In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Kelly talks about her new book, "Testosterone: How It Changes Our Lives" and why she wrote it. She also talks about why she decided to write a book about testosterone and why it's important to understand how it changes our lives and how we understand the world around us. This episode is sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign. To learn more about your ad choices, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers and use the promo code: "Advertiser" to receive 10% off your entire purchase when you enter the discount code: CRIMINALS at checkout. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes and promo codes for our upcoming sponsor discount offer: go to hcrimalds.ca and enter the coupon code: PODCAST10 at checkout to receive $10 off your first purchase of a copy of his new book. Thanks to our sponsor, PODCO, we'll be giving away a free copy of her book, Testosterone: "How It Changes My Life: How We Understand the World: How They Think About Us." Learn more about the book and how you can help support the book here: bit.ly/support-the-book and get 10% discount code "PODCOLLAR" at checkout! Thank you for supporting the book! . The book is available for purchase at Amazon Prime, Audible, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and Audible. and Podcoin. We'll be shipping it out in hardcover and paperback at $99, and we'll have a limited edition hardcover edition of the book available for $99 or $99.99, including hardcover $99 and $99 paperback edition, plus shipping only $99 retail, and two hardcover, including Audible will be shipping in hardbound hardbound edition, and shipping will be available in hardback, and limited edition, including two copies of the second edition of $99 at retail will also be available for best of these two editions, including AVAILABLE in two languages and two Audible and two audible books, and two of these are available at $2499 and two other copies of these books are available in two editions of these will be coming out in two copies will sell for $49 or two copies are also available at these two places we'll get them will receive a third of these tickets go to you get them all of these things.
00:01:09.000I don't really understand men or how they work.
00:01:12.000But understanding this hormone really has helped me a lot.
00:01:16.000And then in teaching about endocrinology, and specifically testosterone, I get so much feedback from students about how it changes their lives, changes how they understand themselves personally, how they understand their relationships, how they understand the world.
00:01:31.000And it's empowering for them, and it's been empowering for me.
00:01:35.000And so I've just always had this natural intellectual enthusiasm for this topic.
00:01:45.000But I'd say in the last five years, I felt like the science was coming under attack.
00:01:53.000Kind of a program to dismantle the science of testosterone and how it shapes behavior, particularly the evolutionary basis of behavior, has kind of come under attack.
00:02:06.000The idea that sex differences are grounded in biology, and I know that testosterone is a really important part of that.
00:02:12.000And there's a movement to kind of discredit that science or downplay the importance of biology and specifically testosterone in our lives and especially in sex differences.
00:02:24.000And I'm fascinated by sex differences and I'm fascinated by how evolution shapes sex differences across different species and how it works.
00:02:32.000And so that's ultimately why I wrote the book because I kind of want to get all the science out there And kind of push back against what I see as an attack on really good science.
00:02:42.000There's nothing wrong with understanding who we are from a biological point of view.
00:02:48.000And I think we should all be open to that and learn as much as we can about who we are and how we work.
00:02:53.000Yeah, I agree with you, but I also think it's fascinating when I watch the attack on the science of biology, the science of how...
00:03:03.000I think that if we were an objective observer, like something other than human, and we're watching human beings...
00:03:10.000We would be really interested in the sex differences between the male and the females and why there's this real clear pattern of behavior on both sides.
00:03:21.000Obviously, there's a spectrum in that pattern, but depending upon the levels of hormones and the genetic variants, there's a lot of consistency and what is causing this and what is it about male behavior that leads to this and female behavior that leads to that.
00:03:38.000But then you get into this weird thing where ideology has somehow or another overtaken science with a lot of human beings today.
00:03:49.000So they're willing to abandon science if it's inconvenient for their ideology.
00:03:55.000It's very strange because you see really intelligent people doing this.
00:04:31.000We want to make sure that we have equal human rights for people who have all kinds of differences.
00:04:38.000And so I agree with all that, but I don't think that if science tells us that some of these differences are grounded in biology, that means that, A, these traits that may be like extreme male aggression.
00:04:53.000That doesn't mean that that's immutable.
00:04:55.000I mean, we have tons of evidence that it's not immutable.
00:04:58.000Humans have control over their behavior.
00:05:01.000So denying the importance of, say, testosterone in male aggression is Isn't going to change the way that sort of differences in our natures or the impetus for males to feel more than females,
00:05:17.000that they want to be physically aggressive or to respond aggressively in certain situations.
00:05:25.000And I like that you said that you implied that there's lots of overlap in behavior between males and females and the degree to which that is grounded in biology.
00:05:34.000So the point isn't, and I just want to make it really clear at the beginning, it's not that females are like this and males are like that in humans or in other species.
00:05:43.000And especially, you know, culture plays such a huge role in how we develop and how we express ourselves.
00:05:49.000But even apart from culture, there are Differences on average.
00:05:54.000So there are some females who are highly physically aggressive and there are many males who are really emotional and sensitive and totally peaceful.
00:06:02.000Can I say that you just said you tear up sometimes?
00:06:08.000Okay, so yeah, no, and I just cry when I'm moved or passionate.
00:06:12.000I cry a lot, and I actually talk about that in the book because there's a relationship with testosterone there that we can talk about later, which is really interesting.
00:06:19.000But the point is that, you know, my book, Tea, is not about not trying to explain why males are one way and females are another way, but why we're different on average, why we have somewhat different natures.
00:06:33.000And testosterone is, to me, the most powerful way To understand those differences in our natures, you know, from an evolutionary point of view and looking at how we as animals, as mammals, try to maximize our reproductive success,
00:06:51.000And so that's what testosterone does, is it helps males maximize Basically, the number of offspring they have through increasing mating opportunities.
00:06:59.000It doesn't mean that males are only interested in having tons of sex and tons of sex partners, but they're definitely more interested in that than females in humans.
00:07:09.000And in many other species where increasing the number of mates yields reproductive benefits for males, but not females.
00:07:33.000They've only been around for a couple hundred thousand years, and for a long time they were eaten by jaguars, and so they had to make as many babies as possible in order to ensure survival of the species.
00:07:51.000One of the things that I found fascinating was listening to Chaz Bono talk about his transition and how he just kind of got it once he started taking testosterone.
00:08:05.000Like, oh, this is what the fuck's been going on with the world.
00:08:08.000So I try to understand how testosterone works in humans by first thinking about it from an evolutionary point of view.
00:08:16.000What is the purpose of sex differences and sex hormones?
00:08:19.000Why do male animals have high testosterone and females have high, say, estrogen?
00:08:24.000And what do those do to our bodies and to our psychology to help us Maximize our reproductive success, meaning have ultimately sort of as many get our genes into the next generation as efficiently as possible.
00:08:38.000So one way is to look from an evolutionary point of view.
00:08:43.000Another way is to look at different kinds of experiments in non-human animals.
00:08:48.000And then another thing we can do is look at what happens in humans who change their hormone levels.
00:08:54.000And this is absolutely fascinating because we have some examples of that happening right now.
00:09:02.000So I talk to people for the book and I use their words because they're the ones who are living through these experiences and I wanted them to tell what it was like.
00:09:11.000So I interviewed a male-to-female transgender person, a female- To male transgender person, a non-binary person who is taking puberty blockers, and then somebody who is female who transitioned to male and then transitioned back to female.
00:09:29.000So I got this really wide range of experiences and I thought that What they had to say was incredibly powerful, and I can describe some of what they said, which helped me to understand myself better, helped me to understand my husband better, and really just had a big impact on me personally.
00:09:47.000I found this evidence really sort of moving and powerful.
00:09:51.000But one thing I want to say before we talk about that is that one of the biggest Influences on human and non-human sex differences is differences in the womb and what happens to us when we're inside our moms as fetuses developing.
00:10:07.000So males have testes that produce male levels of testosterone in utero.
00:10:13.000And that testosterone, that's called a perinatal effect or an organizational effect.
00:11:16.000I was pretty aggressive, I would say, which is a little bit more on the masculine side, so I'm just illustrating that, you know, again, this is kind of a spectrum, but we have these differences where Boys, including my son, who does not like baseball and is not as kind of probably boyish in some ways as I was,
00:11:49.000It seems to be consistent with what we see in non-human animals and a result of early exposure to testosterone because the levels, so in boys, levels are high at certain periods in utero and then go up again for a short period of time after birth.
00:12:04.000That seems to have these effects on the brain that shape that rough and tumble play.
00:12:09.000And it's not an accident that they're That boys have higher sort of aggressive physical play because that's what, in a different environment, in our sort of ancestral environment, they're practicing those skills that they would have needed for physical male-male status competition.
00:12:27.000So in our modern environment, males have different ways of competing that don't necessarily require physical competition, but it requires other kinds of behaviors that testosterone also seems to promote.
00:12:39.000I think I'm—this is a long-winded answer to your question, which I no longer remember.
00:12:46.000So—oh, you—okay, so about the trans thing.
00:12:48.000So the reason I'm going into what happens prenatally is because the evidence that we get about testosterone from looking at transgender people— It's really interesting.
00:13:19.000They might adopt the clothes, say, or behaviors of the opposite sex.
00:13:24.000But many people will want to alter their hormones to be consistent with those of the opposite sex.
00:13:30.000So if you're male to female, that would mean blocking testosterone and increasing estrogen.
00:13:37.000And if you're going the other way, female to male, that means blocking estrogen and jacking up your testosterone.
00:13:45.000So we can look at that evidence, but we have to remember that once people transition, say if a male transitions to female, that person, so we'll call that a natal male, had high testosterone in utero.
00:14:02.000So even though as an adult they might not have testosterone, and we can look at what their behavior looks like as an adult when they block testosterone and start living as a woman, there's something different about their brain.
00:14:15.000So that their brain has been masculinized in utero.
00:14:19.000And female brains, you can say, have been feminized or not masculinized.
00:14:23.000Female brains are not exposed to hormones.
00:14:41.000Most of the evidence that we have is from non-human animals, that we have clear differences in the brain, that one area of the brain is called the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area of the hypothalamus.
00:14:58.000And the hypothalamus is an area that basically controls the action of the pituitary, which is kind of the master gland for controlling all of our many, many hormones in our body.
00:15:11.000And the sexually dimorphic nucleus, so sexually dimorphic means basically different sizes or shapes in each sex.
00:15:21.000So testosterone increases the size of this.
00:15:23.000We know that it increases the size of this part of the...
00:15:28.000And then that predicts male sexual behavior, mounting behavior, say, in rats.
00:15:32.000So we know that sex differences in testosterone in many nonhuman animals do change, do help to explain differences in the size of different areas of the brain.
00:15:45.000But there are also really small differences in just parts of the brain and how neurons, say, branch or make connections.
00:15:53.000So they tend not to be, in humans as far as we know, big, obvious differences like the SDNPOA, but there are some suspected differences in human brains that are due to testosterone differences, but we don't have that kind of evidence.
00:16:10.000I guess I'm not an expert on the brain But it's subtle differences in, say, branching or neuronal connections or the birth and death of neurons in utero.
00:16:23.000So differences in testosterone can cause differences in the population of neurons or the number of cell bodies in different areas or the way that they make connections.
00:16:34.000But the question is, as they transition, so if someone transitions from male to female, how are we measuring the fact that their brains have differences than people that were genetically...
00:17:03.000Question because there's a lot of controversy around brain differences and whether there really are any.
00:17:09.000But my understanding of that literature is that brains can be sexed by experts in humans with 85% accuracy.
00:17:20.000But I don't think there is one really loud signal there that can be attributed to testosterone exposure in utero.
00:17:27.000But the point I was trying to make is just that there are Are probably differences in the brain that were shaped during that organizational period.
00:17:39.000In transgender people, so that we shouldn't necessarily assume that if they change their hormones in adulthood, that they will be sort of just like the other sex psychologically, because there may be other differences in their brain due to having high exposure to testosterone.
00:17:57.000But I can tell you some of the differences that we then see once they transition.
00:18:32.000But what about females that want a lot of sex?
00:18:34.000Yeah, there are lots of females who want a lot of sex, but on average, everywhere, males want more sex and they want more sexual partners.
00:18:42.000I read something once, I don't know if you're aware of this, but a study out of, I think it was the University of Rome, where they were examining a link between promiscuous women and their offspring being male,
00:19:00.000having a disproportionate amount of gay men.
00:19:56.000So the findings link between homosexuality and female fertility strongly support the balancing selection hypothesis which suggests that a gene which causes homosexuality also leads to high fecundity or reproduction among their female relatives.
00:20:11.000Okay, but fecundity is different from the number of sexual partners.
00:20:16.000But they had it connected to promiscuous women.
00:20:20.000Okay, because you don't have more babies necessarily by having more partners.
00:20:51.000The researchers analyzed the personality and fecundity of 61 females who are either mothers or maternal aunts of homosexual men to 100 females who are mothers or aunts of heterosexual men.
00:21:02.000Originally, the team thought the reason why the women who inherited the gay man gene might have more babies is simply because they increased androphilia.
00:21:36.000However, after analyzing the personal characteristics of 160...
00:21:40.000See, here's the however that probably puts it in line.
00:21:42.000Of 161 female maternal relatives of homosexual and heterosexual men, researchers changed their hypothesis and suggested that rather than making the women more attracted to men and therefore more promiscuous, the gay man gene appears to make female inheritors more attractive to men.
00:22:05.000Okay, but females who are highly attractive, who have what we would call high mate value, tend not to be super promiscuous because they can get a high status, high investing male.
00:22:17.000And you screw up that relationship if you're promiscuous.
00:22:20.000Then you're no longer high mate value because your partner's going to question whether the offspring are his.
00:22:27.000That's why I'm confused about how they switched, because it seems like they're 180 degrees from each other.
00:22:32.000If sexually antagonistic genetic factors that introduce homosexuality in males exist, the factors might be maintained in the population by contributing to increase the fecundity, greater reproductive health, extraversion, and a generally relaxed attitude towards family and social values in female of the maternal line of homosexual men.
00:25:21.000And this is something I'd love for more people to talk about.
00:25:26.000I'm interested in what that is like because, yeah, I shouldn't talk about my own puberty, but yeah, that was a time when I was interested in sex.
00:25:36.000Felt very different because my hormones were changing.
00:25:39.000You know, estrogen helped to make me a sexual being.
00:25:42.000But testosterone has a different effect.
00:26:08.000And this is not how all men are or how all trans people are, but this was the effect in the few months after increasing testosterone, sort of like a male puberty, which can feel overwhelming where thoughts of sex are overwhelming and that there's an intense need to kind of get some release.
00:26:28.000And there's a way that these Trans men started viewing women, which was kind of alien to them because they hadn't looked at other people as sexual objects in that same way, but sort of a really intense need to get a release and seeing other women as vehicles for that.
00:27:04.000I really don't want to overstate it and give the idea that trans...
00:27:09.000I want to be careful about this, and I hope that I'm not giving the idea that trans men suddenly are objectifying women.
00:27:16.000It's more that women, natal women like me, don't really understand male sexuality and that we think that men should kind of be more like us and respect everybody and why can't they just treat me like a human being instead of looking at me as a sex object,
00:27:39.000So women get frustrated because men look at them as sex objects.
00:27:43.000Right, but conversely, women dress very provocatively and still think that.
00:27:49.000That they don't like that men look at them like sex objects when their cleavage is showing and they're wearing skirts and their legs basically have a vagina curtain on and their legs are hanging out.
00:27:59.000It's very odd because they're obviously accentuating this.
00:28:05.000Yes, but I think that women don't understand the effect that that has on men or trans men because they don't feel that same urgency, right?
00:28:18.000And what I learned, I just was really interested in understanding what that's like instead of...
00:28:31.000So talking to people who transitioned, who are natal females, who are then like, holy shit, this is what it's like to live as a man and have this sexual desire that was foreign to them.
00:28:51.000So that's really just sort of the male puberty part of it.
00:28:55.000And that's an intensity that females, I think, don't get.
00:29:01.000But then there's this orgasm thing, which I thought was really interesting.
00:29:06.000Orgasm apparently feels very different from the female orgasm, and people who transitioned talked about how their experience of orgasm changed.
00:30:08.000Is a function of testosterone differences because when, for trans men, the experience changes from the full body experience to a sharper, more intense, more acute, more time-limited experience.
00:32:39.000But let's assume that they're keeping their genitalia.
00:32:41.000Well, for female to male, they definitely are, right?
00:32:44.000But this is consistent with the literature about sex differences in orgasms and sexual experience where it's more sort of acute and less concentrated on the whole body for men than it is for women.
00:33:00.000So essentially the testosterone is leading the body to a very specific kind of experience during orgasm.
00:33:08.000And that's something that I thought was fascinating.
00:33:11.000So the orgasm, but just in addition to...
00:33:15.000What it's like sexually to be in the world and how you view the sex that you're attracted to and what the urgency is like.
00:33:25.000As a woman, I don't really understand.
00:33:28.000Obviously, I don't understand what it's like to be a man or have high testosterone or what it's like to be a man sexually in the world.
00:33:35.000And that's part of why I'm interested in the hormone.
00:33:39.000And aggression, interestingly, does not seem to—there's not good evidence that trans men become much more aggressive or that trans women become much less aggressive.
00:33:54.000There are some anecdotal changes in anger.
00:34:38.000So being stoic is masculine and having a lot of emotions and expressing them is more feminine.
00:34:43.000Of course, again, this is a spectrum and there's lots of overlap.
00:34:47.000But that also seems to be a function of testosterone.
00:34:50.000So the people I interviewed described taking testosterone and then feeling that their emotions were blunted, they couldn't access their emotions, they stopped crying, and that anger was the only accessible intense emotion.
00:35:34.000But when you sort of move to the middle and you're talking about anger and you're talking about throwing stuff and pushing and hitting, there's not a huge difference.
00:35:41.000There's a lot of sex difference there, at least in terms of- Lashing out with anger.
00:35:52.000But so the things that change in transgender people, the biggest thing is sex and sexuality and sex drive.
00:36:00.000And then there's some evidence, a little bit of evidence about aggression, but that doesn't seem to be very pronounced.
00:36:07.000What's always interesting to me that there's a lot of people that they sort of dismiss traditional gender stereotypes in terms of makeup and clothing and and then some of these people are actually not just dismissive of these stereotypes but they They seem to think there's something wrong with them.
00:36:35.000They think that these things are in somehow or another holding back women or holding back men.
00:36:41.000And what's odd to me is that it's celebrated in transgender people.
00:36:47.000So whenever a trans woman is wearing a ton of makeup and short skirts and a lot of nail polish and big hoop earrings, everybody's like, you go, girl.
00:36:58.000No one is ever looking at that trans woman saying, you are accepting these harmful gender stereotypes and embracing them.
00:37:12.000And I think that's so complicated because if you have gender dysphoria, if you're really uncomfortable with your body and how it's sexed, and you desperately...
00:37:25.000Go into puberty and you're horrified at how your body is changing because it doesn't represent how you feel.
00:37:31.000Then I can understand how you want to adopt maybe a more extreme version of what you perceive the opposite sex to be like.
00:37:40.000So I get it and I have sympathy for people who are suffering in that way.
00:37:45.000But you're right that there is a sort of stereotyping of the It's just super complicated.
00:38:01.000It is super complicated and I understand it and I sympathize with them and I support them.
00:38:48.000In the book, that is something that I write about at the end.
00:38:51.000What I want for my son, here's where I start getting emotional.
00:38:59.000It's really important to me that he feel free to express himself in whatever way he wants.
00:39:05.000This is what I get upset about when I teach, that there are these restrictive norms and people who feel different feel they just have to break out of that norm instead of feeling comfortable just being who they are with their bodies.
00:39:22.000That he could wear whatever clothes he wants and be accepted.
00:39:28.000But there are these norms that we still have, and there is this confusion where women are stigmatized for being ultra-feminine.
00:40:33.000What I was getting at is that females in our culture are allowed to wear very little clothing at formal events.
00:40:41.000Like if you go to a restaurant and the man is wearing a suit and a tie and a jacket, the woman will often be wearing this vagina curtain, long legs, all exposed.
00:41:16.000I'm looking at this like an objective observer.
00:41:18.000It's fascinating that you're saying that as females transition to males, they start objectifying females.
00:41:25.000But females that identify as female and are attracted to men often dress in a way that would make them much more sexually, if not available, much more looked at like a sexual object.
00:41:44.000You do not see very many men out at dinner with short skirts on where you see their feet and you see all of their arms and deep into their armpits and you see a deep cut in their chest.
00:42:22.000Because if a guy showed up in short skirts, short skirts where you could see big muscular legs and he had a tank top on where you could see his arms and this low cut thing where you could see his chest, that would be a masculine man that would be more likely to provide you with...
00:43:23.000I think that the patterns of attraction differ in humans because it's adaptive for males to seek out females who have high reproductive value.
00:43:35.000And our reproductive value has more to do with our physical health than if a female is seeking a mate, she wants somebody who's high status, who's healthy, but who can provide for her and her offspring.
00:43:49.000On average, But these are the, you know, we have different mating psychologies on average.
00:43:55.000And so for me, it's more important that I, yes, I mean, both sexes want partners who are healthy.
00:45:22.000And you have, I mean, culturally, it's really interesting to look at different cultures and how they vary in terms of those sex differences.
00:46:21.000Respecting another person's intelligence and ability to handle the truth is so much more respectful than giving them information that might make them feel good.
00:46:36.000And I don't even remember what your question was now.
00:46:38.000Whether or not you went in this with a neutral perspective.
00:46:40.000So my perspective is that science is the way to get at the truth.
00:46:47.000And I love teaching this class because I get a lot of students who are not scientists, think they don't like science, but they want to know about themselves and their bodies.
00:46:56.000We don't just talk about sex and testosterone.
00:46:59.000We talk about hunger and diabetes and energy and parenting and how hormones shape all these different kinds of behaviors.
00:48:47.000And I didn't know, which is a lesson because I have students at Harvard who are just totally freaked out about getting a B+. And I just feel like, I always tell them, like, look, you don't know where I came from and what you can change.
00:49:00.000And, you know, a B +, a B +, is great.
00:49:03.000And you're going to be where you're supposed to be.
00:49:05.000Just, like, work hard and be disciplined, etc.
00:49:08.000So that was my high school experience.
00:49:12.000And then I went to this great college, Antioch College, but then I didn't know what I wanted to be.
00:49:17.000But I graduated from college in 1988, and I was really excited about computers, which is so funny.
00:51:48.000And I will just say, if you jump forward, that kind of response now is kind of, seems to be in many places okay, that you're supposed to have an emotional response.
00:51:58.000And if you do, then maybe we shouldn't have assigned that paper.
00:52:02.000But I have an experience with rape, and...
00:52:08.000And I didn't want rape to be a natural part of human behavior.
00:52:14.000I wanted it to be something pathological.
00:52:17.000And so I was having a hard time analyzing the data, but the professor kept saying, look at the data, look at the data, look at the data.
00:52:27.000And this, to me, was one of the most formative experiences because it helped me realize how important the truth is and that I can use science as a tool to get to the truth and understand myself and understand my life and understand even men or things that have been troublesome to me,
00:52:48.000And I learned that I can use science to understand and ultimately it made me feel better and more empowered and more in control.
00:52:58.000So my bias is like so firmly with the science and how important it is and how I was respected as a young scientist and given the truth and sort of really encouraged to look at the data and analyze the science instead of like give in to my emotions and believe what I wanted to believe.
00:53:18.000I don't want to give anyone else like a line of bullshit about anything, like that the sexes are on a spectrum, you know, that there's five sexes because maybe that makes people feel good about being different.
00:53:29.000You can feel good about being different even with the truth that there are two sexes.
00:54:19.000It is what helped me go from somebody who was confused and had no direction and lacked confidence to finding something that works for me, finding something that's so powerful to explain the world.
00:54:31.000And I love helping other people do the same thing and imbue in them a love for science and how powerful it is.
00:54:41.000And I just feel like it's getting shat on.
00:54:45.000Because I don't have a great explanation.
00:54:49.000I think social media has a lot to do with it.
00:54:53.000What aspect of social media do you think accentuates it?
00:54:57.000There's a lot of shaming on social media.
00:54:59.000There's a lot of shutting down conversation.
00:55:04.000Everybody's always advocated for certain points of views and had their agendas, right?
00:55:45.000That was probably seven years ago or something.
00:55:47.000What made you want to teach that sex was on the spectrum?
00:55:51.000Because I thought that the features associated with sex, because they can vary so much, so sex is really about what kind of gametes you make or what your gamete plan is, whether you have large immobile gametes or whether you're going to be making...
00:56:08.000Small mobile gametes, so like sperm and eggs.
00:56:11.000That's really how sex is defined across the animal kingdom.
00:56:56.000So I sort of studied it more and got more into the literature, and I realized, no, it's really about gametes, and I'm muddying this up to make me and my students feel good,
00:57:16.000I think I'm getting better at teaching what is now controversial information.
00:57:21.000My students are saying that they appreciate having someone who's willing to talk about sex and sex differences and admit that there are two sexes and to explore how that works.
00:57:44.000I think the academia spilled over into social media because people that were in school started using social media and then the people who are overwhelmingly progressive that run institutions.
00:59:01.000I think I see things differently, but I think it's the wrong direction, and I'm scared, and I don't know what is going to put an end to this, but it seems to be getting worse and worse.
00:59:12.000You know, my students are congratulating me for teaching just basic science now.
00:59:49.000A lot of them I think are, as you said, they're capitulating.
00:59:53.000I think a lot of them are really worried that this is the trend and you can sort of get out the basic facts while sticking with the current ideology.
01:00:01.000Well, they also get a lot of approval, a lot of social approval.
01:00:24.000The social approval is great, and for sure people do that.
01:00:27.000They virtual signal left and right online.
01:00:29.000It's like one of the main activities on Twitter.
01:00:32.000But the one thing that they happen to do while doing that is avoid the hate that you get from stepping on that third rail of, you know, when you step out of line and start saying things that maybe you actually believe but aren't a part of the orthodoxy,
01:01:00.000It is the science that is coming out now about testosterone.
01:01:07.000There are books coming out and there are even studies coming out that are...
01:01:12.000Completely designed to show that testosterone differences are less than we thought, that there aren't really large sex differences in testosterone, that there's an overlap in testosterone that's just not that powerful and important,
01:01:28.000which means we can celebrate everybody as really being And sexless, you know, that there's no such thing as male and female.
01:01:36.000Testosterone really doesn't do that much.
01:01:38.000Or females have much higher testosterone than we thought.
01:01:41.000And that just to blur the biological differences so that people, I guess the agenda is, so that people feel more comfortable expressing themselves and their...
01:01:53.000Gender as they see fit, which I just think you should do anyway.
01:02:19.000A huge issue right now, because I wrote about this in the book also, because there's questions about whether trans women should be able to participate on women's sports teams.
01:02:30.000So the big issue is, well, does testosterone really confer an athletic advantage?
01:02:34.000And I write about these examples where people are arguing that it doesn't.
01:03:36.000Some people are saying that that advantage is cultural.
01:03:40.000And it's not, and I outline in the book pretty clearly what going through male puberty and having high testosterone in puberty, how that changes.
01:03:50.000I mean, you know you're jacked, and part of it's because you take testosterone.
01:03:53.000And so you can speak from personal experience about the change in your athletic capacity and muscle volume.
01:04:01.000There's no doubt that you have increased hemoglobin, you have increased muscle mass, you have a larger body size, you have increased bone strength, all directly a result of high testosterone.
01:04:13.000And it doesn't all go away when you reduce testosterone.
01:04:16.000In their defense, it doesn't all go away when you reduce testosterone, but some of it does go away.
01:05:16.000We should be accepting of each other and loving of each other and give each other equal rights and laws and respect.
01:05:21.000But when it comes to athletics, there's a reason why men don't compete against women.
01:05:26.000And I had this bizarre conversation with this guy once who has this TV show where he kind of debunks things.
01:05:32.000But when I got him alone to talk about these things, like without a team of writers, when you leave someone to just their opinions, And he had these sort of very progressive talking points that he would kind of blurt out.
01:05:46.000But then when I started challenging him on these and going deep, he realized he didn't even really think about this.
01:05:52.000He just wanted to appear that he was progressive, which I am.
01:07:22.000And I think it's interesting and it's exciting the ways that we're different.
01:07:27.000And testosterone really does help to explain so many of those differences.
01:07:32.000So understanding that hormone helps us understand each other.
01:07:35.000And it helped me, even though I have been teaching about this stuff for ages, writing the book and especially reading about the transgender experiences helped me To have sort of this epiphany, so you can see how emotional I am, right?
01:07:52.000My husband is a British philosopher and he is not, he doesn't get angry, he doesn't really express a lot, a huge range of emotion.
01:08:06.000He's a wonderful guy and I love him, but I've always kind of picked on him and thought there was something wrong with him for not We're good to go.
01:08:34.000I'm not better than he is because I'm so in touch with my emotions.
01:09:28.000It's not that all men are that way, but it did help me just the understanding helps us to accept each other.
01:09:35.000And that's sort of one larger point in the book that I don't try to make so explicitly, but I hope that And again, I don't mean we have to accept bad behavior, but we can try to understand these extremes of male behavior that are disturbing and more disturbing than extremes of female behavior.
01:09:51.000You know, I can cry and have a fit, but I'm not...
01:09:57.000Well, because that's a bad extreme of male behavior that we need to understand.
01:10:01.000But let's understand where that's coming from instead of shutting down the conversation or shaming men for just being men, who all men are being blamed for the extremes of male behavior.
01:10:46.000But I think that's important in regards to everything.
01:10:51.000It's important in regards to gender, to transgender people.
01:10:55.000And if there's anything that upsets me more than anything, it's when I get misrepresented as being Either hostile towards transgender people or dismissive of transgender people.
01:11:21.000You're pretending that you're not a male.
01:11:22.000And you're competing against females without letting them know.
01:11:25.000If you wanted to tell them that you were male for 30 years and became female for two years and they still wanted to compete against you, we have no qualm.
01:12:39.000I, in the same situation, I would be just as furious.
01:12:43.000Well, you could be furious, but would you use the same language knowing that people who are listening, they're not her, but they are people who feel like a woman and want to identify as a woman?
01:13:34.000Sandbagging is like say if we were in a martial arts tournament and you were like a 10-year Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, but you entered into this tournament and lied and said you were a purple belt and you started competing against people that only been doing it a couple years and you fucked them up.
01:13:52.000That was the general consensus for a lot of people how they felt about people that transition and compete against females in a lot of sports.
01:14:30.000When someone tells you that they're a biological female and they're not, that made me furious because I knew the story and I knew this one girl literally got her skull broken.
01:14:41.000And I'm like, this is a person who's probably going to be injured for the rest of her life.
01:14:59.000But now when it comes to sanctioned events like powerlifting, there's a giant issue right now with the Olympics, where they're allowing a transgender male, who's breaking all kinds of world records, compete...
01:15:50.000It's not going to go away, but it doesn't mean people aren't compassionate.
01:15:54.000There's a reason why males don't compete against females.
01:15:58.000And this is part of the thing that I had with this guy, this TV show host, where I was telling him, okay, do you think that males should compete against females?
01:16:10.000So my feeling here is that the way to decide these issues is not to pretend that natal males do not have any kind of advantage, or to To suppress discussion of that or to suppress knowledge about testosterone.
01:16:29.000So I feel like I know what the literature says and there is an advantage.
01:17:03.000Just identifying and living life in society.
01:17:06.000Yeah, but I think that the conversation can't happen when it's If we don't get the scientific facts out there, because people are so hung up on the science and arguing about the science that they're not even open to hearing the ethical case.
01:17:23.000So let's establish the science, let's work with the facts, and then let's sensitively hear the ethical facts.
01:17:32.000So even if there is an advantage, is there an ethical, philosophical case to be made that trans women should be able to compete against NATO women?
01:17:40.000You might say no because there's a physical advantage, but at least we should get the facts out and then just sort of put the facts on the table so that we can have that conversation.
01:17:49.000But that conversation isn't even happening.
01:17:52.000So that people are closed off to what could be a decent ethical case.
01:17:57.000Because maybe it's not all about physical advantage.
01:17:59.000Maybe there's some human rights issues that people aren't even hearing or open to right now.
01:18:03.000Right, but we're talking only about athletics.
01:18:05.000But there are human rights in athletics, too.
01:18:08.000If you have a massive physical advantage, if a guy identifies as a woman and he doesn't want to take hormones and he wants to compete in women's boxing.
01:18:34.000So imagine if you were a biological female and you're the cream of the crop and you've busted your ass your whole life through dedication and discipline to get to that point and you want to get a scholarship somewhere and you're getting denied.
01:19:18.000No, if you're biologically male and you're competing against biological females and you have an extreme advantage, I don't think the ethics would lean towards letting you have this advantage because we want you to feel like you're female.
01:19:33.000I think you should be treated like a member of society with all equal rights and equal respect and equal love, but we're not talking about being a member of society.
01:19:45.000If you're a 300-pound person and you identify with being a 100-pound person and you want to compete with the 100-pound people, that's not fair, right?
01:19:54.000Well, if you're a biological male and you have all these physical advantages of being a biological male, but you identify with being a female and you want to compete as females, which is what we're seeing in high schools, where I don't think in some schools they're not even required to do anything.
01:20:24.000That flies in the face of science, and people are embracing the ideology because they want to be compassionate, they want to be progressive, and they don't want people to get mad at them.
01:20:33.000Yeah, and I think you're right, and I think that's the problem.
01:20:35.000And I think we should be able to have a conversation, which we should definitely be able to have a conversation, where you hear the point of view of the girls who are losing to the trans girls, hear their point of view, hear the point of view of the trans girls, and get the scientific evidence in and have The conversation.
01:20:52.000That is not happening because it's being shut down because you're not allowed to say basically what you just said.
01:20:58.000We have seen some of the evidence and world records being broken.
01:21:45.000It might feel like you have to be in a third, if you're in a third league then you're not a girl and you want to be, I'm just trying to understand the other point of view.
01:21:53.000We're making it seem like having the right to compete in the gender that you associate with, identify with, is a right.
01:22:14.000My only feeling is that people should be able to voice their opinion without being shamed and to use facts and to talk about their opinions.
01:22:51.000I mean, look, this trans man, or excuse me, trans woman, male to female, is now in the Olympics for weightlifting and has a really good chance of winning the gold medal.
01:23:01.000Well, maybe if that happens, that's going to press the issue in a way that it hasn't really been before.
01:23:08.000But the problem is, like, at the expense of how many biological women's athletic careers.
01:23:17.000How many of them are going to be a footnote in this transition?
01:23:21.000And this is significant when you're talking about people that literally dedicate a decade of their life that they can never get back, the prime of their athletic career.
01:23:32.000You have 20 to 30. This is your window.
01:24:32.000Is it just about physical advantages or is it giving everybody the right to participate, say, in what's important to them if they can qualify?
01:24:42.000If it wasn't just about physical advantages, males would compete with females.
01:24:47.000There's a reason there's two divisions.
01:25:29.000I'm saying we want to pay attention to the experiences of those trans people and what it's like for them to not be able to do their sport or to be relegated to some third team.
01:25:39.000I'm just saying that perspective needs to be aired.
01:27:55.000There was no mixed martial arts like the UFC when I was young and competing.
01:28:00.000Can I change track a little bit and tell you a little background evolutionary basis of fighting and testosterone and then sort of ask about your experiences?
01:28:22.000And in the rut is when it's mating season.
01:28:26.000So I went to see this in Scotland, this population of red deer, because there's a lot of research on them and how testosterone controls this population.
01:28:58.000So their weapons, testosterone creates these basically weapons that they can use to poke out each other's eyes and try to kill each other in the fight for females.
01:29:12.000So it coordinates the ability to reproduce with the aggressive behaviors and the antlers.
01:29:19.000So they signal to each other through roaring and through strutting around, and they have to make these decisions about who to fight and when.
01:29:29.000And the most successful males will accumulate these harems of up to 20 or sometimes even more females.
01:29:36.000So these really successful males are the best fighters.
01:29:55.000And how they are so tuned into the cues of the ability of whether they're going to have a chance against another male.
01:30:02.000So some males are just roaming around the hillside with no females, and they're, like, covetously eyeing the dominant males who have a harem.
01:30:12.000And so they have to decide if they're going to challenge that harem holder.
01:30:54.000They go through these stages, and it's predictable, the steps that they go through on the way to battle.
01:30:59.000And if they decide to—if the challenger decides to fight—sorry, now I think it's if the challenger will— Lower his head with his huge antlers.
01:31:13.000And then if the other one accepts, he lowers his head down and they lock antlers and they try to push each other down so that if one can get the other on the ground, he can poke him or he can try to poke his eyes out.
01:31:29.000But what's interesting to me is human fighting.
01:31:35.000And I haven't studied like the kind of fighting that you're interested in, but I was wondering, it's so amazing, first of all, to see in non-human animals, these parallels to human fighting when two males are Really trying to size each other up in terms of how big are they?
01:32:36.000Just rewarding to engage in battle, maybe for males in a way that it's not for females.
01:32:41.000So I just wanted to hear a little bit from your perspective about, from a male perspective, a man's point of view who's really into fighting.
01:32:50.000If you can see any of those parallels with non-human animals.
01:32:57.000There is fighting, meaning competing for females where men puff up or men go to the bar and they fight with other men and there's a big difference between that.
01:33:13.000There's a big difference between that and competition.
01:33:16.000What competition is, is high level problem solving with dire physical consequences.
01:33:22.000And the reason why people are attracted to people that do that is because they know it's a terrifying endeavor.
01:33:28.000Because you're risking your emotional health, your physical health, your self-esteem, you're risking it all at the chance of being a conqueror, at the chance of being a champion.
01:33:39.000And it's a very rare position because only one person can hold it in each weight class.
01:33:44.000And so the extreme of the extreme in terms of people who, and a lot of them, you wouldn't even, especially in jujitsu, you wouldn't even imagine that these would be the people that would do that because they're just really intensely intellectual people.
01:33:59.000I always call them like nerd assassins because they're just really super smart people that are absolutely dedicated to trying to figure out this puzzle.
01:34:06.000They're playing a game of human go or human chess.
01:34:10.000It's not what people think about it when they don't engage in it.
01:34:27.000It has to do with you're trying to figure out a way to get better at everything in life.
01:34:35.000You're trying to reach the maximum of your human potential and that's what fighting does.
01:34:42.000What fighting is, it's a vehicle for developing your human potential.
01:34:45.000With every improvement, with every success, with every setback We have to regroup and relearn and then reassess all the parameters, reassess all the dangers and the risks and all the pros and cons,
01:35:01.000all the things you did wrong, all the things you did right.
01:35:03.000Were you 100% disciplined or were you only 80?
01:35:06.000And if you were 100, would you have won?
01:36:11.000You have to be able to Exist and be mindful in the middle of chaos, in the middle of someone with massive amounts of kinetic energy and training, hurling their bones in your direction with the object of knocking you unconscious,
01:37:43.000No one's ever died in the UFC. The UFC's been around since 1993. Have people become paralyzed or blinded?
01:37:50.000Some people have lost vision in their eyes, yeah.
01:37:54.000But relatively few in comparison to the thousands and thousands and thousands.
01:37:58.000So you don't see it as a status competition.
01:38:01.000It is in some way, but it's a status that's achieved by accomplishment.
01:38:05.000It's not about the status as much as it's about the accomplishment.
01:38:09.000It's about figuring out how to do this thing and also how to do it against someone who is not just a professional, but an elite professional.
01:38:18.000Like this weekend, this weekend, I'm going to Phoenix because Marvin Vittori is challenging Israel Adesanya for the UFC middleweight championship of the world.
01:38:28.000And it's an intense fight because they fought a long time ago.
01:38:30.000They fought like four or five years ago and it was a really close fight.
01:38:33.000And now they're going to talk shit to each other and they're going to go at it.
01:38:36.000But these are two elite super athletes.
01:38:40.000In the prime of their career, and in Stylebender you have probably like the slickest, most intelligent, most technical striker that's ever fought in the UFC. And then in this guy Marvin Vittori, you have this fucking Italian savage who's just like this really good brawler,
01:39:04.000I'm telling you, the moment that happens Saturday night, when I'm sitting there, and it's me and Daniel Cormier and John Anik, and we're calling the fight, and we're sitting there cage-side, and we're just, holy shit!
01:39:16.000It's wild, but what's wild about it is, first of all, for me, There's a tremendous honor in being able to give words to this experience and try to make it exciting for people watching at home and to let them know that, you know, as much as I've seen in this life,
01:39:32.000as much as I experience in this life, I'm still enjoying this as much as they are, if not more.
01:39:40.000I want to accentuate their experience.
01:39:42.000And for the athletes that are fighting, I want to...
01:39:46.000I want to explain it in a way that honors what they've done.
01:39:50.000I want to explain it in a way where when it goes down in history, they can watch that videotape and they can get fucking pumped up hearing the things that I'm saying.
01:39:59.000So what is enjoyable to you is seeing all of this training and intensity and humanity coming together.
01:40:09.000Everybody, these participants putting everything on the line and seeing the talent.
01:41:16.000What I'm interested in when I'm watching these things is when I see a guy like Stylebender, one of the elites of the elites, I know how insanely hard it is to be that guy.
01:41:57.000You have countless days of training when you don't want to, the discipline, all the fucking physical preparation that's involved.
01:42:07.000All the strength and conditioning and all the sparring sessions and all the chaos that's involved leading you up to that fight.
01:42:14.000Watching your diet, the nutrition and supplements and everything and studying tapes and going over techniques with the trainers and keeping the mind on point.
01:42:24.000Not letting the demons of doubt enter your mind and fuck with your psyche.
01:45:18.000Before the fight started, you were standing over there, and as Bruce Buffer was saying your name, you were saying to yourself, I'm the best.
01:47:33.000It's really intense and I didn't understand because, you know, in my life I work hard.
01:47:40.000I try to improve myself and I feel like a lot of people who are really driven that way have some demons or something they're trying to prove or overcome.
01:47:50.000And maybe what you're doing and what you're involved in, you know, because I asked you, couldn't you just, Do rock climbing or write a book or play chess.
01:48:13.000Obviously, I feel like I'm taking a risk writing a book and putting it out into the world, but it's not going head-to-head directly where you have to always...
01:48:31.000Respond intelligently and use your body.
01:49:09.000He's literally one of the most courageous people alive.
01:49:12.000Not only does he climb these fucking mountains without ropes, but he establishes paths that That have never been established before and that's part of the thrill for him is to free solo these places where sometimes he's hanging for his life on like a two inch lip with his fingertips and then he wedges his hand and these rocks and he pulls himself up slowly and he's hanging on this and then Oftentimes he's at angles,
01:49:39.000So he's not even, there's not even a 90 degree angle.
01:49:42.000He's at angles where his gravity's pulling him down and he has to make it up this ledge and he has to follow this path.
01:49:49.000I mean, that's kind of similar in a lot of ways because he's recognizing that what he's trying to do Is so difficult that a mistake equals death.
01:50:03.000Maybe that's the most challenging of all the pursuits.
01:51:05.000But when I talk about that sometimes, I feel like doing even just one marathon...
01:51:13.000I draw on that experience more almost than any other when I need strength sometimes and when I need to get through something.
01:51:20.000I recall feeling like I couldn't go on and what it took, you know, all the training, like a marathon's great because what you put into it is what you get out of it.
01:52:31.000What it takes maybe to get through all kinds of other situations.
01:52:34.000It really does translate to the rest of your life and that when things are hard, you can press on, especially if people are supporting you and applauding you and believe in you.
01:53:29.000Just like when someone gets caught doing steroids, just like when someone gets caught using EPO. And we're going to have to deal with a bunch of these things coming soon in the future with CRISPR and with genetic editing and all the stuff that's going to come down the pipe in 10,
01:53:45.00020 years with new athletes that are coming that have been literally genetically altered.
01:53:50.000We're going to have to reassess what's important and what's not.
01:53:54.000We're going to come to a point in time where transgender people don't have to concern themselves with the differences between biological sexes because they will be biologically different.
01:56:50.000A comic, that's what made me a podcaster, that's what made me everything else I've ever done in my life.
01:56:54.000I've realized through that, when I was 15 years old, that through focus and discipline and overcoming obstacles, you can get better at these things.
01:57:04.000And these things make you a better person.
01:58:00.000Well, that's what it's all about when you get a really arrogant professor who doesn't want to listen to the children, who doesn't want to connect with the kids.
01:58:53.000And I have these conversations with friends that are comedians and they think that somehow or another I'm confident because I'm successful.
01:59:00.000I'm like, you got to listen to me, man.
01:59:58.000And so I lived in New Jersey until I was 7, then San Francisco from 7 to 11, and then Florida from 11 to 13, and then Boston from 13 to 24, and then New York from 24 to like 26, 27-ish.
02:00:17.000And because of that, it made me formulate my own opinions on things because I didn't have the opportunity to have a conglomeration of opinions that I could adopt as my own from my friends that I grew up with.
02:00:28.000But we all agreed, you know, we're all right wing or we're all this or we like the Green Bay Packers.
02:03:05.000Career in this we're choosing to fly and spend your own money to fly across the country To try to kick someone in the face who's trying to kick you in the face.
02:03:13.000It's a crazy thing to do and but By making the team laugh like I would make them laugh.
02:03:19.000Yeah, I'd make them laugh in the locker room like we were about to spar We're putting cups on wood laugh.
02:03:24.000Yeah, and so that's how I became a comedian.
02:03:28.000I became a comedian through fear and Because comedy was a release valve for something way scarier.
02:03:35.000Because for everybody else, comedy is really scary.
02:04:57.000I mean, just thinking about just working at Harvard, I know a lot of super successful people.
02:05:03.000And many of them, I think, are on some level fear-driven about not being good enough somehow.
02:05:10.000And that they just work really, really hard and, you know, they're brilliant and they're amazing at what they do, but they still have this...
02:05:17.000Sense of having to be one of the best absolutely having to but at the end of the day like why?
02:05:25.000Here's the real question like what are we really trying to do because I think what we're trying to do whether you take apart Human sexual interaction transgender people gay people straight people Sensitive people aggressive people.
02:05:42.000We're trying to get through this thing and With the best, the most good feelings and the least bad feelings.
02:05:51.000We're trying to get through this thing and figure out what it is.
02:05:56.000And there's a lot of ways to do it, but ultimately we're kind of working together And we don't really communicate all of the real insecurities and the real emotions and the real problems involved in this.
02:06:15.000And instead, we sort of fortify our tribe.
02:06:21.000And we, you know, we fortify our positions and we get aggressive about our stances on things.
02:06:26.000We fight against people who disagree with us or differ from us.
02:06:30.000We don't realize that often we're fighting against ourselves, especially when it's not important.
02:06:35.000The best strategy is to just communicate with openness and kindness.
02:06:40.000And we don't do that very often because we're scared.
02:06:43.000And that is a battle in and of itself.
02:06:47.000The fight against your own emotions, the fight against your own insecurities and your own fears and your own, you know, the importance of camaraderie and love.
02:07:06.000And I was saying that I felt, you know, I feel when I'm teaching and someone advised me not to get emotional when I do interviews or come on Joe Rogan because it will discredit my authority.
02:07:19.000Someone tell you specifically not to get emotional when you come on here?
02:08:35.000It's a great sort of, you're exemplifying how sex differences work.
02:08:41.000You're totally jacked and strong and like, you know, maybe beating the shit out of people, but you also have a huge heart and a really emotional, and that's, you know, there are some differences on average there, but there's so much variation, and that's my whole, what I really try to In the book,
02:08:59.000T, I'm just going to say the name of it, the story of testosterone, the hormone that dominates and divides us, I'm trying to show how understanding each other can promote the values that you're talking about.
02:09:14.000By understanding this hormone, we can understand each other and hopefully accept our differences.
02:11:24.000He's like, I say this and you say that and I do this and you do that forever.
02:11:32.000And this is his thought, but it's like I move this way and you counter that way and we keep going until one person gets stopped, one person gets tapped out.
02:11:43.000In doing that with each other, you learn about each other and you learn there's other people like you and you learn there's a whole tribe of people like you that also are trying to accomplish these great things and figure out themselves and optimize their human potential through martial arts.
02:11:59.000And you feel this deep bond with them.
02:12:15.000But this guy and I, we hadn't talked for a long time, but every time we'd see each other, we had this weird connection because we fought together all over the country.
02:13:16.000When you're telling me about marathons and about how you develop strength from those experiences and it applied to your regular life, that's a combat between you and your mind.
02:14:36.000But can I just say one thing about, I want to just say something because I was just reminded of like, so I use the bike to prevent depression, right?
02:14:44.000I just want to say that that's in my nature.
02:14:51.000Because a lot of people, if I'm writing about testosterone and saying it promotes X, Y, and Z, they're like, well, you're justifying male aggression and you're justifying rape.
02:14:59.000And if you say, if you write a book...
02:15:01.000Whoa, who the fuck would say that to you?
02:15:03.000They say that if people believe that if you...
02:15:08.000Discuss the effects of, say, genes on behavior, then it implies that that behavior is immutable, that then we're fucked.
02:15:18.000Then we're just going to be stuck with aggressive males who justify their aggression by saying that it's in their genes or in their hormones.
02:15:27.000So it's bullshit because you can have a genetic predisposition to lots of different things.
02:15:33.000There are things that are in your nature, like I do with depression.
02:15:36.000But there are things that I can do in my environment.
02:15:38.000There are ways that I can create my environment, so I keep that at bay.
02:15:42.000But I know that if I let up, if I stop paying attention to it, or if I can't exercise or eat right or whatever it is, or do my fulfilling work, that it will come back.
02:15:54.000So I think it's the same thing about all of our sort of genetic predispositions, but including differences in sex hormones and how they affect us.
02:16:02.000It doesn't mean that we're stuck with any particular behavior.
02:16:05.000It means we learn more about how we can alter our environment to reduce, say, the negative behavior.
02:16:12.000effects of certain predispositions like high testosterone, just on the extreme end.
02:16:18.000But I would also just like to make a plug for high testosterone also potentially having something to do with heroism, like physical heroism.
02:16:54.000The reason why they're doing this is because they're not talking to you.
02:16:57.000It's an ineffective way of communication.
02:16:59.000You're talking in a way where you're writing things down in a vacuum.
02:17:03.000And you're talking to someone who doesn't get to...
02:17:05.000If they sat in front of you, they would never think you're justifying rape.
02:17:09.000This conversation that they're having where they're just typing things out alone in an office and then they send it out through the internet on a fucking blog post.
02:18:02.000If they were honest and they had personal sovereignty, they could communicate about you objectively and honestly.
02:18:11.000But the problem is how few people have been through the fire.
02:18:15.000We got a lot of weak ass people out there that are out there casting aspersions and pointing fingers at people where they don't point them at their selves.
02:18:34.000When we were talking about this before, one of my takes that I've always had is if you get 100 people in a room, how many of those people are going to be fucking idiots?
02:18:52.000That's a lot of people jibber-jabbering and they don't have control of themselves and they're on a fucking handful of SSRIs and trying to figure out what's wrong and trying to self-actualize and yet they're shaping culture at the exact same time.
02:19:09.000And part of the problem is they're not with other people.
02:19:39.000I didn't like the whole, I guess I am going to inject politics, but the sort of shaming of Trump voters.
02:19:46.000Instead of trying to understand their point of view and where are they coming from and what shaped their political opinions, what are their circumstances, instead of just sitting back and saying, I'm superior to you, you're a piece of shit, I'm not even going to ask any questions.
02:19:58.000Well, he was uniquely problematic, and I think this is where this works out.
02:20:02.000The problem is we want a quick fix to all the things that ail us.
02:20:06.000And I think that with a guy like Trump, the people that were on the left that found him abhorrent and they found his policies and the way he discussed things disgusting, What they're doing is signaling to the people on the right that here's all the problems we have with this one individual's approach.
02:20:29.000Maybe there's some merit in some of his fiscal decisions, and maybe there's some merit in some of...
02:20:35.000When more things come down about China, maybe there's some merit in the way that he deals with things with international business.
02:20:44.000But we need someone who is a compassionate, balanced human being who we respect and love to express similar values, but maybe with more nuance.
02:22:03.000You know, to find something that's completely outrageous to say that maybe some people will support you on and other people will attack you on.
02:22:10.000Next thing you know, you're front page news.
02:22:20.000That's where I think it's going to go.
02:22:21.000I think we're going to reach a point where we're so fucking confused we're going to let Elon Musk drill into our head and put some fucking wires in there and put that neural link in there and we're going to have an elevated state of consciousness through some symbiotic relationship with technology.
02:22:38.000Oh, somebody was just giving you shit about saying that.
02:22:40.000You had somebody on who was saying that that was ridiculous.
02:23:03.000I just think that there's going to come a point in time where it's going to be unavoidable, where technology surpasses our personal current capabilities.
02:23:15.000And I think that's one of the best ways.
02:23:19.000Because so much of this stuff that they're doing when people are talking shit about people and people are mad about people, it's like, what are we doing?
02:23:25.000Well, you're trying to label a person without that person being able to respond.
02:23:31.000You're shaming a person and boxing a person into some deplorable category, into some unredeemable category.
02:23:50.000I mean, do you think it's just going to heat up and institutions are going to keep capitulating to the vocal minority and I'm going to be out of a job maybe because I said that they're male and female?
02:24:02.000I think you're going to be able to teach online.
02:24:04.000I think teaching online is the future because I think that online...
02:24:45.000When I found out about that, I'm like, that is insane.
02:24:49.000He's one of the proudest people I've ever had on my podcast because I've always been a giant fan of his.
02:24:53.000And just to be able to sit and talk to him and listen to the way his brain works and the fact that he's been doing this and he's been involved in the civil rights movement for fucking decades and decades.
02:25:05.000And when you find out that guy didn't have tenure because he criticized Israel, or he has controversial views on Israel and the Israel-Palestine crisis, you're like, what?
02:25:48.000I've been talking about it on stage lately, that you get out of school and you're saddled down with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans.
02:25:56.000And you know what the most depressing shit that I've ever read?
02:25:59.000Not the most, but it's right up there.
02:26:01.000I read about this guy who was getting Social Security, and he was getting Social Security docked by the government because he owed student loans.
02:26:13.000Can I make a segue to the scared thing?
02:26:15.000So I sometimes feel scared teaching about controversial topics, but I believe that it's really important to do what I feel is right and to teach the science as I understand it.
02:26:29.000And so I work really hard to try to understand the truth and to convey that to students.
02:26:34.000And I brought something with me because I asked on our final exam, one of the questions at the end of the final exam was, how did this course change you or something you believe in, and what was the evidence that led you to change your mind about some issue?
02:26:51.000So can I just read what one student wrote?
02:26:54.000Because it was so moving to me, and I think it shows the value of telling the truth and how important it is and that we not capitulate.
02:27:04.000Something that I learned in class changed my attitude and assumptions surrounding genetic differences of sexual differentiation and the naturalistic fallacy.
02:27:13.000So I'm just going to say that the naturalistic fallacy, do you know what that is?
02:27:16.000It's the idea that whatever we find in nature is good and that if it's not in nature, somehow it's bad, but that what is natural is good, something along those lines.
02:27:50.000Sorry, this is what really gets me when my students feel that something is wrong with them because they're different or they love the same sex or something, and that's how this student felt.
02:28:13.000After many years of therapy, I'm in a better place, but I never stopped feeling that something was wrong with me until this class.
02:28:19.000When I told them, they actually brought up what I now know to be the naturalistic fallacy.
02:28:23.000They told me that what I was doing was not found in nature and thus it was wrong and was shunned.
02:28:29.000Even though I never believed, okay, blah, blah, blah, blah.
02:28:34.000I've always believed that people are people and that everyone has the autonomy to live the way they want despite what anyone else has to say about it.
02:28:41.000But I never understood the biology of why people felt like they were born into the wrong gender or didn't fit a mold.
02:28:47.000But learning about all this really opened up my mind and made me feel for people who don't feel like themselves in their own body, even though I've never experienced what they are going through.
02:28:56.000Gender and behavior is not as simple as external genitalia at birth or genotype and I really appreciated learning about these topics not only for the sake of others but also for myself and my sanity.
02:29:07.000So I just wanted to read that because I think it's just a testimony to the truth and what it can do for people and that we need to stand up for the truth and not We're good to go.
02:29:34.000Learn how to learn the truth and how to critically evaluate evidence, how important that is to them.
02:29:41.000I guess I'm just making a plug for standing up for the truth and not thinking that it helps people to just tell people what they want to hear or...
02:29:51.000Pretend that sex isn't real or testosterone doesn't matter or that genes don't matter.
02:29:56.000Environment and culture matter too, but it all works together to produce the variation that we see and that we have.
02:30:03.000And it doesn't mean we have to celebrate anything.
02:30:05.000You know, it just means we have to understand how it all works.
02:30:10.000But using science or art or whatever else as a tool, but let's not distort the science.
02:30:17.000Yeah, and it's one of the most depressing aspects of that thing you just read was the idea that the parents didn't...
02:30:46.000LOL. You know, one of the things I wanted to bring up is that, you know, in ancient Native American cultures, transgender people were revered because they could look at things from both sexes.
02:31:29.000But this person recognized that there was this place that they should go to have this battle and they had a vision.
02:31:39.000And this vision was that they were gonna conquer these white soldiers and that they did this thing and they came back and they said there'll be 100 bodies.
02:31:48.000They wound up killing like 80 soldiers.
02:31:54.000It's on this podcast, the Meat Eater podcast that my friend Steve Rinella has and it's a really interesting story.
02:31:59.000This guy talks about how they set a trap and these 10 Native Americans led these soldiers up and they wound up killing them.
02:32:10.000What's interesting to me is there was like 10,000 people waiting for these soldiers and they all killed them.
02:32:16.000At that point in time, it was a suicide run.
02:32:21.000They had realized that the end of their way of life was pretty much there and that these white settlers had made their way across the plains and all the way to the Pacific Coast and they realized that This was it.
02:32:35.000And that coincides with the Battle of Little Bighorn and a lot of the other battles that went on.
02:32:42.000It's like these are the last gasps of the Native American empire that existed in this continent.
02:32:49.000But the way they looked at Native Americans, the way they looked at rather transgender people is fascinating to me.
02:32:55.000They looked at it as a very valuable member of the society because a person who could look at things from both a female and a male perspective.
02:33:04.000They didn't look at it like, oh, he's a sissy.
02:35:49.000I mean, you don't want to – I want – the goal for me is to – Consider, obviously, be sensitive to people's feelings and their identities while being accurate about the science.
02:36:01.000So I chose natal, male and female, because saying biological male, to me, somehow sounds harsher to the person as a trans woman, say.
02:36:15.000I'd rather just say, this is what you were at birth, and now you're something different.
02:36:19.000Is this commonly accepted nomenclature, or is this just your own...
02:37:10.000So the idea of protecting biological females when it comes to athletics or anything else is very important to me.
02:37:18.000And I don't think we should throw biological females under the bus because we want to protect these people's feelings that are in this world.
02:37:30.000Place where they wish they were a biological female, but they're not.
02:37:36.000I should just say, I have a chapter in the book on the source of the male advantage in sports and how testosterone shapes the male advantage, and it's totally clear how it works.
02:37:50.000There's lots of evidence, so you're 100%.
02:37:54.000Well, there's been females that have taken, especially in mixed martial arts, there was a Wild West period where you could kind of do whatever you wanted.
02:38:10.000The UFC started in 1993, and female MMA didn't start until the early 2000s.
02:38:16.000Well, there was like some female MMA, but like early 2000s it started to come out, and there was a few that were like juiced up women, like women on a ton of testosterone, who developed voices like this.
02:38:42.000You hear them talk and you're like, No, it's hard because for detransitioners, that's very, very hard to want to live as a woman again, but you have a male voice.
02:38:52.000And that really signals masculinity so potently.
02:38:59.000And there was a real problem with some of the females that were competing in MMA because they were competing against, they were like natural females who were competing against jacked up females.
02:39:13.000Yeah, getting the fuck beat out of them.
02:39:15.000And that was pre-transgender MMA fighters fighting.
02:39:19.000And it's only been one that I know of.
02:39:21.000There's been a few Thai fighters, because you know the ladyboys in Thailand is more accepted, but quite honestly, most of them compete as males.
02:39:31.000I've heard more than one of them that started off as a male and then transitioned and continued to compete as males.
02:39:37.000And the problem was, I'm sure that some of them have competed as females as well, but the problem was some of them were elite as males, but they identified as female.
02:39:47.000Does everybody tell what ladyboys are?
02:39:56.000They're far more acceptant of transgender people in Thailand for whatever reason.
02:40:02.000One of them that I know of is a fairly infamous one where he was elite as a male and then switched over and became female and unfortunately After getting castrated and getting the surgery and losing his testosterone and becoming a female,
02:40:18.000then she started losing because she was competing against males without testosterone.
02:42:28.000Well, it's because people are into different things.
02:42:31.000I think that's one of the beautiful things about the internet is you could find other people that are also into different things.
02:42:38.000Can I just say something about gay and testosterone that I think is interesting that's in the book, which is a lot of people think gay men are feminized and that they must have had lower testosterone at some point.
02:43:33.000Are you saying there's a lot of sex happening?
02:43:34.000I'm assuming, you know, when you see brass poles and dudes throwing money in the air, I'm assuming there's sex involved.
02:43:40.000It's just, there's a bunch of freedom.
02:43:43.000There's a different sort of, you know, One of the cool things about gay men in particular is they find these neighborhoods and they dominate these neighborhoods with other gay men.
02:43:55.000And I have a joke about it that lesbians never really get a chance because they move in and straight guys find out and they go, I'm an ally, and then they fuck up the neighborhood.
02:44:04.000No, but that's the point is that people think that gay men are feminized somehow, so testosterone should be lower.
02:45:06.000I mean, there is some feminization of behavior in that gay men, as kids say, were more likely to have more feminine interests and have some more feminine interests in adulthood, but it has nothing to do with testosterone.
02:46:24.000Because this is how human beings, as oddly as it seems, and I don't know how I stumbled upon this accidentally, human beings are supposed to have conversations with each other one-on-one, undistracted, where you get to feel how that person actually thinks and feels.
02:46:40.000And you don't usually get that in real life because they're checking their phone and they're talking to other people and there's a lot of activities involved and you're moving around and there's ideologies that come into play and there's cultures that come into play and there's all this pressure and influences.
02:46:58.000And there's something you might have said five years ago, one thing you might have said that pisses somebody off and they're not going to listen to anything else you said and anything else you said is bullshit because you said maybe one thing five years ago that was offensive.
02:47:10.000And they don't want to appreciate the fact that people grow, which is crazy.
02:49:01.000I mean, that's an incredibly difficult path to be on, and it takes an amazing temperament and personality and character, and luckily Daryl has those things.
02:49:15.000The path of life, you know, through him.
02:49:17.000His path, I'm sure, he got it through becoming great at music and a lot of other things.
02:49:22.000Because music brings people together who might disagree and not even like each other, but they're all getting down to the same rhythm, and that's pretty incredible.
02:49:30.000Also, Daryl grew up overseas and came to America when he was young, and then he was attacked for his race, and he didn't understand it.
02:49:38.000He would talk to his parents about it.
02:50:03.000He might have been a little younger than that.
02:50:04.000But the idea was that it was so stunning to him and so stupid that he's seeing grown adults behaving this way.
02:50:13.000And he's like, okay, there's got to be something.
02:50:15.000So when he was finally doing his music and he ran into this guy, the story was, He's talking to this guy and the guy's like, you know, I never had a drink with a black guy before.
02:51:03.000And then, like I said, three or four months into their friendship, that guy gave up his position in the KKK. And how many people did you say?
02:52:00.000If you talk to each one of those individual people with real issues, got together with nothing to gain or lose, and just talked in a room by themselves, most of these things would work themselves out.
02:52:13.000And if they didn't, it would be clearly illuminated to anybody observing that one of these people has a deep emotional problem.
02:52:21.000One of these people doesn't live in reality, or one of these people is unnecessarily aggressive, or whatever the fuck is wrong will be illuminated.
02:52:27.000Yeah, but they're getting a lot of rewards from doing...
02:53:01.000I mean, don't you see people when people are out to dinner and couples are both on their iPhones or even, and if you travel to other countries, I'm not going to say which ones, like everyone's on their phone all the time, wherever they are.
02:55:53.000It can sometimes express love in a way that nothing else can.
02:55:57.000When two people are talking about something and then you talk to them about how you feel about them and tears start rolling down your face.