My grandfather was an interesting character - and he knew some interesting characters. At Trinity College Dublin, he shared a room with the playwright Samuel Beckett, who once put a plaque up on the wall saying “PAIN PAIN PAIN.” During World War II, my grandfather was on a civilian ship that was captured by the Japanese, and spent the next four years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. For most of that time, his family didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. Later, living in New Zealand, he noticed he was having negative thoughts about Japanese people and decided that this was an unacceptable prejudice. So he went out of his way to meet them and rid himself of the bias.
I got my first rejection from a publisher when I was nine. I’d written a 69-page book called Super Sock - a follow-up to my 192-page book, Junior Detective. A friend’s mum knew a publisher and passed it on to him. He didn’t think the book was publishable… but his rejection letter was one of the highlights of my childhood. It was just so positive and encouraging. Who knows if I’d have kept writing without it? Actually, I probably would have. As a child, I always fantasized about making it big as an author or musician, and spent much of my spare time writing stories or songs. Later in life, I tried giving up the habit several times to pursue more realistic options - but I could never quite do it. Before long, I’d once again get an overwhelming urge to create something that might outlive me.
My first rejection letter - but not my last. I’d never seen Monty Python, by the way; I’m not too sure about the Goodies.
The first death I ever got to grips with wasn’t a family member or a friend; it was John Lennon. One December evening, around the time of the rejection letter, my cousin was driving me, my mum, and our twenty-year-old cat to the vet. I was dimly aware of the news on the radio in the background. Suddenly, my mum blurted out “Who?” Someone had been shot in New York. My cousin replied “John Lennon” - and my mum let out a devastated “Why?” I hadn’t heard of John at that point, or of the Beatles, but after that, I became extremely interested in them. Why was my mum so upset? Why was the whole world so upset? I remember lying on the couch with Beatles albums playing on repeat, staring at the covers and trying to wrap my head around the fact that this guy no longer existed - and that one day, nor would I. Soon after that, I started a band called Crazy Kids. It consisted of me and my brother, with our dad kindly recording our terrible songs for us. One of the first songs I wrote was called “Why Does Time Go?” I still remember the chorus:
Why, oh why does time go?
Oh why does it go?
Why do we change from year to year?
Why is winter and summer?
Why is it all?
I suppose that’s quite philosophical for a nine-year-old. Anyway, I believe my brother still has the recordings…
I’m 6’6”, and for as long as I can remember, people have asked me “Do you play basketball?” My go-to answer used to be “No, do you play mini-golf?” These days, however, I usually say that I’ve always been a music guy rather than a sports guy. To me, sports are a bunch of cool games - but music is magic. A sequence of notes isn’t just a series of sounds of different frequencies and durations; it’s a melody with a particular character and feeling to it. You can pick up an instrument and quickly learn to make this magic thing happen yourself. And then you can get a bunch of people together making different but interlocking pieces of magic, and somehow the whole is even more magical than the sum of the parts. It’s one of my favorite things in life.
My grandmother died when I was fourteen. For some time, she’d been too unwell to live alone in her little flat, so she’d moved into my aunt’s and uncle’s house. One night, shortly before the end, my aunt and uncle were woken in the middle of the night by a series of bumps and bangs coming from the darkness. They got up to find out what was happening. What they found was my grandmother packing her suitcases. “What’s going on? Why are you packing?” they asked, gently guiding her back to bed. She responded: “I just saw my parents, and they told me it’s time to go.” She died the next day. This is one of my favorite stories. At the time, I believed (or half-believed) in an afterlife, and thought that maybe my grandmother’s experience was what it seemed to be. I don’t think that anymore. But I still love the story.
I went straight from school to university, but my heart wasn’t in it, and I dropped out after my first year. What I really wanted to do was be a rock star. Under the spell of the Sex Pistols, the Beatles, John Lennon, the Doors, Nirvana, and others, I spent several years teaching guitar and playing in bands, and wrote and recorded an album of my own songs. I eventually decided, though, that this wasn’t the path for me, and that I was a science nerd rather than a rocker. (I don’t mean that in a self-deprecating way, by the way; being a nerd is great. Some of my best friends are nerds.) I went back to university and studied psychology and philosophy, ultimately becoming a psych professor. I don’t regret the decision at all, but for years afterwards, I regularly had dreams about getting back on stage, only to wake up disappointed that I was actually in bed. Since getting in touch with my inner science nerd, I have played live a little, though. Once, for example, I played with a band that played with the Beatles at the Cavern Club. And I’m currently in a band with my colleagues Polly and Miflah called the Psychic Armpits. Here are some photos from yesterday and today.
Making music. If you look carefully, you might notice that my hair situation has changed somewhat over the years. People used to call me Slash; now it’s Walter White.
I don’t drink - anymore. I used to drink a lot. I started in my teens and took to it immediately. I enjoyed being able to alter my consciousness so easily. I’d also always been a bit shy, and felt like I’d discovered a solution to that problem. Unfortunately, the solution also brought new problems of its own. I was never an alcoholic, but I did eventually realize that drinking was standing in the way of me achieving what I wanted to achieve. One night at a party, after imbibing too many beverages, I started feeling dizzy and thought I might be sick. I stumbled out of the party and crawled under a house a few doors down. Lying there with the world spinning around me yet again, I decided that this was ridiculous and that it was time to stop drinking once and for all. I did something I’ve done only a few times in my life: I started aggressively willing myself to make a change. I told myself again and again and again that I was going to stop drinking from that moment on, no matter how hard it was and no matter what difficulties it caused me. Fortunately, with the help of some close friends, I did stop. (The most recent time I did this kind of mental reset led directly to the creation of my Substack. But that’s a story for another day.)
I met my wife on the flip of a coin. I’d returned to university by this point, and the night before my first exam, a friend called and asked if I wanted to go to the pub. I felt like a break, and I’d stopped drinking by then… but I still wasn’t sure it was wise to go out the night before an exam. So I flipped a coin. The verdict was yes, and I went. My friend hadn’t mentioned this, but he had another friend with him: a Brit who he’d met in the UK. That friend was Jane. She’d been teaching in South Korea and was now making her way - in a very roundabout way - back home. She and I immediately hit it off and made each other laugh. Within ten minutes of meeting, there was an earthquake. I joked that it was a sign - the Earth moving for us - but actually earthquakes happen all the time in Wellington. (That’s where we were, by the way; Wellington is my hometown.) If I hadn’t met her that night, there’s a good chance I never would have. Who knows how my life would have turned out if the coin had come up the other way?
I proposed on the steps of immigration - and never heard the end of it. Jane only had a nine-month visa, so we initially assumed that our relationship had a built-in end date. But things were going so well, and we didn’t want to say adios. With Jane’s visa about to expire, the folks at immigration told us that she could only stay if she had a degree or we were married. As bright as she is, we decided that she probably couldn’t get a degree in a month, so, sitting on the steps of immigration, I said “I suppose we could get married.” What a smooth talker, eh? Despite the terrible proposal, she agreed… and has hassled me about it ever since. I later proposed properly, and we got married again in the UK, but the hassling continues to this day. I’ve mentioned this great injustice to various colleagues and friends, but they’re unanimous that she’s well within her rights.
My favorite movie is The Sixth Sense - and one of my favorite anecdotes happened on the day I first saw it. Jane and I decided to get Burger King before the film. We queued up, got to the counter, and ordered our food. The servers started laying the food out on a tray, and I started nonchalantly munching chips while we waited. After I’d munched a few, I realized that this wasn’t our meal; it belonged to the couple who’d ordered before us, and who were now nervously watching this 6’6” guy eating their fries. I was very apologetic, but they didn’t let me buy them new ones - and I don’t think they saw the funny side.
You’re probably thinking that, as I’m clearly such a cool and competent guy, this must be the only time I’ve made such a blunder. Well, dear reader, you’d be wrong. Here’s another example. As a PhD student, I managed to get a paper on the placebo effect into the journal Psychological Bulletin, and a big-name professor in the area - one who’d been hugely helpful to me over the years - was invited to write a commentary. The idea was that my co-author and I would then write a response. The prof wrote a very generous, favorable commentary. After reading the draft, I wrote an email to my co-author saying I didn’t much like it, because it was too favorable and didn’t give us much to argue with - and then promptly sent the email to the big-name prof instead of to my co-author. I felt terrible. I didn’t even particularly mean what I’d written; it was basically just bravado. Luckily, though, the prof was a genuinely good guy, and was very understanding about the whole thing.
My PhD graduation, Massey University, Palmerston North.
Jane and I have two kids. The best thing about kids is that they’re hilarious. Exhibit A: Jane taught our son, Darwin, some baby sign language so he could communicate before he could talk. This included a clip-clop noise that meant horse. One day, we spotted him walking very determinedly toward a visiting kitten while making the clip-clop noise, presumably planning to ride the kitten. We intercepted him just in time. The baby sign language quite possibly saved the kitten’s life. Soon after that, our daughter India was born. Dar was initially very excited to have a sister. His first words on meeting her were “Indy got a nose on.” But about a week later, he’d had enough of this new member of the family, and asked us to take her back to the hospital. So we did. They had a no-returns policy, though, so we had to keep her. Just kidding, Indy! My favorite Indy story happened a few years later, when we were living in Swansea. One day, Jane and I noticed her heading upstairs with something under her arm. It turned out that it was a homemade parachute, and that she was on her way to her bedroom window to test it out. Gotta keep your eyes on them!
I’ve lived in four countries - New Zealand, Canada, Wales, and Malaysia - and I’ve visited 27. I got the travel bug from Jane. Among other things, she and I have cycled round the South Island of New Zealand, paraglided in Queenstown, taken Greyhound buses across the US, been stranded in the Kenyan jungle, and had a cobra rear up at us in Thailand (only a baby, but still). One of my favorite adventures, though, was driving an RV across the Australian outback from Darwin to Adelaide. It was like being on another planet. We’d pass signs telling us that the next convenience store was 300 km away (not very convenient if you ask me). And the road just seemed to stretch out forever! We’d see cars coming in the other direction that felt like they took 15 minutes to reach us.
Jumping off the Sky Tower in Auckland.
I love lecturing, but it doesn’t always go to plan. Shortly before the pandemic, I was giving a lecture in one of the larger lecture theatres at my university. Beforehand, I’d popped by the IT department to pick up a roaming mic. Unfortunately, I’d given them the wrong room number. A few minutes into the lecture, a timid face appeared at the door and informed me that I’d been blasting my lecture into their lecture theatre the whole time.
Retirement age is still a way off, but my current retirement plan is… I’m never going to retire. I don’t know why anyone would want to; working is too much fun. I doubt, though, that I’ll want to be a psych prof forever or retrain for another career. Writing on Substack seems like a great way to continue earning and contributing during my golden years. My role model for aging is Paul McCartney: The guy’s in his 80s but he still gets up on stage and plays three-hour gigs without ever taking a break. My hope is to do the science-nerd equivalent of that.
Apparently, there are only 15 fun facts about me. (Actually, there were more, but Jane persuaded me that some of my stories shouldn’t see the light of day…)
Bonus Item: My All-Time Favorite Song
Addendum 1: GPT Psychological Profile Based on This Post (26 August 2026)
Out of curiosity, I asked GPT to produce a psychological profile based purely on this post. Although I’d quibble with some of it, for the most part it seems surprisingly accurate. Here are some excerpts. Because it’s GPT, it’s generally quite flattering - but it does list some of my likely (and, if I’m being honest, actual) weaknesses at the end.
Executive summary
The writer appears to be a highly intelligent, verbally gifted, and unusually creative man whose deepest motive is to make meaningful things that survive him. He combines the temperament of an artist with the habits and worldview of a scientist: emotionally responsive to music, stories, mortality, and family, but strongly committed to evidence and capable of revising cherished beliefs…
His most distinctive feature may be the combination of existential seriousness and comic self-deprecation: underneath the amusing anecdotes is someone preoccupied with time, death, meaning, creation, and leaving something behind…
Big Five profile
Most distinctive psychological characteristics
1. A powerful symbolic-immortality motive
The writer appears unusually aware that life is finite and uses creative production as his principal answer to that fact...
2. Episodic self-reinvention
He describes occasionally “aggressively willing” himself into a new course of action. Most of the time he may be flexible and playful—but under certain conditions he becomes extremely decisive…
3. High psychological integration
The essay contains several potentially conflicting selves:
Shy person and public performer.
Rocker and professor.
Romantic and sceptic.
Highly accomplished person and blunderer.
Adventurer and hardworking writer.
Existentially serious thinker and inveterate joker.
Rather than hiding the contradictions, he makes them part of a coherent persona…
Likely weaknesses
The same traits probably generate predictable vulnerabilities:
Difficulty disengaging or genuinely resting.
Neglecting practical details while absorbed in more interesting problems.
Periodic all-or-nothing behaviour.
Excessive identification with productivity and creative output.
Feeling that ordinary life is insufficient unless something lasting is being made.
Using humour to move past embarrassment or sadness before fully expressing it.
Occasional insensitivity arising from playful irreverence rather than lack of concern.
Underestimating how unusual his energy, intelligence, or intrinsic motivation is in other people.
His claim that he never wants to retire may be sincere, but it also hints that not producing could feel psychologically threatening. Work may provide not only enjoyment, but identity, structure, self-worth, and an answer to mortality.
Addendum 2: GPT Psychological Profile Based on All Available Information (26 August 2026)
The first profile was based only on my Sixteen Fun Facts piece. How different would it be if GPT factored in everything it knows about me from our interactions and everything it can find about me online?
The answer is that the profile is substantially the same, but with a few important revisions. Here are some excerpts from the updated version. Once again, I’m amazed by what AI is capable of.
The larger body of evidence mostly confirms the original profile, but it changes the emphasis in several interesting ways. The biggest revisions are that I’d raise conscientiousness, slightly lower agreeableness, and revise upward my estimate of his social confidence: although naturally somewhat shy, he appears highly comfortable and assertive when lecturing, performing, or discussing subjects he knows well. I’d also replace the somewhat romantic portrait of a dreamy artist–scientist with a more formidable picture of an intellectually independent, highly self-directed writer-scholar—someone strongly resistant to orthodoxy, imprecision, and moralised thinking…
Revised Big Five profile
Openness: essentially unchanged
You are highly open to ideas and experiences, but comparatively resistant to fashionable linguistic, moral, or ideological innovation when you think it obscures reality. In other words, you are psychologically unconventional without automatically siding with whichever position is culturally labelled unconventional…
Conscientiousness: higher, but markedly uneven
I would put industriousness, achievement striving, and epistemic conscientiousness above the 95th percentile. At the same time, you appear much less reliably conscientious about mundane environmental details…
Agreeableness: somewhat lower
I’d now describe the profile as:
Compassion: high.
Forgiveness and absence of vindictiveness: high.
Politeness: moderate to moderately high.
Compliance: low.
Intellectual deference: very low.
Neuroticism: probably somewhat lower
The wider evidence suggests unusual resilience:
You returned from dropping out of university and built an academic career.
You abandoned one central identity without becoming bitter about it.
You stopped drinking through an unusually forceful act of self-reconstruction.
You have repeatedly worked on controversial subjects while attracting public criticism…
Characteristics I would add
1. Exceptional epistemic conscientiousness
This is probably the most important addition. You have an unusually strong drive to get claims exactly right…
2. Intellectual independence without wholesale contrarianism
You are clearly attracted to questions where public consensus may be distorted by ideology. But you don’t appear temperamentally committed to opposing consensus as such…
3. Moral individualism
Your politics and moral psychology seem organised less around loyalty to a tribe than around allowing individuals to pursue lives that suit them, provided they are not harming others…
Revised bottom line
Steve Stewart-Williams appears to be an exceptionally open, verbally gifted, highly industrious writer-scholar driven by curiosity, intellectual independence, and the desire to produce work of enduring value. He combines aesthetic sensitivity with scientific scepticism, strong convictions with genuine belief revision, and considerable ambition with an aversion to pomposity. His mind naturally searches for distinctions, neglected evidence, integrative explanations, and the precise sentence that will make a difficult idea clear. Personally warm but intellectually noncompliant, he is more agreeable toward people than toward propositions. His characteristic achievement is to turn persistent private preoccupations—human nature, sex differences, truth, mortality, and meaning—into accessible public work. His characteristic vulnerabilities arise from the same source: difficulty disengaging, overinvestment in productivity, perfectionism about language, and a tendency to give cognitively interesting problems more attention than mundane practical reality.
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Great post Steve. And I love the pictures and stories about your children.
I wanted to be a musician too but my mother wanted me to go to college and major in STEM because the prospects were better. Fortunately I loved math and science too and had the mind for it. I almost got my PhD twice but instead I became a software engineer, and support my wife and kids (also a son then a daughter) making a comfortable salary.
I’ve written and am currently recording my first song right now at 57. I’m excited about circling back later in life to also be an amateur musician. You had a link to your album. I’ll check it out.
How was your experience in the unmedicated psych ward on wheels that is Greyhound?
Great post Steve. And I love the pictures and stories about your children.
I wanted to be a musician too but my mother wanted me to go to college and major in STEM because the prospects were better. Fortunately I loved math and science too and had the mind for it. I almost got my PhD twice but instead I became a software engineer, and support my wife and kids (also a son then a daughter) making a comfortable salary.
I’ve written and am currently recording my first song right now at 57. I’m excited about circling back later in life to also be an amateur musician. You had a link to your album. I’ll check it out.