My Top 10 Posts of 2024
...and reflections on my first year on Substack
Update: You can now listen to Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche-Newsletter posts as well as reading them, with Substack’s new text-to-speech feature. I’ve opted for the British accent rather than the American one - but let me know if you’d prefer the American!
Keep Pushing: Reflections on My First Year on Substack
Well, I’ve been on Substack for just over a year now.
It’s been fun! I’m here to stay.
I founded the Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter as a place where I can write about ideas and research I consider interesting and important - primarily in the realm of psychology but with occasional forays into biology, philosophy, and anything else that grabs my attention.
I also wanted to explore whether Substack could become an alternative career for me, if I ever decided I wanted one. Some of my research and writing as a psychology professor has touched on controversial topics - in particular, the evolution of sex differences - and I’m very aware that this could one day blow up in my face or limit my future job prospects. Having an alternative career up my sleeve would give me the freedom and financial security to speak openly and honestly on any topic, without having to worry that it might get me cancelled.
With that in mind, I turned on the option of paid subscriptions in early January 2024. Soon enough, I started receiving email notifications with what I joke are the three most beautiful words in the English language: New Paid Subscriber.
It’s incredibly satisfying! As my Substack guru
once wrote, “One of my favorite things about writing on Substack is that every time I share something useful, interesting, or entertaining, I get a raise.”This makes writing on Substack very different than being a psych prof. As a professor, you get paid even if you give the occasional dud lecture - and although I do my best to make my lectures interesting, I’m aware that many of my students are only really there because they think it’s necessary to get a degree these days to get anywhere in life. In contrast, no one has to pay for a Substack subscription if they don’t want to. That means that every dollar earned on Substack is an immediate and honest signal that you’re producing something people value.
Somewhat to my surprise, it became clear fairly early on that Substack does indeed represent a viable alternative career for me. On March the 1st, my newsletter became a Substack bestseller, with hundreds of paid subscribers, and since then it’s grown more than fivefold.
At this stage, I have no plans to go full-time on Substack. I love being a professor. Still, just by writing in evenings and on weekends, I’m on track to earn as much from Substack as from my day job within the next few months. Not a bad little side hustle!
I’ve been focusing on the positive, but I should add that it hasn’t always been plain sailing. I’ve had several long spells with little growth in paid subscribers. Thinking about it logically, I knew it was unlikely that within just a few short months, I’d hit the ceiling for the number of paid subscribers I could ever hope to attract. But my logical mind sometimes had a tough time persuading my emotions of this!
The solution was simple: Just keep pushing. Pump out content even when it feels pointless. Be obstinate.
2024’s been great. Here’s to another year of honesty and obstinacy!
My Top 10 Posts of 2024
Let’s get to the main course: my Top 10 posts of the year. Note that the first six are partially paywalled, while the final four are free to read in full.
1. 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ
This post was by far my most successful. It highlights 12 of the most important, most replicable findings from the field of IQ research. Did you know, for example, that the heritability of IQ increases, rather than decreases, as people grow from childhood to adulthood?
2. 12 Things Everyone Should Know About Personality
My second-place post gives the same treatment to another pivotal area of psychology: personality psychology. Among other things, it looks at the nature and nurture of personality, how personality predicts life outcomes, and sex differences in personality.
3. 12 Things Everyone Should Know About Evolutionary Psychology
This one explores my favorite area of science: evolutionary psychology. Topics covered include the evolution of sex differences in sexual behavior, aggression, and jealousy; whether humans are naturally monogamous, polygamous, or promiscuous; and the Cinderella effect: the finding that people abuse and neglect stepchildren more often than they do biological children. The post also offers some rapid-fire responses to common criticisms of evolutionary psych.
4. The Four Laws of Behavior Genetics and Why They Matter
This was my first Substack series. It deals with one of my all-time favorite topics: the Four Laws of Behavior Genetics.
1st Law: All psychological traits are partially heritable.
2nd Law: The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of the genes.
3rd Law: A lot of the differences between people in psychological traits aren’t attributable to either genes or the shared family environment.
4th Law: Most complex traits are shaped by huge numbers of genes with only tiny effects.
5. One Bias To Rule Them All
In this piece, I summarize a fascinating recent paper arguing that all cognitive biases stem from one of a handful of fundamental beliefs coupled with confirmation bias.
6. 5 New Findings on Sex Differences, Reverse Gender Bias, and Why You're Wasting Your Time on Tinder
This was the most popular of my Linkfests: my regular collections of links to my favorite recent papers and articles. Topics covered include how politics breaks your brain; sex differences in prescription drug use, school performance, and imposter syndrome; and four surprising findings on gender bias. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t always favor men! Click here for the full Linkfest collection.
7. Top 10 Christopher Hitchens Quotes
At number seven, we have the first and most popular post from my quotes collection series, featuring the inimitable Christopher Hitchens. Click here for the full collection, all of which are free to read.
8. Intelligence and Prejudice
This one’s free as well. It’s one of my graph-of-the-day posts: a series of posts built around a graph or handful of graphs. The key idea of this one is that intelligent people are just as prejudiced as less intelligent people, but just toward different groups. Check out the complete graph-of-the-day collection here.
9. How Couples Meet, 1940-2020
Another freebie and another graph-based post. Long story short, once upon a time, couples met through family and friends, but now they meet online.
10. Self-Control as a Performance-Enhancing Drug
A third and final graph-based freebie. TL;DR: Self-control is an all-purpose good like IQ - it predicts health, wealth, and all things good.
Honorable Mentions
Here are some of my top posts from the end of 2023, when I first began the newsletter.
Scientists Censoring Science: An overview of our paper in PNAS
Fifty Years of Gender Bias: When it comes to hiring decisions, people vastly overestimate how much gender bias there is - against both sexes
…and here are some 2024 posts that didn’t quite make the cut, but which for one reason or another I think are worth highlighting.
12 Mind-Blowing Perceptual Illusions: Perceptual experience is a simulation - a mental model - which doesn’t always correspond to the reality it aims to depict
Imaginary Enemies: People dislike their political opponents for views most don't actually hold
A Billion Years of Sex Differences: How evolution shaped the minds of men and women - a transcript of my recent professorial lecture
A Christmas Present
As a Christmas present for all my subscribers, I’ve republished one of my favorite paid posts from 2024 as a free post. The piece is titled “Who’s More Biased, Left or Right?” The tagline is “In politics, both sides think the other is biased - and both sides are right.” Click the link below to read it.
Gift Subscriptions
Gift subscriptions are now available to the Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter - the perfect gift for every man, woman, and child on your Christmas list!
What You Get for a Premium/Gift Subscription
Full access to all content, including ideas and material I don’t want to publicly share yet
Full access to my “12 Things Everyone Should Know” posts and N3 Newsletter Linkfests
Access to all research summaries, Graph-of-the-Day mini-posts, Top-10-quotes posts, and other regular features
The ability to post comments and interact with the N3 Newsletter community
Finally, by becoming a paid subscriber to the Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Newsletter, you’ll help support my efforts to spread important ideas and knowledge, and to make a space for free thought and non-politicized science.
Plans for 2025 and Beyond
12 Things Everyone Should Know About Behavior Genetics
More multi-part features on major topics in psychology and philosophy, some based on lectures I’ve written and delivered over the years. The next one will be about the philosophical problem of free will - see my taster post here.
Multi-part summaries and reviews of some of the greatest non-fiction ever written - including Richard Dawkins’ Extended Phenotype and Janet Radcliffe Richards’ Sceptical Feminist.
Unpublished sections of my earlier books and early access to sections of the book I’m currently writing.
Much more of the same only different!
Thanks again to everyone who’s supported me in 2024 - in particular, my paid subscribers, who’ve given me the financial security to speak freely, and the option of making a career from my writing!