How I Went From Dangerous Heretic to Boring Academic in Just Three Years - Without Changing Any of My Views
My conversation with Josh Szeps on the Uncomfortable Conversations podcast
It’s podcast time again, folks! A few weeks ago, I had the great pleasure of returning to Josh Szeps’s Uncomfortable Conversations podcast. Josh and I had a fun, in-depth discussion about my book, A Billion Years of Sex Differences, and related topics.
We also discussed the recent “vibe shift,” and how ideas that got me into hot water a few years ago are gradually becoming acceptable topics of conversation again (touch wood). At one point, Josh made the very funny observation that,
When you first came to my attention three years ago, you were this defiant voice standing up to the mob and now, fortunately, you’re just the - no offense - boring academic that you should be by just saying true things accurately.
My immediate response was that I much prefer the latter! I did add, though, that it was kind of cool being a badass just for making a commonsense observation backed by a mountain of research: that men and women are different.
Here’s the blurb for the episode:
Are men innately more violent? Are women innately more people-focused? What explains gay people, campness, transgenderism? How much of the sex differences are cultural, and how much is hardwired by our evolutionary psychology?
The science of the sexes has come a long way. Steve Stewart-Williams is a psychology professor who wrote the groundbreaking book The Ape That Understood the Universe and whose new book is A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How Evolution Shaped the Minds of Men and Women.
Steve joins Josh to explore the science of the sexes, from aggression to promiscuity to parenting, and what recent research reveals about how, and why, men and women behave the way we do.
The episode is available on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. It’s also available on the Uncomfortable Conversations YouTube channel.
If you enjoy the conversation and would like to explore these ideas in more depth, you can pick up a copy of A Billion Years of Sex Differences here.
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Steve
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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.
The Second Law of Behavior Genetics
This is the second part of my five-part series on the Four Laws of Behavior Genetics. You can access the full collection here.