Nature vs Nurture

My appearance on The Good Fight podcast with Yascha Mounk

May 28, 2025

I recently appeared on Yascha Mounk’s excellent podcast, The Good Fight. I’d been out with work colleagues the night before, so I was a little the worse for wear - aside from anything else, my voice was about an octave lower than usual. Despite that, Yascha and I had a fun, wide-ranging conversation. These are some of the many topics we covered:

Evolutionary psychology
The nature and nurture of individual differences
Sex differences, and why so many people are so uncomfortable with them
Why we might never fully close the gender gap in occupational representation
How IQ and personality predict life outcomes
Why political partisans hate the other side for views most don’t actually hold
The four traits political extremists on both sides share that set them apart from moderates
The replication crisis in psychology

If you want to read the transcript of our conversation, you can find it on Yascha’s Substack. Here’s the episode:

Yascha Mounk

Steve Stewart-Williams on Nature vs Nurture

The best way to make sure that you don’t miss any of these conversations is to subscribe to The Good Fight on your favorite podcast app. If you are already a paying subscriber to this Substack or Persuasion, this will give you ad-free access to the full conversation, plus all full episodes and bonus episodes we have in the works! If you aren’t, you can set up the free, limited version of the feed—or, better still, support the podcast by becoming a subscriber today…

Listen now

8 months ago · 1 like · 1 comment · Yascha Mounk

In Other News…

My favorite comedian, Jimmy Carr, mentioned my book The Ape That Understood the Universe in the latest episode of the Joe Rogan Experience. Check it out below!

Follow me on Twitter/X for more psychology, evolution, and science.

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