AS165: Lauren Responds To Tim Hunt Episode with Cog Dis

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:31 Thomas: Hello and welcome to episode 165 of Atheistically Speaking with your host Thomas Smith, and the studio is all set up, so as promised, it's all good to go. Now the only thing is somehow I need more little foam to echo proof this room. It doesn't seem much bigger than my last studio, but the ceilings are higher because, you know, I moved up in the world. And uh, and so maybe that accounts for it, but uh, yeah, either way, it's uh, manageable, it's not too echoey now because I spent all day fixing it up, and here we go, we got a studio for you guys and we got an ice solid recording sound for you. Okay, today's guest is someone I interacted with on Twitter and someone I mentioned in a previous episode, goes by Lauren, um, she keeps to herself.

0:01:24 Thomas: So she, she's used a, not a real name and, and also, uh, didn't want to promote too much about herself. That's totally fine. Completely reasonable. Um, but we had a discussion about the Tim Hunt thing. So, but first I got to know Lauren a little bit. Uh, so that's going to be most of the first part, but then in part two, we really did, um, things got a little heated and we had an exchange. So make sure to tune in on Thursday for part two especially because, um yeah, we really laid it out there. And then I think at the end of part two, I'm going to say a few things relating to our discussion. So there you go. Here's part one of my interview with Lauren. It's fun stuff, and I think you will really enjoy it.

0:02:28 Thomas: Joining me right now is Lauren. How are you doing, Lauren?

0:02:31 Lauren: Well, how are you Thomas?

0:02:33 Thomas: Doing quite well. I'm all set up in the new house. Well, I wouldn't say all, I'm about 95% set up, but enough to do a nice recording today, but I have found that whatever room I pick to put my studio in somehow becomes the hottest room in the house, and I guess it must just be computer fans or something. I don't know, but... So I'm a little toasty right now, but other than that, doing good. Thank you for asking. Now, I invited you on because we spoke on Twitter a little bit and I am very, very interested to hear what you have to say today. But first, why don't we go into just a little bit of your background of kind of how you became an atheist and roughly speaking where you are right now in that process and all that. And

0:03:20 Lauren: Okay, well I went to church growing up. We were nominally Baptist, and by nominally I mean I attended a Presbyterian Sunday school, but my parents are from the country. They're from, well, deep in the country in Arkansas. So, and we moved to New Jersey when I was a baby and they were not used to the kind of city, you know, so they, my mom did not want to drive to downtown, wherever it was in New Jersey to go to church. And that was where the big Baptist church was. So we ended up not going very often and we moved to St.

0:04:07 Lauren: Louis later, and we had a hard time finding a church home there, so I was a Christian, I grew up with lots of gospel music around me, but I didn't really go to church all that often, and then I went to graduate school, and it was while I was in graduate school that I deconverted. Yes.

0:04:28 Thomas: Anything in particular you can point to that led to that?

0:04:32 Lauren: I, I was taking some classes that basically taught you logic.

0:04:38 Thomas: That's a quick short answer. That's good. That is a soundbite answer.

0:04:43 Lauren: Well, okay, so here's the deal. I did not get baptized until a late age. I was in my 20s, and I did that because I wanted to be absolutely certain that I really believed. And then when I was baptized, though, I took it very seriously. I'm like, okay, I have to go to church, and I have to read my Bible. So during my first year of grad school, I was trying to get all of my work done from Monday through Saturday so that I could have Sundays with my Bible, I had friends in school that I had never had before. One of my roommates was bisexual. I had ever even known anybody who was gay before, and she was also Buddhist, and I had Yeah.

0:05:34 Thomas: Oh, one of those. Yeah.

0:05:36 Lauren: One of those. Boots, she was also a genius, by the way, uh, I, I'm not gonna go into it, but I mean, she, she had been, I think she went to MIT at the age of 15 years old. Yeah.

0:05:45 Thomas: Oh, wow. Crazy.

0:05:46 Lauren: So I really, yeah, I couldn't say anything bad about the woman, she obviously knew what she was about.

0:05:54 Thomas: Well, maybe I ought to be a bisexual Buddhist then, it sounds like.

0:05:58 Lauren: Yeah, with tattoos. Oh.

0:06:01 Thomas: Yeah, sounds like it.

0:06:01 Lauren: She was an amazing person, she really was. Yeah. And my family was, like I said, Christian, my sister was very, very Christian, she's younger than I am, and she had become pretty fundamentalist several years earlier, and so I'm at grad school and I am, I have my bisexual roommate, I'm away from home for the first time, I have an atheist friend, I have a Muslim friend, I had a Protestant friend, but she is not Baptist, she actually drinks. I came from a tradition where you don't drink alcohol.

0:06:43 Lauren: So yeah, I mean I was in my 20s and had never had an alcoholic beverage. So I have all these wonderful types of friends. I've been getting warnings. Don't hang out with them. Birds of a feather flock together. All of that, you know, but I liked them and I couldn't get away from my roommate. So,

0:06:42 Thomas: One of those boring traditions, yeah.

0:06:57 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:06 Thomas: You're making that sound kind of sinister, like you couldn't get away.

0:07:06 Lauren: Oh no, no, she was, Oh, no. She was awesome. Um, okay. So if you look at my Twitter handle, I am, I'm a black woman and my roommate was Asian and this kind of goes, I have an Asian sounding last name and my grad school thought I was Asian.

0:07:35 Lauren: So we had a dorm with, you know, in order to save money, I was ruined with two people. So it was three people in our dorm and we know that they did not do this on purpose. We know they did not know I was black because they had a black person, an Asian person, and a white person in one dorm.

0:07:53 Thomas: Oh. Yeah.

0:07:54 Lauren: Yeah. And my bisexual roommate was Asian. But I didn't get along that well with the other roommate. And so I was kind of stuck with my wonderful Asian roommate as my main companion. But obviously, as you can tell, that would have been an issue, especially for my family. So I was, there I was. I'm reading my Bible. I'm trying to be a good Christian. And meanwhile, I'm keeping away from my family the fact that my roommate that I am talking about just glowingly saying, oh, she's amazing. Oh, we went down to Chinatown. I went to a club. I'm going to clubs now and having so much fun.

0:07:55 Thomas: Wow.

0:08:36 Thomas: We went to gay pride. I mean, no, whoops, we didn't do that. Yeah, right, right.

0:08:41 Lauren: Yeah, I went To my first gay club with her and some other friends. We danced together. No um it was only once it was just

0:08:47 Thomas: Yeah? So you just, you weren't allowed to, you didn't feel like you could talk to your parents or tell your parents that? They would freak out?

0:08:51 Lauren: Exactly but I let slip over thanksgiving and I was then told have you told your roommate that she's going to hell because you know if you care about her you have to tell her that she'S GOING TO HELL

0:08:56 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, geez. Yeah that's a caring thing to do.

0:09:07 Lauren: Right and I was like no and I'm not gonna do that so oh anyway time passes right I'm starting to struggle oh I'm telling you I was like the ideal Christian for people to hang around. I prayed at my meals, but I didn't impose it on anyone else. I didn't curse. But what my whole deal was, you lead by example. I'm going to hang out with, yeah, I can hang out with this heathen, you know, my atheist friend, and I can hang out with this Muslim, and I can hang out with the Buddhist, but I am going to be that shining light. And they're going to respect me and maybe they will convert to Christianity because of me. Right.

0:09:52 Thomas: Sure, yeah.

0:09:54 Lauren: And instead, I'm reading the Bible every week and I'm going to class and I'm learning about logic and I'm learning how to dissect ideas. And I am slowly realizing that this stuff doesn't make any sense.

0:10:12 Thomas: Was it, what, what kind of stuff did you focus on, like the Bible or just things you'd been told about God, or which things do you remember, anything the first thing that you thought Adam, okay, yeah, that's an easy one, yeah.

0:10:23 Lauren: Adam and Eve. I was, yeah, I was a, I believe in evolution. I mean, I could, how could I not? Right. But no,

0:10:27 Thomas: Okay. Well You so you already did back then, I'm just. So your parents didn't kind of keep you from that.

0:10:40 Lauren: In fact, I was very good in my science classes.

0:10:41 Thomas: Okay, gotcha.

0:10:43 Lauren: I, but I did, but you know, that whole compartmentalization. Organizations, yeah. That's what I did you

0:10:50 Thomas: Right, yeah. So do you think your parents accepted evolution or no? Would they have been against it?

0:10:58 Lauren: Know, that's a good question. I've never asked them.

0:11:00 Thomas: Never thought of it? Yeah, okay. Just wondering. Okay, so yeah, Adam and Eve, that's an easy problem there. It's like, well, here we have science and we have a completely idiotic, simplistic story. I wonder which one's right. Right.

0:11:01 Lauren: Yeah. Yes.

0:11:15 Lauren: And It didn't help that I lived in DC at the time and there was some kind of public access TV station that had Jewish, a Jewish channel, where they talked about things like, like, hey, guess where we got weekends from? We got weekends from Judaism. And another thing they talked about was that Jewish, the Judeo religion sees Adam and Eve as a metaphor.

0:11:48 Thomas: Oh, really? That's interesting.

0:11:50 Lauren: That's what I learned there. Now, I've spoken to some Jewish people since who say that that is not what they believe.

0:11:56 Thomas: Right. Well, I'm sure it's like Christianity where there's a bunch of different groups that believe, you know, different things about it, or I would guess it is anyway.

0:12:02 Lauren: Right. Yeah, that's what I've decided because Because, no, actually, you know what? I kind of did for a little bit, yes. I was like, well, everything, I'm realizing that for some reason I was like, Jesus doesn't make sense.

0:12:07 Thomas: So, you converted to Judaism. Oh, yeah. Huh.

0:12:20 Lauren: Adam and Eve doesn't makes sense. But you know, I was just like, I don't know. You know what, this whole God thing, that still makes sense, yes,

0:12:27 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty easy. There's so many secular Jews. So did they convince you that Jesus wasn't the prophet or something? Because I know that's a big thing that they might, Right. Yeah.

0:12:37 Lauren: I believed that Jesus was not the prophet, and I, yes TV show.

0:12:38 Thomas: Okay. Wow. They were convincing. Yeah, right.

0:12:48 Lauren: So I went from Christian to Jewish and I put that in quotes because it wasn't like I was like, oh, you know, like all that other like I wasn't going to convert.

0:12:57 Thomas: Oh, but you did sort of, you would say you, you took on a few Jewish beliefs. That's interesting. I was just kidding before, but okay.

0:13:02 Lauren: Yes. Oh, no, no. I did.

0:13:05 Thomas: I was right on.

0:13:08 Lauren: It was part of the process because really that lasted for maybe two months and Within a year and about three or four months after I went to grad school, I was an atheist. I have not looked back. And I think it's because I'm kind of stubborn and I know it all.

0:13:14 Thomas: Right, right, hmm.

0:13:24 Thomas: Okay, and I haven't looked back. Yeah. Or maybe Just Because it's, yeah, it's, it's obviously, once, once you're an atheist, it's pretty easy to see that other religions, uh, they're not, they're never convincing, you know, I, I don't know, there's different degrees of people how atheists feel about religion, but I dunno, there, I dunno a whole lot of atheists who would go back to religion after they're atheists, um,

0:13:54 Lauren: Well, I did also, I had to challenge one of my friends who, and this is going to sound kind of weird. I had really been kind of, I just blocked off that people that were not Christian existed because, and I had a good friend and she had told me, this was before I went to grad school, school that she was not a believer. And I literally blocked it out because I wasn't allowed to have friends that weren't Christian.

0:13:54 Thomas: Oh Wow Well This was, was before your, your roommate Situation, I guess. Yeah, okay.

0:14:21 Lauren: Right. So I literally blocked it out. And when I went to, and I met the atheist while I was in grad school, I went and I told my friend and she's like, um, Lauren, uh, you actually already know an atheist. And you know, we've hung out for a couple of years now.

0:14:35 Thomas: Yeah Oh So did you reconcile after that, or oh

0:14:43 Lauren: And and I were, she was like one of my best friends, but

0:14:46 Thomas: You mean, wait, sorry, sorry, I'm just not understanding that you blocked her Out, I thought you said, but then, oh

0:14:49 Lauren: I've locked out that she was a non-believer.

0:14:52 Thomas: Oh, I'm sorry, I misunderstood, so you, you just blocked out that fact about her and okay I get it, that's funny, yeah I thought you meant you blocked her out of your life or something, okay

0:14:57 Lauren: Yes. Yeah. No, she, I know we, we were like best buds, but only because, yeah, it was like, No, you're, you know, surely, no. She's like, no, remember I told you, I said, no you didn't. It

0:15:03 Thomas: Oh Okay, she's Like, hello Yeah, yeah. Well, that's one way to do it, I guess. That's one way to get away with it in terms of your parents or whatever. So, and then let me, I was going to ask something else. So how did that affect your family? Well, I have two questions. I'm always very curious and maybe you don't have an answer, but do you remember when you officially thought, like, I don't believe in God. Like, I just, you know, because I know a lot of people hang on to it for a long time of like, oh, there's probably something, there's probably, you know, maybe there's some deity or something. Do you remember, uh, do you happen to remember when you thought, you know, there's just no God. Oh,

0:15:17 Lauren: Yeah Okay, I Could tell you almost to the time. Okay. Well Because I was having an argument with someone, I, at that time, a family friend who had been friends with my sister and they grew up together, but she became my friend because we went to the same undergrad and I showed her around because I wasn't, my last year there, she was in her first, and so we became friends. And she came, came to visit me in DC, and she had, like my sister, become fundamentalist pretty much, and like, I was supposed to be. I had been questioning things. I lived in DuPont Circle in DC. Do you know DuPont Circle in

0:15:52 Thomas: Neat That's awesome No

0:16:31 Lauren: DC? It's kind of the student slash gay area.

0:16:31 Thomas: Sorry, oh That's an interesting Area Okay, they

0:16:37 Lauren: Yeah, yeah, very, very nice area. At least it was back when I lived there. And restaurants and And there's a Church of Scientology is down there.

0:16:51 Thomas: Would be, yeah, they always have the prime real state, I've noticed, I don't know how all The money they take from their followers, yeah, yeah

0:16:56 Lauren: Yeah. Yeah, I used to have to walk by them on my way to the train station when I was going on my way to school. And

0:17:06 Thomas: I'm, I'm pretty sure there's a nice Scientology center in downtown Sacramento where I live. So that's, they always have, they always find a way, you know, there's somebody, anyway, off topic. But OK, so you're having an argument.

0:17:15 Lauren: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Because, OK, one of the things I did not know, even though I had lived there for like a year at the time, you do not go into any place if you live in DuPont Circle that says Dupont in the title. That's what I learned after I did this. We were going, I took her out to dinner and the place I wanted to take her to was too full. She didn't want to wait.

0:17:34 Thomas: Huh? I'm now I'm curious about this. OK,

0:17:43 Lauren: So I was like, oh, we'll just go someplace else. And so I walked a couple of blocks and there was this place, I think it was called Dupont Kitchen. I took her there. We're eating. There were, I don't think the, I want to use the proper term. So if, I'm sorry if I offend anyone by using the wrong term, drag queens were there. And there were obviously gay couples sitting at tables and eating. And I was cool with it. I'm just like, whatever, you know, we're eating. We're here to eat the food. And my friend was very uncomfortable. And then she went to the bathroom and she came back and she was freaked out because there was a man who was dressed as a woman in there

0:17:51 Thomas: OK. Oh, OK, oh, really? What happened in the bathroom? A man using it.

0:18:41 Thomas: So if you're conservative, don't go to any place with DuPont in the name. Is that OK?

0:18:43 Lauren: Right. No.

0:18:46 Thomas: OK. Okay. I thought you were saying just anyone. All right.

0:18:48 Lauren: No. Yeah. And so she was freaked out and she wanted to leave immediately and we go back to my apartment and she's just like, I just don't understand how you could be okay with that and everything. And that's when I, by arguing with her, my position, it just solidified it. I had been having all of my doubts. I have been, but I've been on the fence. I was really on the face. I still could have gone either way. That's why I always believed. And it's been 16 years now, but still believe that I could have either way, yeah,

0:18:49 Thomas: Okay. I see. Oh, wow. Uh-huh. Wow. That's so interesting. It really came

0:19:23 Lauren: But yes, defending it was, She put me on the defense, and I argued my way into, yes, you know what? I'm an atheist.

0:19:23 Thomas: Down to that one argument, you think, that just put you over the edge. Wow, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah well, that's really neat. That was a great answer, and then the follow-up I had was, how did that affect your family? Did you tell them? Did Did you keep it a secret? What did you do?

0:19:46 Lauren: She outed me.

0:19:48 Thomas: Oh, that friend did?

0:19:49 Lauren: Yes, because she was friends with my sister.

0:19:51 Thomas: Oh, man. She got her revenge, I guess.

0:19:54 Lauren: Yeah. Well, she was concerned. And I always think also that that wasn't good. The fact that I was outed instead of being given the chance to tell them, that really hurt me a lot. So

0:19:57 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's too bad. So what happened?

0:20:15 Lauren: People freaked out but I was in DC and my family was not in DC so but I was very close with my family I still am very close to my family we all lived within 20 minutes of each other and I I

0:20:26 Thomas: Oh, well, that is good. So did you just kind of weather the storm and then come back a while later? Like, hey, how is everything going?

0:20:38 Lauren: Weathered yeah I weather this storm I wasn't nobody like I wasn't dependent on them so there was no issue yes and at at the time I was, I still had another year and a half in DC. So there was no, you know, real pressure personally put on me except for over the phone. And we're talking the 1990s. So it's not, it isn't like it is now where everybody has a cell phone and so they couldn't contact

0:20:46 Thomas: Right. That always helps. Yeah. Right. Right.

0:21:09 Thomas: Yeah. It was so much easier to not talk to your parents back then, huh?

0:21:10 Lauren: Me. Yes. Email, you know, I get these long emails, but I didn't have to respond to them. It's like, like, hey, she's in school, you know?

0:21:18 Thomas: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm busy.

0:21:24 Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. And my family loves me very much. I have to say there was no, we're going to break off from you. We're going cut you off. It was just about trying to convince me to see the error of my ways.

0:21:25 Thomas: Yeah that's good.

0:21:37 Thomas: So do you, at this point, so it sounds like it's been some years later, do you just have kind of a truce? Do you just not talk about it? Don't talk about it. Yeah, there you go. Sometimes that's all you can do with family that's never going to change their mind and you're not going to change your mind so there you go your

0:21:44 Lauren: We don't talk about it.

0:21:54 Lauren: Yes. But, and it really was was not an issue for a long time because basically so I moved to Texas for family purposes with family with my sister and she and I were roommates for four and a half years yes I

0:22:12 Thomas: Fundamentalist sister? Wow, how did that work? You

0:22:17 Lauren: Spent a lot of time upset and lonely but I, I'm the oldest, you know, so you do what you gotta do. Moving to Texas, this was a culture shock too. When I was in D.C., I knew four, I could say I knew very well four atheists. And three of them were women. Two of them were black women. So I was around.

0:22:46 Thomas: Kind of hit the jackpot in terms of the yeah the intersections there

0:22:50 Lauren: Yeah. Yes. You know, and it was cool. And I had this this great social life, not just because I had these, you know, these wonderful women that were also atheists at a time when I definitely needed that kind of support, but also because I was in grad school. I had a lot of people that I had in common with, and it was D.C. It wasn't Texas.

0:23:11 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah, it sounds like Texas is a little more your sister's turf in terms of the people

0:23:19 Lauren: How did you guess? In fact, that's why I moved. It was because she wanted to move to Texas.

0:23:25 Thomas: Yeah wow, but it's interesting that you're you're still, it sounded like you're independent, but you were still, I guess, attached enough to your sister that you moved to a state that was not a good move for you. Just for her or? Wow.

0:23:30 Lauren: Yes. Yes. For her. You have to remember, again, I have to say, I'm going to be honest here. I lived at home until I went to grad school and I even had a permanent job at one point. Yeah. So I was kind of a stay at home, kind of sheltered person to begin with.

0:23:48 Thomas: Oh, okay. Wow. I see. Okay. But you managed to, you managed to expose yourself to enough people to, uh, you know, become, become an atheist. So that's good. You could have been, could have had,

0:24:09 Lauren: Yes and True. And I was always very open-minded, it wasn't that, except for the fact that, yeah, I couldn't be friends with you unless you were a Christian, but hey, I could still be friends, I just couldn't know it. So right.

0:24:27 Thomas: You could have, you after They told you

0:24:29 Lauren: Exactly. Just Yep. Men in black, bam. And I'd even left the country once. I mean, I had managed to do some things. I was just very much though, but home is where I belong, you know?

0:24:30 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So All right, so thank you for sharing all that, that's very interesting, uh, to paint your background a bit, and now I suppose we should talk about something, well, how about this, let me ask you, let me see if I can ask you this, what's your take on the Tim Hunt controversy? Let's have you on here, let's, let's get your, let me hear it, let me here your opinions on this.

0:25:08 Lauren: Okay. My opinion is that he screwed up and that I don't think that he was treated too harshly. I

0:25:22 Thomas: Hmm. So what, what's his screw up? Is it, do you not, I guess you don't buy the idea that he's making a joke or do you buy that part, but you think making a jock like that is, it does, it still is not permissible.

0:25:40 Lauren: Think that He definitely made a joke. And I do think that I think making the joke was permissible. But I think that often our humor reveals how we really feel about things.

0:25:47 Thomas: Hmm?

0:25:55 Lauren: And I think in his case, his humor revealed it. And that his apology, or not apology, showed that his humor showed how he really felt. I

0:26:12 Thomas: Yeah, I get, I think that certainly can be true, but don't you think, I'm just wondering, isn't there, there's not a type of humor that you could see that might might be playing the character of kind of playing the dummy. I mean, I don't know, I mean that's kind of how I took it because he, he sort of played the fool. I mean, that's sort of, that's one, that's one bit of humor where maybe I guess you could argue maybe it's coming from something inside of him, but but also, can't, isn't there no such thing as just playing the buffoon and kind of, you know, treating yourself like a punchline for the sake of humor when you don't really feel that that way?

0:26:53 Lauren: I think that that is a possibility. But one thing is, I trust the women scientists that responded. I'm not a scientist. I've never been one. I don't know what it's like in the labs. But they are. And they, the ones with the experience in labs, you know, with educators like Tim Hunt, determined that it was something that should be taken seriously.

0:27:29 Thomas: I think, uh, just, just to to throw in my two cents, I, I don't, I hope no one thought, um, based on you saying that, I hope no one taught I was, if I, if I was somewhat defending Tim Hunt, I didn't mean it to be claiming there's no misogyny in science. That's a totally different question because I think there's a ton of misogymy in science, and I certainly think that the, uh, the women in science you're referencing, I saw a lot of them too. And those were actually the most convincing people for me as well, talking about sexism in the lab, men making jokes or making comments, that sort of thing. I think that certainly exists, but I'm just a little bit worried that all that energy was being taken out on someone who I'm not sure exactly was the perpetrator of of that.

0:28:18 Thomas: I mean, could there be any projecting involved in that? I mean, I understand it because he made a joke, but it just doesn't, it seems like based on the recording that it was perceived as a joke and he was at an event to benefit or to talk about the benefit of women in science, something that he was contributing to. I don't know, what do you think? Does that affect your opinion at all, or are you still where you are? All

0:28:41 Lauren: I'm still where I'm at I think that they are the best ones to know, and I, and I think, I mean, that's basically what it comes down to, I, I give them, the, you call it, the benefit of the doubt is that one

0:28:44 Thomas: Right, okay, fair enough.

0:29:05 Thomas: Benefit of the doubt. Yeah, Okay, so, but if that's your policy, which I think is a good policy, how are you deciding who you're listening to? Because surely it wasn't 100% of women scientists who thought he was, you know, making a sexist remark, right? I mean, do you pick, he

0:29:23 Lauren: Issue that I had was okay, he called, he referred to them as girls, he said girls in the joke, and he also, if I recall correctly, referred to girls in his apology?

0:29:30 Thomas: Referred to them as, which part?

0:29:41 Lauren: Girls is a very loaded term. And I don't go around calling men boys. You know why? Because I don't think of men as boys under any circumstances. Hello?

0:29:53 Thomas: Well, that's a very fair point.

0:29:54 Lauren: Right. I don't call men boys at the point of never calling referring referring to men as boys, because I don't see them as boys. A man is a man.

0:30:05 Thomas: All right. I think that's a very excellent point. Maybe I overlooked that. I think I would want to go look back and see that, and that would certainly affect my perceptions of it. So I'm glad you brought that up. Because yeah, I mean, especially in science, calling women who, I mean, I would never do that. I think I always refer to, you know, women scientists as women in the lab, not girls in the Lab. That's definitely, I think that's a little bit condescending. That's a good point.

0:30:32 Lauren: Yes. Yeah. Even in a joke, because the thing is, even if he's playing the buffoon, still, I'm sorry, to me, you call them women. That's my take on it. I've been called a girl, and it's always been by people who did did not want to take me seriously.

0:30:45 Thomas: Well, yeah, okay. That, that's a fair point. I would like to try in this world to reserve a tiny corner where people can say what they want for the sake of a joke. But if it's going to be true that that's always taken to being what they really think, I suppose that's a bad thing, but I, I don't know, I, I, I believe very strongly in the, the, the right and the ability for people to make jokes, and I, I, I, I, I don't know, it just, it just came across with hearing the laughter and hearing the fact that he said, "But now, seriously, you know, women," in the etc, etc. I just, that, that's where I'm coming from on it. And And I think that may be true that him calling women girls does reflect a genuine bias. So I'd want to examine that.

0:31:40 Thomas: And I do also think that like I said earlier, I mean, there's, I know Sean Carroll in particular, he's tweeted a lot about, do you know Sean Carroll? Carroll.

0:31:50 Lauren: No, I don't.

0:31:50 Thomas: He's an astrophysicist, obviously male, but he tweets a lot about sort of the difficulties that women face and advocates for women in science. Because you can send the same resume, one with a man's name and one with the girl's name. No, I'm just kidding. One with a woman's name. See, I made a joke. It was okay. I didn't reflect my real feelings. You're laughing. See? See, we're all happy. Everybody says, yeah, you Alright, sorry, I had to cut off a little abruptly there, but sometimes there's just not a good place to split that up. So yeah, we're just getting going, just getting our feet wet with the debate, and Thursday, I promise, is, it's gonna be pretty good. It's the thrilling conclusion. So thank you for listening, and, well, I suppose I don't need to make too many announcements because it's Monday's episode.

Other than I am super happy to be back on time and And I'll set up and going to be able to continue podcasting into at least next week, and then I'll quit. No, just kidding. Into the future. No end in sight until people stop being interested, I guess. So thank you for listening, and I will see you on Thursday for a very, very exciting episode.

0:32:21 Lauren: Well,