The Uncomfortable Science of Sex Differences
My appearance on the Modern Wisdom podcast with Chris Williamson
One of the highlights of my recent book tour was my trip to Austin, Texas, for my second appearance on the Modern Wisdom podcast with Chris Williamson.
After flying in from London, I did a one-on-one interview with Chris about my new book, A Billion Years of Sex Differences, followed by a roundtable with Chris, Rob Henderson, and Macken Murphy: four hours of podcasting on four hours’ sleep. After that, I took my first ride in a self-driving car. All in all, it was an amazing trip.
Chris and his team released the one-on-one interview last week, and in typical Modern Wisdom fashion, it’s doing the kind of numbers that most podcasters can only dream of. Here’s the blurb for the episode:
Why is it so difficult to talk about the differences between men and women today? It’s important to recognize that men and women deserve equal respect and opportunity, but that does not mean they are exactly the same. There are differences between the sexes that can be meaningful, valuable, and even beautiful. So what are those differences, and why has discussing them become so polarising?
Expect to learn why talking about sex differences is so controversial, what the actual definition of sex is, why there are challenges to the binary idea of sex, the largest sex differences between men and women, how sex differences reveal themselves via personality, the danger of denying and/or not respecting the differences in sex, and much more…
The episode is available on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. It’s also available on Chris’s YouTube channel.
If you enjoy the conversation and would like to explore these ideas in greater depth, you can pick up a copy of A Billion Years of Sex Differences here.
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Great conversation! One of the key insights: humans evolved through pair bonding and biparental care. Men and women are different on average, yet profoundly cooperative. Explanation is not justification. Like you say: Let people be themselves.
This does not surprise me: <<it’s doing the kind of numbers that most podcasters can only dream of.>>
As Chris Williamson blurbs, <<talking about sex differences is so controversial>>. It's controversial so many in the media world are afraid to touch this conversation. And yet, we humans are talking about such differences all the time.... though in the current age, sometimes first after casting a look over our shoulder to make sure no one is listening in....