A Skeptic and an Evolutionary Psychologist Walk Into a Village Hall…
My appearance on The Michael Shermer Show
Another highlight of my recent book tour was my trip to the HowTheLightGetsIn Festival in Hay-on-Wye. It was a wonderful festival with a great vibe, amazing food, and stimulating conversations. The organizers really know how to look after their speakers, covering transport to and from the festival, meals, and accommodation in the Welsh countryside - and even providing drivers to ferry us around. I could get used to that kind of treatment…
While I was there, I led a “Champagne, Cake, and Philosophy” event on my book A Billion Years of Sex Differences, caught my first glimpse of the book in the wild (in the festival bookshop), and took part in a debate on the notion of being “spiritual but not religious.” I spotted various famous faces, including Simon Baron-Cohen, Kathleen Stock, and Rowan Williams, and at one point found myself sitting next to Jeremy Corbyn in the green room. And I finally met several people in person who I’d previously known only online, including Charlotte Blease, Eric Kaufmann, Laura Kennedy, and Michael Shermer.
Meeting Michael, in particular, was long overdue. He wrote the foreword to my second book, The Ape That Understood the Universe, and kindly endorsed A Billion Years of Sex Differences. He also published one of my “12 Things Everyone Should Know” posts in his Skeptic magazine. Despite knowing each other for years, however, we’d never actually met. It turns out we have a lot in common - including remarkably similar stories about how we proposed to our wives.
As well as speaking at the festival, Michael was recording episodes of his podcast, The Michael Shermer Show. He and his Strategy Director, Alexander Reiman, rented a nearby village hall to use as a makeshift studio, and interviewed various festival attendees - including yours truly. Michael and I had a wide-ranging conversation about A Billion Years and various other topics I’ve written about over the years.
Among other things, we discussed:
The evolutionary origins of sex differences
Sex-role-reversed species - that is, species where all the usual sex differences are flipped into reverse
Greater male variability and the Larry Summers controversy
Why both sexes prefer research that puts women in a better light than men
Whether murder-suicide has an evolutionary basis
The young male syndrome and sex differences in crime
Whether IQ is a valid scientific concept or pseudoscientific nonsense
The replication crisis in psychology
The episode is available on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. It’s also available on the Skeptic YouTube channel.
Hope you enjoy it!
You can order A Billion Years of Sex Differences here.
You can read the first chapter of The Ape That Understood the Universe for free here.
Follow me on Twitter/X for more psychology, evolution, and science.
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Related Reading from the Archive
12 Things Everyone Should Know About Evolutionary Psychology
This is the latest post in my “12 Things Everyone Should Know” series. You can access the full collection here.
12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ
This is the first post in my “12 Things Everyone Should Know” series. You can access the complete collection here.
A Billion Years of Sex Differences
I recently gave a professorial lecture at my university, focused on some of my theoretical work on the evolution of human sex differences. The following is a lightly edited transcript of the lecture.
Tell us more about the “spiritual but not religious” debate. What does the phrase mean to people who use it and which side were you on?
The HowTheLightGetsIn Festival in Hay-on-Wye is an incredible event. I attended it in 2023 and participated (I use that term loosely) in a dinner/discussion event with only about 20 others with Michael Shermer at one head of the table and Iain McGilchrist at the other. I happened to be seated at a corner next to McGilchrist. During a brief lull in conversation as everything was just beginning to wrap up I managed to get the nerve to ask McGilchrist what to me was an interesting question but to him was, apparently, so trivial as to warrant no consideration whatsoever. 😄
It's a great way to spend several days in a beautiful setting with deeply curious people and have a chance to meet some of your intellectual heros. It's a bit of an adventure getting to Hay-on-Wye, Wales (if you're not a celebrated speaker, that is, ha ha) but that was part of the fun for me. The first thing, if you are considering going, is to not confuse this festival with the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts which occurs during overlapping days just right up the road. Also, HowTheLightGetsIn Festival is also presented every Fall at Hamstead Heath, London with a different lineup of speakers. So be aware of that as well.
Because the festival occurs in the small village of Hay-On-Wye simultaneously with the world renowned Hay Festival of Literature and Arts, accomodations become scarce quickly. Some places even book up a year in advance. So very early planning will pay off. The downside of very early planning is that you won't know who many of the speakers will be until much closer to event time (looking at you Steve). So you'll have to commit to going without knowing the whole program of events. But I'd bet that the likelihood of at least one of your admired thinkers being there is very high.
I think it really makes for a worthwhile holiday trip. Follow this link and get on their mailing list. The festival always occurs during the same weekend, the UK Spring Bank Holiday weekend, so you can actually start your planning now.
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