Joe Rogan Experience #1081 - Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying

1. 0:08 – 2:33

   Setting the stage: evolutionary biology vs today’s sex/gender discourse

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:08

      Boom. And we're live, ladies and gentlemen. Heather Heying, Bret Weinstein. I didn't screw it up this time.

   2. BWBret Weinstein0:15

      Nope, you got it right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      Gotta get that Steen, Stein thing messed up with you.

   4. BWBret Weinstein0:18

      Got to get it right.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      I apologize. It's a bad time to get those messed up.

   6. HHHeather Heying0:21

      It is.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:21

      So-

   8. HHHeather Heying0:22

      Thanks for having us.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:22

      Thank you for being here, both of you. I'm very excited about this conversation.

   10. BWBret Weinstein0:25

       Really excited about it too. A little bit nervous in one way, but, but pretty, pretty jazzed.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:30

       T- well, I think it's good to be nervous about it, you know? I mean, uh, what we're talking about folks, uh, what we would like to talk about is... Well, why don't you explain it?

   12. BWBret Weinstein0:38

       Well, uh, I think Heather and I have been on, uh, an interesting adventure. We are evolutionary biologists. We trained with some of the, the finest evolutionary biologists of the 20th century, and we have been teaching... We taught for, Heather taught for 15 years, I taught for 14 years at Evergreen, and we spent a lot of time, uh, dealing with students and trying to help them see how clarifying an evolutionary viewpoint is with respect to understanding what a human being is and how we function and how we interact. And that was very, uh, enjoyable to us and it was very empowering to students to discover that there was actually a way of removing a lot of the confusion of being a, a person. And we're now watching the conversation out in civilization about, uh, sex and gender devolve into an absurdity. And, on the one hand, that's kind of frightening. I mean, for, for, for us, it's not, uh, uh, directly an issue. We're happily married, and so w- we're not having to navigate romance out in the world these days, and our kids are too young to be navigating it yet. Maybe this will all be, uh, clarified by the time they're involved in dating. But we also have a tremendous number of millennial friends, former students who are trying to navigate this stuff and finding it, uh, difficult and bewildering to hear a conversation that, frankly, there's a, a much better alternative if one can stand to think in evolutionary terms. If we can really look at ourselves as we are, as we came to be through evolutionary, uh, forces, then actually we can improve the landscape for romance and dating, uh, a great deal. But we can't do it if we're committed to very simple truisms that actually aren't right.

2. 2:33 – 4:16

   A “third way” between traditionalism and postmodern denial of biology

   1. JRJoe Rogan2:33

      What is disturbing both of you most about what's going on right now?

   2. HHHeather Heying2:39

      Well, I think... We'd love to see a third way. So there are the pre-moderns, as it were, who have very traditionalist, conservative approach-

   3. JRJoe Rogan2:47

      Let me try to get this sucker up close to you. Sorry. Right there.

   4. HHHeather Heying2:50

      Sorry about that.

   5. JRJoe Rogan2:51

      No worries.

   6. HHHeather Heying2:51

      Better?

   7. JRJoe Rogan2:51

      Yeah, perfect.

   8. HHHeather Heying2:52

      The, the pre-moderns who have a very traditional, conservative approach to gender roles, to sex, to relationship, and, uh, there are a lot of us in the modern world who would reject a lot of that. And then there, there are the post-moderns, who want to throw out everything, want to throw out everything that evolution handed us, and in the meantime, pretend that it didn't happen, right? Pretend that it's not even based on reality. And there's a, there's a third way, and, you know, maybe we need to call it modern as opposed to pre or post-modern. But, uh, there's, there's a third way to navigate what evolutionary has, what evolution has given us, what we can change, what we can't change, and how to actually recover some of, you know, the sexiness in sex and the love in love and the romance in romance and, you know, understand that human beings are what we are from not just 100 years back, but 1,000 and 10,000 and 100,000,000 years back, we've had sex.

   9. JRJoe Rogan3:48

      Since y- you both taught at a university level, you, you've been around these students and you s- you've seen this sort of post-modernist movement gain steam. What, what do you think is the cause of it? Like, what, what is the reason why people are projecting this sort of distorted idea that there's no differences between men and women, and that all the differences in the genders are all, it's all propaganda or cultural or...

3. 4:16 – 8:43

   Why extreme ideological solutions spread: complex systems and “diminishing returns”

   1. BWBret Weinstein4:16

      So I, I think it actually arises from a relatively simple cause, that we all detect there's something not right about what we've been taught. We detect there's something not right about the way civilization is structured. We can tell that there's nobody really at the helm. And you have a lot of people who are faced with some issue that, to them, is incredibly glaring, something that just absolutely needs to be solved. And so what they do is they look at that issue and they say, "What would we have to, what would we have to say in order for that issue to be fully addressed?" And the problem is that we're dealing with a complex system, and if you optimize for any one solution, you cause a catastrophe across all of the other things that it's connected to. And if you're not focused on those unintended consequences, you tend not to understand why people are resistant to your solution. So for example, let's deal with the transgender issue. For the transgender community, and I don't, you know, this is not a monolithic community, I actually know quite a number of people within it who have a heterodox position. But in general, there is a sense that it is disrespectful not to simply recognize anybody who has decided to transition as a full-fledged member of the sex to which they have moved. That seems right. And if you are focused on, uh, the humanitarian side of the question, maybe it even is right. But the problem is, if you say, "A person..."... who identifies as a particular sex is that sex, suddenly you've actually caused a whole bunch of consequences that you weren't thinking of over in a biology class, over, uh, in the prison system. I mean, is it true that somebody who says that they are female gets to go to a women's prison? Do we wanna put, um, violent sex offenders in a women's prison because they declare themselves to be female? So not tracking the consequences that were not in your view when you decided on a particular solution is the reason that so many people have signed up for these really absurd notions. And part of what I hope we will get to today is that there is a, a principle at the core of understanding all complex adaptive systems, and it is diminishing returns. And diminishing returns sounds kind of arcane. Um, it has too close an association with economics, where it was first outlined. Um, but the message of diminishing returns is that you can very often get 90% of a solution that you want and not disrupt other things unduly. But if you say, "I want 100% of the solution to this problem," you'll cause a catastrophe. So getting people to realize, don't shoot for the utopia in which the problem you're talking about is 100% solved. If you can accept a 90% solution, then you can have a whole bunch of other things that you don't even realize you're using.

   2. JRJoe Rogan7:25

      In defense of people that would try to go for 100% though, isn't it one of those things where, like you, if you would negotiate, you would... if you want $100, you ask for $150?

   3. BWBret Weinstein7:36

      Unfortunately, I mean, I think you're identifying something correct, that in part, the positions that we hear, um, being deployed are not an honest reflection of the beliefs of many of the people who are espousing them. They are a negotiating tactic. But we can't do that with biology.

   4. JRJoe Rogan7:55

      Right.

   5. BWBret Weinstein7:55

      You can't negotiate with biology. Biology is what it is, and then we can talk about which parts of it are amenable to being changed. And, uh, as Heather pointed out, we're not advocating for a return to some traditional way of interacting between the sexes. We're advocating for, uh, an enlightened way that, uh, takes advantage of the freedoms we have that our ancestors didn't and, um, tries to navigate the hazards that we're stuck with. Um, so you can't, you can't, uh, negotiate with biology. You really ought to listen to what it is that nature is telling you and then say, "All right, what does that leave open? Where can we shift things?" But if you're gonna require that we lie about what's true biologically in order to navigate to a solution, I guarantee you it will be unstable in the end.

   6. JRJoe Rogan8:43

      Well-

4. 8:43 – 29:06

   Sex isn’t infinitely malleable: chromosomes, gametes, and the “bimodal” reality

   1. HHHeather Heying8:43

      Yeah, the z- the zeitgeist has begun to include such nonsense as chromosomes exist on a continuum. You know, there are X chromosomes and there are Y chromosomes.

   2. JRJoe Rogan8:52

      I haven't heard that one.

   3. HHHeather Heying8:53

      Um, one of our children just heard that at his school.

   4. JRJoe Rogan8:56

      What did they mean by on a continuum?

   5. HHHeather Heying8:59

      Who, who even knows? You know, it's a-

   6. BWBret Weinstein9:00

      I don't, I don't think they meant anything. I think what they intended to do was carve out freedom from a biological truth.

   7. JRJoe Rogan9:07

      Mm.

   8. BWBret Weinstein9:07

      And so if you say-

   9. HHHeather Heying9:08

      Well, it is a l-

   10. BWBret Weinstein9:08

       ... "Chromosomes are on a continuum."

   11. HHHeather Heying9:10

       Ye-

   12. BWBret Weinstein9:10

       Then it's very hard to disagree with that because it doesn't mean anything that we can-

   13. JRJoe Rogan9:14

       Right.

   14. BWBret Weinstein9:14

       ... uh, unpack.

   15. HHHeather Heying9:14

       Well, I would say it's actually really easy to disagree with it and say no. You know, gametes aren't on a continuum. Sperm is sperm and eggs are eggs. Sorry. Discrete, two of them. Right? Chromosomes also not on a continuum, at least in mammals. Sex, yeah, a continuum. There... Intersex is real, but it's strongly bimodal, right? There's, there are males and there are females, and there are a few people, it's rare but real, that there are intermediate phenotypes. And gender is even more of a continuum, but still strongly bimodal.

   16. JRJoe Rogan9:45

       Have you folks heard about that new crayfish that they're battling in Europe? There's a giant-

   17. HHHeather Heying9:49

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan9:49

       ... crayfish in Europe that's female, uh, female only, and essentially is a clone. They m- they reproduce by cloning, so they don't need a male partner, and, uh, they're going crazy. And there's-

   19. BWBret Weinstein10:01

       No.

   20. HHHeather Heying10:01

       So that works great.

   21. JRJoe Rogan10:01

       ... a lot of them.

   22. BWBret Weinstein10:02

       For your first two sentences there, it sounded like there was a giant crayfish-

   23. JRJoe Rogan10:07

       (laughs)

   24. HHHeather Heying10:07

       (laughs)

   25. BWBret Weinstein10:07

       ... descending on Europe. It was a female.

   26. HHHeather Heying10:09

       Yep. (laughs)

   27. JRJoe Rogan10:09

       (laughs)

   28. BWBret Weinstein10:09

       And she's mad.

   29. JRJoe Rogan10:10

       She's pissed. (laughs)

   30. HHHeather Heying10:11

       Exactly. Yeah.
5. 29:06 – 37:30

   Switching sex, environmental sex determination, and why “male/female” is a convergent pattern

   1. JRJoe Rogan29:06

      But there are certain animals, certain, uh, things that can switch sexes?

   2. HHHeather Heying29:12

      Yes.

   3. BWBret Weinstein29:13

      Absolutely. Which also, I mean-

   4. JRJoe Rogan29:14

      Which organisms can do that?

   5. BWBret Weinstein29:16

      Well, there's lots of reef fish-

   6. JRJoe Rogan29:17

      Okay.

   7. BWBret Weinstein29:17

      ... would be the-

   8. JRJoe Rogan29:18

      Right.

   9. BWBret Weinstein29:18

      ... the big cluster of them.

   10. JRJoe Rogan29:20

       Uh, I've heard about ocean fish. Are there land creatures that do that?

   11. HHHeather Heying29:24

       There's one frog where there's a little bit of evidence, but it seems it, it may be an artifact of a, of a zoo setting effectively, which might mean that it can happen in the wild and we just haven't seen it.

   12. JRJoe Rogan29:33

       Mm.

   13. HHHeather Heying29:33

       But it's well known in reef fish, like there, there are a lot of species of reef fish, uh, that, and it, and it goes both ways. So there's, it's called, uh, sequential hermaphroditism where, uh, in some species, they're, everyone's born female, and then some transition into males, and in some it's the other way around, you transition from male to female. There are some species where you can go both ways, and it depends on the sex ratio around you and sort of what strategies there aren't enough of. So male and female are strategies, and if you are the most dominant female in a landscape and the male just died, it makes sense to turn into a male so that you can now fertilize all those females.

   14. JRJoe Rogan30:11

       Hm.

   15. BWBret Weinstein30:11

       But there also ... So that's the sequential, you know, where one individual will transition, um, between sexes. But there are also cases like, uh, turtles where there's no chromosomal sex determination, and the sex is effectively chosen by the environmental conditions, by temperature in the nest. And so, one individual lives its entire life within a sex, but that sex was not dictated when the egg was laid. It was dictated by the environment the egg, uh, matured in.

   16. HHHeather Heying30:39

       And in fact, that's-

   17. JRJoe Rogan30:39

       Isn't that the case with crocodiles as well?

   18. HHHeather Heying30:41

       Crocodiles, and in fact most...... most every vertebrate that we know except for mammals and birds. And the mammals and birds is a different evolution of genetic sex determination. So most lizards, snakes, frogs, crocodiles, turtles, um, teleost fish, have some kind of environmental sex determination.

   19. BWBret Weinstein30:58

       And actually, as long as we're going down this road, I promise you there's some place cool to go with humans too.

   20. JVJamie Vernon31:02

       This is cool already. (laughs)

   21. BWBret Weinstein31:03

       Okay, good. I, I never know, I never know how, how interested people are on the-

   22. JVJamie Vernon31:07

       (laughs)

   23. BWBret Weinstein31:07

       ... on the animal side of things.

   24. HHHeather Heying31:07

       Biology geek, yeah.

   25. BWBret Weinstein31:08

       But, um, so in human beings and, and mammals, and not all mammals, the monotremes are exceptional in this regard, but there are only-

   26. HHHeather Heying31:18

       That's the echidnas and platypus.

   27. BWBret Weinstein31:20

       Yeah. There are only three species-

   28. HHHeather Heying31:21

       Three species.

   29. BWBret Weinstein31:21

       ... left on earth that's a remnant of an early, early branch on the mammal tree. But, um, in, in most mammals, like us, we have chromosomal sex determination, and males are XY and females are XX. In birds, the situation is exactly reversed, as it is in butterflies. So what that tells you is that to the extent that-

   30. HHHeather Heying31:43

       So by, by reverse, what Brett means is, and we just use different letters just so as not to be confused, males are so-called homogametic, or WW. Whereas in, in mammals, females are homogametic, XX. And in birds, males are homogametic, WW, and females are WZ. Which means that female birds can't clone themselves, um, as, the, the way that, say, a Komodo dragon could.
6. 37:30 – 48:41

   Humans are sexually unusual: persistent breasts, concealed ovulation, pleasure sex, and menopause

   1. JRJoe Rogan37:30

      One of the things that we discussed in the green room before this show started was that what we are is some weird animal that can communicate in very, very complex ways, and one of the things that we do when we can communicate in such complex ways is explain all these things that we've learned about science, but another thing that we do is we distort reality to fit what we would desire it to be rather than what it is. How much of that is what's going on today?

   2. BWBret Weinstein37:59

      Uh, a huge amount. And, um, unpacking that, learning not to impose your expectations on nature is key to understanding it, and it really is a skill you have to learn. And, you know, that way when nature does tell you something about what males and females are like, and you know that you're not talking about something that you've learned by being human, you're talking about something you've learned by looking at other creatures, then there's a lot of power in understanding what those patterns are. Especially when you get to humans, because of all the creatures, I think this is fair to say, of all the creatures that I've spent any time thinking about, humans are maybe sexually the weirdest. Our story-

   3. JRJoe Rogan38:47

      Weirder than ducks?

   4. BWBret Weinstein38:49

      Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

   5. HHHeather Heying38:50

      Nicer than ducks too. (laughs)

   6. JRJoe Rogan38:51

      (laughs)

   7. BWBret Weinstein38:51

      Ni- for the most part. Well-

   8. HHHeather Heying38:54

      On average.

   9. BWBret Weinstein38:55

      ... on average.

   10. HHHeather Heying38:55

       Yes.

   11. BWBret Weinstein38:55

       But, um, human beings are partially sex-role reversed, okay? That's, sex-role reversal is not unheard of in, in animals, it happens, but our sex-role reversal is so weird, and it is not complete. So, there's stuff going on in human beings that is absolutely novel. I mean, in, in fact, here's a mind-blowing fact that really, you could start here and just follow back to the implications of this. There are, uh, how many species of mammals do you think there are?

   12. JRJoe Rogan39:33

       Whew. Half a million?

   13. BWBret Weinstein39:38

       No, no, no, no. You're off.

   14. JRJoe Rogan39:39

       30. (laughs)

   15. HHHeather Heying39:41

       (laughs)

   16. BWBret Weinstein39:41

       Uh, there are 30 and then a few more.

   17. HHHeather Heying39:43

       (laughs)

   18. JRJoe Rogan39:43

       (laughs)

   19. BWBret Weinstein39:43

       There are, uh, there are about 4,000.

   20. JRJoe Rogan39:46

       That's it?

   21. HHHeather Heying39:46

       5,000 now we think.

   22. JRJoe Rogan39:47

       Really?

   23. HHHeather Heying39:48

       Close to five.

   24. BWBret Weinstein39:48

       Well, I still think it's 4,000. (laughs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan39:51

       Wow.

   26. BWBret Weinstein39:51

       Okay. Well, this is gonna mess me up because I don't know how to work back from 5,000, and I don't know which clade has grown, but yeah, we've got about 5,000 species of mammals-

   27. HHHeather Heying39:58

       The ratios, the ratios are pretty consistent still.

   28. BWBret Weinstein39:59

       They're pretty consistent. So-

   29. HHHeather Heying40:01

       If you're doing...

   30. BWBret Weinstein40:01

       ... half of them are rodents, a quarter of them are bats. That one, I, I studied bats in, in graduate school. That was my thing. People never expect that a quarter of all mammal species are bats.
7. 48:41 – 1:08:23

   Modern sexuality’s mismatch: “hot vs beautiful,” male strategies, and advertising’s incentives

   1. JRJoe Rogan48:41

      Mm-hmm. This modernity, I mean, the way human beings represent sexuality or the way sexuality is represented, um, what's wrong with it? Like what, what are the, what are the key things that stand out as an evolutionary biologist?

   2. BWBret Weinstein48:58

      Um, well, let me try and experiment with you. This is-

   3. JRJoe Rogan49:00

      Okay.

   4. BWBret Weinstein49:01

      This is, uh...I'm concerned this isn't going to work, but I hope, I hope it does.

   5. JVJamie Vernon49:04

      Even if it doesn't work, it'll work.

   6. BWBret Weinstein49:05

      Okay. Um, I w- I would like to try and experiment with you as a, a red-blooded male.

   7. JVJamie Vernon49:12

      Okay.

   8. BWBret Weinstein49:13

      I would like you to conjure the image in your mind of a woman who is not beautiful, but is hot.

   9. JVJamie Vernon49:24

      Mm. Okay.

   10. BWBret Weinstein49:25

       Can you do it?

   11. JVJamie Vernon49:26

       Sure.

   12. BWBret Weinstein49:26

       Okay. Can you conjure the image of a woman who is beautiful, but not hot?

   13. JVJamie Vernon49:32

       Yes.

   14. BWBret Weinstein49:33

       No problem.

   15. JVJamie Vernon49:34

       No problem.

   16. BWBret Weinstein49:35

       Me either. Um, this, I think, actually is a window into much that is wrong with what we think about human sexuality. I think most people, if you ask them without doing that little experiment, to conjure, uh, or to define what, what it is for somebody to be hot, you would get answers and people would tell you that hot was sort of like the height of beauty, right? Which is very frightening if that's true, because hotness wanes with age. It deteriorates. You just can't help it. The discovery that beauty actually is a different parameter tells a whole different story about what's going on with us people, with men and with women. And I think both men and women are confused by this. Um, so if it is true, and I, I mean I know it is true. I can look inside my own mind and I can say that at least for some men, it is true that beauty and hotness are almost uncorrelated. There are people who have both traits. But I, uh, I have no trouble seeing that image of a woman who is hot, but not the least bit beautiful. And I know lots of women who are beautiful and not hot. And I also, if I take the category of women who are beautiful but not hot, um, there are a lot of older women in it, right? I know women in their 60s and 70s who have poise, have aged gracefully. They're gray as can be. They may be wrinkled, but if you talk to them, one does have the sense, "I'm talking to a beautiful person," right? And I'm not, I'm not being maudlin here. If it was just a simple fact that both beauty and hotness waned with age, I would say so. But it is not the case. So, what's going on? Why do we have these two categories, and why do we assume ... I mean, if you look at advertising, you will get the message that hotness is where it's at, right? Hotness is the thing.

   17. HHHeather Heying51:40

       It's the only standard possible.

   18. BWBret Weinstein51:42

       It's the only standard. And so women are aspiring to it, and then they're fighting it as it wanes and all of this. And, um, here, here's what I suspect is up. Because males are males, they have, I want to say they have two reproductive strategies. Really, they have three reproductive strategies and one of them is, uh, so awful that it's really just unpleasant to even enter it into the discussion. But you-

   19. JVJamie Vernon52:10

       You're talking about rape.

   20. BWBret Weinstein52:11

       Yep.

   21. JVJamie Vernon52:12

       Yeah.

   22. BWBret Weinstein52:12

       Yeah. So the first reproductive strategy that men have, the one that would generally have succeeded, and by the way, we can talk about monogamy versus polyamory and all of that at some point, but, uh, I'm not saying anything that is inherent ... It's not inherently about monogamy. The way males have typically reproduced is they have invested in their offspring and the mothers of their offspring. That's the go-to mechanism for reproducing as a human. Why? Because human babies are so needy that one person trying to raise them on their own is hobbled by just the sheer difficulty of trying to manage an infant and a toddler while trying to accomplish the other things of being a person. So-

   23. HHHeather Heying52:56

       So, let me just add here that the idea that monogamy has been ubiquitous throughout human history is not completely accepted, uh, but that there is good evidence for it on a lot of fronts. And one of the points against it is that we remain somewhat sexually dimorphic, that men are, on average, a bit taller, a bit more musc- you know, much more muscular, um, but that we are so much less sexually dimorphic than even our ancestors, um, bef- you know, in more recent times than when we were shared a r- more recent common ancestors with chimps, that we are moving towards a more monogamous situation.

   24. BWBret Weinstein53:33

       So just, I think, I think you said something that was unclear at the beginning. There has been a lot of polygyny, where one male has multiple females, in human history. Probably the majority of human cultures have been polygynous.

   25. HHHeather Heying53:45

       Yes.

   26. BWBret Weinstein53:45

       Majority of people on earth today belong to cultures that are at least nominally monogamous. And we should talk about what that shift is and what it means to us and what's desirable and all of that. But, um, the basic point that human babies are so expensive and difficult to raise, that, um, you need a team to do it. And, you know, in part, this is a ... Chicken and egg question is not a good term, because it's quite clear which came first, but, um, the ... This is a situation where the, when you have a team, you can also afford to have a baby that's more needy. And there are, there's nothing good about a needy baby, but there is something good about what you can get if you can tolerate a needy baby. You can get a baby that's a lot more nuanced when it grows up. So, males have traditionally invested in offspring. Um, but a male who is investing in their offspring, should they happen on an opportunity in which a female who is fertile and capable of producing an offspring does not require commitment from them in order to have sex, that's an evolutionary bargain. A male who can either convince a female or finds a female who's willing to produce a baby but not expect any support in return, that's such a power. It's like winning the lottery evolutionarily. So it would have almost never happened in history because women-... because babies are so expensive, are wired to avoid this like the plague. You don't wanna get stuck raising a baby on your own if you could, through committing to somebody, get a partner in raising an offspring. So-

   27. JRJoe Rogan55:20

       How does birth control factor into that?

   28. BWBret Weinstein55:21

       Well, we'll, we'll get there in a second. But let's just get the two strategies-

   29. JRJoe Rogan55:24

       Okay.

   30. BWBret Weinstein55:24

       ... on the table. Males, in general, have succeeded reproductively by investing in their offspring and their offsprings' mothers. When they have the opportunity to produce offspring with no commitment, they have a hard time resisting that opportunity because it's such an evolutionary win. But that doesn't mean it would've been very common in history because females would avoid it. So, my-
8. 1:08:23 – 1:20:24

   Catcalling, sexual signaling, and the empathy gap between male and female experience

   1. BWBret Weinstein1:08:23

      Well, and, but, but again, I, so there is what I would call a two-way failure of empathy. So if you'll give me a, a little, a little leash here, we empathize with another individual by using our own minds and whatever it is that we have as the content of our minds, and then we run the data of somebody else's situation through our minds, and we say, "How would I feel in that situation?" And, in general, this works really well if you share circuitry with somebody, and it works not so well where your circuitry is different. So there are lots of places where males and females who grew up ... Heather and I both grew up in LA. There's a certain amount of stuff that we can intuit about what the other would think about something, just based on the fact that we grew up in the same period and the same place. Um, but males and females, there, there's a place where we top out, and we can't understand what the other is, is experiencing because it is very unlike what we would experience. So for example, if, uh, if you were walking down the street, let's say before you were a well-known guy, okay? You're an anonymous guy walking down the street, and imagine that there's a group of women talking somewhere, and, uh, you walk by and they're like, (whistles) "Look at that, that's one fine hunk of man." How do you feel?

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:09:50

      Uh, yeah. Whoo!

   3. BWBret Weinstein1:09:53

      You feel pretty good?

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:09:54

      Well, I don't feel threatened. That's the difference.

   5. BWBret Weinstein1:09:55

      You certainly don't feel-

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:09:56

      The difference between a man experiencing that with women is I'm not gonna get gang raped.

   7. BWBret Weinstein1:10:00

      Yeah, but do you feel good?

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:10:02

      Yeah.

   9. BWBret Weinstein1:10:02

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:10:03

       Sure.

   11. BWBret Weinstein1:10:03

       Of course you would, right?

   12. HHHeather Heying1:10:04

       Of course. You feel complimented.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:10:05

       So ... Right. But the, uh, th- it's very different with the opposite sex, because there's no threat.

   14. BWBret Weinstein1:10:09

       Uh, it's very different for the, with the opposite sex not only because ... Let's neutralize the threat part of it.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:10:15

       Okay.

   16. HHHeather Heying1:10:16

       Whi- which is, I mean, it's, it's huge.

   17. BWBret Weinstein1:10:17

       It's huge.

   18. HHHeather Heying1:10:17

       For sure. But there's other stuff going on too.

   19. BWBret Weinstein1:10:19

       But here's the part that I think men don't intuit until somebody points it out to them. Because men have two different reproductive strategies, and one of them is about long-term investment, and the other one is about have sex with them, impregnate them, and never see them again, when a man whistles at a woman, right, and he compliments essentially how hot she looks, he is essentially offering to stick her with a child that will then be her responsibility for the better part of two decades. That's not a very nice compliment. Right?

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:10:55

       Well, that's a weird way of looking at it. (laughs) I s- I bel- I agree with you. Uh, I, I see exactly where you're going with that, but man, I never thought about it that way before, and I don't think most people have either.

   21. BWBret Weinstein1:11:03

       Well, th- this is my point though. It's right in front of us.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:11:06

       Mm-hmm.

   23. BWBret Weinstein1:11:06

       Why should-

   24. HHHeather Heying1:11:06

       But there's, I mean, there's another thing too that, um, so you've just identified, you know, a single guy catcalling, maybe, right? But a woman walking past a construction site and getting five, six, seven guys whistling, who are those calls for? Not necessarily for her. It's communication between the men.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:11:25

       Yeah.

   26. HHHeather Heying1:11:26

       Right?

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:11:26

       It's they're, they're signaling that they're not gay. (laughs)

   28. HHHeather Heying1:11:28

       They're, yeah, they're signaling to each other-

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:11:29

       (laughs)

   30. HHHeather Heying1:11:29

       ... "Hey, did you see that?" "I saw that." "I'm into that."
9. 1:20:24 – 1:31:39

   MeToo: bright lines, loss of nuance, bad actors, and due process

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:20:24

      Sorry. My, my apologies. I, I mean, I should know what that means. Uh, I've heard it before, but it's ... Now, um, what out of all this can we unpack, um, about the way we're interpreting what's acceptable and not acceptable about male and female interaction in 2018?

   2. HHHeather Heying1:20:46

      Yeah. Well, I mean, we're ...

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:20:48

      'Cause it seems to be getting redefined. Right?

   4. HHHeather Heying1:20:51

      Yeah. And it's a hot mess.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:20:52

      Yeah.

   6. HHHeather Heying1:20:52

      It's, um, you-

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:20:53

      What's wrong with it as a, like, as a biologist, as a, a person who understands humans?

   8. HHHeather Heying1:20:59

      Yeah. Um, let's, let's go to Me Too. Right? The Me Too movement looks, looks like an honorable thing at first. Because most men are not nasty human beings and don't behave towards women in a way that most women have been behaved towards by men. Almost every woman who at all fits their, the norms for their culture has been harassed in some way, um, when they were a young woman. That is just, that is true. Most men don't do that. That's also true. So imagining that most men are behaving in some kind of a toxic way, and I just, I don't like that word, but, um, imagining that because most women have experienced harassment, most men are therefore harassing is an error of logic, of statistics, of humanity. So we go from this place of wow, are there some monsters out there. Wow, was it a good moment to reveal some of the monstrosity that was happening. And are there some bright lines? Like I'm, I'm prepared to draw a couple of bright lines. Everyone deserves not to be touched if they don't wanna be touched. And everyone deserves to exist in a situation where there are no quid pro quos, uh, for instance, of their employment. If you want to stay employed or if you want to be, uh, advanced in your employment, then you need- going to need to do this sexual thing with me. Quid pro quos, don't, don't be touched when you don't wanna be touched, those things seem honorable and true and for God's sake, can't we all agree to those? But then it went too far, and women are arguing, some, some women are arguing that it doesn't matter if innocent men go down. And because many women have experienced this, it must be all men. I mean, we, we're actually hearing from people that any boy that you are raising is potentially a rapist. No. Sorry. Most men I know couldn't rape actually. It's just, it's not what men are. So Me Too went off the rails and it had an opportunity to actually really wake a lot of good men up to how ubiquitous the experience of walking around on the streets and, um, being catcalled, being harassed and sometimes being groped and sometimes worse than that is for a woman. And it took it to this, this absurd point where now most, I think, increasingly reasonable people are looking at it going, "Well then if you're claiming that, what else that you're saying isn't true?" And that puts the, you know, that puts the early stages of the movement at risk.

Episode duration: 2:52:47