Category: podcast

Sam Harris on the election: trans-activism completely destroyed Democratic politics (without most Democrats knowing)

November 12, 2024 • 10:00 am

Everybody has their own theory about the most important factor leading to the Democrats’ loss a week ago.  People blame Biden, Harris, the Republicans (whose supporters are characterized as fascistic racists), the left-wing press, and the wokeness of Democrats, which pushed Harris and the party away from the center towards the “progressive” (far Left) side.

In the 40-minute video below, Sam Harris zeroes in on the last factor—the fulminating wokeness of Democrats. Make no mistake about it, Harris was a vehement opponent of Trump, but here he is—as I often do—noting the problems with “Democratic” views that make them lose elections.  In this case, it’s wokeness, especially the brand centered on “trans” issues.

Sam’s overall take: the Left “did not pivot to the political center in a way that the voters found credible.”  He adds that the planks of Harris’s platform were “rotten”, especially those supporting identity politics. As he says,  “identity politics is over, nobody wants it.”

In particular—and for this Sam will be excoriated for transphobia, though he’s not transphobic—he says that “activism about transgender politics has deranged our politics as long as Trump has been in politics.”  Harris emphsizes that he supports transgender rights (meaning “legal rights”), but thinks the electorate rejects the idea that males identifying as females should be competing in sports against biological females. Neither do I and neither does Sam, but he adds that “if [that] sounds like transphobia to you, then you are the problem.”  He goes on to characterize gender activism as a “new religion” or a “cult”, but again emphasizes that it is the excesses of that movement that turns him off just as it repelled potential voters for Harris. (Sam says, as an aside, that “We should help those who are truly gender dysphoric.”)

Where readers might disagree is Sam’s emphasis on gender activism as THE factor that turned off centrists and moderates, and may have swung the election. As he says,

 “A shocking percentage of Democrats imagine that all the controversy about trans rights and gender identity in kids is just right wing bigotry, and a non-issue politically, whereas it is obvious that for millions of Americans it might as well have been the only issue in this election–not because they’re transphobic assholes, but because they simply do not accept the new metaphysics, and even the new biology, mandated by trans activists and the institutions that htye have successfully bullied and captured. . . . Congratulations, Democrats: you have found the most annoying thing in the fucking galaxy and hung it around your necks.”

Sam has apparently abandoned the calmness accompanying the meditation he practices, for the piece is larded with uncharacteristic profanity, including Sam’s peevish claim that if we Democrats continue this way, “You’re going to get President Candace Fucking Owens some day.”  But I applaud the increasing use of profanity in such podcast, for that’s the way people actually talk.

Sam then appends the claim that cultural issues, not inflation or the border, may have been the crucial factor that swung the election towards Trump—although of course there may have been many factors, each of which, if mitigated, could have changed the course of a close election. These include the following:

a.) The degradation of major cities run by Democratic mayors, who don’t do anything about homelessness or pervasive theft in retail stores.

b.) The lack of policing or criticism of policing in many places. As he says, officials  “won’t police the streets but they police the language.”

c.) The failure of Democrats to take Islamism, and terrorist organizations like Hamas, sufficiently seriously. “Democrats needs to figure out,” he says,  “that civilization needs to be defended from barbarism.” While he notes that both Biden and Harris did support Israel, during the election they—and by this he means Kamala Harris—”talked out of both sides of their mouths.” Indeed she did, for I paid close attention.

In the end, Sam concludes that “Democratic moral confusion cost the Democrats millions of votes.” While you may say that equivocation and both-sides-of-the-mouth talking is the heart of politics, Sam is saying that the moral rectitude was not rocket science, but comprised centrist and populist views that wokeness prevented Democrats from espousing.  And the GOP picked up on this moral weakness, making it the subject of many pro-Trump ads like the one below.

I recommend that you listen to Sam’s audio here. I’ve put two extra items below it.

Here’s one of the Trump ads that excoriated Democrats for wokeness, concentrating on Kamala’s support for government-funded gender surgery for incarcerated immigrants who entered the country illegally (yes, she did say that):

And here’s a kerfuffle at CNN showing how vehemently some liberals take gender activism. One guy goes ballistic when the speaker, Republican Shermichael Singleton, suggests that boys (who assume the female gender) shouldn’t be able to compete in in women’s athletics, saying “they’re not boys”. And then the room explodes, with the moderator demanding “respect” for that view and suggesting that the athletics ban is “transphobic”.  Singleton keeps saying that this is what “regular people” think, and he’s right.  It’s the insistence on that kind of misguided activism that, says Harris, is precisely why the Democrats lost. Well, weigh in below.

 

Matthew appears again on a continuing podcast series on the history of DNA

March 26, 2024 • 9:30 am

The Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine has now done 13 podcasts on the history of DNA, beginning with the discovery of nucleic acids through the observation that DNA was the hereditary material (Avery et al.) and (so far) up to the structure of the double helix.  As far I know, our own Dr. Cobb, very eloquent behind the microphone, has been on four of these broadcasts:  #3, 4, 7 and the newest one #13, about Watson, Crick, and the double helix.

You can access the whole lot by clicking on this screenshot, or get to the individual podcasts by clicking on the screenshot below.

This podcast series illuminates the history of seminal discoveries and research through which we learned about the molecule that has been dubbed as the “secret of life” itself: DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid.

This series progresses from the first discovery of the substance in 1869 to the late 1950s, when scientists figured out the structure of this molecule and its implications for the way in which it carries out its biological functions. Each episode features scholars and experts from different fields, including the history of science, other humanities and social sciences—such as philosophy, anthropology, sociology of science and STS—the specific areas of science pertinent to the paper being discussed, and science communication.

Click on the “Resources” tab for information for researchers as well as further readings.

Jump to:
Episode 1 on Friedrich Miescher and the discovery of nuclein
Episode 2 on Albrecht Kossel and the discovery of the building blocks of nuclein
Episode 3 on Walter Sutton and the relation between chromosomes and heredity
Episode 4 on Fred Griffith and the discovery of bacterial transformation
Episode 5 on Phoebus Levene, DNA chemistry and the tetranucleotide hypothesis
Episode 6 on William Astbury, Florence Bell and the first X-ray pictures of DNA
Episode 7 on Oswald Avery, Colin McLeod, and Maclyn McCarty and the chemical basis of bacterial transformation
Episode 8 on Maclyn McCarty, Oswald Avery and the enzymatic evidence for DNA as the transforming substance
Episode 9 on Erwin Chargaff and the evidence for non-uniformity of nucleotide base composition in DNA
Episode 10 on Harriet Ephrussi-Taylor, Rollin Hotchkiss and the demonstration of bacterial transformation as a general phenomenon
Episode 11 on Alfred Hershey, Martha Chase, and the conclusive evidence for the function of DNA as the material of heredity.
Episode 12 on Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin, their collaborators, and the data that supported the double helix model for DNA structure.
Episode 13 on James Watson, Francis Crick, and the DNA Double Helix.

You can hear the latest episode, 62 minutes long, by clicking at the screenshot below, is described comme ça:

Rounding out the story begun in the previous installment, episode 13 of the DNA Papers centers on the publications in which the double helical structure for DNA was proposed, detailed, and its various implications speculated upon. It features four papers, all by Watson and Crick from Cambridge. Together these papers not only proposed that DNA’s three dimensional structure was a double-stranded helix, but also described the antiparallel and complementary nature of its two component strands and the specific pairing of  the component nucleotide bases, namely,  the purines, A and G, with the  pyrimidines T and C respectively. The papers also discussed the implications of these features for the fundamental functions of DNA. . . .

And the participants are:

Soraya de Chadarevian, University of California, Los Angeles
Matthew Cobb, University of Manchester
Nathaniel Comfort, Johns Hopkins University
Georgina Ferry

Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal discuss the “dueling articles” of Dawkins and Rose

August 2, 2023 • 10:00 am

I could listen only to the free 17-minute beginning of Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal’s podcast episode, “But really, what IS a woman?”, as I don’t subscribe (I would, but I now subscribe to more sites than I can keep up with). At any rate, if you click below you can hear the 17-minute take for free, and then, if you want to subscribe and hear the whole thing, go here.

They introduce the controversy about “what is a woman” discussed by Richard Dawkins and Jacqueline Rose (see here for my link and the link to Dawkins’s and Rose’s pieces), and then go into the mistakes made when one violates the standard gamete-based definition of biological sex—mistakes famously promulgated by Anne Fausto-Sterling and repeated to this day by gender activists (though Fausto-Sterling’s calculation has long since been corrected by others). No, people, the frequency of intersexes is not 2%, they are not as common as people with red hair, they do not represent “other sexes” and thereby violate the sex binary, and, most important, people with intersex conditions are not the same thing as transgender people.

One plaint: Herzog mentions me and says that I “blog like it’s 2003,” which I gather means more than once a day, but what’s wrong with that? And what’s with the 2003?

That aside, the first 17 minutes of discussion is good, and if the podcasters loved me—since they do read this “blog”—they might give me free access. I know they’re reading this website (not a “blog”)!

In which I am canceled as a transphobe

July 11, 2023 • 10:45 am

A while back I was invited to go on a video podcast to talk about evolution. I agreed and was fully prepared to talk only about evolution, as requested.  Then the host, whom I won’t name, had a family emergency and had to cancel the podcast.  There was no mention about rescheduling the show for a later date.

After a few weeks, a reader asked me about the podcast, which I’d mentioned before, so I wrote the host inquiring about it, asking whether we could reschedule. In the reply was this, which shocked me down to my soles:

Since our last message, I have been advised that our Q&A would unfortunately not likely remain focused on evolution so much as on recent comments from yourself regarding the trans community. This being a live show, that would be unavoidable. I am not comfortable speaking for groups to which I do not belong, especially not on a topic where I, like you, have no formal education or experience. Though I do have close relatives on both sides of my family, as well as dear friends who are trans. I will support them (like the activist I have always been) against our State legislators who have begun targeting their own constituents. ‘Muricah!
I have always admired your voice as an advocate of evolution, but other fields of science overlap human rights issues where you and I disagree, and this would inevitably come up. That is not the show that I had hoped to have.

I responded politely, pointing out that I have never been a transphobe but have questioned the “rights” of trans women to occupy “female spaces,” most particularly women’s athletics. As you know, this view is based on scientific grounds: data showing convincingly that biological men who transition to women during or after puberty retain a significant level of male physiological and morphological traits (greater muscle mass, grip strength, bone strength and density, etc.) that would give them an athletic advantage over biological women.  To me that is unfair, which is a moral conclusion drawn from the data. If there were no such advantages, I wouldn’t be at all opposed to trans women competing against biological women.

As you also know if you read here regularly, my only other objection to trans women occupying women’s spaces are places like women’s prisons, shelters for battered women, and rape-counseling centers. That’s as far as I go. And I’ve said a gazillion times, in all other respects I think that trans people, whether they identify as men or women, should have all the rights, respect, and equal treatment by others. I also have no issue with calling people whatever pronouns they like.

If I sound defensive here, I’m really not: I want to point out that this person has clearly no idea of what my views on trans people are, or, if the host does, then we have an honest disagreement which isn’t “transphobic.” And there is some scientific support for my position on sports, at least.  Although I wrote a polite response, upon thinking it over I think that what the host wrote is ignorant, offensive, and absurd.

In my response I also reiterated that I wanted to talk only about evolution, not gender issues, and I would certainly not have brought the latter up. I’m not sure whether this podcast takes questions from viewers, but even so the gender issue could easily have been avoided by simply announcing that we’re talking only about evolution.  I have no idea why talking about trans issues would have been “unavoidable.”

I’m curious who “advised” this host, but the host should have done their own research. The “advice” was simply bad.

Finally, I am not speaking “for” trans people, but about them, and I know enough, I think, to have an opinion about athletics and other moral issues. This is like saying that we can have no opinion on any issue involving minorities or oppressed people unless we are one of them. It behooves us to listen, of course, but it doesn’t behoove us to turn off our brains.

In the end, I am appalled that this mentality exists. It’s one thing to damn someone as a hater of trans people, but another completely to punish someone—yes, that’s what this person is trying to do—for discussing the athletic and ethical implications of a limited set of trans “rights.”

As for the host, it’s their loss. The result is that people don’t get to hear about evolution simply because I have “wrongthink” on an issue that wouldn’t even have arisen. What a world!

Oh, I should add that I use the word “canceled” above as a bit of hyperbole. A host has the right to boot a guest off their private podcast, even if it’s for things not connected with the topic at hand. But it might as well have been cancelation, because I’m banned for. . . . well, it’s really not clear!

Our CFI podcast/discussion

July 8, 2023 • 11:15 am

The Center for Inquiry has put the discussion that Luana and I had this week, along with Robyn Blumner moderating, on YouTube. (You can also see it at the SI site.)  It was fun, but of course given the material we covered in our paper, there’s no way that we could do more than give a brief summary in an hour (45 minutes, really, with 15 minutes of questions at the end.) As usual, I haven’t watched it because I hate to see and her myself talking (not unusual, I think).

If you want to read our paper, “The Ideological Subversion of Biology,” it’ll be online forever, and you can find it here.

Videocast discussion of the Coyne/Maroja paper this evening

July 6, 2023 • 9:00 am

Just a reminder that this evening, starting at 7 p.m. Eastern Ti9me, Luana Maroja and l will discuss our Skeptical Inquirer paper “The ideological subversion of biology” (free at the link.) It would be nice if you read it beforehand, but it’s not essential. The discussion will be started and moderated by moderated by Robyn Blumner, the head of the Center for Inquiry and of the Richard Dawkins Foundation,

The total time should be about an hour, and there will be a few questions for us, posed by listeners, at the end.

My announcement of the even was here; and the official site and registration are here, or click on the screenshot below. You have to register to get the link, but it’s only a matter of providing your name and email.

Fom the site:

In “The Ideological Subversion of Biology,” the cover feature of the July/August 2023 issue of Skeptical Inquirer, Jerry A. Coyne and Luana S. Maroja deliver a powerful and provocative warning about the dangers of trying to make scientific reality conform to the political winds. It’s an absolute must-read for anyone who agrees that science must be objective and empirical—not ideological.

Join us on Thursday, July 6, at 7:00 p.m. ET for a special Skeptical Inquirer Presents livestream with Jerry A. Coyne and Luana S. Maroja, hosted by Robyn E. Blumner, CEO and president of the Center for Inquiry. They’ll discuss how the field of evolutionary and organismal biology has been “impeded or misrepresented by ideology,” how the erosion of free inquiry in science due to progressive ideology is damaging both intellectually and materially, and, most importantly, what can be done about it. If things don’t change, they warn, “in a few decades science will be very different from what it is now. Indeed, it’s doubtful that we’d recognize it as science at all.”

See you there!

Live interview with Aron Ra tomorrow

May 28, 2023 • 10:30 am

Aron Ra has asked me to be on his live video podcast tomorrow, and I’m glad to oblige. It will be about evolution. As Aaron told me:

Ideally, we would like to do a half hour of you talking about your career in defense of science against creationism. Then we would do another half hour of taking selected questions from the chat.

The show is at 10 a.m. Chicago time (11 a.m. Eastern time) tomorrow, and you will be able to watch it by clicking on the link below.