The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1665 - Carole Hooven

00:00:17.000 My pleasure.

00:00:18.000 I'm excited to talk about this.

00:00:20.000 What made you want to write about testosterone?

00:00:23.000 What was the motivation behind this?

00:00:25.000 So I'll give you the short story first, and then later I can give you the longer story.

00:00:31.000 You can give me the longer story?

00:00:31.000 The longer story involves chimpanzees, so that's kind of fun.

00:00:34.000 Oh, one of my favorite subjects.

00:00:35.000 But the short story is that I teach at Harvard about hormones.

00:00:41.000 I teach a course on behavioral endocrinology.

00:00:45.000 It's called Hormones and Behavior.

00:00:46.000 And I've taught that for a long time now.

00:00:50.000 And I got my PhD at Harvard studying testosterone and behavior, studying sex differences in the way we think and process information.

00:00:58.000 And I just love the topic.

00:01:02.000 I love how much understanding testosterone helps me understand the world, understand men.

00:01:08.000 I'm not a man.

00:01:09.000 I don't really understand men or how they work.

00:01:12.000 But understanding this hormone really has helped me a lot.

00:01:16.000 And 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.

00:01:31.000 And it's empowering for them, and it's been empowering for me.

00:01:35.000 And so I've just always had this natural intellectual enthusiasm for this topic.

00:01:45.000 But I'd say in the last five years, I felt like the science was coming under attack.

00:01:51.000 And there's been...

00:01:53.000 Kind 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.

00:02:06.000 The idea that sex differences are grounded in biology, and I know that testosterone is a really important part of that.

00:02:12.000 And 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.

00:02:24.000 And I'm fascinated by sex differences and I'm fascinated by how evolution shapes sex differences across different species and how it works.

00:02:32.000 And 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.

00:02:42.000 There's nothing wrong with understanding who we are from a biological point of view.

00:02:48.000 And I think we should all be open to that and learn as much as we can about who we are and how we work.

00:02:53.000 Yeah, 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...

00:03:03.000 I think that if we were an objective observer, like something other than human, and we're watching human beings...

00:03:10.000 We 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.

00:03:21.000 Obviously, 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.

00:03:38.000 But then you get into this weird thing where ideology has somehow or another overtaken science with a lot of human beings today.

00:03:49.000 So they're willing to abandon science if it's inconvenient for their ideology.

00:03:55.000 It's very strange because you see really intelligent people doing this.

00:03:59.000 Yes, yes.

00:03:59.000 Which is where it's really spooky, because they're scared of being chastised and attacked on Twitter.

00:04:04.000 They're scared of being cancelled.

00:04:05.000 So they're scared of going against the mainstream, which is ideologically based instead of scientifically based.

00:04:14.000 That's right.

00:04:15.000 And I think the fear is that the science is getting in the way of the ideology.

00:04:21.000 So I agree with most of the goals of the people who are ideologically motivated.

00:04:29.000 We want to reduce human suffering.

00:04:31.000 We want to make sure that we have equal human rights for people who have all kinds of differences.

00:04:38.000 And 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.

00:04:53.000 That doesn't mean that that's immutable.

00:04:55.000 I mean, we have tons of evidence that it's not immutable.

00:04:58.000 Humans have control over their behavior.

00:04:59.000 It depends heavily on the culture.

00:05:01.000 So 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,

00:05:17.000 that they want to be physically aggressive or to respond aggressively in certain situations.

00:05:25.000 And 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.

00:05:34.000 So 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.

00:05:43.000 And especially, you know, culture plays such a huge role in how we develop and how we express ourselves.

00:05:49.000 But even apart from culture, there are Differences on average.

00:05:54.000 So there are some females who are highly physically aggressive and there are many males who are really emotional and sensitive and totally peaceful.

00:06:02.000 Can I say that you just said you tear up sometimes?

00:06:05.000 I cry all the time.

00:06:06.000 I cry mostly for happy things.

00:06:08.000 Okay, so yeah, no, and I just cry when I'm moved or passionate.

00:06:12.000 I 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.

00:06:19.000 But 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.

00:06:33.000 And 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,

00:06:50.000 right?

00:06:51.000 And so that's what testosterone does, is it helps males maximize Basically, the number of offspring they have through increasing mating opportunities.

00:06:59.000 It 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.

00:07:09.000 And in many other species where increasing the number of mates yields reproductive benefits for males, but not females.

00:07:15.000 And that's what sex hormones do. 1.00

00:07:17.000 Estrogen and progesterone do similar things in women, but it doesn't motivate us to fight aggressively for mates. 1.00

00:07:24.000 Right.

00:07:24.000 Clearly, if we were looking at this again as an objective observer, we would see all this.

00:07:29.000 There wouldn't be any debate.

00:07:31.000 It'd be like, this is fascinating.

00:07:32.000 Well, this is why.

00:07:33.000 They'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.

00:07:43.000 All this makes sense.

00:07:45.000 Did you talk to any people that have switched genders?

00:07:49.000 Yes.

00:07:49.000 What was that like?

00:07:51.000 One 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. 0.96

00:08:05.000 Like, oh, this is what the fuck's been going on with the world. 0.98

00:08:08.000 Yes. 0.98

00:08:08.000 So I try to understand how testosterone works in humans by first thinking about it from an evolutionary point of view. 0.98

00:08:16.000 What is the purpose of sex differences and sex hormones?

00:08:19.000 Why do male animals have high testosterone and females have high, say, estrogen?

00:08:24.000 And 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.

00:08:38.000 So one way is to look from an evolutionary point of view.

00:08:43.000 Another way is to look at different kinds of experiments in non-human animals.

00:08:48.000 And then another thing we can do is look at what happens in humans who change their hormone levels.

00:08:54.000 And this is absolutely fascinating because we have some examples of that happening right now.

00:09:02.000 So 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.

00:09:11.000 So 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.

00:09:29.000 So 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.

00:09:47.000 I found this evidence really sort of moving and powerful.

00:09:51.000 But 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.

00:10:07.000 So males have testes that produce male levels of testosterone in utero. 0.79

00:10:13.000 And that testosterone, that's called a perinatal effect or an organizational effect.

00:10:20.000 So that's early on in life.

00:10:22.000 We start out right from the get-go with these very different levels of testosterone, and that shapes the brain and body.

00:10:29.000 So it helps to develop the genitalia, internal and external genitalia. 0.72

00:10:35.000 So it changes male genitalia to, say, form the penis and internal structures. 0.83

00:10:42.000 But at the same time, it shapes the brain.

00:11:00.000 Pretty much can accept that little boys behave differently, on average, again, from little girls.

00:11:06.000 Boys are definitely, all over the world, much more interested in rough-and-tumble play.

00:11:12.000 So, you know, I'm somebody who used to love to climb trees.

00:11:15.000 I played baseball.

00:11:16.000 I 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,

00:11:35.000 but he tackles his friends.

00:11:37.000 Like, one of his favorite things to do is to, like, roll around on the floor and try to pin each other down.

00:11:43.000 Boys do this a lot, and girls typically don't.

00:11:46.000 They do other stuff on average.

00:11:48.000 That is...

00:11:49.000 It 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.

00:12:04.000 That seems to have these effects on the brain that shape that rough and tumble play.

00:12:09.000 And 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.

00:12:27.000 So 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.

00:12:39.000 I think I'm—this is a long-winded answer to your question, which I no longer remember.

00:12:43.000 No, no, no, it's great.

00:12:43.000 Don't worry about that.

00:12:46.000 So—oh, you—okay, so about the trans thing.

00:12:48.000 So 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.

00:13:15.000 We'll change sex socially. 0.91

00:13:17.000 They'll change their pronouns.

00:13:19.000 They might adopt the clothes, say, or behaviors of the opposite sex. 0.98

00:13:24.000 But many people will want to alter their hormones to be consistent with those of the opposite sex. 0.80

00:13:30.000 So if you're male to female, that would mean blocking testosterone and increasing estrogen.

00:13:37.000 And if you're going the other way, female to male, that means blocking estrogen and jacking up your testosterone.

00:13:45.000 So 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.

00:14:02.000 So 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. 0.85

00:14:15.000 So that their brain has been masculinized in utero.

00:14:19.000 And female brains, you can say, have been feminized or not masculinized. 1.00

00:14:23.000 Female brains are not exposed to hormones. 1.00

00:14:25.000 Can I stop you for a second?

00:14:25.000 Yeah.

00:14:26.000 When you say their brains have changed or their brains have developed this way, what are we basing this on?

00:14:32.000 Is this fMRI?

00:14:33.000 What method are we using to examine where the brains are different?

00:14:37.000 Yeah.

00:14:38.000 So that's a really good question.

00:14:41.000 Most 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.

00:14:58.000 And 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.

00:15:11.000 And the sexually dimorphic nucleus, so sexually dimorphic means basically different sizes or shapes in each sex.

00:15:21.000 So testosterone increases the size of this.

00:15:23.000 We know that it increases the size of this part of the...

00:15:27.000 Hypothalamus.

00:15:28.000 And then that predicts male sexual behavior, mounting behavior, say, in rats.

00:15:32.000 So 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.

00:15:45.000 But there are also really small differences in just parts of the brain and how neurons, say, branch or make connections.

00:15:53.000 So 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.

00:16:10.000 I 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.

00:16:23.000 So 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.

00:16:34.000 But 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...

00:16:46.000 Oh, right.

00:16:47.000 Yeah, we don't.

00:16:47.000 We don't.

00:16:48.000 It's an assumption that because they were exposed to...

00:16:53.000 So a male, because he has testes, he's exposed to male levels of testosterone in utero.

00:16:59.000 So the assumption is that their brain has been masculinized.

00:17:02.000 But it's a good...

00:17:03.000 Question because there's a lot of controversy around brain differences and whether there really are any.

00:17:09.000 But my understanding of that literature is that brains can be sexed by experts in humans with 85% accuracy.

00:17:20.000 But I don't think there is one really loud signal there that can be attributed to testosterone exposure in utero.

00:17:27.000 But 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.

00:17:39.000 In 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.

00:17:57.000 But I can tell you some of the differences that we then see once they transition.

00:18:04.000 Did you have a question?

00:18:05.000 No, no.

00:18:06.000 Go ahead.

00:18:10.000 What do you think one of the biggest sex differences is in human behavior or human psychology?

00:18:20.000 I don't know.

00:18:22.000 Would it be aggression?

00:18:23.000 There's aggression, yep.

00:18:25.000 That's big.

00:18:26.000 There's one other thing.

00:18:27.000 Another thing?

00:18:28.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:18:29.000 Sex. 0.99

00:18:30.000 The males want more sex? 0.99

00:18:31.000 They do. 0.98

00:18:32.000 But what about females that want a lot of sex? 1.00

00:18:34.000 Yeah, 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. 0.98

00:18:42.000 I 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, 0.97

00:19:00.000 having a disproportionate amount of gay men.

00:19:02.000 In their offspring.

00:19:04.000 And they were thinking that it was some sort of a variant in the X chromosome.

00:19:08.000 That there was something about the X chromosome that was leading them to be much more attracted to men than normal. 0.76

00:19:17.000 And that this is what led these women to be promiscuous and it led their sons to be gay. 0.97

00:19:23.000 Which sounds like madness, right? 0.99

00:19:24.000 I did not hear that.

00:19:25.000 I would want to see replication.

00:19:27.000 Yeah, I'm sure you would.

00:19:28.000 You work at Harvard.

00:19:30.000 That's interesting. 1.00

00:19:30.000 When you're a moron like me and you read something like that and you go, oh, okay. 1.00

00:19:34.000 No, no, that, I mean, I haven't heard anything like that when I see one study that has that kind of sort of explosive finding. 0.99

00:19:44.000 I want to see more data.

00:19:48.000 Here it is.

00:19:49.000 Research is by Andrea Camperio Gianni from the University of Padova in Italy.

00:19:55.000 That's right.

00:19:56.000 So 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.

00:20:11.000 Okay, but fecundity is different from the number of sexual partners.

00:20:16.000 But they had it connected to promiscuous women. 1.00

00:20:20.000 Okay, because you don't have more babies necessarily by having more partners.

00:20:24.000 Right.

00:20:25.000 But you have more of a chance of having more babies if you have a lot of partners.

00:20:31.000 I don't think you do.

00:20:32.000 You probably have more sex, like naturally.

00:20:35.000 If you're with one partner, as time goes on, we all know you have less sex.

00:20:39.000 But if you have new partners all the time, you have sex constantly.

00:20:42.000 So if a woman is having sex every day with different people... 1.00

00:20:46.000 Well, that's highly, highly promiscuous. 0.86

00:20:48.000 Is that what we're talking about here?

00:20:49.000 Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

00:20:49.000 Superhoes.

00:20:51.000 The 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.

00:21:02.000 Originally, the team thought the reason why the women who inherited the gay man gene might have more babies is simply because they increased androphilia.

00:21:09.000 What is that?

00:21:10.000 Or attraction to men.

00:21:11.000 That's it.

00:21:11.000 There it is.

00:21:12.000 Thus making the male inheritance homosexual and the female inheritors more promiscuous. 0.99

00:21:17.000 Okay. 0.98

00:21:18.000 That's it.

00:21:18.000 Okay.

00:21:19.000 Yeah, I'm just super skeptical about everything.

00:21:21.000 Keep that up, Jamie. 0.98

00:21:22.000 Scroll down, because there's a stupid ad in the way over here. 0.98

00:21:24.000 So the idea is that since they're really attracted to men, their sons are going to be really attracted to men? 0.99

00:21:29.000 The idea is it's a variant of the X chromosome.

00:21:30.000 There's something about the X chromosome.

00:21:32.000 What does that mean, variant of the X chromosome?

00:21:33.000 I don't know. 1.00

00:21:34.000 I'm an idiot. 1.00

00:21:35.000 No, no, no, you're not. 1.00

00:21:36.000 However, after analyzing the personal characteristics of 160...

00:21:40.000 See, here's the however that probably puts it in line.

00:21:42.000 Of 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.

00:22:00.000 Okay.

00:22:03.000 How do they know that though?

00:22:05.000 Okay, 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. 0.99

00:22:17.000 And you screw up that relationship if you're promiscuous.

00:22:20.000 Then you're no longer high mate value because your partner's going to question whether the offspring are his.

00:22:27.000 That's why I'm confused about how they switched, because it seems like they're 180 degrees from each other.

00:22:32.000 If 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.

00:22:51.000 That's interesting.

00:22:52.000 What year was that?

00:22:53.000 It was a long time ago, if I remember correctly.

00:22:55.000 Because, okay, 2012. 2012. So you would think that if it's 2012, if there's something to it, it might have been replicated.

00:23:02.000 And if it's just one study from 2012, you have to look at where it was published, where it was cited, was it replicated?

00:23:08.000 I don't trust Italians. 1.00

00:23:09.000 Really?

00:23:09.000 Yeah, I'm one of them.

00:23:10.000 Are you Italian?

00:23:10.000 Yeah, I don't trust my people.

00:23:12.000 What part of Italy are you from?

00:23:14.000 Well, part of my family is from Palermo and part of my family is from Naples.

00:23:22.000 And then a little bit from Ireland.

00:23:23.000 I'm joking around about not trusting them.

00:23:24.000 But I always joke around about how I would never buy an Italian car because they don't pay attention. 1.00

00:23:30.000 They're not really tightening the bolts down.

00:23:33.000 I like German cars.

00:23:35.000 They're more engineered.

00:23:36.000 They're more rigid.

00:23:39.000 More disciplined.

00:23:40.000 You know what I mean?

00:23:41.000 They're more structured.

00:23:42.000 Japanese cars are excellent.

00:23:44.000 I love Japanese cars.

00:23:45.000 Very structured.

00:23:46.000 Reliable. 0.90

00:23:47.000 Italians aren't reliable. 1.00

00:23:49.000 But they're so different from the Germans and personality. 1.00

00:23:53.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:23:53.000 And art and food and they're fun to hang out with.

00:23:56.000 Yeah, they're great.

00:23:57.000 So speaking of sex, the biggest effect of changing your hormones is changing yourself sexually, what you want sexually.

00:24:09.000 And I learned this.

00:24:11.000 This is one of the most salient points from interviewing the transgender people I interviewed was how their sexuality changed.

00:24:19.000 And it's also completely backed up by all the literature on transgender transitions.

00:24:26.000 And it sort of confirms the stereotypes about testosterone.

00:24:30.000 So if you are a female and you jack up your testosterone to male levels, that's a huge difference. 0.73

00:24:40.000 So the female body is very, very sensitive to testosterone. 1.00

00:24:45.000 We have so little compared to men.

00:24:47.000 We have a minuscule amount.

00:24:49.000 And so any little change will have huge effects.

00:24:52.000 And so you have very dramatic effects on natal women who take a lot of testosterone.

00:24:57.000 So first of all, their bodies change.

00:24:59.000 They get jacked, even if they're not They get a lot of muscle mass.

00:25:04.000 They get facial hair.

00:25:06.000 Their voice can deepen.

00:25:08.000 And they, especially when they're first taking the testosterone, they're going through something like a male puberty.

00:25:14.000 I don't know what your male puberty was like, but I bet you were totally horny. 0.90

00:25:19.000 I'm just guessing. 0.97

00:25:20.000 For sure.

00:25:21.000 And this is something I'd love for more people to talk about.

00:25:26.000 I'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.

00:25:36.000 Felt very different because my hormones were changing.

00:25:39.000 You know, estrogen helped to make me a sexual being.

00:25:42.000 But testosterone has a different effect.

00:25:45.000 It seems to be more intense.

00:25:47.000 And what was so interesting to me is the way that some of the people I interviewed for the book talked about how their sexuality changed.

00:25:55.000 And natal females who took on a male identity started viewing other females, according to them, as objects.

00:26:04.000 Sexual objects. 0.55

00:26:05.000 Objects.

00:26:06.000 That they had so much lust.

00:26:08.000 And 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.

00:26:28.000 And 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.

00:26:55.000 And also orgasms changed.

00:26:57.000 But when you mean by objects, you stop thinking of them as people?

00:27:04.000 Yeah, I don't want to overstate it.

00:27:04.000 I really don't want to overstate it and give the idea that trans...

00:27:09.000 I want to be careful about this, and I hope that I'm not giving the idea that trans men suddenly are objectifying women.

00:27:16.000 It'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,

00:27:39.000 right?

00:27:39.000 So women get frustrated because men look at them as sex objects.

00:27:43.000 Right, but conversely, women dress very provocatively and still think that. 1.00

00:27:49.000 That 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. 0.96

00:27:59.000 It's very odd because they're obviously accentuating this. 0.89

00:28:05.000 Yes, 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?

00:28:18.000 And what I learned, I just was really interested in understanding what that's like instead of...

00:28:24.000 Shaming men for feeling that way.

00:28:26.000 I want to understand what that feeling is.

00:28:29.000 I really want to get it. 0.94

00:28:31.000 So 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. 1.00

00:28:46.000 So there was that piece of it. 0.95

00:28:47.000 That's a major piece.

00:28:49.000 It does soften with time.

00:28:51.000 So that's really just sort of the male puberty part of it.

00:28:55.000 And that's an intensity that females, I think, don't get. 1.00

00:29:01.000 But then there's this orgasm thing, which I thought was really interesting.

00:29:06.000 Orgasm apparently feels very different from the female orgasm, and people who transitioned talked about how their experience of orgasm changed.

00:29:18.000 So do you want to hear about that?

00:29:20.000 Yes, I do.

00:29:21.000 I have so many questions.

00:29:26.000 I can say. 0.76

00:29:26.000 So I've had an orgasm. 0.76

00:29:27.000 Whoa. 0.92

00:29:28.000 I can see.

00:29:28.000 I have.

00:29:29.000 Crazy.

00:29:29.000 And so men might not understand that for women, it is a full-body experience that takes a while to build up.

00:29:39.000 It plateaus, but it takes a while to kind of terminate.

00:29:42.000 And sometimes after sex, men are like, oh, done, ba-ba-ba.

00:29:45.000 You know, I'm falling asleep.

00:29:46.000 I'm going to go do this or do that.

00:29:48.000 And women are like sort of luxuriating in the afterglow, right? 1.00

00:29:51.000 And it can be Yeah.

00:30:08.000 Is 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. 0.64

00:30:25.000 So it's more intense at the peak.

00:30:28.000 But yet they're still getting an orgasm in the same method that a woman would get an orgasm because they still have the same equipment. 0.98

00:30:37.000 No, no, no.

00:30:39.000 Oh, yes, yes, yes.

00:30:42.000 So they changed the orgasm, but you still have female equipment, essentially. 1.00

00:30:47.000 Yes, yes.

00:30:49.000 But the experience changes.

00:30:51.000 And if you go the opposite direction, you soften that intensity.

00:30:59.000 And the whole body is responsive in a way. 0.94

00:31:05.000 You're confusing the shit out of me.

00:31:06.000 If you go the other way, you're talking about male to female. 0.99

00:31:11.000 And then male to female have orgasm, but are they keeping the equipment?

00:31:16.000 How are you getting an orgasm without that? 1.00

00:31:21.000 You mean if you have a penis? 1.00

00:31:22.000 If you don't anymore. 1.00

00:31:25.000 Well, most trans people now are keeping their genitalia. 0.99

00:31:29.000 They're not surgically...

00:31:31.000 Can we say that?

00:31:32.000 I can say it, because I just did.

00:31:36.000 And I believe that that's the case, and I think the trend is changing.

00:31:43.000 Yeah, but I should have some evidence behind it.

00:31:47.000 But this is where I'm confused.

00:31:48.000 Is that essentially the only way to achieve orgasm? 0.92

00:31:51.000 You can still have an orgasm. 1.00

00:31:53.000 Even if you remove your genitalia? 1.00

00:31:58.000 That's a whole other area. 0.99

00:32:02.000 You're not just removing the genitalia, you're creating something like female genitalia. 1.00

00:32:09.000 And yes, you can definitely have orgasms. 0.98

00:32:12.000 But I don't know as much about exactly how that works.

00:32:16.000 Definitely? 0.64

00:32:18.000 Well, I had a trans woman come talk to my class who had had the surgery and discussed in graphic detail what her orgasms were like. 0.97

00:32:31.000 So, yes. 0.80

00:32:33.000 Okay.

00:32:34.000 That's where I'm confused.

00:32:35.000 Yeah.

00:32:36.000 So, female to male... 0.94

00:32:39.000 But let's assume that they're keeping their genitalia. 1.00

00:32:41.000 Well, for female to male, they definitely are, right? 0.93

00:32:44.000 But 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.

00:33:00.000 So essentially the testosterone is leading the body to a very specific kind of experience during orgasm.

00:33:06.000 It seems that way.

00:33:08.000 It seems that way.

00:33:08.000 And that's something that I thought was fascinating.

00:33:11.000 So the orgasm, but just in addition to...

00:33:15.000 What 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.

00:33:25.000 As a woman, I don't really understand.

00:33:28.000 Obviously, 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.

00:33:35.000 And that's part of why I'm interested in the hormone.

00:33:39.000 And 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.

00:33:54.000 There are some anecdotal changes in anger.

00:33:59.000 And emotions.

00:34:00.000 So the emotional piece seems to be that—so I talked a lot.

00:34:05.000 I asked questions about emotional expression, partly because I cry.

00:34:10.000 I was telling you earlier, I tear up a lot when I am moved, and I seem to be moved all the time, and I can't control it.

00:34:16.000 I cry when I'm teaching, which is really embarrassing.

00:34:19.000 But I teach about what I think are really important issues.

00:34:22.000 You're a human.

00:34:22.000 You care.

00:34:23.000 I care a lot, but I care so much that I just cannot control my reactions.

00:34:31.000 I think that's great.

00:34:32.000 I think people are scared of that for some strange reason.

00:34:34.000 They think they're supposed to be stoic all the time.

00:34:37.000 It's masculine. 0.89

00:34:38.000 So being stoic is masculine and having a lot of emotions and expressing them is more feminine.

00:34:43.000 Of course, again, this is a spectrum and there's lots of overlap.

00:34:47.000 But that also seems to be a function of testosterone.

00:34:50.000 So 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.

00:35:04.000 That seems silly. 0.93

00:35:06.000 As a person who's male, that seems silly. 0.95

00:35:08.000 Yes.

00:35:08.000 So that was one person I talked to.

00:35:11.000 That is not a universal experience.

00:35:14.000 And there aren't big sex differences in anger in the first place.

00:35:17.000 There are large sex differences in physical aggression. 0.98

00:35:20.000 Like really fucking somebody up is more of a, you know, much higher rates of that in men killing people. 0.98

00:35:27.000 You know, that's basically all men. 0.98

00:35:29.000 Like serious physical violence where you put yourself at risk.

00:35:32.000 There's a large sex difference there.

00:35:34.000 But 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.

00:35:41.000 There's a lot of sex difference there, at least in terms of- Lashing out with anger.

00:35:46.000 Interpersonal romantic relationships, too.

00:35:50.000 But that's another area.

00:35:52.000 But so the things that change in transgender people, the biggest thing is sex and sexuality and sex drive. 0.99

00:36:00.000 And then there's some evidence, a little bit of evidence about aggression, but that doesn't seem to be very pronounced.

00:36:07.000 What'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.

00:36:33.000 They're insulting of these things.

00:36:35.000 They think that these things are in somehow or another holding back women or holding back men.

00:36:41.000 And what's odd to me is that it's celebrated in transgender people. 0.96

00:36:47.000 So 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. 0.92

00:36:58.000 No one is ever looking at that trans woman saying, you are accepting these harmful gender stereotypes and embracing them. 0.99

00:37:08.000 Right?

00:37:09.000 Yeah.

00:37:10.000 It's part of what...

00:37:11.000 You know what I'm saying?

00:37:12.000 Yeah, I do.

00:37:12.000 And 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...

00:37:25.000 Go into puberty and you're horrified at how your body is changing because it doesn't represent how you feel.

00:37:31.000 Then I can understand how you want to adopt maybe a more extreme version of what you perceive the opposite sex to be like. 0.98

00:37:40.000 So I get it and I have sympathy for people who are suffering in that way.

00:37:45.000 But you're right that there is a sort of stereotyping of the It's just super complicated.

00:38:01.000 It is super complicated and I understand it and I sympathize with them and I support them.

00:38:10.000 Go do that. 0.52

00:38:11.000 Wear all the makeup.

00:38:12.000 Wear all the fake eyelashes. 0.90

00:38:13.000 Go crazy. 1.00

00:38:14.000 But why do you give a shit when women do it? 1.00

00:38:17.000 When biological women do it? 1.00

00:38:18.000 Why does anybody care?

00:38:19.000 That's what they like.

00:38:21.000 There's clearly something different.

00:38:23.000 Look at you.

00:38:24.000 You're very conservatively dressed, but why do I see your whole arms?

00:38:28.000 Like, what's that about?

00:38:29.000 But imagine.

00:38:30.000 Because I'm psyched, because I work out.

00:38:31.000 Because you got the guns.

00:38:32.000 But if I was dressed like you, it would be odd.

00:38:35.000 Right?

00:38:35.000 If you were wearing a dress.

00:38:37.000 Well, men wear tank tops and show off.

00:38:38.000 Very rarely.

00:38:39.000 Not for formal things like this, or a podcast.

00:38:42.000 It would be odd.

00:38:44.000 If someone just showed up here with a wife beater on, it would be odd. 0.67

00:38:46.000 So I wish that weren't odd.

00:38:48.000 In the book, that is something that I write about at the end.

00:38:51.000 What I want for my son, here's where I start getting emotional.

00:38:59.000 It's really important to me that he feel free to express himself in whatever way he wants.

00:39:05.000 This 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.

00:39:22.000 That he could wear whatever clothes he wants and be accepted.

00:39:28.000 But there are these norms that we still have, and there is this confusion where women are stigmatized for being ultra-feminine.

00:39:40.000 But women have a lot of leeway. 1.00

00:39:42.000 Women can be super masculine. 1.00

00:39:43.000 We can be ultra-feminine.

00:39:45.000 It's basically fine.

00:39:46.000 Men have much more narrow...

00:40:02.000 I think?

00:40:07.000 And they are bullied for that.

00:40:09.000 And they are tortured.

00:40:11.000 And a lot of those boys, I mean, some of those boys now are becoming transgender.

00:40:16.000 So maybe in some ways they're becoming very uncomfortable with their sex because it's an extremely unpleasant experience.

00:40:23.000 And then they end up feeling like they are the opposite sex because there isn't the leeway for them to just express themselves. 0.94

00:40:30.000 And be who they are.

00:40:33.000 What I was getting at is that females in our culture are allowed to wear very little clothing at formal events. 1.00

00:40:41.000 Like 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. 1.00

00:40:52.000 You see her toes. 0.99

00:40:53.000 You see all of her feet and these strappy little shoes.

00:40:57.000 There's a long cut where her full arms are exposed. 1.00

00:41:01.000 Her breasts are at least half exposed.

00:41:04.000 There's cleavage.

00:41:05.000 I'm not criticizing this.

00:41:07.000 Again, I'm looking at it like an objective observer.

00:41:12.000 I'm on the outside.

00:41:13.000 Are you?

00:41:13.000 I'm trying to.

00:41:14.000 But are you objective?

00:41:15.000 This is what I'm saying.

00:41:16.000 I'm looking at this like an objective observer.

00:41:18.000 It's fascinating that you're saying that as females transition to males, they start objectifying females.

00:41:25.000 But 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.

00:41:41.000 This is not all of them.

00:41:42.000 I'm not generalizing.

00:41:43.000 I'm just saying...

00:41:44.000 You 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.

00:41:56.000 It's odd, right?

00:41:57.000 Just as an objective observer.

00:41:59.000 Just looking at it like as looking at this species.

00:42:01.000 But sorry, why is it odd?

00:42:02.000 I don't see why it's odd.

00:42:04.000 Because it's very different than males.

00:42:06.000 It's hugely different.

00:42:07.000 Because...

00:42:08.000 But that has to do with sex differences in what promotes reproductive success, right?

00:42:16.000 So if women... 1.00

00:42:19.000 That doesn't make any sense.

00:42:21.000 Here's why it doesn't make any sense.

00:42:22.000 Because 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...

00:42:38.000 He'll show up in his Maserati.

00:42:39.000 He'll show up in his Maserati and his expensive suit.

00:42:42.000 We're not talking about a vehicle.

00:42:43.000 We're talking about clothing.

00:42:44.000 We're talking about clothing.

00:42:45.000 We're talking about a stark difference in the way males versus females dress.

00:42:49.000 Where females, although you're saying they don't want to be sexually objectified or they don't realize they are, and males... 0.98

00:42:57.000 Female to male, when they start taking testosterone, are more likely to objectify females.

00:43:03.000 It's a weird thing.

00:43:05.000 Again, I'm just looking at this for what it is.

00:43:08.000 Humans have these strange patterns with males and females, and females show way more of their bodies, even in formal settings. 0.90

00:43:16.000 So why do you think that they show more of their body?

00:43:19.000 Why do you think that is?

00:43:20.000 I'm asking you.

00:43:23.000 I think that the patterns of attraction differ in humans because it's adaptive for males to seek out females who have high reproductive value.

00:43:35.000 And 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. 0.93

00:43:49.000 On average, But these are the, you know, we have different mating psychologies on average. 0.76

00:43:55.000 And so for me, it's more important that I, yes, I mean, both sexes want partners who are healthy.

00:44:08.000 We're good to go.

00:44:23.000 And they want to advertise cues of youth and health.

00:44:27.000 And that's...

00:44:28.000 But it's such a stark contrast.

00:44:30.000 Yeah.

00:44:30.000 But I think for males, it's much more important to be...

00:44:32.000 For women, they're going to... 1.00

00:44:33.000 The emphasis is more likely to be on status and success and resources.

00:44:38.000 And in our society, that's money.

00:44:41.000 And cues of high status.

00:44:43.000 So men are going to advertise that more than women, just on average.

00:44:48.000 But yeah, our culture has...

00:44:50.000 Really amplified in some cultures, not everywhere, the expression of those signals.

00:44:57.000 And then there's also a reaction to that in other cultures, like Islamic cultures, where they cover the women up completely. 0.95

00:45:03.000 And they take a completely opposite approach.

00:45:06.000 It's fascinating, right?

00:45:08.000 If you look at the real raw difference between male and female wardrobe, it's very, very different.

00:45:14.000 I mean, that might be one of the biggest differences amongst us, except for the fact that you guys carry the babies. 1.00

00:45:22.000 Yeah.

00:45:22.000 And you have, I mean, culturally, it's really interesting to look at different cultures and how they vary in terms of those sex differences.

00:45:33.000 Yeah.

00:45:34.000 It's very weird, right?

00:45:35.000 Yeah.

00:45:36.000 Yeah.

00:45:38.000 Now, when you set out to do this, obviously you have a son, you're a woman, you're trying to understand these things.

00:45:46.000 Did you have a neutral position?

00:45:50.000 Did you have a bias going in here?

00:45:53.000 Were your biases confirmed?

00:45:55.000 Or were you surprised by anything?

00:45:58.000 So I try to have a neutral position.

00:46:02.000 My position is firmly pro-science and the truth.

00:46:08.000 And I'm extremely passionate about...

00:46:11.000 I tear up talking about this.

00:46:14.000 It's so important to me.

00:46:15.000 But I think that it's respectful.

00:46:19.000 It's the...

00:46:21.000 Respecting 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.

00:46:36.000 And I don't even remember what your question was now.

00:46:38.000 Whether or not you went in this with a neutral perspective.

00:46:40.000 So my perspective is that science is the way to get at the truth.

00:46:47.000 And 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.

00:46:56.000 We don't just talk about sex and testosterone.

00:46:59.000 We talk about hunger and diabetes and energy and parenting and how hormones shape all these different kinds of behaviors.

00:47:09.000 And they love learning that.

00:47:10.000 And it's not stuffy.

00:47:12.000 It's fun and it's accessible.

00:47:14.000 And they, through science, they're learning about who they are and how they work.

00:47:18.000 And they find that tremendously satisfying.

00:47:20.000 So I'm going to tell a little story about Science and what it meant to me and learning about testosterone.

00:47:29.000 And that is, I describe this in my book.

00:47:34.000 And when I was a grad student, I, so I went to, I changed my career late in life.

00:47:41.000 And so I was in, gosh, I guess I was in my early, very early 30s.

00:47:47.000 And I I got accepted to Harvard and I felt like an imposter like a lot of people do.

00:47:51.000 You know, I don't belong here.

00:47:52.000 They made a mistake.

00:47:54.000 So I'll just back up and say That I was not a stellar high school student.

00:48:01.000 This is hard to admit to such a big audience because I teach at Harvard.

00:48:05.000 But it's also a lesson.

00:48:07.000 I was at the bottom of my class in high school.

00:48:11.000 I grew up in Weston.

00:48:15.000 Weston, Massachusetts?

00:48:16.000 Sorry, Mass, yeah.

00:48:17.000 So I'm just Weston because I know that you lived in Newton or something.

00:48:23.000 I skipped classes and just had very little parental oversight and was kind of a party animal, but kind of destructive.

00:48:36.000 And so I ended up failing gym and English, which is ironic because I just wrote a book and I'm extremely athletic.

00:48:43.000 So I failed gym and English.

00:48:45.000 I just didn't go.

00:48:46.000 I just blew it off.

00:48:47.000 And 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.

00:49:00.000 And, you know, a B +, a B +, is great.

00:49:03.000 And you're going to be where you're supposed to be.

00:49:05.000 Just, like, work hard and be disciplined, etc.

00:49:08.000 So that was my high school experience.

00:49:12.000 And then I went to this great college, Antioch College, but then I didn't know what I wanted to be.

00:49:17.000 But I graduated from college in 1988, and I was really excited about computers, which is so funny.

00:49:27.000 Computers were sort of fairly new.

00:49:30.000 And I wanted a job where I could work with computers.

00:49:33.000 So I just got this job in financial software.

00:49:35.000 And there was like 10 years of just doing this financial software stuff.

00:49:40.000 But I was just doing that so I could get my life together.

00:49:43.000 I really had a lot of growing up to do.

00:49:45.000 I just wanted to live on my own and be responsible and have a job and save money.

00:49:49.000 But I traveled a lot and I read a lot.

00:49:51.000 And then I figured out that I wanted to understand human behavior.

00:49:54.000 So I quit my job and I applied to grad school.

00:49:57.000 So that's kind of the long story about how I got there.

00:50:01.000 But again, I just forgot what you...

00:50:02.000 So I asked you if you came into it with...

00:50:05.000 But I think you asked something about the background.

00:50:08.000 But so...

00:50:11.000 Oh, so, you know, I was going to tell my story of what happened, why I felt like an imposter.

00:50:16.000 It's partly because I didn't have the same background that my Harvard students have. 0.98

00:50:20.000 They were all, like, had their shit together from the get-go. 0.94

00:50:23.000 And they were, you know, had these habits that enabled them to be successful. 0.99

00:50:28.000 They were getting A's in high school and president of this and captain of that.

00:50:31.000 They're really mature, amazing students.

00:50:35.000 And that just wasn't me.

00:50:37.000 It took me a long time to kind of get to a place where I felt like I belonged and I'm probably still not there.

00:50:44.000 So I was in this seminar, this grad student seminar.

00:50:48.000 I think it was my first year at Harvard.

00:50:50.000 And it was the evolution of human sexuality.

00:50:54.000 And we were reading a paper on the evolution of rape.

00:50:59.000 And there was this explanation about rape in the scorpion fly and this implication that humans rape, men rape because it's an adaptation.

00:51:13.000 If they don't have the resources to acquire a mate, they'll just use rape. 1.00

00:51:19.000 And I had to comment on the paper.

00:51:21.000 It was my turn to talk.

00:51:22.000 And I was getting really emotional.

00:51:24.000 And I felt I was pissed off.

00:51:26.000 And I just was like, why isn't anyone else outraged here?

00:51:31.000 And so I remember just my eyes were watery and I was kind of angry. 1.00

00:51:35.000 And I said, this guy's an asshole. 1.00

00:51:37.000 Like the guy who wrote the paper. 1.00

00:51:40.000 And...

00:51:42.000 That wasn't, you know, an appropriate scientific response.

00:51:46.000 That was an emotional response.

00:51:48.000 And 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.

00:51:58.000 And if you do, then maybe we shouldn't have assigned that paper.

00:52:02.000 But I have an experience with rape, and...

00:52:06.000 So it was upsetting to me.

00:52:08.000 And I didn't want rape to be a natural part of human behavior.

00:52:14.000 I wanted it to be something pathological.

00:52:17.000 And 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.

00:52:27.000 And 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,

00:52:44.000 even if it is painful.

00:52:45.000 And that pain is okay.

00:52:46.000 And I grew from that.

00:52:48.000 And I learned that I can use science to understand and ultimately it made me feel better and more empowered and more in control.

00:52:58.000 So 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.

00:53:18.000 I 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.

00:53:29.000 You can feel good about being different even with the truth that there are two sexes. 0.99

00:53:33.000 That's okay.

00:53:34.000 You know, we can talk about that.

00:53:36.000 It's just confusing to be fed lines about science just because it makes people feel better.

00:53:43.000 But what is this shift?

00:53:44.000 Where do you think this shift happened in academia?

00:53:47.000 Where it became...

00:53:49.000 Does it drive you crazy?

00:53:51.000 It's so sad and discouraging to me.

00:53:55.000 I mean, that makes me want to leave.

00:53:59.000 Like, it's really...

00:54:02.000 It's sad.

00:54:03.000 Like, socially, it's sad because I can't talk about what I want to talk about.

00:54:06.000 I showed you some of the things my students said.

00:54:08.000 They want the truth, but they're afraid to speak up.

00:54:12.000 Sorry, I didn't...

00:54:13.000 Okay, it's okay.

00:54:15.000 It's just...

00:54:17.000 Science really changed my life.

00:54:19.000 It 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.

00:54:31.000 And I love helping other people do the same thing and imbue in them a love for science and how powerful it is.

00:54:41.000 And I just feel like it's getting shat on.

00:54:45.000 Because I don't have a great explanation.

00:54:49.000 I think social media has a lot to do with it.

00:54:53.000 What aspect of social media do you think accentuates it?

00:54:57.000 There's a lot of shaming on social media.

00:54:59.000 There's a lot of shutting down conversation.

00:55:04.000 Everybody's always advocated for certain points of views and had their agendas, right?

00:55:08.000 And that's okay.

00:55:10.000 But we should be able to have open conversations about people's points of view that should be informed by reality, right?

00:55:18.000 But now I think we have the ability to make people feel bad about what they believe.

00:55:26.000 I, before I really understood how things work, I did teach a couple classes where I said that sex, I thought sex was on a spectrum.

00:55:33.000 And I remember feeling good about that.

00:55:34.000 I remember feeling like my students really like that.

00:55:37.000 And I feel good saying that.

00:55:39.000 And that was sort of back in the day.

00:55:42.000 How long ago was this?

00:55:45.000 That was probably seven years ago or something.

00:55:47.000 What made you want to teach that sex was on the spectrum?

00:55:51.000 Because 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...

00:56:08.000 Small mobile gametes, so like sperm and eggs.

00:56:11.000 That's really how sex is defined across the animal kingdom.

00:56:14.000 It's not chromosomes.

00:56:16.000 It's not sex hormone levels.

00:56:18.000 It's not body types.

00:56:19.000 That's not how you define sex.

00:56:20.000 Those are features that are associated with sex, right?

00:56:23.000 And those things do vary.

00:56:25.000 Even genitals vary.

00:56:27.000 You know, you can...

00:56:28.000 Have all these different combinations, right?

00:56:30.000 So I thought, I sort of wanted to see things that way because I wanted to validate people who are different.

00:56:36.000 Because I really do care so much about, identify somehow, I don't know why, with, I think, people who are different.

00:56:43.000 And I thought that that kind of validated people with differences.

00:56:49.000 And I have since learned that that's just not, it doesn't validate them.

00:56:52.000 It's just not true.

00:56:56.000 So 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,

00:57:12.000 and that's just not how it works.

00:57:16.000 I think I'm getting better at teaching what is now controversial information.

00:57:21.000 My 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.

00:57:30.000 They're craving that.

00:57:32.000 But I think that...

00:57:36.000 Social media somehow.

00:57:39.000 And, you know, I hate to say it's a generational thing.

00:57:42.000 So I don't know if I'm just old.

00:57:43.000 I think it's an academic spillover.

00:57:44.000 I 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.

00:57:56.000 Yeah.

00:57:57.000 Well, that people are just capitulating all over the place to a vocal minority.

00:58:01.000 So people who disagree, which is the majority, are being shamed.

00:58:05.000 They get scared and they don't want to lose their jobs.

00:58:07.000 Yeah.

00:58:08.000 And that's a whole other ball of wax.

00:58:12.000 But I am scared as a science educator because science is such a beautiful, powerful tool.

00:58:19.000 It's reality.

00:58:20.000 It's reality.

00:58:21.000 And that story I told about that seminar...

00:58:26.000 It's just so clear to me how important science is and that you not twist the truth to try to make people feel better.

00:58:34.000 It's disrespectful to them.

00:58:36.000 And it doesn't solve problems in the world.

00:58:39.000 You're not going to solve problems and make social progress by twisting science.

00:58:42.000 But you see the motivation of it, right?

00:58:44.000 You see these people are compassionate towards people that want to be something other than they are.

00:58:49.000 They have body dysmorphia or whatever you want to call it.

00:58:52.000 And people want to be their allies.

00:58:53.000 Yeah.

00:58:54.000 And I understand that.

00:58:58.000 I'm not smarter than they are.

00:58:59.000 I'm not better than they are.

00:59:01.000 I 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.

00:59:12.000 You know, my students are congratulating me for teaching just basic science now.

00:59:17.000 Like it's risky.

00:59:18.000 Yes.

00:59:19.000 Yeah.

00:59:19.000 Yeah, it's strange.

00:59:21.000 I mean, we've changed terms to make people feel better.

00:59:24.000 Yes.

00:59:24.000 Chest feeder.

00:59:26.000 Yeah.

00:59:26.000 Uterus haver.

00:59:27.000 Menstruator. 0.89

00:59:28.000 Yes.

00:59:29.000 Yeah.

00:59:29.000 Yeah, it's very strange.

00:59:31.000 But smart people think that is the right thing to do.

00:59:34.000 And that does make me wonder if I'm just completely wrong.

00:59:37.000 What am I missing here?

00:59:38.000 You know, these are smart people I respect and I have questioned myself over and over again.

00:59:43.000 But are they cowards?

00:59:45.000 I think they think they're doing the right thing. 0.93

00:59:47.000 Do they?

00:59:48.000 A lot of them I bet don't.

00:59:49.000 A lot of them I think are, as you said, they're capitulating.

00:59:53.000 I 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.

01:00:01.000 Well, they also get a lot of approval, a lot of social approval.

01:00:04.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:00:05.000 You get a lot of social approval and more importantly, you avoid the criticism.

01:00:10.000 You avoid the harsh hate.

01:00:12.000 No, I don't know.

01:00:13.000 I think when you get that much social approval from other smart people, you feel like this is the right thing.

01:00:19.000 Right, but if you step out of that, then you get hated on.

01:00:22.000 Yes.

01:00:23.000 And that's worse.

01:00:24.000 The social approval is great, and for sure people do that.

01:00:27.000 They virtual signal left and right online.

01:00:29.000 It's like one of the main activities on Twitter.

01:00:32.000 But 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,

01:00:48.000 then you get hated on and piled on.

01:00:51.000 And that's terrifying for people.

01:00:52.000 Yeah.

01:00:53.000 And that's why I wrote the book, because it's not just social media.

01:00:58.000 I have air quotes here.

01:01:00.000 It is the science that is coming out now about testosterone.

01:01:07.000 There are books coming out and there are even studies coming out that are...

01:01:12.000 Completely 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,

01:01:28.000 which means we can celebrate everybody as really being And sexless, you know, that there's no such thing as male and female.

01:01:36.000 Testosterone really doesn't do that much.

01:01:38.000 Or females have much higher testosterone than we thought. 1.00

01:01:41.000 And 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...

01:01:53.000 Gender as they see fit, which I just think you should do anyway. 0.94

01:01:55.000 Let's promote that.

01:01:57.000 Let's just do that.

01:01:58.000 It's not true.

01:01:59.000 That's the problem with it.

01:02:00.000 I remember watching this YouTube video where this woman was talking about the differences between males and females.

01:02:05.000 We're all cultural, and there's no difference between males and females, even with strength and athletics. 0.93

01:02:11.000 And I was like, this is one of the dumbest conversations I've ever heard anybody speak out loud. 1.00

01:02:16.000 This is so stupid. 1.00

01:02:17.000 So the athletics is... 1.00

01:02:19.000 A 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.

01:02:30.000 So the big issue is, well, does testosterone really confer an athletic advantage?

01:02:34.000 And I write about these examples where people are arguing that it doesn't.

01:02:38.000 It is insane.

01:02:39.000 Of course it does.

01:02:40.000 And it's not just common sense.

01:02:41.000 There is tons and tons of evidence.

01:02:44.000 What was that tweet by Amy Alcon, who tweeted, I sent it to you before, about the differences in sprinting speeds.

01:02:54.000 And she was talking about a women's world record, I believe in a 400 meter.

01:02:58.000 That's 10%.

01:02:59.000 And that 300 high school kids that are boys every year break that.

01:03:05.000 Yes.

01:03:06.000 They break the women's world record for sprinting.

01:03:09.000 Yeah.

01:03:10.000 No, and it's testosterone.

01:03:12.000 I mean, it's very clear that that's what it is.

01:03:13.000 The fastest female sprinter in the world is American runner Allison Felix, a woman with more gold medals than Usain Bolt.

01:03:21.000 Her lifetime best for the 400-meter run is 49.26 seconds.

01:03:24.000 Based on 2018 data, nearly 300 high school boys in the U.S. alone could beat it. 0.99

01:03:30.000 That's fucking bananas. 0.98

01:03:32.000 Okay, but people are saying... 1.00

01:03:36.000 Some people are saying that that advantage is cultural.

01:03:40.000 And 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.

01:03:50.000 I mean, you know you're jacked, and part of it's because you take testosterone.

01:03:53.000 And so you can speak from personal experience about the change in your athletic capacity and muscle volume.

01:03:59.000 It's all super clear.

01:04:01.000 There'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.

01:04:13.000 And it doesn't all go away when you reduce testosterone.

01:04:16.000 In their defense, it doesn't all go away when you reduce testosterone, but some of it does go away.

01:04:20.000 Oh, certainly.

01:04:20.000 So the hemoglobin plummets.

01:04:22.000 I mean, if you're male to female, hemoglobin plummets.

01:04:28.000 And hemoglobin is important because it carries oxygen and it has to do with lung capacity.

01:04:33.000 Aerobic capacity and power.

01:04:35.000 And so that's an important decline.

01:04:38.000 But muscle mass does not, I mean, it's totally variable, but typically it does not go down to typical female levels. 1.00

01:04:46.000 There's definitely an advantage that's retained.

01:04:49.000 And bone strength and height and grip and all that stuff is retained.

01:04:53.000 And just the shape of the bones.

01:04:56.000 It's very different.

01:04:57.000 It's a strange time when it comes to the reality of the differences between genders.

01:05:03.000 It's a very strange time because it doesn't...

01:05:07.000 No one's ever said men are better than women or women are better than men.

01:05:11.000 We're just different things.

01:05:13.000 And transgender people are different as well.

01:05:15.000 We're all just different.

01:05:16.000 We should be accepting of each other and loving of each other and give each other equal rights and laws and respect.

01:05:21.000 But when it comes to athletics, there's a reason why men don't compete against women.

01:05:26.000 And I had this bizarre conversation with this guy once who has this TV show where he kind of debunks things.

01:05:32.000 But 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.

01:05:46.000 But then when I started challenging him on these and going deep, he realized he didn't even really think about this.

01:05:52.000 He just wanted to appear that he was progressive, which I am.

01:05:55.000 I am a progressive person.

01:05:57.000 I know I look like a meathead, but I'm very progressive.

01:06:00.000 I just look at reality, though. 0.98

01:06:02.000 I grew up with martial arts and with fighting, and I know there's a fucking radical difference between males and females. 0.94

01:06:09.000 It's radical. 0.95

01:06:10.000 It's not small.

01:06:12.000 It's not subtle.

01:06:14.000 It's radical.

01:06:15.000 You mean in physical strength or do you also mean in psychological...

01:06:18.000 In physical strength, in violence, in psychology, in attitude, in competitiveness.

01:06:24.000 It's radical.

01:06:26.000 There's a radical difference.

01:06:28.000 And also, there's a spectrum. 0.99

01:06:30.000 And some people are far more feminine than they are masculine and they happen to have penises. 1.00

01:06:35.000 And some women are far more masculine than they are feminine and they happen to have vaginas. 1.00

01:06:40.000 But it doesn't change the norm. 0.99

01:06:42.000 It doesn't change, and it certainly doesn't change on the high ends of these spectrums.

01:06:46.000 That's right.

01:06:47.000 When you look at the high ends of these spectrums, ultra-female versus ultra-male, you're looking at two radically different things.

01:06:53.000 Yeah.

01:06:54.000 Yeah.

01:06:54.000 And I really like what you said about...

01:06:58.000 I'm getting emotional again.

01:07:03.000 I like what you said about just accepting and understanding each other.

01:07:07.000 Yes.

01:07:07.000 That, to me, you don't have to accept bad behavior.

01:07:12.000 You don't have to accept hurtful behavior.

01:07:14.000 But it does help us to really work hard to understand it.

01:07:17.000 And those are the extremes of behavior.

01:07:21.000 But you're right, we're different.

01:07:22.000 And I think it's interesting and it's exciting the ways that we're different.

01:07:27.000 And testosterone really does help to explain so many of those differences.

01:07:32.000 So understanding that hormone helps us understand each other.

01:07:35.000 And 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?

01:07:50.000 I'm like ultra emotional.

01:07:52.000 My 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.

01:08:06.000 He'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.

01:08:34.000 I'm not better than he is because I'm so in touch with my emotions.

01:08:37.000 I have issues.

01:08:38.000 He probably has issues too, but he doesn't have to come to be closer to me in my way of being in the world.

01:08:46.000 I need to work on accepting who he is.

01:08:49.000 He's an awesome guy.

01:08:50.000 And I was always trying to get him to be more like me.

01:08:53.000 And I think women really want... 1.00

01:09:18.000 I'm getting emotional again.

01:09:22.000 But that was all through learning more about this hormone and what it does.

01:09:26.000 It's just who he is as a man.

01:09:28.000 It's not that all men are that way, but it did help me just the understanding helps us to accept each other.

01:09:35.000 And 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.

01:09:51.000 You know, I can cry and have a fit, but I'm not...

01:09:55.000 Raping anybody.

01:09:57.000 Well, because that's a bad extreme of male behavior that we need to understand.

01:10:01.000 But 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. 0.96

01:10:11.000 That's ridiculous, in my view. 0.96

01:10:13.000 I agree as well. 0.97

01:10:14.000 I look at the human race as a puzzle that is whole.

01:10:18.000 But every piece is different.

01:10:20.000 And you cannot get a person, maybe like your husband, to be shaped like your piece.

01:10:26.000 That's right.

01:10:26.000 It's not going to work.

01:10:27.000 But together, we fit together in some very strange synchronicity.

01:10:32.000 It all works.

01:10:33.000 That's beautiful!

01:10:33.000 It works.

01:10:34.000 It's beautiful.

01:10:35.000 But you have to find the right people.

01:10:36.000 If you found someone who didn't jive with you, it wouldn't work.

01:10:41.000 And you can't change people.

01:10:43.000 I mean, you can kind of influence them a little bit.

01:10:45.000 No, that's right.

01:10:46.000 But I think that's important in regards to everything.

01:10:51.000 It's important in regards to gender, to transgender people.

01:10:55.000 And 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.

01:11:09.000 It's not the case.

01:11:11.000 Is that because of the Fallon Fox thing?

01:11:13.000 100%.

01:11:14.000 Because I was furious at that.

01:11:15.000 Because I know what that is.

01:11:16.000 Here's what that is.

01:11:18.000 That's someone who wants to win.

01:11:19.000 That's someone who's sandbagging.

01:11:21.000 You're pretending that you're not a male.

01:11:22.000 And you're competing against females without letting them know.

01:11:25.000 If 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.

01:11:33.000 I'm all in.

01:11:34.000 But that's not what that is.

01:11:35.000 When you say, I don't have to tell them because it's a medical condition. 0.98

01:11:39.000 Well, that's horseshit. 0.99

01:11:40.000 And we all know it's horseshit. 0.99

01:11:41.000 Was that what happened? 0.98

01:11:42.000 Exactly.

01:11:43.000 That's why I was so furious.

01:11:44.000 Because she fought two people without telling them that she was a male for 30 years.

01:11:49.000 But she said it was a medical...

01:11:50.000 Yeah, she said she didn't have to tell anybody because it was a medical issue.

01:11:53.000 Okay.

01:11:54.000 Which is nuts.

01:11:55.000 So that's why I got angry.

01:11:57.000 And when I got angry, I would normally never get into that sort of subject.

01:12:02.000 I wouldn't have such a strong opinion, but it's in my wheelhouse.

01:12:06.000 I'm a martial arts expert.

01:12:07.000 I do cage fighting commentary.

01:12:09.000 That's what I do.

01:12:10.000 I've done it for more than 20 years. 1.00

01:12:12.000 So when that kind of shit happens and you try to tell me there's no difference between males and females, like, fuck you. 1.00

01:12:18.000 I watch males and females fight. 1.00

01:12:20.000 I've seen thousands of fights.

01:12:23.000 Feet away from me!

01:12:24.000 So, can I ask a sensitive question?

01:12:27.000 Yes.

01:12:27.000 Do you understand why people got upset about the way that you talked about it?

01:12:32.000 Oh, for sure.

01:12:32.000 Why do you think they got upset?

01:12:33.000 Because I called her a man.

01:12:36.000 Would you call her a man now? 1.00

01:12:37.000 I said, you're a fucking man. 1.00

01:12:39.000 I, in the same situation, I would be just as furious. 1.00

01:12:43.000 Well, 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?

01:12:54.000 It's very painful to be...

01:12:55.000 Aggressively insulting, right?

01:12:57.000 And insensitive and also...

01:13:02.000 Inflammatory in a way that would incite people who are transphobic.

01:13:07.000 Right.

01:13:07.000 Which I'm not.

01:13:08.000 That's part of the problem.

01:13:09.000 I see.

01:13:10.000 Is that even though I look like a meathead, like I said, I'm a very progressive person.

01:13:14.000 I'm very open-minded.

01:13:15.000 If I meet transgender people, I'm extra kind.

01:13:19.000 I try to treat them with the most amount of respect because I don't want them to feel bad.

01:13:22.000 That's how I feel.

01:13:24.000 But this is not one of those situations.

01:13:25.000 This was a girl who got her face crushed. 1.00

01:13:28.000 And I'm like, you're a fucking asshole. 1.00

01:13:30.000 You're not supposed to do that. 1.00

01:13:31.000 Do you know what sandbagging is? 0.98

01:13:34.000 Sandbagging 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. 0.97

01:13:50.000 That's what sandbagging is. 0.98

01:13:52.000 That 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.

01:14:02.000 Without telling them.

01:14:03.000 But that's in martial arts.

01:14:05.000 In martial arts, I feel like it should be...

01:14:07.000 It's like riding bulls.

01:14:10.000 Do you choose to ride a bull?

01:14:12.000 You have a massive disadvantage against that bull.

01:14:14.000 There's no way you're going to hang on.

01:14:16.000 The best chance you got is eight seconds.

01:14:18.000 You want to do that?

01:14:19.000 I'm all for it.

01:14:20.000 Have you ridden a bull?

01:14:21.000 No, I have not.

01:14:23.000 I'm all for anything that people want to do where they understand the risks where they're getting into it.

01:14:29.000 I don't like deception.

01:14:30.000 When 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. 0.69

01:14:41.000 And I'm like, this is a person who's probably going to be injured for the rest of her life.

01:14:45.000 And from deception.

01:14:47.000 Like, had she known that this was not a biological female that she was competing against, maybe she would not have taken on that bout. 1.00

01:14:55.000 That's what made me furious.

01:14:57.000 Well, you want people to have the truth.

01:14:58.000 Exactly.

01:14:59.000 But 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...

01:15:11.000 With trans-female. 1.00

01:15:13.000 I'm sorry.

01:15:14.000 You're right.

01:15:15.000 Trans woman.

01:15:16.000 Transgender male to female.

01:15:18.000 Sorry.

01:15:18.000 Who's competing against females and breaking...

01:15:21.000 Well, this is also part of the problem, right?

01:15:22.000 We don't see the opposite. 1.00

01:15:23.000 There's not a lot of trans males that are kicking ass. 1.00

01:15:26.000 No. 1.00

01:15:26.000 It's kind of crazy. 1.00

01:15:27.000 So what do you think should happen?

01:15:29.000 Trans people should compete against trans people. 1.00

01:15:32.000 If there's so many of them that we have to change all these rules, why not have a transgender league? 1.00

01:15:37.000 Why not have a transgender division? 1.00

01:15:39.000 We have two divisions, right?

01:15:40.000 There's a reason why we have two divisions.

01:15:42.000 Why?

01:15:42.000 For fairness.

01:15:44.000 Men and women don't compete against each other for what Amy Alcon highlighted.

01:15:49.000 This issue is not going to go away.

01:15:50.000 It's not going to go away, but it doesn't mean people aren't compassionate.

01:15:54.000 There's a reason why males don't compete against females. 1.00

01:15:58.000 And 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?

01:16:04.000 And he's like, no.

01:16:05.000 I go, well, what are we doing then?

01:16:07.000 Because it's transgender.

01:16:10.000 So 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.

01:16:29.000 So I feel like I know what the literature says and there is an advantage.

01:16:35.000 Natal males will have an advantage. 1.00

01:16:37.000 But to me, that doesn't decide the issue.

01:16:40.000 I think there is a really, you know, there is a case to be made that if you are legally female, you should be able to compete as a female.

01:16:48.000 There's an ethical case there.

01:16:50.000 Legally female meaning what? 0.81

01:16:51.000 Well, if you have had your sex changed on your birth certificate.

01:16:55.000 Right, but if there's physical advantages.

01:16:57.000 No, no.

01:16:57.000 So all I'm saying, yeah, and I agree, there's physical advantages.

01:17:00.000 We're talking about competition.

01:17:01.000 No, no, no.

01:17:01.000 We're not talking about a person.

01:17:03.000 I agree.

01:17:03.000 Just identifying and living life in society.

01:17:06.000 Yeah, 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.

01:17:23.000 So let's establish the science, let's work with the facts, and then let's sensitively hear the ethical facts.

01:17:29.000 And consider that ethical case.

01:17:32.000 So 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? 0.74

01:17:40.000 You 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.

01:17:49.000 But that conversation isn't even happening.

01:17:52.000 So that people are closed off to what could be a decent ethical case.

01:17:57.000 Because maybe it's not all about physical advantage.

01:17:59.000 Maybe there's some human rights issues that people aren't even hearing or open to right now.

01:18:03.000 Right, but we're talking only about athletics.

01:18:05.000 But there are human rights in athletics, too.

01:18:08.000 Yeah, but there's not.

01:18:08.000 If 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.

01:18:16.000 Oh, okay.

01:18:16.000 But you know what I'm saying?

01:18:18.000 Yes.

01:18:18.000 Do you understand what's happening in high school sports, right?

01:18:20.000 I do.

01:18:20.000 There's two men, or two biological males in Connecticut.

01:18:25.000 Let's say natal males.

01:18:27.000 Whatever it is.

01:18:28.000 Okay.

01:18:29.000 Trans girls. 0.94

01:18:30.000 They have 18 state records.

01:18:31.000 Yes.

01:18:32.000 Which is crazy. 0.97

01:18:34.000 So 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. 0.96

01:18:45.000 Yep. 0.97

01:18:46.000 This is the reality of biological females. 1.00

01:18:49.000 But what if you're the...

01:18:50.000 I'm just playing devil's advocate here. 0.64

01:18:52.000 But what if you are one of those trans girls? 0.93

01:18:54.000 You identify as a girl.

01:18:56.000 You believe on some level that you're a girl.

01:18:59.000 You really want to be accepted.

01:19:01.000 You want to do your sport.

01:19:03.000 You don't want to play in some third league like some sort of weirdo.

01:19:07.000 You know, say you just want to be a girl.

01:19:09.000 You want to play against the girls. 0.91

01:19:11.000 There is an ethical issue there.

01:19:14.000 And I agree.

01:19:14.000 They have an advantage.

01:19:15.000 I don't think there is.

01:19:16.000 There isn't even one to be discussed.

01:19:18.000 No, 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.

01:19:33.000 I 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.

01:19:43.000 We're talking about competing.

01:19:45.000 If 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?

01:19:54.000 But that is different.

01:19:54.000 Well, 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.

01:20:08.000 I think that's correct. 0.97

01:20:09.000 Which is fucking bananas, right? 0.99

01:20:11.000 And this is what drives these kids crazy. 0.99

01:20:13.000 Because if you are a biological female, you know there's a distinct advantage to having that testosterone. 0.90

01:20:20.000 And this is what they're dealing with.

01:20:22.000 It's ideology.

01:20:24.000 That 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.

01:20:33.000 Yeah, and I think you're right, and I think that's the problem.

01:20:35.000 And 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.

01:20:52.000 That is not happening because it's being shut down because you're not allowed to say basically what you just said.

01:20:58.000 We have seen some of the evidence and world records being broken.

01:21:01.000 Oh, yeah.

01:21:01.000 Yeah.

01:21:02.000 I mean, that's a big piece of evidence when you see trans women crushing world records. 0.73

01:21:06.000 Oh, yeah.

01:21:06.000 There's an advantage.

01:21:07.000 No doubt about it.

01:21:08.000 There is an advantage.

01:21:09.000 And then the other question is, well, how much of an advantage is it to be an outlier as a female? 0.77

01:21:16.000 Like, there are female outliers that are extreme athletes that are just better genetically. 1.00

01:21:22.000 They're stronger and faster.

01:21:23.000 Everybody uses the example of Michael Phelps.

01:21:25.000 Yeah, it's a perfect example.

01:21:26.000 He's a genetic outlier.

01:21:27.000 And there's always going to be outliers in male to female.

01:21:30.000 But the gap in the crossover is significant.

01:21:33.000 And this is the reason why men and females don't compete against each other. 0.72

01:21:36.000 That's right.

01:21:37.000 I don't think there's anything wrong, I don't think it makes you a freak to be in a female, rather a transgender league. 0.82

01:21:43.000 I don't think that makes you a freak.

01:21:45.000 It might feel that way.

01:21:45.000 It 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.

01:21:53.000 We're making it seem like having the right to compete in the gender that you associate with, identify with, is a right.

01:22:02.000 Right.

01:22:03.000 That sounds crazy.

01:22:05.000 Right.

01:22:05.000 Yeah.

01:22:06.000 I mean, it's a tough...

01:22:09.000 I think it's a really hard...

01:22:11.000 I think it's a hard issue.

01:22:14.000 My 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.

01:22:21.000 That's not happening.

01:22:22.000 Right.

01:22:22.000 It's not happening because if you have an opinion that varies, that steps out of line from this orthodoxy...

01:22:29.000 But it's the majority opinion as far as I can tell, but that majority is being silenced.

01:22:33.000 They're just scared.

01:22:34.000 They're scared because the people that are the activists are so incredibly aggressive in trying to enforce this ideology.

01:22:40.000 They're so aggressive.

01:22:42.000 And they have to be aggressive because I think they feel like they're trying to gain ground.

01:22:48.000 Well, it's working.

01:22:49.000 Yeah.

01:22:49.000 It's working, right?

01:22:50.000 Yeah.

01:22:51.000 There you go.

01:22:51.000 I 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.

01:23:01.000 Well, maybe if that happens, that's going to press the issue in a way that it hasn't really been before.

01:23:08.000 But the problem is, like, at the expense of how many biological women's athletic careers. 1.00

01:23:16.000 Yeah.

01:23:17.000 How many of them are going to be a footnote in this transition?

01:23:21.000 And 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.

01:23:32.000 You have 20 to 30. This is your window.

01:23:37.000 That's all you have.

01:23:38.000 That's it.

01:23:39.000 After 30, you can maintain for a couple years, but you hit 34. Ooh, 36?

01:23:46.000 Ooh, not so good. 0.99

01:23:48.000 The fucking extreme outliers can make it to the 36 and compete. 0.98

01:23:52.000 But you have a small window. 0.99

01:23:53.000 And if that window is dominated by someone who really, in all fairness, should not be in the same division as you.

01:24:01.000 But that's the only area.

01:24:03.000 That's the only area.

01:24:04.000 This is where the rubber meets the road.

01:24:05.000 But you're...

01:24:08.000 And I understand it.

01:24:09.000 You know, your concern is with the natal females, right? 0.59

01:24:14.000 Yes.

01:24:14.000 But what about the trans women?

01:24:17.000 And I know that you're talking about physical advantages, and that's clear.

01:24:23.000 The issue there is clear.

01:24:25.000 We're talking about sports.

01:24:26.000 But what does fairness mean in sports?

01:24:29.000 I think there is a question there.

01:24:32.000 Is 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?

01:24:42.000 If it wasn't just about physical advantages, males would compete with females. 0.86

01:24:47.000 There's a reason there's two divisions.

01:24:49.000 No, there is a reason.

01:24:50.000 It's stark.

01:24:50.000 But now we have an issue where there's Natal male people who are identifying and maybe legally be female.

01:24:59.000 I just think there is some attention needs to be paid to their concerns and their rights and what's fair in sports.

01:25:07.000 And I'm not saying that it is fair to have them compete against females. 1.00

01:25:13.000 I'm saying that that I do think needs to be brought in to the conversation.

01:25:17.000 How so?

01:25:18.000 Show me a scenario where you think that that would work out.

01:25:21.000 No, I'm not saying it would work out.

01:25:24.000 The concerns need to be addressed explicitly.

01:25:26.000 I'm not saying it would work out.

01:25:28.000 I understand what you're saying.

01:25:29.000 I'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.

01:25:39.000 I'm just saying that perspective needs to be aired.

01:25:45.000 I understand.

01:25:45.000 We're talking about feelings rather than sports.

01:25:49.000 Right.

01:25:49.000 Okay.

01:25:50.000 But isn't some high school sports maybe also about self-esteem and feelings?

01:25:55.000 Not when you're competing for scholarships.

01:25:59.000 Okay.

01:25:59.000 It could change your life.

01:26:01.000 Yeah.

01:26:01.000 It could change your future.

01:26:03.000 Yeah.

01:26:04.000 If we're competing, then someone's going to win, right?

01:26:07.000 And then we have to determine what's fair and what's not fair.

01:26:09.000 And we've kind of done that.

01:26:11.000 That's why we've separated males from females. 0.87

01:26:13.000 Now we have this weird gray area where we have transgender males and transgender females. 0.89

01:26:18.000 And where do you put them in terms of the competition as opposed to biological males and biological females?

01:26:26.000 And then there's this urge to use the term cis.

01:26:31.000 I don't like that.

01:26:32.000 It's not real.

01:26:33.000 People are making it up that aren't biologists and it's a thing that gets accepted because it shows that you conform to the ideology.

01:26:42.000 You've given into this.

01:26:44.000 Cisgender. 0.99

01:26:45.000 I mean, I don't use that in the book.

01:26:46.000 I think it's confusing.

01:26:47.000 I think the concept of gender identity is even a little bit confusing.

01:26:52.000 It is confusing.

01:26:53.000 Sex assigned at birth is confusing.

01:26:55.000 So those are terms that make some people feel good, but I think scientifically are confusing.

01:27:01.000 But it's just where the rubber meets the road is athletics.

01:27:05.000 That's where it gets crazy.

01:27:06.000 Because other than that, it's just human beings being what they think is their true self, which is we should all support.

01:27:14.000 Right.

01:27:16.000 You identifying and being whoever you...

01:27:19.000 You could be just a hardcore dude who likes wearing fake eyelashes. 1.00

01:27:24.000 Who gives a fuck? 1.00

01:27:26.000 Whether you're gay or you're straight or you're... 1.00

01:27:29.000 There's a lot of people that become trans women and then they become lesbians. 0.99

01:27:32.000 I don't get it, but I don't have to.

01:27:35.000 Right?

01:27:36.000 But if I meet them and I talk to them, I treat them with respect and love the same way I do everybody.

01:27:42.000 I just get angry when it comes to sports, particularly fighting, because that's what I did most of my life growing up.

01:27:49.000 What kind of fighting did you do?

01:27:51.000 Martial arts.

01:27:52.000 Mixed martial arts.

01:27:53.000 Taekwondo and kickboxing at the time.

01:27:55.000 There was no mixed martial arts like the UFC when I was young and competing.

01:28:00.000 Can 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?

01:28:13.000 Sure, if you want to.

01:28:16.000 You know about red deer and testosterone in red deer?

01:28:20.000 Have you heard about that?

01:28:21.000 The antlers and all that jazz?

01:28:22.000 Yeah.

01:28:22.000 And in the rut is when it's mating season.

01:28:26.000 So 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.

01:28:37.000 We're good to go.

01:28:55.000 And it's rutting season.

01:28:56.000 The antlers grow.

01:28:58.000 So 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. 0.95

01:29:08.000 It gets their testes up and running. 0.98

01:29:11.000 It gets sperm made.

01:29:12.000 So it coordinates the ability to reproduce with the aggressive behaviors and the antlers. 0.78

01:29:19.000 So they signal to each other through roaring and through strutting around, and they have to make these decisions about who to fight and when.

01:29:29.000 And the most successful males will accumulate these harems of up to 20 or sometimes even more females. 0.68

01:29:36.000 So these really successful males are the best fighters.

01:29:39.000 I think?

01:29:55.000 And how they are so tuned into the cues of the ability of whether they're going to have a chance against another male.

01:30:02.000 So some males are just roaming around the hillside with no females, and they're, like, covetously eyeing the dominant males who have a harem.

01:30:12.000 And so they have to decide if they're going to challenge that harem holder. 1.00

01:30:16.000 So they listen to the roars.

01:30:18.000 The roars are a really good sort of indication of what kind of condition that male is in right now.

01:30:23.000 How big is he?

01:30:24.000 Is he tired?

01:30:27.000 And they'll say run down the hill and then they do this thing called a parallel walk.

01:30:34.000 So they'll have a roaring contest and then maybe they'll decide to have a parallel walk.

01:30:38.000 They walk next to each other and then they back and forth, back and forth, just side by side, and they're sizing each other up.

01:30:47.000 And a lot of the time, one will decide, no, I'm not going to fight this guy.

01:30:51.000 I'm not going to win.

01:30:52.000 But it's this very formal thing.

01:30:54.000 They go through these stages, and it's predictable, the steps that they go through on the way to battle.

01:30:59.000 And 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.

01:31:13.000 And 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.

01:31:27.000 So they become very...

01:31:28.000 Violent and aggressive.

01:31:29.000 But what's interesting to me is human fighting.

01:31:35.000 And 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?

01:31:53.000 How threatening are they?

01:31:54.000 Are they tired right now?

01:31:56.000 Are they strong?

01:31:58.000 Are they experienced?

01:32:00.000 And what is the motivation like for you or for your fighters? 0.99

01:32:05.000 What is that motivation to want to just kick the shit out of somebody?

01:32:08.000 And how do you make the decisions on the road to battle? 0.99

01:32:12.000 And it's obviously not because you're going to take over somebody's harem.

01:32:15.000 So what is it that's at stake when...

01:32:21.000 What is behind that motivation to fight?

01:32:23.000 And what do you feel like is at stake?

01:32:25.000 Is it status?

01:32:26.000 Is it reputation?

01:32:27.000 And there's a lot of evidence that testosterone upregulates dopamine in different contexts, like sexual contexts and aggressive contexts.

01:32:35.000 So I think it's also...

01:32:36.000 Just rewarding to engage in battle, maybe for males in a way that it's not for females. 0.69

01:32:41.000 So 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.

01:32:50.000 If you can see any of those parallels with non-human animals.

01:32:53.000 Okay.

01:32:54.000 First of all, we're talking about two very different things.

01:32:57.000 Yes.

01:32:57.000 There 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.

01:33:11.000 Have you ever done that?

01:33:12.000 No.

01:33:12.000 Okay.

01:33:13.000 There's a big difference between that and competition.

01:33:16.000 What competition is, is high level problem solving with dire physical consequences.

01:33:22.000 And the reason why people are attracted to people that do that is because they know it's a terrifying endeavor.

01:33:28.000 Because 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.

01:33:39.000 And it's a very rare position because only one person can hold it in each weight class.

01:33:44.000 And 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.

01:33:59.000 I 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.

01:34:06.000 They're playing a game of human go or human chess.

01:34:10.000 It's not what people think about it when they don't engage in it.

01:34:14.000 People look at it like it's brutish.

01:34:16.000 It's like two deer.

01:34:20.000 Just trying to compete and jab each other's eyes out.

01:34:23.000 It has nothing to do with that.

01:34:25.000 It has nothing to do with that.

01:34:27.000 It has to do with you're trying to figure out a way to get better at everything in life.

01:34:35.000 You're trying to reach the maximum of your human potential and that's what fighting does.

01:34:42.000 What fighting is, it's a vehicle for developing your human potential.

01:34:45.000 With 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,

01:35:01.000 all the things you did wrong, all the things you did right.

01:35:03.000 Were you 100% disciplined or were you only 80?

01:35:06.000 And if you were 100, would you have won?

01:35:08.000 What if you slept more?

01:35:10.000 What if you got more massages?

01:35:11.000 What if you stretched more?

01:35:12.000 Would you have won?

01:35:13.000 What if you stopped hanging out with girls and drinking with your friends and doing this and doing that?

01:35:18.000 Would you have won?

01:35:19.000 And the winners do everything right.

01:35:22.000 And it's so hard to do.

01:35:24.000 It's so hard to do.

01:35:25.000 And you have to have everything in line.

01:35:27.000 The winners have all the things.

01:35:29.000 They have the genetics.

01:35:31.000 They have the mental strength.

01:35:32.000 They have the technique.

01:35:34.000 They have the experience.

01:35:35.000 They have all the things.

01:35:37.000 And it's such a rare combination of traits and attributes and experiences.

01:35:43.000 And they all come together.

01:35:45.000 Under the bright lights of thousands of people watching.

01:35:49.000 So you have the intense pressure of you looking across the octagon or the ring at another human being that's in the same thing.

01:35:58.000 Where you've prepared for weeks and weeks and weeks for this one moment where the referee looks at you.

01:36:03.000 Are you ready?

01:36:04.000 Are you ready?

01:36:06.000 Let's go!

01:36:06.000 And then it happens.

01:36:07.000 And then you have to be in the moment.

01:36:09.000 You have to be in the moment.

01:36:11.000 You 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,

01:36:27.000 which is totally possible.

01:36:30.000 You know it's possible because you've done it to other people, and you know it can happen to you.

01:36:34.000 Maybe it's happened to you before.

01:36:35.000 And so you have to put that aside, and you have to think about defense and offense, and you have to try to be in the zone.

01:36:41.000 That's what people are addicted to. 1.00

01:36:43.000 And it has nothing to do with those stupid fucking deer. 1.00

01:36:45.000 Those stupid deer that are going sideways. 1.00

01:36:47.000 They get to fuck once a year. 1.00

01:36:49.000 It's a terrible life and they're probably going to get eaten by mountain lions. 1.00

01:36:53.000 Fighting between human beings is very different.

01:36:56.000 And that's why it's so attractive.

01:36:57.000 That's why it's so exciting.

01:36:59.000 I guess I'm trying to get at the motivation and the kind of ritual nature of it.

01:37:04.000 There's a glory to conquering.

01:37:06.000 There's a glory to victory.

01:37:08.000 Because you're scared of losing.

01:37:11.000 You're gambling.

01:37:12.000 You're gambling at all.

01:37:13.000 But why does it have to be battle?

01:37:14.000 All the things that you just talked about?

01:37:15.000 No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

01:37:16.000 They don't exist anywhere else.

01:37:18.000 Explain why it's battle.

01:37:19.000 Why does it have to be physical male-male competition?

01:37:22.000 Because of what I said.

01:37:23.000 It's not male-male competition.

01:37:24.000 It exists in female-female competition as well. 1.00

01:37:26.000 Yes, yes.

01:37:26.000 No, and that's interesting.

01:37:27.000 It's high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences.

01:37:32.000 But couldn't you just go do rock climbing or something? 1.00

01:37:34.000 No, no, because then you fucking die. 1.00

01:37:36.000 But you could fucking die doing mixed martial arts. 1.00

01:37:39.000 Can't you just get really screwed up? 1.00

01:37:41.000 Very, very, very rarely. 0.95

01:37:41.000 Very rarely do people die. 0.95

01:37:43.000 No one's ever died in the UFC. The UFC's been around since 1993. Have people become paralyzed or blinded?

01:37:50.000 Some people have lost vision in their eyes, yeah.

01:37:54.000 But relatively few in comparison to the thousands and thousands and thousands.

01:37:58.000 So you don't see it as a status competition.

01:38:01.000 It is in some way, but it's a status that's achieved by accomplishment.

01:38:05.000 It's not about the status as much as it's about the accomplishment.

01:38:09.000 It'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.

01:38:18.000 Like this weekend, this weekend, I'm going to Phoenix because Marvin Vittori is challenging Israel Adesanya for the UFC middleweight championship of the world.

01:38:28.000 And it's an intense fight because they fought a long time ago.

01:38:30.000 They fought like four or five years ago and it was a really close fight. 0.99

01:38:33.000 And now they're going to talk shit to each other and they're going to go at it. 0.98

01:38:36.000 But these are two elite super athletes. 0.99

01:38:40.000 In 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, 0.83

01:38:56.000 who's good at everything. 0.97

01:38:58.000 He's good at wrestling, he's good at ground and pound, his striking is solid.

01:39:02.000 That's this weekend.

01:39:03.000 This is... 0.98

01:39:04.000 I'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!

01:39:16.000 It'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,

01:39:32.000 as much as I experience in this life, I'm still enjoying this as much as they are, if not more.

01:39:38.000 And I want them to feel that.

01:39:40.000 I want to accentuate their experience.

01:39:42.000 And for the athletes that are fighting, I want to...

01:39:46.000 I want to explain it in a way that honors what they've done.

01:39:50.000 I 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.

01:39:59.000 So what is enjoyable to you is seeing all of this training and intensity and humanity coming together.

01:40:09.000 Everybody, these participants putting everything on the line and seeing the talent.

01:40:18.000 What exactly is so enjoyable to you?

01:40:22.000 Human excellence.

01:40:24.000 Okay.

01:40:24.000 That's what I like.

01:40:25.000 I like human excellence.

01:40:27.000 It's not beating the shit out of each other, exactly. 0.98

01:40:28.000 It is beating the shit out of somebody. 0.86

01:40:29.000 But why do you want to see excellence in that particular domain? 0.56

01:40:32.000 Because it's so hard to do. 0.98

01:40:33.000 To beat the shit out of someone. 0.99

01:40:35.000 It's so hard to do. 1.00

01:40:36.000 It's so hard to beat the shit out of someone who's really good. 0.96

01:40:39.000 I'm just interested in men fighting, I guess. 0.98

01:40:41.000 I understand what you're saying, but listen to me.

01:40:43.000 You're looking at it in terms of the actual physical act.

01:40:47.000 I'm looking at it in terms of the extreme difficulty in getting to that physical act.

01:40:53.000 I'm looking at the whole path of the warrior.

01:40:55.000 It's insanely difficult.

01:40:57.000 And there's a mindset involved that I'm deeply aware of.

01:41:01.000 I mean, I haven't fought since 1989, I think was the last time I fought. 0.93

01:41:05.000 It's a long fucking time ago. 0.85

01:41:06.000 Why'd you stop? 0.95

01:41:07.000 Because I was worried about brain damage and there was no money in it.

01:41:10.000 And I was definitely getting loopy.

01:41:12.000 There was something going on.

01:41:16.000 What 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.

01:41:30.000 There's only one of him.

01:41:33.000 Do you understand?

01:41:33.000 There's like millions of people doing martial arts.

01:41:36.000 Millions of people watching the UFC. There's one stylebender.

01:41:40.000 There's one 185 pound champion. 0.99

01:41:43.000 And when he walks into that octagon and raises his hands and everyone goes, fuck yeah! 0.99

01:41:49.000 Woo! 0.99

01:41:49.000 He's here! 0.99

01:41:50.000 Because they know that guy has gone through a journey, like an insane journey to be who he is.

01:41:55.000 It's not easy to be that guy. 0.91

01:41:57.000 You have countless days of training when you don't want to, the discipline, all the fucking physical preparation that's involved.

01:42:07.000 All the strength and conditioning and all the sparring sessions and all the chaos that's involved leading you up to that fight.

01:42:14.000 Watching your diet, the nutrition and supplements and everything and studying tapes and going over techniques with the trainers and keeping the mind on point. 0.94

01:42:24.000 Not letting the demons of doubt enter your mind and fuck with your psyche. 0.90

01:42:28.000 All that stuff. 0.98

01:42:29.000 The psychology of it is so intense.

01:42:32.000 There's so much involved.

01:42:35.000 Can you get jacked up?

01:42:37.000 What are the doping rules there?

01:42:38.000 No, you can't.

01:42:40.000 No, there's USADA, the US Anti-Doping Agency.

01:42:42.000 They'll wake you up at 3 o'clock in the morning and check your pee.

01:42:45.000 They randomly test people all the time.

01:42:49.000 So it's all natural.

01:42:51.000 Well, you can't say that because some people have been busted.

01:42:55.000 Some unscrupulous agents have been busted because there is a desire to cheat.

01:43:00.000 There's always a desire to cheat.

01:43:02.000 You know what I talked about with sandbagging?

01:43:04.000 That exists with MMA too.

01:43:06.000 There's people that want an advantage and they want to be able to have that advantage even if it's not fair.

01:43:11.000 And there's cheating.

01:43:12.000 But they get caught.

01:43:13.000 With the UFC they get caught quite a bit.

01:43:15.000 And they get suspended for two years.

01:43:18.000 Okay, that's pretty serious. 0.98

01:43:19.000 So you got no fucking money at all coming in for two years. 0.97

01:43:22.000 So how does the women's fighting differ, if you could just generalize, from the male fighting? 0.98

01:43:28.000 Well, the elite women, it's the same thing. 1.00

01:43:32.000 That's why it's not a male thing.

01:43:34.000 It's high-level problem-solving.

01:43:36.000 There's two of the best women in the world. 1.00

01:43:40.000 Well, not just two.

01:43:41.000 There's a few in the UFC that are really exceptional.

01:43:43.000 There's one who's really interesting.

01:43:46.000 Her name is Rose Namajunas.

01:43:49.000 And she's an intensely sweet person.

01:43:55.000 She's super emotional.

01:43:57.000 There was a video of me interviewing her after she just re-won her title.

01:44:04.000 And I was talking about her mindset.

01:44:06.000 Find that on my Instagram.

01:44:08.000 I was talking to her after she won the title.

01:44:12.000 It was this amazing thing.

01:44:13.000 She knocked out this girl, Zhang Weili, who's this monster. 0.99

01:44:17.000 She's terrifying. 0.54

01:44:18.000 She's this physical specimen. 0.92

01:44:19.000 And she knocked her out with a head kick in the first run. 1.00

01:44:22.000 It was crazy.

01:44:23.000 But before the fight, she was almost in a trance.

01:44:27.000 And she was standing there while they were getting ready, and she's going, I'm the best, I'm the best.

01:44:31.000 She was standing there.

01:44:33.000 Like, this is after she won the title, but give us the volume.

01:44:36.000 Well, this girl just got knocked out. 1.00

01:44:39.000 Back it up, back it up.

01:44:48.000 That's Pat Berry.

01:44:49.000 That's her boyfriend and her trainer.

01:44:51.000 And he's like, who's the best?

01:44:52.000 She's like, I'm the best.

01:44:53.000 And so they give her the title, and then I talk to her about it.

01:44:59.000 And when I'm talking to her, she's emotional.

01:45:01.000 She's crying.

01:45:02.000 And I cried.

01:45:03.000 I totally cried.

01:45:04.000 This is the first time I ever cried.

01:45:07.000 During an interview.

01:45:08.000 The first time.

01:45:10.000 I really just had to have faith in him, and that's what got me through.

01:45:15.000 You were so focused.

01:45:18.000 Before 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.

01:45:25.000 I'm the best.

01:45:27.000 I am the best.

01:45:30.000 See, do you understand?

01:45:31.000 That has nothing to do with male savagery.

01:45:36.000 That has nothing to do with male savagery.

01:45:38.000 That has nothing to do with males.

01:45:40.000 That has to do with someone trying to overcome all of the obstacles that are in play when you're trying to be great.

01:45:50.000 That's what that is.

01:45:51.000 It has nothing to do with men.

01:45:53.000 She's like one of the most feminine people ever. 0.69

01:45:54.000 She's beautiful.

01:45:55.000 She shaves her head so she doesn't have to think about her hair.

01:45:58.000 But if you see her with long hair, she's a gorgeous woman.

01:46:00.000 She looks like a model. 0.99

01:46:02.000 It has nothing to do with deers.

01:46:05.000 It has nothing to do with men beating each other up.

01:46:08.000 It has nothing to do with brutishness.

01:46:09.000 It has to do with high level problem solving with dire physical consequences and the reward.

01:46:15.000 You see the reward?

01:46:16.000 She's a champion of the world.

01:46:17.000 That's how beautiful she is.

01:46:18.000 Oh my gosh. 0.99

01:46:19.000 Yeah, she's fucking stunning. 0.99

01:46:20.000 Oh my gosh. 0.99

01:46:21.000 She's gorgeous.

01:46:22.000 And she is the champion of the fucking world. 1.00

01:46:25.000 She's the 115 pound champion of the world. 1.00

01:46:29.000 She's tiny.

01:46:30.000 Yeah.

01:46:30.000 Well, she weighs 115 for a brief amount of time.

01:46:33.000 She really probably weighs like 125 and she cuts weight. 1.00

01:46:36.000 Okay.

01:46:37.000 That's what they do.

01:46:39.000 She's a great example.

01:46:41.000 Because there's nothing about her that's aggressive.

01:46:44.000 Nothing about her that's brutish.

01:46:46.000 When she won the title the first time, when I was interviewing her, one of the things she was saying is, we have to be better people.

01:46:52.000 She looked at this message while I was interviewing her, Anthony Gage, after winning a fight.

01:46:58.000 And she's like, we gotta be nicer to each other.

01:47:02.000 That was her message.

01:47:04.000 It's about transcending whatever you think you are and becoming something better.

01:47:12.000 That's what it's about.

01:47:18.000 See, look at you.

01:47:20.000 See, I told you.

01:47:21.000 No, it's intense because I didn't obviously understand it at all.

01:47:24.000 Most people don't.

01:47:25.000 I've heard you talk about it.

01:47:28.000 It's really, I hate to say it, but deep.

01:47:31.000 It's very deep.

01:47:33.000 It's really intense and I didn't understand because, you know, in my life I work hard.

01:47:40.000 I 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.

01:47:50.000 And 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.

01:48:01.000 No, it's not...

01:48:03.000 Rocks don't hit back.

01:48:04.000 Right.

01:48:05.000 It's not enough.

01:48:07.000 It's not enough.

01:48:09.000 It's not risking.

01:48:13.000 Obviously, 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...

01:48:31.000 Respond intelligently and use your body.

01:48:33.000 Yes, but let me be clear.

01:48:34.000 You don't have to do that.

01:48:36.000 Nobody has to do that.

01:48:37.000 But some people have a calling to do that.

01:48:39.000 Some people have a calling to rock climb, right?

01:48:41.000 Some people have a calling not just to rock climb, but to free solo like Alex Honnold.

01:48:46.000 I've had him on several times.

01:48:48.000 I'm amazed at him.

01:48:50.000 And he's so calm.

01:48:51.000 One of the things about Alex that's so interesting, he's so nice.

01:48:55.000 He's so calm and sweet.

01:48:58.000 He's like the sweetest guy.

01:48:59.000 He's so nice.

01:49:01.000 And he's very boyish.

01:49:04.000 In his charm and the way he carries himself.

01:49:07.000 His eyebrows are always raised.

01:49:09.000 He's literally one of the most courageous people alive. 0.55

01:49:12.000 Not 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, 0.83

01:49:38.000 right? 0.97

01:49:39.000 So he's not even, there's not even a 90 degree angle.

01:49:42.000 He'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.

01:49:49.000 I 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.

01:50:03.000 Maybe that's the most challenging of all the pursuits.

01:50:08.000 Maybe that's the most.

01:50:09.000 But it's different.

01:50:10.000 His mindset, as I talked about before...

01:50:15.000 We're looking at the human race as a giant puzzle, where every piece is important, but every piece is different.

01:50:21.000 I would not want Alex Honnold to be kickboxing.

01:50:23.000 He doesn't have to.

01:50:25.000 That's not what's interesting to him.

01:50:28.000 It doesn't have to be.

01:50:29.000 He doesn't have to be a sprinter.

01:50:31.000 But it's something where he's pushing himself to the absolute limit and drawing strength and lessons from that.

01:50:39.000 So I have an example that I hesitate to bring it up because it just completely pales in comparison, but for me, it's really meaningful.

01:50:48.000 And I just mention this in the book, but just running a marathon.

01:50:52.000 I ran two marathons.

01:50:53.000 I ran one when I turned 30, one when I turned 40. And I couldn't...

01:50:57.000 I got injured in training for the one when I was 50, which is why we have age classes, right? 0.99

01:51:02.000 Just like sex classes.

01:51:03.000 You're not the same person.

01:51:05.000 But when I talk about that sometimes, I feel like doing even just one marathon...

01:51:13.000 I draw on that experience more almost than any other when I need strength sometimes and when I need to get through something.

01:51:20.000 I 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.

01:51:30.000 It's not luck.

01:51:31.000 It's just work and discipline.

01:51:34.000 And just the lesson that you teach yourself when you push yourself till you feel like you can't go on, and then you go a little bit...

01:51:41.000 I'm getting emotional again.

01:51:42.000 You go a little bit further.

01:51:43.000 And it's just a marathon.

01:51:44.000 I haven't, you know, climbed.

01:51:47.000 But it's not just a marathon.

01:51:49.000 But for me, it's that experience of really pushing yourself and figuring out how to do it and having people support you.

01:51:56.000 So the reason I even applied to Harvard Graduate School was because somebody believed in me.

01:52:02.000 You know, I had...

01:52:03.000 Someone believe in me, even when I thought, like, this is a dream, I could never do this, blah, blah, blah.

01:52:08.000 Someone believed in me and pushed me to work and do the work.

01:52:12.000 And I, you know, I think you get the same.

01:52:15.000 So just hearing you talk about mixed martial arts, it is emotional.

01:52:18.000 And I didn't understand, but I get it a little bit just because of my experience with marathon, where it teaches you so much.

01:52:26.000 And it's something you can draw on your own strength and your own discipline.

01:52:30.000 You know you have it.

01:52:31.000 What it takes maybe to get through all kinds of other situations.

01:52:34.000 It 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.

01:52:46.000 That makes a huge difference.

01:52:48.000 Yeah, great moments like that.

01:52:50.000 These wild, crazy moments.

01:52:52.000 They elevate us.

01:52:53.000 They elevate our potential.

01:52:55.000 They change the way we look at what's possible.

01:52:57.000 I have goosebumps.

01:52:58.000 Yeah, it's important.

01:52:59.000 That's what sports are all about.

01:53:01.000 I really have goosebumps.

01:53:02.000 Yeah, I mean, that's why it drives me crazy when we're talking about sports.

01:53:07.000 Yeah.

01:53:07.000 And we're talking about unfair advantages for biological women.

01:53:11.000 It drives me nuts.

01:53:12.000 Oh, this is really contextualizing your passion here.

01:53:17.000 Someone like that.

01:53:18.000 I get it.

01:53:19.000 Thank you so much for putting this all together.

01:53:22.000 She's one of my heroes.

01:53:23.000 That little girl.

01:53:24.000 So it infuriates you to think somebody's gonna come in.

01:53:26.000 And cheat.

01:53:27.000 Okay.

01:53:28.000 You're cheating.

01:53:29.000 Just 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,

01:53:45.000 20 years with new athletes that are coming that have been literally genetically altered.

01:53:50.000 We're going to have to reassess what's important and what's not.

01:53:54.000 We'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. 0.94

01:54:06.000 That is my ultimate hope.

01:54:07.000 I don't have any... 0.96

01:54:13.000 Hateful thoughts about transgender people.

01:54:16.000 My thoughts and concerns, and one of the reasons why this all came to light, was all about competition.

01:54:21.000 And unfortunately for me, it wasn't just casual competition. 0.98

01:54:25.000 If it was competition like running, I'd probably be like, that's kind of fucked up. 0.96

01:54:28.000 But it's this, which is a part of my DNA. This is a part of who I am as a human being. 0.97

01:54:34.000 It's been a giant part of my life.

01:54:36.000 Martial arts changed who I am as a person. 0.99

01:54:38.000 It changed me from a loser to someone who had confidence. 0.98

01:54:42.000 What kind of loser were you? 0.98

01:54:43.000 I didn't have a future. 1.00

01:54:45.000 I didn't know what I was doing.

01:54:46.000 But you weren't like a big screw up in high school like I was.

01:54:48.000 I wasn't paying attention.

01:54:50.000 I barely got through high school.

01:54:52.000 I used to have nightmares after I graduated that I had to go back.

01:54:54.000 Oh, everybody has that.

01:54:56.000 I have that all the time.

01:54:57.000 I was teaching Taekwondo at BU. I was a US Open champion.

01:55:01.000 I still had nightmares about having to go back to high school.

01:55:03.000 I'm not kidding.

01:55:05.000 Well, that actually happened to me.

01:55:07.000 I didn't go.

01:55:09.000 It was the only thing that I ever did that made me feel like a winner.

01:55:13.000 The only thing.

01:55:14.000 And I started when I was 15 years old and become obsessed with it.

01:55:17.000 But I was lucky in a lot of ways.

01:55:19.000 I was lucky that I found a really good school.

01:55:22.000 I was lucky that I was...

01:55:23.000 It was a pure luck situation.

01:55:25.000 I was coming home from a baseball game in Boston and there was a long line leaving Fenway Park to get on the tee.

01:55:33.000 And me and a friend of mine went up to this Taekwondo school.

01:55:38.000 Because it was there, and I'm like, let's go see what this is about.

01:55:40.000 And we walked up the stairs, and as we walked up the stairs, I heard this crazy sound, and there was this guy hitting the heavy bag.

01:55:46.000 And this is a guy named John Lee.

01:55:48.000 And John Lee was a U.S. national champion who is competing in the World Cup soon, so he's in peak training.

01:55:55.000 So he was the elite of the elite.

01:55:57.000 And I got a chance to watch him hit this heavy bag and do things that I never thought a person could do with their body.

01:56:04.000 Like I saw him generate the kind of force that I couldn't imagine a person could.

01:56:09.000 And I was thinking about that hitting me. 0.99

01:56:11.000 I was like, holy shit. 1.00

01:56:12.000 How can he do this? 1.00

01:56:13.000 And I became obsessed.

01:56:14.000 I signed up immediately and it became my life for the next six years.

01:56:19.000 Like day in, day out, every day.

01:56:22.000 Obsessed.

01:56:23.000 That's all I did.

01:56:23.000 And it was the first thing that I ever did.

01:56:25.000 Because you were good at it.

01:56:26.000 I became good at it.

01:56:28.000 I wasn't good at it.

01:56:29.000 I was terrible.

01:56:30.000 But you put in the effort and you could see the progress.

01:56:32.000 Yes.

01:56:32.000 I put in the effort.

01:56:33.000 And that's one of the more important things about belts.

01:56:36.000 Like when you get a white belt and you go from a white belt to a blue belt.

01:56:39.000 There's all these belt systems and you learn and grow and get better.

01:56:44.000 And along the way, I realized I can do this with anything.

01:56:48.000 And that's what made me...

01:56:50.000 A comic, that's what made me a podcaster, that's what made me everything else I've ever done in my life.

01:56:54.000 I'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.

01:57:04.000 And these things make you a better person.

01:57:06.000 They define your character.

01:57:08.000 They make you more aware of the flaws and the positive aspects of other people.

01:57:13.000 You can see these things.

01:57:15.000 I feel like that about teaching.

01:57:16.000 I'm sure.

01:57:17.000 I feel like when you make a mistake, it's so public.

01:57:22.000 I got a lot of smart kids taking my class, and if I screw up, they are on it.

01:57:27.000 They'll call me out.

01:57:28.000 And I grow so much from that.

01:57:30.000 But I realize when you're teaching something, that's when you really...

01:57:34.000 I go in there, I think I understand exactly what I'm talking about.

01:57:37.000 And then I'll try to explain it, or someone asks me a question, that's when I realize I don't understand it as well as I thought I did.

01:57:43.000 And they kind of call you out and challenge you.

01:57:45.000 But that's, you know, you grow from that, and you know you're growing from that, and that feels great.

01:57:52.000 And it's fun, and I get to, you know...

01:57:55.000 And people avoid that, and that's what tenure's all about.

01:57:58.000 They do, but it's a risk.

01:57:59.000 I mean, you're taking a risk.

01:58:00.000 Well, 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.

01:58:08.000 Well, you're 17 years old. 1.00

01:58:09.000 You're a fucking kid. 1.00

01:58:10.000 Oh, yeah. 1.00

01:58:10.000 18 years old. 1.00

01:58:10.000 You're a kid. 1.00

01:58:12.000 When you see someone like that, what that is is a person who's gotten too soft.

01:58:18.000 They've gotten comfortable.

01:58:19.000 You see that with comedians.

01:58:21.000 You see that with fighters.

01:58:22.000 Well, insecurity prevents that, I think, for a lot of people.

01:58:25.000 It prevents it for me.

01:58:26.000 I am always worried I'm going to screw something up, so I work my ass off.

01:58:30.000 Well, that's not insecurity, that's awareness.

01:58:34.000 It is a part of insecurity, but it's all-encompassing.

01:58:39.000 It's awareness.

01:58:41.000 You're aware.

01:58:43.000 Thank you for putting it there.

01:58:45.000 I'm very insecure in that way. 0.98

01:58:47.000 I fucking hate everything I do. 0.98

01:58:49.000 But doesn't that mean you work harder and you prepare more? 0.99

01:58:52.000 It's why.

01:58:53.000 Yeah.

01:58:53.000 And I have these conversations with friends that are comedians and they think that somehow or another I'm confident because I'm successful.

01:59:00.000 I'm like, you got to listen to me, man. 0.99

01:59:01.000 I fucking hate everything I do. 0.99

01:59:04.000 Everything. 1.00

01:59:04.000 It's a constant process of hating everything I do. 1.00

01:59:08.000 Which keeps you working your ass off, right? 0.82

01:59:10.000 Exactly.

01:59:11.000 I'm the worst critic I could ever...

01:59:13.000 Other critics, people who criticize me, Congratulations, but you're not going to put a dent on what I do to me.

01:59:21.000 What I do to me is horrible, and I do it all the time, every day.

01:59:25.000 Around the comedy or around the podcasting?

01:59:28.000 Everything.

01:59:28.000 About being a husband and a father?

01:59:30.000 Everything.

01:59:31.000 I'm constantly evaluating could I do it better.

01:59:33.000 Everything.

01:59:34.000 Constantly.

01:59:35.000 All day long.

01:59:36.000 I'm always like, in interaction with someone, if they say, have a nice day, I'm like, you too.

01:59:42.000 I'm like, maybe I could have done that better.

01:59:44.000 Maybe I should have said- Did you ever have social anxiety?

01:59:47.000 Yeah, when I was younger, yeah for sure.

01:59:49.000 Like in high school?

01:59:50.000 Oh yeah, yeah.

01:59:51.000 Were you kind of always evaluating your social behavior?

01:59:55.000 Well, I grew up in a bunch of different places.

01:59:57.000 Right, right, right.

01:59:58.000 And 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.

02:00:12.000 I was back and forth.

02:00:12.000 And then L.A., yeah.

02:00:15.000 So I lived in a lot of places.

02:00:17.000 And 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.

02:00:28.000 But we all agreed, you know, we're all right wing or we're all this or we like the Green Bay Packers. 0.99

02:00:34.000 I didn't have any of that shit. 0.99

02:00:35.000 So I had to look at things from my own perspective and try to figure out what... 1.00

02:00:40.000 And I would see things in people and go, well, that's kind of fucked up. 0.96

02:00:43.000 And see things in other people and go, man, I wish I was like her. 0.93

02:00:46.000 And these kind of interactions shaped me.

02:00:50.000 But until I found martial arts, I was ruthlessly...

02:00:55.000 Like shy and nervous.

02:00:58.000 Did humor get you out of that?

02:01:00.000 No.

02:01:00.000 Humor didn't come...

02:01:01.000 That came later.

02:01:02.000 Humor came way later.

02:01:03.000 Yeah.

02:01:03.000 Wow.

02:01:04.000 Yeah.

02:01:05.000 I didn't...

02:01:05.000 If you talk to anyone I went to high school with and they're like, hey, do you think Joe Rogan would have been a funny comedian?

02:01:10.000 They're like, what the fuck are you talking about? 0.98

02:01:12.000 They would have never thought I was funny. 0.99

02:01:14.000 I wasn't funny.

02:01:15.000 I wasn't funny until I started fighting.

02:01:20.000 I'm really good friends with a guy named Steve Graham.

02:01:24.000 He was 30 when I was 15. He was a student at the same place where I was training.

02:01:32.000 He was a really exceptional guy.

02:01:34.000 He was on the US ski team.

02:01:36.000 He was a flight pilot in the Air Force.

02:01:43.000 Ophthalmologist.

02:01:43.000 Amazing person.

02:01:45.000 Just amazing, super accelerated person.

02:01:48.000 He just goes for things.

02:01:51.000 He always has been this guy that has no complaints, just go forward.

02:01:55.000 And he talked me into doing comedy when I was like 19, 20 years old.

02:02:01.000 When you weren't yet funny?

02:02:03.000 I was funny to them.

02:02:05.000 But I thought I was a psychopath because all I wanted to do was fight.

02:02:09.000 And my thought was like we would all go to these tournaments.

02:02:13.000 We would travel either by airplane or we'd travel all over the country to compete in these tournaments.

02:02:18.000 We'd fly to Ohio and California and all these different places.

02:02:21.000 And everybody was so scared.

02:02:22.000 It was so scary.

02:02:23.000 Because you'd see your friends get kicked in the head and knocked unconscious.

02:02:27.000 It's really freaky.

02:02:28.000 Especially when you're young.

02:02:29.000 And so it was like gallows humor.

02:02:32.000 I would make fun of everything. 0.99

02:02:34.000 So I would do my impressions of my instructor having sex with one of the other students. 0.98

02:02:40.000 I would just try to make everybody laugh. 0.96

02:02:45.000 And then he pulled me aside and he said, I think you should be a comedian.

02:02:50.000 And I was like, you don't...

02:02:51.000 I go, you think I'm funny because you like me. 1.00

02:02:53.000 I go, but other people are going to think I'm an asshole. 0.99

02:02:56.000 Because our comedy is crazy person's comedy. 0.99

02:02:59.000 It's savage comedy. 0.91

02:03:00.000 Like, we're crazy people.

02:03:01.000 We're choosing with no money on the line.

02:03:03.000 There was no... 0.99

02:03:05.000 Career 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.

02:03:13.000 It's a crazy thing to do and but By making the team laugh like I would make them laugh.

02:03:19.000 Yeah, I'd make them laugh in the locker room like we were about to spar We're putting cups on wood laugh.

02:03:24.000 Yeah, and so that's how I became a comedian.

02:03:28.000 I became a comedian through fear and Because comedy was a release valve for something way scarier.

02:03:35.000 Because for everybody else, comedy is really scary.

02:03:37.000 Getting on stage is scary. 0.95

02:03:39.000 But the only thing scarier is getting kicked in the liver.

02:03:42.000 Yeah, so you have this kind of fear, overcoming fear theme.

02:03:48.000 Yes.

02:03:49.000 And you're working really hard to feel in control of it somehow.

02:03:55.000 There's no control.

02:03:56.000 You never have control.

02:03:58.000 But you constantly feel it.

02:03:58.000 You constantly...

02:03:59.000 It's like the waves of the ocean.

02:04:02.000 You ride them and you try to achieve balance.

02:04:06.000 You try to achieve balance and whatever you can do in order to stay upright, make sure you do that.

02:04:14.000 Do you think everybody feels this on some level?

02:04:18.000 I don't know.

02:04:20.000 I don't know.

02:04:21.000 Maybe they're not in touch with it?

02:04:23.000 I know a lot of people do.

02:04:25.000 There's a lot of people I know like me.

02:04:26.000 There's a lot of people like me.

02:04:28.000 I know those people from jiu-jitsu.

02:04:31.000 I know them from Thai boxing and taekwondo and all the martial arts.

02:04:36.000 There's people like me.

02:04:37.000 There's not a lot, though.

02:04:38.000 It's because it's not that they couldn't be a lot.

02:04:42.000 It's that they haven't inserted themselves into that thing and understand and learn the rewards of that.

02:04:47.000 Instead, they're fearful of it or they're dismissive of it.

02:04:50.000 They look at it like it's a brutish path, you know, that's a terrible person's path to me.

02:04:55.000 It's not.

02:04:56.000 It's not that.

02:04:57.000 I mean, just thinking about just working at Harvard, I know a lot of super successful people.

02:05:03.000 And many of them, I think, are on some level fear-driven about not being good enough somehow.

02:05:10.000 And 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...

02:05:17.000 Sense of having to be one of the best absolutely having to but at the end of the day like why?

02:05:25.000 Here'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. 0.52

02:05:41.000 What are we trying to do?

02:05:42.000 We're trying to get through this thing and With the best, the most good feelings and the least bad feelings.

02:05:51.000 We're trying to get through this thing and figure out what it is.

02:05:56.000 And 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.

02:06:15.000 And instead, we sort of fortify our tribe.

02:06:21.000 And we, you know, we fortify our positions and we get aggressive about our stances on things.

02:06:26.000 We fight against people who disagree with us or differ from us.

02:06:30.000 We don't realize that often we're fighting against ourselves, especially when it's not important.

02:06:35.000 The best strategy is to just communicate with openness and kindness.

02:06:40.000 And we don't do that very often because we're scared.

02:06:43.000 And that is a battle in and of itself.

02:06:45.000 That's another kind of fight.

02:06:47.000 The 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.

02:07:00.000 It's very important.

02:07:02.000 Inject in here this.

02:07:04.000 So I'm tearing up again.

02:07:06.000 And 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.

02:07:19.000 Someone tell you specifically not to get emotional when you come on here?

02:07:21.000 Yes, because I said I'm going to cry.

02:07:23.000 Who told you that?

02:07:24.000 I'm not going to say.

02:07:24.000 You don't have to, but listen, they're wrong.

02:07:26.000 Someone who's like a very successful, high-profile person.

02:07:30.000 But they're different from you.

02:07:32.000 And in teaching, I do worry that it will discredit me because I'm not as much of an authority, but I've thought about it a lot.

02:07:40.000 And it's really, it's just perceived as masculine, not to get emotional, to sort of keep your emotions in check.

02:07:48.000 And masculine is perceived as the authoritative sex.

02:07:52.000 So I'm trying to own it and say that, you know what?

02:07:56.000 It's hard for me to own it because it's embarrassing to me.

02:07:58.000 But I feel like this is the way I am.

02:08:01.000 I am a woman.

02:08:02.000 And I also know what I'm talking about.

02:08:04.000 And I'm also authoritative.

02:08:05.000 And students are responding.

02:08:07.000 They feel that somebody who's open and real It creates a trusting environment for them to open up to new ideas.

02:08:16.000 So that's just a different way of doing something.

02:08:18.000 And maybe it's a low testosterone way. 0.97

02:08:19.000 But the way you're being right now, you have a shitload of testosterone. 0.98

02:08:24.000 That is obvious. 0.53

02:08:24.000 And you're so open and raw and emotional. 0.53

02:08:28.000 And I love what you're doing.

02:08:30.000 And I love what you're talking about.

02:08:32.000 Yeah.

02:08:35.000 It's a great sort of, you're exemplifying how sex differences work.

02:08:41.000 You'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,

02:08:59.000 T, 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.

02:09:14.000 By understanding this hormone, we can understand each other and hopefully accept our differences.

02:09:20.000 Yes.

02:09:23.000 I don't think...

02:09:25.000 I think our differences are unique and they're fascinating.

02:09:30.000 But I don't think it's everything. 0.98

02:09:32.000 And I think that this idea that somehow or another emotions are weakness is for fools. 0.99

02:09:37.000 Yeah. 0.97

02:09:38.000 I'm very emotional.

02:09:39.000 Well, you're showing it.

02:09:40.000 You're showing it right now.

02:09:43.000 I'm emotional.

02:09:44.000 I've always been emotional.

02:09:45.000 My whole life.

02:09:47.000 I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

02:09:49.000 I don't believe it.

02:09:51.000 I don't believe it.

02:09:52.000 No, thank you.

02:09:53.000 I think it's fuel.

02:09:55.000 You're going to give license to more men, I hope, to feel that it's okay to express their emotions.

02:10:00.000 I think it's hard for men to sometimes get in touch with their emotions.

02:10:03.000 I think some of that is due to the hormone, but some of that is due to culture, and they interact.

02:10:08.000 They're scared that they don't have a tribe.

02:10:11.000 Or that they're not in control, maybe.

02:10:13.000 It's also one of the beautiful things about martial arts is that you do it with a bunch of people.

02:10:19.000 You don't do it in a vacuum.

02:10:21.000 You don't get good in a vacuum.

02:10:23.000 You know, and because of that, you struggle together.

02:10:26.000 And it's one of the things that I love the most about jujitsu is because you can do it without hurting each other.

02:10:31.000 Because you're not hitting each other.

02:10:32.000 Yeah.

02:10:33.000 You're just strangling each other.

02:10:34.000 And like if somebody gets me, I just tap out and then I go, good job.

02:10:38.000 And then you keep going.

02:10:39.000 Wait, tap out?

02:10:40.000 Tap out means you give.

02:10:40.000 I've heard you talk about that and that means you're like uncle.

02:10:43.000 Yeah.

02:10:43.000 Right.

02:10:44.000 If someone gets me in an arm bar and they extend my arm and it's in trouble, in training, they're very kind.

02:10:52.000 Like they won't break your arm.

02:10:53.000 Everybody will just hold it.

02:10:54.000 Everyone knows how to do it.

02:10:55.000 Most of the time when I roll, I'll roll with like a black belt, right? 0.86

02:10:59.000 Roll, roll.

02:11:00.000 I'm sorry.

02:11:01.000 Roll is jujitsu sparring.

02:11:03.000 So if you're sparring, what it is is like this open-ended, it's almost like a conversation of techniques.

02:11:09.000 It's like you say this and I say that.

02:11:12.000 Helson Gracie, who's a very famous jiu-jitsu instructor, he's a part of the greatest lineage of all jiu-jitsu, which is the Gracie family.

02:11:22.000 And he said, this is jiu-jitsu.

02:11:24.000 He's like, I say this and you say that and I do this and you do that forever.

02:11:32.000 And 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.

02:11:43.000 In 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.

02:11:59.000 And you feel this deep bond with them.

02:12:01.000 Yes, deep bond, deep bond, deep bond.

02:12:03.000 I have friends that I fought with to this day.

02:12:06.000 Well, one of them is dead now.

02:12:08.000 He died a few years ago.

02:12:09.000 From...

02:12:10.000 No, he died from...

02:12:11.000 He got electrocuted.

02:12:12.000 It was crazy.

02:12:13.000 I found about it in the news.

02:12:15.000 But 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.

02:12:26.000 We'd travel and...

02:12:29.000 It was a weird bond, you know, like we trained together.

02:12:33.000 I'm sorry.

02:12:34.000 No, it's okay.

02:12:34.000 No, I'm sorry.

02:12:36.000 No, it's okay.

02:12:38.000 But these bonds are through experience, and it's through the experience of difficult things.

02:12:45.000 There's so many people in this life that are looking to retirement.

02:12:49.000 They're looking to getting out of the game, and they're looking to all these things.

02:12:56.000 There's a thing that's happening with all of us.

02:13:01.000 Where we're trying to figure out ourselves and we're trying to find truth.

02:13:06.000 And you seek truth through combat.

02:13:09.000 You seek truth through these very difficult things.

02:13:13.000 But also through marathons.

02:13:14.000 Marathons is combat.

02:13:16.000 When 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.

02:13:25.000 You are in combat. 0.98

02:13:27.000 When you're in fucking mile 24, you're in combat. 0.99

02:13:31.000 No, but I love that part. 0.99

02:13:32.000 I do spinning at home.

02:13:34.000 I don't know if I can say the name of the company, but whatever.

02:13:36.000 Peloton?

02:13:36.000 Yes.

02:13:37.000 And I get depressed.

02:13:38.000 No, I get depressed if I don't.

02:13:40.000 They were one of our sponsors for a long time.

02:13:41.000 Oh, okay.

02:13:41.000 Like I need it.

02:13:42.000 I literally get depressed if I don't have a lot of aerobic activity.

02:13:48.000 But one of the things I love about it is that I get to that point.

02:13:52.000 I love getting to that point where I'm like, get me off this bike.

02:13:55.000 I'm drenched.

02:13:56.000 I feel like I can't go on.

02:13:58.000 And then I have somebody in my face, yes, on the screen, saying, push it, push it, push it, you can do it.

02:14:03.000 Those are the greatest moments, and I'm in ecstasy, and then I get off and I feel like a rock star.

02:14:08.000 What did I do?

02:14:08.000 I just had 45 minutes an hour on the bike, and it's over, but I have that.

02:14:12.000 But that's like a Zoom conversation. 0.89

02:14:14.000 I have that.

02:14:14.000 And I need it.

02:14:15.000 You really should go to an actual spin class.

02:14:17.000 No, no, no.

02:14:17.000 I've been to a spin class.

02:14:19.000 I don't like all the sweating.

02:14:20.000 It's too much sweatiness.

02:14:22.000 Too many people?

02:14:24.000 I don't know.

02:14:25.000 Well, with COVID, I got injured running, so I had to do something and I got the bike.

02:14:30.000 But it is a little bit of that every day.

02:14:34.000 But COVID is eventually going to go away, right?

02:14:35.000 Of course it is.

02:14:36.000 Get back in there.

02:14:36.000 But 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?

02:14:44.000 I just want to say that that's in my nature.

02:14:47.000 I have a genetic predisposition.

02:14:48.000 I have it on one side of my family.

02:14:50.000 And I write about this in the book.

02:14:51.000 Because 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.

02:14:59.000 And if you say, if you write a book... 0.99

02:15:01.000 Whoa, who the fuck would say that to you? 0.99

02:15:03.000 They say that if people believe that if you... 1.00

02:15:08.000 Discuss the effects of, say, genes on behavior, then it implies that that behavior is immutable, that then we're fucked. 0.93

02:15:18.000 Then 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. 0.95

02:15:25.000 In their biology, right? 0.98

02:15:27.000 So it's bullshit because you can have a genetic predisposition to lots of different things. 0.98

02:15:33.000 There are things that are in your nature, like I do with depression. 0.99

02:15:36.000 But there are things that I can do in my environment.

02:15:38.000 There are ways that I can create my environment, so I keep that at bay.

02:15:42.000 But 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.

02:15:53.000 I think most people are like that.

02:15:54.000 So 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.

02:16:02.000 It doesn't mean that we're stuck with any particular behavior.

02:16:05.000 It means we learn more about how we can alter our environment to reduce, say, the negative behavior.

02:16:12.000 effects of certain predispositions like high testosterone, just on the extreme end.

02:16:18.000 But I would also just like to make a plug for high testosterone also potentially having something to do with heroism, like physical heroism.

02:16:26.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:16:27.000 Listen, if the shit goes down. 0.99

02:16:29.000 You want people that understand who they are to help you. 0.99

02:16:33.000 Yeah.

02:16:33.000 You want someone who understands danger and how to get through danger.

02:16:36.000 I mean, it's true that men take more physical risks to help others.

02:16:39.000 I'm not saying women don't do physically heroic things, but there is a difference there.

02:16:43.000 There is a difference.

02:16:44.000 But here's an argument for what you're saying and for the people that are saying these things to you as if you're justifying.

02:16:52.000 Well, they write about that.

02:16:53.000 But let me explain this.

02:16:54.000 The reason why they're doing this is because they're not talking to you.

02:16:57.000 It's an ineffective way of communication.

02:16:59.000 You're talking in a way where you're writing things down in a vacuum.

02:17:03.000 And you're talking to someone who doesn't get to...

02:17:05.000 If they sat in front of you, they would never think you're justifying rape. 0.99

02:17:09.000 This 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. 0.99

02:17:18.000 Those people are just doing... 0.97

02:17:20.000 I mean, it's not as extreme as...

02:17:21.000 They're expressing themselves in a very...

02:17:23.000 It's a very short-sighted, ineffective way.

02:17:28.000 The best way to express themselves in that way, if you're going to be accusatory, is to communicate with someone.

02:17:35.000 Because then you get an understanding.

02:17:36.000 And you would say, hey, do you think that rape is justified because of high testosterone?

02:17:41.000 You're like, no!

02:17:43.000 No, that's not what I'm saying.

02:17:44.000 We're just talking about, like, look... 0.99

02:17:46.000 If we go back 100,000 years ago, what the fuck was rape about? 0.99

02:17:49.000 200,000 years ago, let's look at chimps. 0.99

02:17:52.000 Let's look at higher primates.

02:17:54.000 Why is it happening?

02:17:56.000 What is it?

02:17:57.000 What's causing it?

02:17:58.000 It's obviously negative, but what is it?

02:18:01.000 And then they would go, oh, okay.

02:18:02.000 If they were honest and they had personal sovereignty, they could communicate about you objectively and honestly.

02:18:11.000 But the problem is how few people have been through the fire. 0.90

02:18:15.000 We 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. 0.95

02:18:23.000 Well, that is interesting. 0.99

02:18:25.000 It is easy to point fingers at other people instead of looking at your own...

02:18:31.000 Instead of developing character. 1.00

02:18:34.000 When 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? 1.00

02:18:43.000 At least one. 1.00

02:18:44.000 You got one idiot. 1.00

02:18:46.000 So you got 300 million people. 1.00

02:18:47.000 You got 3 million fucking idiots. 1.00

02:18:50.000 That's a lot of people on Twitter. 1.00

02:18:52.000 That'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.

02:19:09.000 And part of the problem is they're not with other people. 0.76

02:19:12.000 No, but you're right.

02:19:13.000 It's a lot of judgment.

02:19:14.000 Yeah, but it's a lot of judgment without love and compassion.

02:19:17.000 And trying to understand.

02:19:18.000 Yes.

02:19:18.000 And really asking questions and trying to understand where the other person is coming from.

02:19:23.000 Because when you do, it makes sense.

02:19:25.000 Right.

02:19:26.000 I mean, people who disagree with you, there's usually reasons why they do.

02:19:30.000 And it's interesting to find out why.

02:19:33.000 Or people who behave differently or have different values.

02:19:35.000 Of course, first we should inquire, where are you coming from?

02:19:39.000 Right.

02:19:39.000 I didn't like the whole, I guess I am going to inject politics, but the sort of shaming of Trump voters.

02:19:46.000 Instead 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. 0.98

02:19:58.000 Well, he was uniquely problematic, and I think this is where this works out. 0.99

02:20:02.000 The problem is we want a quick fix to all the things that ail us.

02:20:06.000 And 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.

02:20:29.000 Maybe there's some merit in some of his fiscal decisions, and maybe there's some merit in some of...

02:20:35.000 When more things come down about China, maybe there's some merit in the way that he deals with things with international business.

02:20:42.000 Maybe.

02:20:43.000 It's a little too nuanced.

02:20:44.000 Right.

02:20:44.000 But we need someone who is a compassionate, balanced human being who we respect and love to express similar values, but maybe with more nuance.

02:20:57.000 Yeah.

02:20:58.000 No, I agree.

02:20:58.000 But also, I think we don't get anywhere when we just shut down the conversation and shame people who disagree with us.

02:21:05.000 I know, but people want to be heard, and the only way to get heard is to do that.

02:21:08.000 I mean, how many people that are on Twitter that are race hustlers are really just race hustlers because they found a niche?

02:21:14.000 Like, if you just tell all white people they're racists, that's how you get attention. 1.00

02:21:19.000 And if you tell all men they're pieces of shit, or all straight people, they can go get fucked. 1.00

02:21:24.000 Or all white people, you want to shoot them in the head. 1.00

02:21:26.000 I mean, that's literally... 1.00

02:21:27.000 Oh, you know, about that that just happened.

02:21:29.000 Hilarious.

02:21:29.000 Oh, I was all over that.

02:21:31.000 Hilarious.

02:21:31.000 Yeah, but what happened to her?

02:21:33.000 Nothing, right?

02:21:33.000 Nothing.

02:21:34.000 Nothing happened to her. 1.00

02:21:35.000 Imagine if this same woman said, I just want to find all Chinese people and shoot them in the head. 1.00

02:21:41.000 Well, she addressed that in her response. 1.00

02:21:43.000 What did she say?

02:21:44.000 That it's not equivalent.

02:21:46.000 Why?

02:21:48.000 I don't want to go there.

02:21:49.000 It doesn't matter.

02:21:50.000 I dare not speak about that topic.

02:21:51.000 We don't need to.

02:21:54.000 It's just people wanting to be heard, and they probably don't deserve to be.

02:21:59.000 And so they find a way to be, and that way is to be inflammatory.

02:22:02.000 That way is to be...

02:22:03.000 You 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.

02:22:10.000 Next thing you know, you're front page news.

02:22:12.000 You know?

02:22:13.000 And that's what's going on.

02:22:14.000 You're all over Twitter.

02:22:15.000 You're trending.

02:22:16.000 Woo! 0.99

02:22:16.000 Congratulations. 0.99

02:22:16.000 Where do you think it's going to go? 0.99

02:22:18.000 Mind reading.

02:22:20.000 That's where I think it's going to go. 0.94

02:22:21.000 I 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. 0.99

02:22:38.000 Oh, somebody was just giving you shit about saying that. 0.99

02:22:40.000 You had somebody on who was saying that that was ridiculous. 1.00

02:22:44.000 Oh, that's normal. 0.99

02:22:46.000 Mind reading was ridiculous. 0.85

02:22:47.000 I don't remember who that was. 0.94

02:22:48.000 Most people. 0.99

02:22:49.000 Look, I'm a ridiculous person. 1.00

02:22:51.000 I'm patently ridiculous. 1.00

02:22:53.000 What's ridiculous? 0.99

02:22:54.000 Everything.

02:22:54.000 Everything about me.

02:22:55.000 Who I am, what I've done, all of it.

02:22:57.000 Fill in the blanks.

02:22:58.000 I'll agree with you. 0.99

02:22:59.000 It's all ridiculous. 0.97

02:23:01.000 Yeah, I'm not resistant to that.

02:23:03.000 I 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.

02:23:15.000 And I think that's one of the best ways.

02:23:17.000 To figure out intent, right? 0.95

02:23:19.000 Because 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? 0.90

02:23:25.000 Well, you're trying to label a person without that person being able to respond. 0.97

02:23:31.000 You're shaming a person and boxing a person into some deplorable category, into some unredeemable category.

02:23:38.000 Like, what are you doing?

02:23:40.000 Like, what are you doing?

02:23:40.000 You're trying to paint someone in a way.

02:23:42.000 You're trying to describe them in a way that they can't get out of that box.

02:23:49.000 Future.

02:23:49.000 Chaos.

02:23:50.000 I 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?

02:24:02.000 I think you're going to be able to teach online.

02:24:04.000 I think teaching online is the future because I think that online...

02:24:07.000 It's awful.

02:24:08.000 It's awful.

02:24:09.000 Teaching online was so hard for me. 0.99

02:24:12.000 Oh, you mean through Zoom and shit? 0.96

02:24:14.000 Oh my god, it was just so hard and I was just dying to be with my students in person. 1.00

02:24:18.000 The problem is the institutions themselves, they're cowards. 0.69

02:24:22.000 I know, but yeah, why? 0.95

02:24:25.000 It's very hard to really make sense of.

02:24:27.000 Because those are the vocal minorities.

02:24:29.000 Okay, so people need to stand up.

02:24:31.000 People need to stand up.

02:24:32.000 But it's too hard because you could lose your career.

02:24:35.000 Yeah, but if everybody does it, then...

02:24:38.000 Listen, Cornel West didn't have tenure.

02:24:41.000 Do you know how crazy that is?

02:24:42.000 Yes, I know about that.

02:24:43.000 Cornel West didn't have tenure.

02:24:45.000 When I found out about that, I'm like, that is insane.

02:24:49.000 He's one of the proudest people I've ever had on my podcast because I've always been a giant fan of his. 0.74

02:24:53.000 And 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.

02:25:03.000 The contributions that guy's made.

02:25:05.000 And 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?

02:25:15.000 Like, who?

02:25:16.000 What?

02:25:17.000 So you're just talking about people not standing up for what they think is right.

02:25:20.000 People are scared of consequences.

02:25:22.000 They're scared.

02:25:24.000 They're scared of consequences.

02:25:25.000 They're scared of the mob.

02:25:27.000 They're scared.

02:25:29.000 The problem is these institutions, they're subsidized by the government.

02:25:37.000 Also, there's this weird financial situation attached to them where it's the only thing that you can't get out of if you go bankrupt.

02:25:45.000 It's student loans.

02:25:47.000 So you get out of debt.

02:25:48.000 I'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. 0.98

02:25:56.000 And you know what the most depressing shit that I've ever read? 0.98

02:25:59.000 Not the most, but it's right up there. 0.99

02:26:01.000 I read about this guy who was getting Social Security, and he was getting Social Security docked by the government because he owed student loans.

02:26:10.000 Oh, ouch.

02:26:10.000 So it's over.

02:26:11.000 The game's over.

02:26:13.000 Can I make a segue to the scared thing?

02:26:15.000 So 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.

02:26:29.000 And so I work really hard to try to understand the truth and to convey that to students.

02:26:34.000 And 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?

02:26:51.000 So can I just read what one student wrote?

02:26:54.000 Yeah, for sure.

02:26:54.000 Because 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.

02:27:04.000 Something that I learned in class changed my attitude and assumptions surrounding genetic differences of sexual differentiation and the naturalistic fallacy.

02:27:13.000 So I'm just going to say that the naturalistic fallacy, do you know what that is?

02:27:16.000 No.

02:27:16.000 It'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.

02:27:34.000 Woo! 0.99

02:27:38.000 Woo! 0.99

02:27:50.000 Sorry, 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.

02:27:59.000 I have a lot of students like that.

02:28:01.000 Who just feel bad about who they are.

02:28:03.000 Needless to say, okay, so that was the worst day of her life.

02:28:06.000 Imagine telling your parents that you love someone and that's the worst day of your life.

02:28:12.000 Okay.

02:28:13.000 That's so sad.

02:28:13.000 After many years of therapy, I'm in a better place, but I never stopped feeling that something was wrong with me until this class.

02:28:19.000 When I told them, they actually brought up what I now know to be the naturalistic fallacy.

02:28:23.000 They told me that what I was doing was not found in nature and thus it was wrong and was shunned.

02:28:29.000 Even though I never believed, okay, blah, blah, blah, blah.

02:28:34.000 I'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.

02:28:41.000 But I never understood the biology of why people felt like they were born into the wrong gender or didn't fit a mold.

02:28:47.000 But 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.

02:28:56.000 Gender 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.

02:29:07.000 So 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.

02:29:34.000 Learn how to learn the truth and how to critically evaluate evidence, how important that is to them.

02:29:40.000 And I just want...

02:29:41.000 I 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...

02:29:51.000 Pretend that sex isn't real or testosterone doesn't matter or that genes don't matter.

02:29:56.000 Environment and culture matter too, but it all works together to produce the variation that we see and that we have.

02:30:03.000 And it doesn't mean we have to celebrate anything.

02:30:05.000 You know, it just means we have to understand how it all works.

02:30:10.000 But using science or art or whatever else as a tool, but let's not distort the science.

02:30:17.000 Yeah, and it's one of the most depressing aspects of that thing you just read was the idea that the parents didn't...

02:30:27.000 Look, their kid is in love.

02:30:29.000 Yeah, but science helped her accept herself.

02:30:31.000 I understand that, but that's not what's sad to me.

02:30:34.000 What's sad to me is that science failed, or someone, education, I should say, failed the parents.

02:30:39.000 Well, but religion plays a role in their...

02:30:42.000 I know, but even that...

02:30:44.000 Jesus Christ.

02:30:46.000 Yeah.

02:30:46.000 LOL. 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.

02:31:06.000 Yeah.

02:31:20.000 They thought this person as a visionary because they could see things as both male and female perspective.

02:31:27.000 And they had a word for it.

02:31:28.000 I can't remember what the word is.

02:31:29.000 But this person recognized that there was this place that they should go to have this battle and they had a vision.

02:31:39.000 And 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. 0.87

02:31:48.000 They wound up killing like 80 soldiers.

02:31:51.000 They tricked them.

02:31:52.000 They had like 10 Native Americans.

02:31:54.000 It's on this podcast, the Meat Eater podcast that my friend Steve Rinella has and it's a really interesting story.

02:31:59.000 This guy talks about how they set a trap and these 10 Native Americans led these soldiers up and they wound up killing them.

02:32:10.000 What's interesting to me is there was like 10,000 people waiting for these soldiers and they all killed them.

02:32:16.000 At that point in time, it was a suicide run.

02:32:21.000 They 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. 0.97

02:32:35.000 And that coincides with the Battle of Little Bighorn and a lot of the other battles that went on.

02:32:42.000 It's like these are the last gasps of the Native American empire that existed in this continent.

02:32:49.000 But the way they looked at Native Americans, the way they looked at rather transgender people is fascinating to me.

02:32:55.000 They 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. 0.98

02:33:04.000 They didn't look at it like, oh, he's a sissy. 0.96

02:33:07.000 He likes dressing up like a girl. 0.99

02:33:09.000 Or, oh, look at her, that bull dyke likes wearing men's pants. 1.00

02:33:13.000 They didn't look at it that way.

02:33:14.000 But these are people who didn't take hormones, right?

02:33:16.000 These are people who just felt...

02:33:17.000 Exactly.

02:33:18.000 We didn't have hormones.

02:33:19.000 That's interesting that you feel like you're biological sex, but you can be comfortable in your body.

02:33:34.000 If you're a natal male, maybe you can be comfortable expressing femininity. 0.84

02:33:40.000 Why is natal better than biological?

02:33:44.000 Because male is biological.

02:33:46.000 So I think biological male is redundant.

02:33:49.000 And so I think natal male...

02:33:51.000 But wait a minute.

02:33:51.000 But female is biological too.

02:33:53.000 Right.

02:33:54.000 So biological female or biological male is a differential.

02:33:57.000 So why not just say male and female?

02:33:57.000 So you could just say male and female.

02:33:58.000 Well, you're saying biological because you've made this concession that...

02:34:02.000 Well, I'm not saying biological.

02:34:02.000 I am.

02:34:02.000 Yes.

02:34:03.000 Because I made this concession that someone is transgender.

02:34:05.000 Well, then you can say trans man or trans woman.

02:34:09.000 Why does it matter?

02:34:10.000 You know who says biological male, biological female?

02:34:13.000 Buck Angel, who's a transgender male.

02:34:17.000 He's great.

02:34:18.000 And he uses that term, which is why I use that term.

02:34:21.000 Because he wants to be clear with everyone what his biological sex is.

02:34:26.000 So he's emphasizing that he's a biological female, and that's fine. 0.88

02:34:32.000 But I think female means biology. 1.00

02:34:36.000 So I guess I feel like I don't need to specify that that's an aspect of our biology.

02:34:43.000 If you're female, that's biological. 1.00

02:34:45.000 Right.

02:34:47.000 Right, but you're making this distinction.

02:34:51.000 Biologically female. 0.76

02:34:52.000 Yeah.

02:34:53.000 Biologically male. 0.92

02:34:54.000 XX, XY. But why not just say female? 0.88

02:34:57.000 Well, because they're transgender. 1.00

02:34:58.000 So even though they're biologically, we're talking about the physical differentiation, right?

02:35:04.000 We're talking about this male has a uterus. 0.98

02:35:07.000 This male has a vagina. 1.00

02:35:09.000 No, no. 1.00

02:35:09.000 A male doesn't have a uterus. 1.00

02:35:11.000 What are you talking about?

02:35:12.000 Biological female. 0.93

02:35:14.000 Oh, I thought you said this male has a uterus. 0.98

02:35:16.000 But transgender male. 0.86

02:35:17.000 So this male has a uterus. 1.00

02:35:19.000 This male has a vagina. 0.99

02:35:21.000 So they're a trans male. 0.99

02:35:24.000 Okay, but I wouldn't say a male under any circumstances.

02:35:27.000 You wouldn't say trans male?

02:35:28.000 I would say trans male. 1.00

02:35:29.000 What about their vagina? 1.00

02:35:33.000 Yes. 1.00

02:35:34.000 Yes.

02:35:35.000 Exactly.

02:35:35.000 That's what I'm saying.

02:35:36.000 Yeah.

02:35:36.000 So there's these hard lines that we take.

02:35:41.000 Yeah.

02:35:41.000 How do you take a hard line when someone swaps genders?

02:35:45.000 Well, it's hard because also you don't want to be – but you don't want to – right.

02:35:48.000 Sorry.

02:35:49.000 I 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.

02:36:01.000 So I chose natal, male and female, because saying biological male, to me, somehow sounds harsher to the person as a trans woman, say.

02:36:15.000 I'd rather just say, this is what you were at birth, and now you're something different.

02:36:19.000 Is this commonly accepted nomenclature, or is this just your own...

02:36:22.000 No, it's commonly accepted.

02:36:25.000 I think it's accurate.

02:36:27.000 For me, it's a way to be accurate while being as sensitive as possible, but without distorting reality.

02:36:34.000 I think that being a stickler for this stuff just clouds it even more.

02:36:40.000 Yeah, it's difficult.

02:36:42.000 Yeah, because the whole biological male... 0.99

02:36:46.000 You know, with a vagina. 1.00

02:36:49.000 Biological female with a penis. 1.00

02:36:51.000 What are we doing? 1.00

02:36:53.000 Well, it's confusing.

02:36:54.000 We're getting confused.

02:36:56.000 There's a lot of confusion.

02:36:56.000 But here's the thing.

02:36:57.000 It's okay to be confused.

02:36:59.000 What's most important is how we treat each other.

02:37:01.000 But it's also most important how we treat biological females involved in sports. 1.00

02:37:05.000 That's important too.

02:37:06.000 And this is where I get crazy because I have all daughters.

02:37:09.000 I have three daughters.

02:37:10.000 So the idea of protecting biological females when it comes to athletics or anything else is very important to me.

02:37:18.000 And 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. 0.99

02:37:30.000 Place where they wish they were a biological female, but they're not. 0.99

02:37:35.000 It's not fair.

02:37:36.000 I 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.

02:37:50.000 There's lots of evidence, so you're 100%.

02:37:54.000 Well, 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. 1.00

02:38:05.000 There was no drug testing.

02:38:06.000 When was that?

02:38:07.000 In the early days.

02:38:09.000 Okay.

02:38:09.000 Whoa!

02:38:10.000 The UFC started in 1993, and female MMA didn't start until the early 2000s. 0.98

02:38:16.000 Well, 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.

02:38:29.000 Acne and facial hair.

02:38:30.000 Oh, acne, facial hair.

02:38:32.000 You can only get the voice back with surgery if you decide.

02:38:37.000 Yeah, that voice is theirs forever.

02:38:39.000 And it's so obvious.

02:38:41.000 It's so obvious.

02:38:42.000 You 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. 0.97

02:38:52.000 And that really signals masculinity so potently.

02:38:56.000 Yes, it does.

02:38:58.000 It does.

02:38:59.000 And 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. 1.00

02:39:09.000 Yeah, it was a real problem. 0.99

02:39:11.000 And just getting the crap. 1.00

02:39:13.000 Yeah, getting the fuck beat out of them. 1.00

02:39:15.000 And that was pre-transgender MMA fighters fighting. 0.99

02:39:19.000 And it's only been one that I know of.

02:39:21.000 There'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.

02:39:29.000 Yeah.

02:39:30.000 In Thailand?

02:39:31.000 Yes.

02:39:31.000 I've heard more than one of them that started off as a male and then transitioned and continued to compete as males.

02:39:37.000 And 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.

02:39:47.000 Does everybody tell what ladyboys are? 0.97

02:39:50.000 Oh, I think everybody knows.

02:39:53.000 Their culture is different.

02:39:56.000 They're far more acceptant of transgender people in Thailand for whatever reason.

02:40:02.000 One 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,

02:40:18.000 then she started losing because she was competing against males without testosterone. 0.99

02:40:25.000 And she wasn't allowed to?

02:40:28.000 No, but she didn't want to.

02:40:29.000 She was a woman at that time, right?

02:40:31.000 So she switched over.

02:40:33.000 It's crazy.

02:40:35.000 Yeah.

02:40:36.000 Yeah.

02:40:37.000 Yeah, I'm hoping one day people that have this sort of gender dysphoria are able to legitimately 100% transition.

02:40:50.000 You know, I mean, I'm hoping there's going to be a time where we understand biology far greatly.

02:40:57.000 Just imagine a time just...

02:41:02.000 300 years ago where you thought about fixing someone's ACL or repairing backs, doing back surgery.

02:41:11.000 It wasn't possible. 0.99

02:41:12.000 The things that we can do today with stem cells and with robots doing surgery, it's wild shit. 0.97

02:41:19.000 We can do brain surgery and get out the next day. 0.97

02:41:21.000 So you think we're going to be able to totally change someone's sex and someone's brain, change their brain also to match? 0.82

02:41:27.000 I think it's possible.

02:41:28.000 And you think that would be a good thing?

02:41:30.000 I think it'd be a great thing for people who want it.

02:41:32.000 What about if fewer people wanted to transition and felt like they could be super feminine in a male body? 0.79

02:41:43.000 Maybe that just won't work culturally because we're always going to have...

02:41:48.000 Sex roles. 0.96

02:41:49.000 Yeah, but maybe that's okay.

02:41:52.000 Maybe that is the move.

02:41:54.000 Maybe it won't work because if you want to be feminine, if you're going to have a beard and a deep voice, that's not going to work. 1.00

02:42:00.000 Maybe it'll work with someone who's into that shit. 1.00

02:42:04.000 What do you mean? 1.00

02:42:05.000 Oh, you mean someone who feels like I could be feminine with a deep voice?

02:42:08.000 Someone who really likes being around you when you're feminine but you have a deep voice.

02:42:12.000 There's different strokes for different folks.

02:42:14.000 That's why there's bear bars. 0.99

02:42:18.000 Some gay guys are into effeminate gay guys and some gay guys are into gorillas with a bunch of back hair. 0.99

02:42:27.000 What is that? 0.98

02:42:28.000 Well, it's because people are into different things.

02:42:31.000 I think that's one of the beautiful things about the internet is you could find other people that are also into different things.

02:42:38.000 Can 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.

02:42:52.000 Do you know anything about that?

02:42:53.000 Do you have any opinions, thoughts about that?

02:42:55.000 I have a bit about it.

02:42:57.000 What would you speculate or what do you know? 1.00

02:42:59.000 Well, I say that gay guys are guys who fuck guys. 1.00

02:43:03.000 That's all it is. 1.00

02:43:04.000 Thank you.

02:43:05.000 And stop getting confused.

02:43:07.000 Thank you.

02:43:08.000 Yeah. 0.88

02:43:09.000 And they want to have a lot of sex, on average. 0.83

02:43:13.000 On average. 0.78

02:43:14.000 Have you ever been to Boys Town in Los Angeles?

02:43:16.000 No.

02:43:16.000 It's amazing.

02:43:17.000 Just drive through.

02:43:19.000 No, but because, describe what goes on.

02:43:22.000 They're just partying.

02:43:24.000 They're just partying. 1.00

02:43:25.000 Just fucking dudes with bikinis on and baseball hats, and it's wild. 1.00

02:43:30.000 It's wild. 1.00

02:43:30.000 I mean, pre-COVID, of course. 1.00

02:43:32.000 And there's a lot of sex?

02:43:33.000 Are you saying there's a lot of sex happening?

02:43:34.000 I'm assuming, you know, when you see brass poles and dudes throwing money in the air, I'm assuming there's sex involved. 0.96

02:43:40.000 It's just, there's a bunch of freedom.

02:43:43.000 There'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. 0.99

02:43:55.000 And 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. 1.00

02:44:04.000 No, but that's the point is that people think that gay men are feminized somehow, so testosterone should be lower. 0.99

02:44:12.000 There's zero evidence that that's...

02:44:15.000 And plus, they're guys.

02:44:17.000 They have a male sexuality.

02:44:19.000 And one of the main things testosterone does is give male animals a different kind of sexual nature than female animals.

02:44:27.000 And gay men have that, and they can express it in the way that they want.

02:44:31.000 And so you see those differences, say, between two women and two men in sexual relationships or the way that they are sexually.

02:44:41.000 So there's just no evidence that there's any feminization of sexuality or that testosterone has anything wrong.

02:44:47.000 To do with that.

02:44:48.000 So I just thought, I think that's a really interesting point that a lot of people get wrong. 0.98

02:44:54.000 They're just, they're guys who like to have sex with other guys. 0.94

02:44:56.000 Yeah, it's just a sexual orientation thing. 0.97

02:44:58.000 It's like, we don't know what it is, right?

02:45:01.000 Like that study out of Italy, we don't know what it is, but it is a thing.

02:45:04.000 It's clearly real.

02:45:05.000 Right.

02:45:06.000 I 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.

02:45:19.000 Hold on.

02:45:19.000 Some.

02:45:20.000 Right, some. 1.00

02:45:20.000 Some gay men are gorillas. 1.00

02:45:22.000 Yes, so it's on average. 0.99

02:45:24.000 I've known gay men that are fighters.

02:45:27.000 Yeah.

02:45:27.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:45:27.000 You have no idea.

02:45:29.000 You have no idea.

02:45:30.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:45:31.000 And they look like fucking savages, like gladiators. 1.00

02:45:35.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:45:36.000 They just want to fuck dudes. 1.00

02:45:37.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:45:38.000 That's normal.

02:45:39.000 Yeah.

02:45:45.000 Human beings are slow to learn, and it takes a long time for us to adopt all this information and adapt.

02:45:54.000 It's going to take time, and more of these conversations have to take place.

02:45:59.000 I hope so.

02:46:00.000 Here's the other thing.

02:46:01.000 These kind of conversations between you and me, they don't happen that often.

02:46:05.000 Where people get a long form hashing out.

02:46:09.000 I mean, I just met you.

02:46:11.000 We met a few hours ago.

02:46:13.000 That's it.

02:46:13.000 And we've cried together.

02:46:15.000 A couple times.

02:46:18.000 But that's how people should be.

02:46:20.000 You should be able to do that with people.

02:46:22.000 But we don't get a chance.

02:46:24.000 Because 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.

02:46:40.000 And 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.

02:46:56.000 It's hard for people to just be. 0.88

02:46:58.000 And 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.

02:47:10.000 And they don't want to appreciate the fact that people grow, which is crazy. 0.77

02:47:13.000 And change, yeah.

02:47:14.000 Like, are you the same person you were when you were one days old? 0.99

02:47:17.000 So what the fuck are we talking about? 0.99

02:47:18.000 Right. 0.99

02:47:18.000 Like, everybody grows. 0.99

02:47:19.000 And then also when you get to a certain age, like, you know, you look at someone like, oh, he's 70 years old. 1.00

02:47:24.000 Fuck him. 1.00

02:47:25.000 Like, he's never going to figure it out. 1.00

02:47:26.000 But he's no, like, he's 70 years old.

02:47:27.000 He's alive.

02:47:28.000 He's breathing.

02:47:29.000 He can learn.

02:47:30.000 Right.

02:47:30.000 You know?

02:47:31.000 There's that thing.

02:47:32.000 And especially young people are really quick to do that. 1.00

02:47:34.000 You look at some old racist and you're like, fuck that old guy. 1.00

02:47:38.000 And you're like, that old guy was probably raised by morons and just never got a good understanding of human beings. 1.00

02:47:45.000 And here he is scared and insecure and all fucked up and wearing a fucking white robe, looking stupid. 1.00

02:47:52.000 Do you know who Daryl Davis is? 1.00

02:47:53.000 No.

02:47:54.000 Daryl Davis is a brilliant guy.

02:47:55.000 He's a blues musician.

02:47:57.000 Okay.

02:47:58.000 Who has actively converted more than 200 KKK and neo-Nazi people.

02:48:06.000 Oh, no, I do.

02:48:06.000 I do know.

02:48:07.000 I have heard of him.

02:48:08.000 One of my favorite guests I've ever had on the podcast.

02:48:10.000 Yes.

02:48:10.000 Because he's so unassuming and he's so nice.

02:48:12.000 And he's also so intelligent.

02:48:14.000 And he's not judging.

02:48:15.000 Not at all.

02:48:16.000 He's finding out where people come from.

02:48:18.000 That's how it works.

02:48:18.000 And that's how you get someone to be open to you.

02:48:21.000 Not just that.

02:48:21.000 You ask questions.

02:48:22.000 He went and had dinner with these people and ate at their house.

02:48:24.000 That's amazing.

02:48:24.000 And had these guys turn in their robes.

02:48:26.000 It's amazing.

02:48:27.000 The first guy that did it, he was like a grand wizard.

02:48:29.000 And three, four months into their friendship, he handed him his robe.

02:48:34.000 He says, hey, I want you to have this because I can't ever wear that anymore.

02:48:37.000 Because being friends with you has taught me that I'm wrong.

02:48:40.000 And that I had this idea about the differences between white people and black people. 1.00

02:48:44.000 And it's stupid. 1.00

02:48:45.000 And what would have happened if instead he had just insulted the KKK guys and just said, you're a piece of shit? 1.00

02:48:52.000 Nothing happens. 1.00

02:48:53.000 People just become more extreme.

02:48:55.000 So it's through that openness and conversation that people grow.

02:48:59.000 Daryl Davis is the truth.

02:49:00.000 That's how you learn.

02:49:01.000 I 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.

02:49:11.000 But how do you get that?

02:49:12.000 How do you get that temperament?

02:49:15.000 The path of life, you know, through him.

02:49:17.000 His path, I'm sure, he got it through becoming great at music and a lot of other things.

02:49:22.000 Because 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.

02:49:30.000 Also, 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.

02:49:38.000 He would talk to his parents about it.

02:49:39.000 He's like, what is going on?

02:49:40.000 He didn't understand, because overseas, he was...

02:49:44.000 Where was he, in Italy?

02:49:46.000 I forget which country that he lived in, but when he came to America he didn't understand racism.

02:49:52.000 So all of a sudden he's dealing with this.

02:49:55.000 He had developed as a human being up until I believe he was 10 or 11 years old when this started happening.

02:50:02.000 I don't remember.

02:50:03.000 He might have been a little younger than that. 0.99

02:50:04.000 But the idea was that it was so stunning to him and so stupid that he's seeing grown adults behaving this way. 0.99

02:50:13.000 And he's like, okay, there's got to be something. 0.99

02:50:15.000 So 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.

02:50:26.000 He thought he was joking.

02:50:27.000 Yeah.

02:50:28.000 He thought the guy was joking.

02:50:29.000 He's like, you're joking?

02:50:30.000 He's like, no, man, I'm in the KKK. He's like, what?

02:50:33.000 And the guy shows him his KKK membership.

02:50:37.000 And they had a conversation.

02:50:40.000 And for whatever reason, the guy and him connected to the point where Daryl gave him his phone number.

02:50:45.000 And he said, hey man, when I'm back in town again, give me a call.

02:50:50.000 We'll have a couple drinks and we'll sit down and talk.

02:50:53.000 So he comes back in town again.

02:50:55.000 He found a little opening and he worked it.

02:50:58.000 And they become friends.

02:50:59.000 And then they went to dinner together.

02:51:01.000 He ate over the guy's house.

02:51:02.000 They became friends.

02:51:03.000 And 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?

02:51:11.000 More than 200. That's incredible.

02:51:14.000 Neo-Nazis, and he goes out and he meets them, and he's so nice.

02:51:18.000 When you meet Daryl, also, he's so brilliant.

02:51:22.000 He's so articulate and intelligent that when you talk to him, you can't imagine that he's inferior, because he's just too smart.

02:51:28.000 So it's like, hmm.

02:51:31.000 You're trying to find holes in this game, but those holes don't exist.

02:51:36.000 But this is the power of one-on-one conversation.

02:51:40.000 One-on-one conversation is the only way people are supposed to talk.

02:51:43.000 The worst aspect of human communication is through text anonymously.

02:51:47.000 And that's what you're seeing through social media.

02:51:49.000 And that's unfortunately shaping the zeitgeist.

02:51:52.000 It's shaping culture.

02:51:53.000 It's shaping the way we think about ideas and issues and people.

02:51:56.000 It's not real.

02:51:59.000 It's not how people are.

02:52:00.000 If 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.

02:52:13.000 And if they didn't, it would be clearly illuminated to anybody observing that one of these people has a deep emotional problem.

02:52:21.000 One 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. 0.53

02:52:27.000 Yeah, but they're getting a lot of rewards from doing... 0.98

02:52:29.000 That's real.

02:52:30.000 The rewards and the shame, I think, are real.

02:52:34.000 They're real.

02:52:34.000 That's what keeps it going.

02:52:35.000 Right?

02:52:36.000 Yeah, don't live online.

02:52:37.000 Yeah.

02:52:38.000 It's not a good environment. 0.99

02:52:39.000 It's a shitty game. 0.97

02:52:40.000 It's a rigged gig. 1.00

02:52:43.000 Really, it's a rigged thing.

02:52:45.000 That's what it is.

02:52:46.000 It's just not healthy.

02:52:47.000 It's not how human beings are supposed to interact with each other, ever.

02:52:50.000 Human beings should look at each other one-on-one and be in a room with each other and talk.

02:52:55.000 That's what I think.

02:52:56.000 Maybe we're, we don't know, yeah, we just don't even know how to do that anymore.

02:53:00.000 We do.

02:53:01.000 I 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.

02:53:15.000 It's just totally normal.

02:53:17.000 But you don't have to.

02:53:20.000 But you, anyone listening, you.

02:53:23.000 Anyone listening to my words, you.

02:53:24.000 You don't have to do that.

02:53:25.000 Put your phone down.

02:53:27.000 You and I have had a three hour conversation.

02:53:29.000 It's three hours in.

02:53:31.000 We haven't looked at our phones.

02:53:32.000 People can do that at dinner. 1.00

02:53:34.000 Just put that fucking thing on silent. 0.99

02:53:36.000 We had a three-hour conversation, but seriously, we talked about, from my point of view, some intense stuff. 1.00

02:53:43.000 Yes.

02:53:44.000 About the meaning of life.

02:53:47.000 And people are so guarded, even in person, even without their phones.

02:53:52.000 And what I appreciate is that you're not...

02:53:55.000 You are open and raw.

02:53:57.000 And...

02:53:58.000 I think we need more examples of that to facilitate that kind of open communication.

02:54:05.000 And more examples of you.

02:54:06.000 Same thing.

02:54:07.000 Like the fact that you come in here.

02:54:08.000 You don't know me.

02:54:09.000 You fly and do this podcast and promote your book. 1.00

02:54:11.000 You know what the fuck you're getting into? 0.99

02:54:13.000 No, I have no idea. 1.00

02:54:15.000 But it worked.

02:54:17.000 And you're raw.

02:54:18.000 And you're open.

02:54:19.000 And you're confident enough to be vulnerable.

02:54:23.000 It's easy.

02:54:24.000 It's just easier.

02:54:26.000 It's just like there's so much less energy involved in just being who you are.

02:54:30.000 Some people won't let you do that, though.

02:54:32.000 But the good thing is that you find out who you could be real around and who you can't.

02:54:36.000 Yeah.

02:54:36.000 And then you just can't help those people.

02:54:38.000 Like, I can't do this.

02:54:39.000 Yeah, if it's just uncomfortable.

02:54:41.000 Right, and that's how it should be in friendships.

02:54:43.000 That's how it should be.

02:54:44.000 And I think it's probably how it should be in business, too.

02:54:48.000 I don't think you should be in business with people you don't love.

02:54:50.000 That's my feeling.

02:54:51.000 What?

02:54:52.000 I really think that.

02:54:52.000 All business is going to fail.

02:54:54.000 I don't know about that.

02:54:55.000 I don't think they have to.

02:54:57.000 I think you just have to be real selective.

02:54:59.000 Well, you're very idealistic.

02:55:00.000 I am.

02:55:01.000 Yeah.

02:55:02.000 It's worked so far.

02:55:02.000 Have you always been that way?

02:55:03.000 I'm not sure.

02:55:05.000 Yeah.

02:55:06.000 I'm not sure.

02:55:06.000 I think I've...

02:55:08.000 I probably had a general sense of it initially, but it's been solidified with experience.

02:55:14.000 Yeah.

02:55:15.000 Good.

02:55:16.000 Yeah.

02:55:17.000 The best way...

02:55:18.000 Yeah, I have, like, ethics.

02:55:22.000 You know, I have boundaries I won't cross.

02:55:24.000 I have lines that I think are important.

02:55:27.000 And I think that... 0.97

02:55:30.000 One of them is whenever, obviously I fuck up, everybody fucks up, but one of them is whenever possible, embrace humanity. 0.98

02:55:38.000 Embrace the weirdness, embrace the laughs, embrace the tears, embrace all those things. 0.99

02:55:44.000 Don't be running away from crying. 1.00

02:55:47.000 The fuck are you scared of crying for? 1.00

02:55:48.000 Crying is energy. 1.00

02:55:50.000 It gives you something.

02:55:52.000 Are you going to suppress that?

02:55:53.000 It can sometimes express love in a way that nothing else can.

02:55:57.000 When 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.

02:56:03.000 Their face too.

02:56:05.000 You know.

02:56:05.000 You are making me feel so much better.

02:56:07.000 I hope everybody at work hears this because I also cry at faculty meetings.

02:56:13.000 And I've been so embarrassed.

02:56:15.000 You're making me cry again.

02:56:16.000 No, I cry when I talk because I also do advising and I always want my students to travel.

02:56:20.000 If they haven't left the country, I want them to travel. 1.00

02:56:22.000 And I start talking about my traveling or that they should travel or whatever and I just start crying talking about traveling.

02:56:29.000 It's okay.

02:56:30.000 You're an open person.

02:56:32.000 It's good.

02:56:33.000 No, I'm feeling a little better about it.

02:56:35.000 You should feel better about it.

02:56:36.000 Thank you.

02:56:37.000 The only reason why you feel bad about it is because there's not enough strong people that support you in it.

02:56:44.000 But it does take the attention off of whatever somebody's talking about and on to why are you crying?

02:56:49.000 No, it doesn't.

02:56:50.000 It doesn't with me.

02:56:51.000 I know that you're being real.

02:56:54.000 You feel it.

02:56:54.000 When you're crying about something, I'm like, oh, this lady feels it.

02:56:59.000 You feel it.

02:57:00.000 It's real.

02:57:01.000 It's coming out.

02:57:02.000 And then people sense that, too. 1.00

02:57:04.000 Unless you're a fucking psycho and you can just try on command. 1.00

02:57:06.000 You can just cry on command. 1.00

02:57:08.000 You're some fucking monster. 1.00

02:57:11.000 But no, people, they recognize that, you know? 1.00

02:57:15.000 You can cry like that.

02:57:16.000 Like I said, when Rose was doing that, that was the only time I've ever cried, ever, during an interview.

02:57:21.000 I came once, came real close once with Ronda Rousey.

02:57:24.000 I was interviewing her and I almost cried, but not as much as with Rose.

02:57:28.000 With Rose, I couldn't help it.

02:57:29.000 Tears are streaming down my face when I was interviewing her.

02:57:31.000 I'm so glad you explained all of that about fighting and what it means.

02:57:36.000 I think I'm starting to get it.

02:57:38.000 I think it's important and I don't think everybody should do it.

02:57:41.000 I think it's important to understand why people do it.

02:57:44.000 I don't advocate it.

02:57:46.000 I don't think everybody should do it.

02:57:48.000 But I think martial arts in general are great for developing your human potential, just because it's hard.

02:57:53.000 But you could do other things that are hard, like you explained your experience doing marathons, and then how it strengthened you.

02:57:59.000 But everyone I know who did a marathon had the same experience.

02:58:02.000 It meant just as much to them.

02:58:04.000 I bet everyone I know that has done martial arts has had the same experience.

02:58:08.000 Do hard things.

02:58:09.000 Hard things are good for you.

02:58:11.000 Test yourself.

02:58:12.000 Challenge yourself.

02:58:12.000 And also you'll find camaraderie in other people that are seeking to do those hard things.

02:58:17.000 And you'll find community.

02:58:19.000 I think I found community with people who wrote a book that was hard.

02:58:23.000 I'm sure.

02:58:24.000 Yeah.

02:58:24.000 All those things.

02:58:25.000 Everything you do that's difficult.

02:58:28.000 That's what life is.

02:58:29.000 Life is overcoming difficult things.

02:58:32.000 And loving.

02:58:33.000 And loving, yeah.

02:58:34.000 Yeah, well that's difficult too, right?

02:58:37.000 Because part of loving is you have to accept someone who- Be vulnerable.

02:58:40.000 And you have to be vulnerable and be known.

02:58:41.000 And also, you have to be open.

02:58:45.000 You have to not just be vulnerable.

02:58:46.000 You have to give.

02:58:47.000 You have to give them love.

02:58:48.000 It's not just a matter of being vulnerable.

02:58:50.000 It's also about being compassionate and loving.

02:58:56.000 Don't be scared of that.

02:58:58.000 But that's the thing with a lot of men. 0.98

02:59:00.000 They get taught by shitty dads that you're supposed to shield those emotions. 0.98

02:59:05.000 Emotions are fuel. 0.99

02:59:07.000 They can propel you.

02:59:09.000 And if you're fighting off anything, fighting off anything.

02:59:12.000 The only thing you should ever fight off is weakness.

02:59:17.000 Find whatever is making you weak.

02:59:19.000 Find whatever is making you insecure or doubtful. 0.96

02:59:22.000 Find whatever the fuck that is and just solidify your position so you don't have to deal with that as much. 1.00

02:59:27.000 Unless your position sucks. 1.00

02:59:28.000 That's true, too. 1.00

02:59:30.000 Unless you're being an asshole. 1.00

02:59:32.000 Don't solidify that. 1.00

02:59:32.000 Then you need to change. 1.00

02:59:34.000 Yes, very important.

02:59:36.000 Live in reality.

02:59:38.000 Jamie, pull up a copy of her book so people can see it.

02:59:42.000 Oh, yes.

02:59:42.000 Thank you.

02:59:43.000 Pull up the image.

02:59:45.000 It's available.

02:59:45.000 Did you read the audio?

02:59:48.000 No.

02:59:48.000 I asked to read the audio.

02:59:51.000 Those motherfuckers. 1.00

02:59:52.000 Well, they said, basically, there's no way you could do it as well as the trained person. 1.00

02:59:58.000 That's horseshit. 0.98

02:59:58.000 No, no, no. 0.98

03:00:00.000 I spoke to the—I listened to auditions.

03:00:04.000 The person who read it is amazing and I think did a much better job.

03:00:09.000 I mean, I thought, no, I went through these things.

03:00:11.000 It's my voice.

03:00:12.000 But she had this long conversation with me.

03:00:15.000 What exactly did you mean by this sentence?

03:00:17.000 You know, she really wanted to know.

03:00:21.000 She read the book.

03:00:22.000 Did you get a full size of an image?

03:00:24.000 Shrink it down?

03:00:26.000 She was great.

03:00:27.000 But I haven't heard the audiobook.

03:00:30.000 But she was fantastic. 0.79

03:00:33.000 But why is it doing that?

03:00:34.000 I don't know.

03:00:34.000 Oh, okay.

03:00:36.000 Not that top one.

03:00:37.000 No, no, no.

03:00:38.000 Move it up.

03:00:38.000 It's not the top one.

03:00:39.000 That one.

03:00:39.000 But this one right here.

03:00:40.000 Oh, there's another one.

03:00:42.000 Go back to where you were.

03:00:43.000 No, no, don't go.

03:00:44.000 The one that's available July 13th, 2021. That is the one.

03:00:47.000 T, the story of testosterone, the hormones that dominates and divides us.

03:00:54.000 Alright.

03:00:55.000 Thank you.

03:00:56.000 Thank you, Carol.

03:00:56.000 That was fun.

03:00:57.000 Thank you so much.

03:00:57.000 I really enjoyed it.

03:00:58.000 I really did.

03:00:58.000 It was a great conversation.

03:01:00.000 I've never cried more.

03:01:01.000 I've cried like three times during that podcast.

03:01:03.000 Really?

03:01:03.000 Yeah.

03:01:04.000 Because it's you.

03:01:05.000 You're vulnerable and I'm vulnerable with you.

03:01:07.000 That's what it is.

03:01:08.000 Thank you.

03:01:09.000 Okay.

03:01:11.000 Alright.

03:01:12.000 That's a wrap.

03:01:13.000 Goodbye, everybody.

03:01:14.000 Goodbye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - June 10, 2021

Joe Rogan Experience #1665 - Carole Hooven

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