Joe Rogan Experience #1673 - Colin Wright
Joe Rogan (host), Colin Wright (guest), Narrator, Narrator, Narrator
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Joe Rogan and Colin Wright, Joe Rogan Experience #1673 - Colin Wright explores biologist Colin Wright Dissects Sex, Gender, and Woke Ideology Joe Rogan and evolutionary biologist Colin Wright discuss Wright’s arguments that biological sex is binary (male and female) and not a spectrum, and how this conflicts with current academic and activist narratives.
Biologist Colin Wright Dissects Sex, Gender, and Woke Ideology
Joe Rogan and evolutionary biologist Colin Wright discuss Wright’s arguments that biological sex is binary (male and female) and not a spectrum, and how this conflicts with current academic and activist narratives.
They explore how gender ideology emerged from queer theory and critical theory, how it spread through universities, media, and corporations, and how it manifests in issues like trans women in female sports and prison placement.
Wright connects today’s “woke” movements to earlier atheist and skeptic communities, describing how those spaces were captured by social-justice activism and how dissenting academics face professional punishment and cancellation.
The conversation broadens into cancel culture, institutional capture, possible long‑term cultural consequences, and whether new centrist or reality‑based institutions can counter these trends.
Key Takeaways
Biological sex is defined by reproductive anatomy and gametes, not traits like hormones or body hair.
Wright argues sex is a binary rooted in whether a body is organized (developmentally) around producing small gametes (sperm, male) or large gametes (ova, female). ...
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Claims that sex is a spectrum often misuse intersex conditions and secondary traits.
Intersex conditions occur in roughly 1 in 5,000 births and represent rare developmental anomalies, not additional sexes. ...
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Trans women retain substantial performance advantages in female sports even after hormone suppression.
Citing recent sports medicine research, Wright notes that male puberty confers large, mostly irreversible advantages (muscle mass, bone structure, height, grip strength). ...
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Language redefinitions (“woman,” “female,” “gender identity”) enable policy changes without open debate.
By redefining “woman” as anyone who identifies as such, institutions can allow biological males into female categories (sports, prisons, shelters) without formally changing sex-based rules. ...
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Woke ideology spreads via institutional capture, social-media mobbing, and fear of being labeled a bigot.
Wright describes HR-driven political litmus tests (diversity statements), online harassment campaigns, and professional blacklisting that deter academics from dissenting. ...
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Gender-identity frameworks can inadvertently harm women, gay people, and gender‑nonconforming kids.
Redefining homosexuality as attraction to “same gender identity” rather than same sex blurs gay/lesbian boundaries, pressures lesbians to accept “female penises,” and frames kids who defy sex stereotypes as possibly “born in the wrong body,” increasing confusion and medicalization.
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There is a growing need for reality‑based, ideologically plural institutions outside captured universities.
Given how entrenched critical-theory frameworks have become in higher education and corporate DEI structures, Wright sees promise in new projects like centrist, debate‑friendly colleges (e. ...
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Notable Quotes
“If we can't get these questions right on what sex is, that there's only two sexes, there's just not many more levees after this that can hold back the flood of insanity.”
— Colin Wright
“What they all have in common is this allergy to the number two. They need to break up binaries anywhere they see them.”
— Colin Wright
“The whole thing about the Olympics is supposed to be no drug testing, no this, no that, no advantages… and if you can be competing… as a gender that's not represented by your chromosomes… it's just weird that they chose to do that in the Olympics.”
— Joe Rogan
“I’m saying the most boilerplate things I can possibly imagine that a biologist could possibly say… and now it’s not ‘you’re wrong,’ it’s ‘you’re a horrible person.’”
— Colin Wright
“If I was an evil genius looking to deteriorate society from within, I would do it the way these woke people are doing it.”
— Joe Rogan
Questions Answered in This Episode
If biological sex is clearly binary, why has the “sex is a spectrum” narrative been so successfully adopted within academia and media?
Joe Rogan and evolutionary biologist Colin Wright discuss Wright’s arguments that biological sex is binary (male and female) and not a spectrum, and how this conflicts with current academic and activist narratives.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How should societies balance compassion for trans individuals with the need to maintain sex-based categories in areas like sports, prisons, and intimate spaces?
They explore how gender ideology emerged from queer theory and critical theory, how it spread through universities, media, and corporations, and how it manifests in issues like trans women in female sports and prison placement.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
To what extent is today’s gender ideology an organic cultural shift versus a product of institutional incentives, social media dynamics, or even foreign influence operations?
Wright connects today’s “woke” movements to earlier atheist and skeptic communities, describing how those spaces were captured by social-justice activism and how dissenting academics face professional punishment and cancellation.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How can parents, teachers, and clinicians distinguish between healthy gender nonconformity in children and cases where medical transition might be appropriate?
The conversation broadens into cancel culture, institutional capture, possible long‑term cultural consequences, and whether new centrist or reality‑based institutions can counter these trends.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What would a truly pluralistic, reality‑anchored university or institution look like in practice, and how could it avoid being captured by any single ideological faction over time?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Transcript Preview
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays) Hello, Colin.
How's it going, Joe?
W- well, first of all, it's going great. Thank you very much, first of all, uh, for this bottle of, uh, this is distilled honey, right?
It's distilled mead.
Distilled mead.
Yeah. So-
So mead is like a beer made out of hon- well, kind of like-
Yeah. It's like a honey wine. So when you make rum, that's basically just like a distilled, uh, fermented sugarcane product in beer, or i- and whiskey is a distilled beer. And then if you wanna have brandy, that's sort of a distilled fruit wine of some sort.
Mm.
So this is sort of a unique thing. This is distilled mead, so straight from honey. So I think it's one of the most like crafty spirits there are, because like good luck replicating all the stuff that the bees did to, to make that honey and then the fermentation process. And then that was put in a pot still by myself.
Well, I had mead for the first time last weekend actually.
Oh, okay.
I was at, uh, Maynard Keenan's place in, um, Scottsdale, Arizona. M- um, uh, American Vineyards. You know Maynard from Tool?
Yeah, yeah. For sure.
You know, he's a, he's actually a wine guy. He makes wine. What would you call that? A... What is a wine producer?
Viticulturist? Enologist?
Wine maker? (laughs) I'm sorry. Well, uh, whatever he is, he makes mead as well. It was interesting. I was like, "Oh, this is tasty." Like a weird sort of wine-ish kind of thing.
Yeah. I'm sort of halfway interested in actual drinking mead itself. Uh, I'm more into like distilling that product and making a spirit. And for some reason... So I w- the first time I had honey shine was in Wisconsin. I was at a conference there, and just something I never had before. And you can actually taste like the honey and the floral, uh, notes that come through at the very end.
And you made this?
I did.
Ooh. How'd you make it?
Uh, I have a, a copper pot still, and you just basically make five gallons of mead, wait till it's really dry so all the sugars have been converted to alcohols, pour it in the pot still-
I gotta taste this, brothers.
... and then there you go.
How strong is it?
It's 100 proof.
Oh. Wow.
There you go.
Whoa, that's intense.
But can you taste the honey and the flower or no? Or is it just all-
Um, sort of. Y- y- now that you told me that, I would go, no, it's like a fucking strong turpentine taste.
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