just got a lot of toys. Right? He's an only child. He's got it like and then like my son sequesters, this is like when he was like four or five, he was five, I think he's sequesters a pile of toy guns and is defending this pile of toy guns and we're just like my wife's like what is going on here? You know, cuz he's never played with Gods. Yeah, but he knows he wants those. And that was really, really weird. I mean, they're just, it's just interesting.
Yeah, can I just want to say, you know, I've been teaching about testosterone and a bunch of other hormones, but I just wrote the book on testosterone. But I've been teaching about this stuff for, like, you know, a long time, like almost 20 years. And I have always understood how potent the effects of prenatal depending on the species or post perinatal, you know, pre or directly postnatal effects of testosterone are on male brains, and sometimes on female brains if there are certain disorders or differences. But in researching and writing this book, I have become even more impressed by how powerful those influences are throughout life. And the best evidence is what you're describing. So we have the observations of these really strong and pervasive cross culturally consistent sex differences in play, and what boys and girls are interested in. So a lot of people because our society does reinforce these differences, because the economy reinforces these differences, because they make money from selling certain types of toys and marketing certain types of toys to boys and other types to girls and reinforcing stereotypes, right? So we see that too. So people think, oh, what we observe in terms of sex differences in behavior in kids is due to these environmental forces, because it's so easy to see that they're everywhere, too, right? However, people get confused, I think about the direction of causation. And all we need to do is step away from humans and look at similar behaviors in animals that don't have Toys R Us, right. And we see the same... almost, yes, they're not playing with guns and stuff, but they are engaged in very, very similar types of behaviors, like male mammals are tackling each other and practicing the reproductive behaviors, they need to be successful as adults plays away to practice, survival and reproductive behaviors that we need, you know, to be successful, right. So male animals, if they're in a species where they need to compete physically for mates and compete for status for resources they can then use to attract the mates or whatever. They're going to engage in rough and tumble play, and it's going to look like fun and they're going to learn how to do that physical competition. Female mammals just tend not to need those skills as much and tend not to engage in those same types of behaviors at the same rates. Again, these are on average, right? There's plenty of girls who like rough and tumble play, but it is much more unusual to see girls playing hoarding guns, or having her friend come over and what they do for half of the afternoon is wrestle, like, you just see that almost nowhere it happens, but it's rare. So that's what we're talking about is these patterns. And if you look in non human animals, if you manipulate testosterone, prenatally, you can completely manipulate the expression of those behaviors of that like rough and tumble, play and play styles. And we see similar evidence in humans that that prenatal testosterone in girls in girl fetuses who have higher than average levels of testosterone, they engage in higher than average levels of rough and tumble play. So there's just tons of evidence it's cross culturally consistent, we have evidence from humans and non human animals, that testosterone is what shapes this behavior. But that doesn't mean that culture doesn't have an effect on the way the behavior is expressed. And we see that with adult sexual behavior with adult aggressive behavior, culture matters a lot. But we see the same patterns all over the place.
I mean, I mean, it matters in the United States in, you know, by class and region. That's right. You know, I mean, this is part of, I think, what we're alluding to here, you know, when you're talking about academia, there's a certain set of norms, certain expectations, that are just like, totally out of step or, like very different, at least, then like, like many other areas of American culture, so some of the discussions are just like super weird. I mean, even people who are, you know, conventionally liberal and outside of academia, and like, I'm not, yeah, you know, I'm not liberal myself, you know, but I know the language. And sometimes I'll like, just drop into it. Because this is just, you know, I'm academic adjacent. My most of my, a lot of my friends are still in academia. And people be like, What are you talking about, I'm like, Oh, this concept, this concept, and they're just like, oh, and I was like, I don't even believe in any of this. But like, you kind of have to use this
Culture is so important. And people like me, but not me, have been indoctrinated with certain ideologies and have changing... that are changing the way they think. And I just have to drop in that lane. This is a whole other thing. But the attempt that is successful to control language, I think really does control how we think about certain issues. It's a successful campaign. And yes, it is 1984. And it's happening. And I do think we should be very thoughtful and conscious about our language choices. Instead of letting this happen insidiously. Like, it seems like it's happening to your friends, people need to step back and jump out of the boiling pot of water. I'm sorry, I just mixed two metaphors. They don't work. But it is happening. And people are just sort of sucking it up and passively responding instead of just putting the brakes on to really evaluate what is happening in the culture, and do they want to participate? Is this really what they believe? Is this consistent with their values and their intellectual beliefs? And I think most of your friends would say, No, wait a minute, something weird is happening here. What exactly am I why am I participating?
Yeah, I mean, I can't I mean, you know, I can't like tell all the stories on the podcast, partly because, you know, people do talk to me, because they know that they know that I won't judge them. I mean, like, there's a lot of people who are pretty judgmental, they know that Razib will never... I have a lot of stories that I can't tell, you know, but if there is a climate of fear, and that climate of fear also is like people's brains are almost captured to the point where they anticipate what will happen, so they don't say it. You know, once right, I think I can tell, I knew like, so I knew a guy. Well, I mean, I'll just say they're both guys, okay, in the same lab, and they were messaging me that like, you know, everyone is being crazy. And, you know, why can't like they talk to like normal people. And I told them, I'm like, turn around, because they were office mates. But they they thought the other end like what happened was one of them was convinced that the other one was lying to me, and that I was like, there was a mole... anyway. And I was like, no,
Because it's true. You I have to really, I don't know who to trust. I don't know who I can talk to I don't know who I can be open with. Because who is policing me who's gonna report me to go tell everybody else that I said some horrible thing and, and but everyone is like that now.
Yeah, well, I you know, we don't know each other that well, though. I do know your husband a little I thought I knew him. I thought I knew him from the rationalist circle. But anyway, so I actually messaged Yeah, I just I messaged him like last year. So I was like, I think I know you and I was like, No, we don't know each other. We have a lot of mutual friends
Yeah its Alex Byrne. MIT philosopher.
Yeah, yeah. And so but uh, so I know a lot of people who like reach out to me and they're like, do you know anybody at my institution I could talk to and it's not like it you know, I don't know like psychologists and stuff - I know people in evolutionary genetics but they don't normally talk about human human stuff. So they don't know who actually agrees with them. And so I do put people in touch and so I guess if there's anyone out there but
This could be a service this can be another gig for you.
Ah, well, I think of it as a mitzvah because I'm I have a certain personality like I don't really back down and I can tolerate a lot of stuff and a lot of people are not like me, but they do need spaces they need people to talk to and they're not crazy and so they will try to prevent and pull people together just like weird thing to say but is what I do this is what's happened
Do you think you can talk quote, tolerate a lot of stuff I'm interested in this, I was talking to a couple people recently about that. And these people tend to be men who say that they can tolerate this kind of social ostracization, or, and I wonder, so that, but the people who say that are not embedded, obviously, within institutions, so when you've been like, I've been at Harvard, you know, for a long time, and it is extremely difficult to be in that environment. And in an institution where people's kind of start turning on you, especially if you've been working really hard and busting your ass and done a basically great job. And that can happen on in the flash of a moment, you know, and so that people are leaving their cherished - once cherished institutions to find that freedom, but I wonder if you feel is just your personality? Or is it that like, do you think you would feel different if you are within an institution where you have, you know, been for some time and knew a lot of the people and...
Yeah, I obviously it's my partly it's my personality. So I, you know, my my background would I explained to people's I grew up in Eastern Oregon, and I've always been an atheist, and I have no problem like being in a room full of people who don't know what an atheist is, and just defending my viewpoint. I have, I've always been in the minority, so I don't care. And you know, when I was like, you know, conservative, like, you know, in grad school, I would just like argue with like, all 20 people, I don't really care and like not to be arrogant, but usually I can handle it. So, I mean, it wasn't like, I don't really care what you..
I mean, it's different when people are saying you're racist, or transphobic. I feel like you can. Yeah, I'm an atheist. And I have no problem with that. But...
Yeah, well, I mean, I've been called a white supremacist.
But it's, these are the worst insults that people...
Sure, sure.
I don't know.
Well, I mean, so I mean, I, you know, I have told the story. Like I was physically assaulted at a conference because of my politics.
And but because their? Oh because of because of being?
Well, I'm open, like, you know, I've had friends who said, like, I would not be accepted to grad school now, because I'm open about my politics. And I would create a dangerous environment, because I'm conservative,
and plus it to get a job. Now you have to write a diversity statement.
Yeah, there's no way I would do that. Obviously,
[inaudable] are screening out like, many, many conservatives, I would say,
yeah but that's a feature not a bug. It's pretty obviously a feature. But
to have nine, Harvard, I forget what the number is 90 95% liberal faculty or something, not counting economics?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, I think that's a feature not a bug
I don't know what the exact number is. But it's outrageous.
Yeah. But I mean, so it's a certain type of personality, that's willing to just like stand no matter what most people are conformist. That's human nature. Like we're talking about human nature here. Most people they will do what needs to be done to, you know, be within the in group, when you join the, you know, cherished inner circle, and yet you're at Harvard, you know, how people are Harvard - they're just like, "we're at Harvard", you know, we, you know, "we teach in Boston", I mean, it's like, it's a very elite, you don't I'm saying,
"I teach at a University in Cambridge"
Yeah, that sort of stuff. And so it's just like, you're in this circle? Do you want to be expelled out of the circle? Like you have, like, the keys to the kingdom? Do you want those keys taken away? And so what I would, what I would tell people what I tell people who asked me, and you know, so I mean, entirely frank here, this is like, kind of off the topic of the book. But this is, this is interesting. I just say you need to know and realize what matters to you. Don't like dither around like, if truth is what matters to you go whole hog. And if you want to take a low risk path, convert, just like, because there are people who slowly just, you know, many people who slowly kind of come to the awareness that they're actually woke and all the things they used to say they don't believe anymore. And it's a stepwise process. And I just recommend, just go fast, just get it out of the way. Because that way, you're like, minimize the people you offend. And you'll have like, a bigger track record of being a believer and all this stuff. And that's just what I recommend. And I also say, like, you know, because sometimes people approached me, and I'm just like, okay, but I need to make sure that you're not going to change your mind. Because I don't want to be like, in confidence with you, because I've had people turn on me, where it's like, okay, I actually think you're a white supremacist now, you know, because I've, like, changed my mind. And I'm like, that's fine. But like, I don't want like, you know, to be like, in confidence with you. So you just need to know, like, what you saw, you know, you're talking about... [inaudable] Well, what's, what's your value, like? Why are you in this? So I just had a conversation with a friend of mine who's in, you know, he does genomics, and he works in humans, and he works in behaviors. And we just had a frank conversation like he's like, I'm not going to lie. I can't say everything that I believe but I'm not going to lie. And that's that is my my rule. But he also like it's pretty it's pretty clear talking that it's like, I don't know if he's gonna last in academia, partly because like he's not here to - If you want to make a lot of money, he could go make a lot of money. He's got the skills, right. And so I think people in academia need to think about that. In terms of like the climate they're creating, and I know many people who are actually exiting like in my field in genomics, there's a lot of money in the private sector. And so there's a lot of people who like, Oh, they're looking at a postdoc, and then they're like, No, you know, I'm not going to do this, as some of the explicit reasons given are just like social aspects where I have a friend, I'll give you a concrete example. I have a friend who was basically during the BLM thing as he was exiting grad school. They his he was forced to sign a petition that he didn't really believe in. But everybody in his department signed the petition every single grad student, except for one guy who was a he was underrepresented minority. So the his privilege was, he didn't have to sign it, you know, but um, he was like, you know, if I have to do this, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do this. So now he's in the private sector, you know, and he's left academia. So this is what's gonna happen. And I don't think you know... I mean, it's happening. It's happening. So, you know, I should I should let you go. We've been talking for a while, but I do want to ask you one last thing. The Larry Summers thing. 2004. Yeah. If you knew what was gonna happen in 2004. And so just for the listeners who are probably Zoomers, if you don't remember Larry Summers said something about sex differences and math and, and stuff like that, and caused a huge controversy, and it was precipitous event in him getting expelled from his position as a president of Harvard.
I gave an interviewed to the Gazzet supporting him
Yes, you supported him. And so that was ...
I was still getting my Phd and I had no idea wasn't supposed to do that.
Yeah, there's a lot of things that you probably aren't supposed to do that you have no idea. Maybe that's a feature of, of your personality, you know, but I mean,
he should be, we should be talking about that. My whole view was like, he's trying to get at the truth, we need to support that we need to have - that's never changed. Yeah, he's 100%. Right, is that this is interesting. And this is, he's a thoughtful, smart guy. And he's looking at the evidence, we should be able to talk about that we shouldn't be calling him names and shutting down the discussion, and that's never changed. But that was just my wiring back in like, 2004. Like, I don't
Yeah, yeah. And, and so I mean, what's happened since like, 2004, and like, almost a generation, not quite, but almost. Like, would you have thought this is crazy? Or would you have been like, Okay, that's interesting. You know, cuz like...
Now?
yeah.
Interesting.
I don't know, I'm trying to be like,
No, it is, it's actually fascinating. It. It is, I mean, if you it is fascinating, just from a human, cultural, psychological point of view. And I'm very interested in, like, what is happening at Harvard right now, being in a situation where I had fantasized that important people would really stand up for me in a strong way, and stand up for the principles of higher ed and for what Harvard stands for, and all of this, and that didn't happen. And what did happen was a lot of administrative bullshit and trying to save this situation and not get out of it with as little damage as possible, instead of like vigorous statements in support of, you know, open scholarship, free speech, critical thinking, blah, blah. So my fantasy, I don't know why I held on to those fantasies. But prior to me being personally involved in any of this, I'm looking around at other institutions and other people getting cancelled and fired, and they're just or just their lives made miserable, and their institutions not sticking up for them. And I could not understand what was going on inside these institutions. What is going on with these higher level administrators? Where's the president of XYZ college or publishing company? How come? You know, I just didn't get it. And now I see how the sausage is made. And it does seem to be cowardice. And I just don't know. And I'm interested in the psychology here, who are the people who are standing up for what they believe and fighting for the truth? And what you know, and then who are the people who are not? And what are the pressures and environmental circumstances and whatever else that's contributing to these different kinds of responses. So that's fascinating. So yes, but overall, it's just so disturbing, because I don't know where we're gonna end up. And I do feel, you know, there is a group of people who are supporting me, but I don't know a lot of them. These are a lot of people on Twitter or writing me. They're not the people. There are some people in my immediate vicinity. Steve Pinker is one of them. He's been he has just been incredibly generous. And he's so busy. He has so much going on, but he is, you know, I know that he's really been attacked. He's not a perfect person. None of us are perfect, right? We're all complicated, but he's somebody who was trying Do something good in the world. And I believe that he is. And anyway, just personally, he's been super supportive. And that has helped me so much just to feel less alone, but also to have good advice. And there are other people like that not have his, you know, stature necessarily, but, and he's somebody I do know personally. But otherwise, it's just a lot of people coming out of the woodwork. And that is really important to keep people are trying to do what they think is right. And but otherwise, yeah, you said fascinating, or whatever would I have predicted this in 2004, I wasn't really thinking about it, I just thought I'm gonna keep doing what I, you know, looking for the truth. Like, that's what's exciting to me. That's what's fun. That's what I think is important. And I'm so sad that I don't get to just do that and talk about - freely, you know, with with enthusiasm and a sense of humor and like, infect, I still feel like it can infect my students with that. And they're, you know, responding, but otherwise, it's immensely difficult. And I just feel sad for all of the instructors literally all over the place who can't do that anymore, and are leaving or leaving. And so, and I'm hearing from parents all over the country who are saying, I'm not sending, or I had not planned to send my kid to college, because I don't trust them to give my kids the proper education. But I'm heartened to hear you say there are two sexes, and that that makes me feel like I could read if there are people like you, who are just saying the most obvious, obvious one of the most obvious scientific principles in my field anyway. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is to be congratulated. That's crazy.
Yeah. Well, I mean, that's what I'm saying. Why it's like, uh, you know, I don't like I just ignore a lot of my friends when they're like, Well, you know, so, you know, Colin, Wright You probably know him. You know, when he, when he came out with his article, like, Colin will tell you this, I immediately direct message him, I was like, your life is gonna change. And he's like, what? And I'm like, oh, it's gonna change. And so, you know, like, he was like...
He's just like, fuck it. I'm just gonna say what I believe now. Because, like, that's who he is now. And go,
Yeah, you don't do that. So, you know, it's just but but you know, what I tell people is like, look, I mean, I'm not like, I wasn't born yesterday, like all of this stuff that you're saying you didn't say five years ago. So what changed? Did human nature change? Or did you change? You know, and like, that doesn't, that makes people mad because people have a certain self image of themselves, but it is what it is. And, you know, I think it's a learning experience for for, you know, people at Harvard, like, you know, you're at Harvard, this is a big deal. It's like this awesome institution. And yet, you're clearly disappointed in the moral fiber of a lot of people, but it just shouldn't...
What does say to you about what has changed? people the you know, the counter argument is that we we become more sensitive, we become more sensitive to marginalized people's rights and needs. And there is something to that, that's where this is tricky, because, of course, it is a positive movement, right, for us to really come to appreciate... To me, it's just the different ways that different people suffer, of course, but each group is not a monolith with the same views or goals and needs. Um, but that's the would be the counter is like, look, you're just insensitive, you don't care about all of these people and language and how language can hurt. And so there is some nuance there.
Yeah. Yeah. Which that is true about me. Like, I mean, people, people would say that to me, like 20 years ago, okay, like, I am insensitive. Like, I just, I don't care, you know, so I just like, say it. And so I mean, like, I'm a, I'm a person out of time, in a way, you know,
you don't care about what?
I just like, you know, like, I will say things that will offend people if I think it's true. So
Oh right, but that doesn't mean that you don't care about say how difficult it is to be a trans woman say?
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a separate thing. The truth is different than like, you know, whatever your like normative, you know, your your viewpoint is, so people, people
Will you use her pronouns?
I usually respect the pronouns. I don't, it's not a big deal for me, personally. You know, it's just, I'll call people what they want to be called. That's basically my attitude. You know, it's just like, it's not, I mean, like, I'll go, I'll go along with social norms. I just will not go along with things that I think are not true, or I don't understand
What your saying is you won't really worry about it too much.
No, I don't care about blowback. Like I didn't care about blowback when I was a kid, you know about other things either. And, you know, I'm still here. I mean, it's not the easiest life but it is a life you know, and I, you know, and like I said, like, I have my friends backs, you know, I think like one reason people trust me is like, they just know that I'll still just say what I think it's true. And that might cause problems, but like they can trust me, like there's a lot of paranoia right now. Because they see people bending all the time. And they just know I won't bend.
That also makes you interesting. You know, it's more interesting to talk to someone who's going to say what they believe instead of - And it's also you know, what it's, I do think it's patronizing, to tell people what you think they want to hear like that? Who are you to decide what they should be hearing? Or you should just say what you think is true. I really, and I won't part of why I won't do that, because I would never want anyone to do that to me. And I don't want to do that to my students. I don't want to do that to anyone.
Yeah, well, um, you know, I've been talking to you for a while. I mean, I think this has been great. I recommend everyone read the book. I recommend that you continue telling the truth. Because like, you're in it, you better win it at this point, I think I think you've shown your cards, you know, at some point, like I tell people, I'm like, if you show your cards, you know, you better you better win it and like go to the end because they're not going to give up at this point. You know, like you are who you are. And I'm glad that Steve has been mench and he stepped up for you. And obviously there's a lot of people who agree with you your books been well reviewed people really enjoyed your book. I hope it's doing well, you know, that you the usual stuff. As far as what's happening to you. You know, to be entirely candid, this has happened to a lot of people I've seen this happen.
I have a tiny taste of what it's much much worse for so many other people. Yeah. To them and supporting them and speaking out.
Yeah. All right. Um, so it was great having you on Carol and me. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Check out the book. "T." And it's great. There's a lot of biochemistry in there for like..
There's a lot of biochemistry
yeah. I think people will be surprised by that because we didn't I don't think like that's been talked about as much but there's a lot of fascinated mechanistic details for the bio nerds in there
