WTW93: Everyone Is a Complete Idiot Except Bill Maher

Transcript

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

0:00:42 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is my amazing wife Lydia Smith. How you doing?

0:00:47 Lydia: Hi, I am so excited to get back into this piece. I feel like I've been waiting too long and it wasn't long at all.

0:00:53 Thomas: Ready to get talked at a bunch? We split. Sometimes you talk at me, sometimes I talk at you.

0:00:58 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. We take turns. It makes for a healthy marriage.

0:01:01 Thomas: Yep. And like any man, I do 80 % of the talking and then try to feel like it's 50 -50, you know? It's just... This is part two of our little Bill Maher's awful, annoying, jackass...

0:01:08 Lydia: It's a working title.

0:01:16 Thomas: Every time I try to come up with a title, I just keep doing a series of, like, curses. Is Bill Maher's fucking socks. Bill Maher, just fucking idiot, dumb.

0:01:26 Thomas: We'll see what I decide on. Yeah. So that's what we're going to do on this one. And we're gonna get to this really funny exchange where Bill Maher yells at someone and has no idea what they're saying. And we're to get to the Scientific American article that he had referenced that it's not explicitly about sports in the title, but it touches on it. It says the theory that men evolved to hunt and women evolved to gather is wrong. It's interesting.

0:01:44 Lydia: The. That would hook me.

0:01:51 Thomas: Yeah, sounds like a science thing to talk about. But in it was that quote that Bill Maher said that he couldn't get... Sorry, it's just so dumb. I couldn't even get this random fucking guy who's a scientist in a different field that came on my show to agree with something.

0:02:07 Lydia: Unbelievable.

0:02:07 Thomas: I know that sounds like confusing mess, but we'll make it make sense. Please support the show, patreon.com/wherethereswoke, and you can avoid the ads. You can support some of the few people debunking bullshit like this and more.

0:02:17 Lydia: Help with our red string budget.

0:02:19 Thomas: Yep, yep. Yep. I don't know why for my brain went to like red band when there's a red band trailer. And I was like, that's not. I was like, what? Oh, yeah. Yarn or yarn budget. Is that what you mean? Yeah. Red yarn, I think.

0:02:30 Lydia: Yarn yarn string I don't know

0:02:32 Thomas: I think red yarn is probably what you mean. Is it?

0:02:33 Lydia: It's

0:02:41 Thomas: Support all this nonsense. Patreon.com/wherethereswoke. Well, thank you so much to those who are supporting. It means a lot to us. And I think it's important right now in this anti-science, anti-expert, anti-history era we're in.

0:02:41 Lydia: Arbitrary yeah absolutely

0:02:57 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:02:57 Thomas: So before we dig into the Scientific American article, which I want to analyze and criticize, but in a good faith way that doesn't simply call it anti -science, but I'm not a scientist. I'm not going to quibble with the science, but they talk about sports in a way that is verifiably wrong, and I'm going to debunk that, but that's a thing they might have gotten wrong. It's not, I don't declare it anti science and say people need to be fired. What you should do is do more science about it, you know, and write another article or critique it or disagree or even just disagree. That's one thing I've said a lot when it comes to these things is like, what if you just disagree? What if you're just like, oh, that person thinks that gender doesn't matter in sports. Oh, well, you know, like what? It's amazing. Like they get so threatened, so threatened. Even though there are just fucking no trans athletes, like broadly speaking, and that's not to insult trans athletes. Now there's like almost literally none because we've regressed and they're not going to let anybody compete. But even when at the height of allowing at the previous height, hopefully it's not the all time high. I hopefully eventually let trans people compete again. But like at the all time high previously of trans people competing in sports, there was like one, what did we, we've done this before. There's like one person in the Olympics, maybe that like

0:04:07 Thomas: Almost did something. Yeah. I don't even know if anybody's ever medaled.

0:04:06 Lydia: I think that's right right exactly

0:04:11 Thomas: I think that was like maybe one person or maybe somebody, but he got like a fifth or something. I can't remember, but it was like nothing. It's zero. And so they talk about this issue as though what's currently happening is it's all trans people winning everything. They really do.

0:04:15 Lydia: Yeah yeah in terms of like qualification versus medaling and there's like zero medals yeah oh yeah well haven't you heard 900 medals were stolen and sold.

0:04:29 Thomas: Yeah, well, get into all that, but just think about how much they are threatened by this. A thing that is just not reality in any way. Even if you wanted to take a good faith position on it and be like, I'm concerned about it. Well, okay. Think about your concerns. Look at the state of the world. Oh, the state OF the world is there's no trans athletes in the Olympics like at all anymore. Okay. Because it doesn't matter. How many trans athletes were there in all of the NCAA? There was a handful. Okay, I guess this isn't actually a big deal. Nevermind. That's what it always should be. But no, they're so threatened. They're so frightened by it. So anyway, we'll set that aside because I want to finish out. We don't have to like think about Bill Maher again if we finish out this part. I want go back to that club random conversation because it is so fucking fucking crazy here we go let's witness an old idiot yelling at a scientist while never understanding what he's

0:05:21 Clip: I know you think that, like, you had a thing with Martina Navratilova. A beef. She has beef with you. Because you think, like guys with dicks should get in the women's swimming pool, basically.

0:05:26 Thomas: Saying god Bill just keeps track all this dumb stuff what there isn't a women's swimming pool

0:05:36 Clip: Oh, no, no. Well, whatever got clipped and reposted, I don't know. But what I said was that the in this emergent space where you have people expressing themselves on a gender spectrum and you want to now compete in sports we that's still a frontier to be solved and I don't have the answer but I can suggest one whether or not it'll work maybe we don't compete by gender anymore we compete on hormone ratios okay is a test there was a woman who had uncommonly high testosterone levels and they wanted to disqualify her because of how manly she was when she was born a woman and competing as a woman so if we're that's how we're gonna do it you know that this again this is what you really want right Bill no I thought this through more than you might think I have so what you really want is an interesting contest between people who are similarly talented. The least interesting Super Bowl you could ever watch is a blowout by halftime. See, what we agree on is that there are anomalies in human nature, whereas the vast majority of people, I'm sorry, are still male or female.

0:06:51 Thomas: Exactly what did let's pause checking in with reality what did Neil say that it all provoked that response because neil is trying to say something that at least seems like reasonable. I don't really know. By the way, this is two years ago now, November, 2023, where he has said, for one, I've thought about this more than you might think. I love that comment. Cause Bill just assumes everyone's an idiot all the time. And he's like, Hey, maybe what we ought to separate sports by is something more to do with the hormones that we know are making a difference. Cause yeah, testosterone makes a difference, estrogen makes a difference in terms of like, it's actually better for endurance, you know, like there's And so I don't know if this is a good play. I don't know, but I will credit Neil for being like, yeah, here's the point I was making. There's this one example of a woman who's definitely a woman, but has high testosterone and was like banned from women's sports. How horrible is that? Cause what can she even compete in? She's not, she's just doesn't get to be an athlete.

0:07:46 Thomas: Like that can't be right. That's fucking stupid. And so all credit Neil, for at least wanting to do something fair and not gut reaction, being a transphobe. And I actually think he's not a trans. Well, I think he defends trans rights. And Bill listens to none of that. Like he has not heard a word that he said.

0:08:00 Clip: And certainly, every cell in our body is dictating one of those other sexes. I mean, obviously, that's well. Well, also, I make sperm, and other people make eggs. You can't deny that.

0:08:16 Lydia: Wait can you pause for a second? So I think where Bill Maher it's not that that Bill Maher actually cares about solving this problem. He doesn't want trans people to exist. That's his position. And he's hiding that in this sports question. And the way you can tell that that's what's happening is Neil deGrasse Tyson is suggesting, you know, maybe this is a potential way that we could make things more equitable in athletics by going about it this way. And Bill Maher's immediate reaction is basically saying, like, well, why should we change anything when most people identify as, you know, male or female? And that's aligned with their anatomical makeup and whatever.

0:08:57 Thomas: You might be right. I was actually not necessarily being that harsh on Bill Maher, believe it or not. I actually, I think I agree with you when it comes to basically all conservatives like ever, but I'm not sure about this. But my other interpretation of Bill Maher is that what Bill Maher is most interested in in the world is being right and other people being dumb. And so he, he sits on, he just focuses in on issues that makes him feel that way, where he gets to feel that way. Like that's, he laser focuses on issues where he gets to feel like a genius and everyone else is an idiot. And so what I think might be happening, I don't think he has a problem with trans people existing to the extent that conservatives do. Like he does come from like a libertarian kind of bent. I think maybe ultimately this anti -trans propaganda, who knows, maybe you're right and it's gotten him there. I'm not sure. But I think he just gets so focused on this one question of how can you not agree with me that women shouldn't be or men shouldn't be in women's sports? He's so laser focused on that that that's all he cares about. And he doesn't hear any nuance or explanation around it. He just wants to keep beating this drum and being like, I'm smart because I know this obvious thing. You're an idiot because you can't admit this obvious things. And that's what I'm saying.

0:09:18 Lydia: Bill Maher. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, could be

0:10:11 Thomas: And that all he focuses on and all his conversation. But having said that, I do worry that maybe you're right trans people than I even knew. Yeah.

0:10:17 Lydia: Further down this than. Yeah?

0:10:19 Thomas: You might be right. Cause he is saying a lot of stuff that sounds that direction. So maybe, maybe you're right about that. But I do think that primarily, I do think it comes from that place in what's motivating him to get involved in this to begin with and also triggering his victim complex and his, you know, defensiveness around anything different than new. Cause he's a fucking old white guy.

0:10:37 Clip: So this, but as liberals, we, I think, agree that there are anomalies in nature, and they should be respected and protected.

0:10:46 Lydia: We as liberals.

0:10:47 Clip: But this attempt to reorganize all of society around what a very tiny percentage, who again, we can protect and respect without pretending that every baby is a jump ball, like penis, what the fuck? We have no idea what this child is.

0:10:52 Thomas: Yeah, sure. Cause we're doing that. Mm hmm.

0:11:03 Thomas: Does that have anything to do with what Neil said in any way? Yeah. Well, we're both saying that. He's gestured at, though, in that very part, he says, like, well, we can respect the anomalies, which you could. I know. Yeah, a fully, fully reasonable take to not buy that. Not disagreeing there, but it's possible that he believes that. I just don't know. Yeah who cares but we both agree that he just cannot listen at all to anything that this very brilliant scientist say what you want about neil and I'm not a huge fan I want to play more of this because neil he really does defend trans people I think in a good way here where

0:11:05 Lydia: No. And that's what I'm saying. Like, like he can't even engage in. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. We are both saying that. Like yeah, he just can't even engage. And I mean, yeah, I just don't know if I buy that.

0:11:27 Lydia: Yeah Yeah, I don't know what's in his heart. Truly.

0:11:43 Clip: I mean, that seems to be where you wanna go. I mean like, how many people fit this description

0:11:46 Thomas: You want to go. I always love that that's such a fucking classic asshole conservative way to argue my dad would do that all the time that's where they want to take it that's where they want to go it's always about that it's where that's what they wanted how am I supposed to argue with that the way you would have a real argument or debate is listen to someone's position and then actually, yeah. Or, or at least address the argument.

0:11:46 Lydia: So yeah, yeah. Ask clarifying questions. Yeah right. Yeah

0:12:08 Thomas: Like it's possible you just disagree on certain things.

0:12:09 Lydia: I mean like what Bill Maher could have done with this was when Neil deGrasse Tyson brought up using hormones as a basis for segregating sports. He could have been like, huh, tell me more about that. How would that work exactly? Can you tell me more about the differences that you see in the hormones? What leads to what in muscle mass or whatever? How could we do that?

0:12:17 Thomas: Maybe that's a good idea. Yeah.

0:12:32 Lydia: Tell me more. I think that that would be a great interview then. Yeah.

0:12:32 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah well let's see what he did instead.

0:12:37 Clip: That we should reorganize sports around? Sports is, we have men's sports and women's sports. And if the best team in the WNBA played the worst team in NBA, the score would be a million to zero.

0:12:52 Thomas: But that's consistent with what Neil said. Like he said like, yeah there's some people who are anomalies and maybe we should, like it's, possible that Neil's position about, again I, maybe it's not a good idea. I don't care. I'm neither here nor there, except that at least it sounds good faith to me. I think Neil is making a good faith attempt. And it could be that what he's talking about, where we'd segregate sports by hormones, it could mean that that makes very little difference. Maybe that moves one person from women to men's and one person from men's to women's.

0:13:22 Thomas: That could be what Neil's saying. And he would not disagree with the idea that an NBA team is going to beat a WNBA team. Bill has just decided that Neil believes that, and he doesn't like he hasn't said he believes that or guys can we organize society around the fact that an NBA team would beat a WNBA team just it just brings up the absurdity these people are obsessed with the dumbest fucking shit

0:13:34 Clip: Can we organize society around that basic point with this, of course, proviso that we

0:13:40 Lydia: Organize. So weird.

0:13:52 Clip: Protect and respect people who do not fit into it? Let's segregate society between dark-skinned people and light-skinned people, because nature made it that way, and that's how it is. Well, nature did make it that. And it's not segregating, it's segregating anything. That attitude 150 years ago was it was I did two years ago. You act like this was a yes, right Lincoln This was a big issue in the Lincoln-Douglas debates trans

0:14:19 Thomas: Oh my god so now we start where I mean granted Bill Maher already hasn't had any idea what anyone was talking about now I will say that Neil jumping to this being the same as you know scientific racism and segregation is a bit of a jump I mean I think it's a little justifiable, but I don't know if that's like entirely fair when it comes to just men and women's sports. Like, I think there's plenty of good reasons to do that. Literally. I mean, I just Googled it. There's no Olympic sport where women beat men records wise where like any of the records by women are higher. There're a few where it's close and it's interesting.

0:14:53 Thomas: I want to talk about it because I do find it interesting, but yeah, like that's, that's a bit unfair to be like, that's the same as segregation of races. Like no, I mean there's a reason that we do this. So I will grant that, but I think, I think Neil is justifiably fed up with this bullshit. And then Bill Maher goes, decides to interpret him as saying like, oh yeah, 150 years ago, they were talking about trans issues. Like, what are you talking about? Like, he just goes off on him for a while.

0:15:14 Clip: Lincoln this was big issue and the Lincoln Douglas debates trans people. That's 1861 yes, I remember those debates. It was 1860. Lincoln was all about getting trans. Oh for fuck's sake Hey, you're ridiculous.

0:15:32 Thomas: You're ridiculous, he says. He was, he never knew what he was talking about. And he says, you're ridiculous. He was talking about the racial Issue.

0:15:38 Clip: Just all I'm saying is that, how about this? I'm looking at schools in Manhattan.

0:15:45 Thomas: Here we go.

0:15:45 Clip: And there's a school there, and there's an old from, like,

0:15:47 Thomas: It gets even worse where Bill Maher just yells at him, not understanding what the fuck he's talking about. It gets even worse.

0:15:55 Clip: And there is a doorway that says boys, and a separate doorway on the other side Why are we doing this? Because people are mostly boys and girls? But why split them entering a school building? Jesus Christ, I have to try to explain this? No, because you know what I thought when I saw that?

0:16:10 Lydia: Oh

0:16:17 Thomas: I'm going to keep going. God, it's so good. It's so good. And in terms of listening to the person you're talking with, Neil says there's a school. There's a school that has a separate entrance for men and boys and girls. And the girls is like on the other side, which sounds unfair, possibly

0:16:17 Lydia: My god. Man.

0:16:19 Clip: It's colored fountain over here, white fountain over there.

0:16:35 Lydia: Yeah and Bill Maher because they have to pee differently.

0:16:41 Thomas: Depending. Bill thinks he's talking about bathrooms because Bill is obsessed with this fucking issue and the bathrooms and the peeing and the whatever.

0:16:50 Lydia: Yeah yeah and let me just say if boys have to poop they're gonna be sitting on a toilet exactly like a girl so there you

0:16:56 Thomas: Important. Glad you said that. But like, how fucking funny is it that he yells at him and he's like, oh, you fucking, I have to explain this to you. They pee different. Like, yeah, they need to enter the school in separate entrances because they pee different.

0:16:56 Lydia: Go biology yeah does Neil like correct this at all I mean I

0:17:12 Thomas: Neil kind of doesn't always understand what's happening in the conversation either, but not in like a really malicious way, you know?

0:17:15 Lydia: Yeah yeah he just kind of lets it go or like yeah weird

0:17:20 Thomas: Yeah, I guess it's kind of, that's, Neil doesn't ever get him on the same page while he's drinking.

0:17:24 Lydia: Is he participating in the smoking at all or no drinking okay yeah yeah

0:17:27 Thomas: So it could be, they both might just be blasted. I will say, but this is not abnormal. First off, Bill Maher is always high. There's no time when Bill Maer is not high. So it's not an excuse for him. Maybe Neil's not always drunk. Maybe this is Not His Normal Self. But like, how fucking crazy is that? That he just yells at him. I just want to play that again.

0:17:44 Clip: I'm looking at schools in Manhattan. And there's a school there, and there's an old from like, And there is a doorway that says boys, and a separate doorway on the other side of the school Why are we doing this? Because people are mostly boys and girls? But why split them entering a school building? Jesus Christ, I have to try to explain this?

0:18:09 Thomas: I love how funny that is to Neil. So I'm going to skip some, thank God, because this is just Bill Maher pathologizing and psychoanalyzing and saying that, you know, oh, well, some people are too far from an issue and some people too close. And that's how they get insane, which, by the way, is just him starting from the assumption that someone's being insane on an issue. And then psychoanalysts are going to be like, oh my God, that's not true. Psychoanalyze why, which is not helpful.

0:18:32 Thomas: Skip, skip, skip a little bit. And then I think it's just worth playing like Neil, I think, makes a pretty good defense of trans people later on that a couple more minutes may be worth playing here. He talks about his sports background and Bill continues to not have any idea or listen.

0:18:32 Lydia: Why

0:18:47 Clip: So I used to wrestle, high school and college, okay? It's relevant to this conversation, believe it or not.

0:18:51 Lydia: Is he laughing at him?

0:18:52 Thomas: Yeah, I don't know.

0:18:54 Clip: So I was captain of my high school team, undefeated, although...

0:18:54 Thomas: It's a sport. It's yeah, sure.

0:19:00 Clip: But anyhow, what you want is a match not where one person dominates the other.

0:19:06 Thomas: That's what everybody wants is he's he's trying to start from a shared assumption. He's trying To do like a basic conversational thing like yeah. Hey people who might be worried about trans people in sports. That's What you want right good competition.

0:19:08 Clip: In wrestling, dominates other. In wrestling they know this. There are 10 weight categories. In high school I was 190 pounds, that was 50 pounds ago or more. Because if I were one pound over it, So I was there at 190 pounds I'm not wrestling someone 127 no they find somebody else 127 to wrestle 127 that makes the match more interesting for the viewer So if we can split wrestling into 10 categories and that becomes the wrestling match, but all men Against each other correct. So so now I guess I don't have key boy. Okay Okay, so all I'm saying is what is it that makes them and the man is it the hormones? Okay? Oh, is it if it's the hormones and And you decide to give yourself a different cocktail I'm making this up, by the way. I'm not saying it should happen this way. It's a way to start thinking about it. OK, it would be maybe the track meats have hormone categories. And maybe giving yourself the wrong hormones is deleterious to your health.

0:20:25 Thomas: What the fuck so good so good

0:20:25 Clip: Do you think we can just safely do things like this?

0:20:26 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

0:20:28 Clip: So you feel this way because you're concerned about, you're so deeply concerned about the health of the people who who are trying to find their place on the gender spectrum? You care about their health so much It's not something that keeps me up at night, I care about them like I care

0:20:52 Lydia: Oh, my God. Awkward. Yeah.

0:20:54 Thomas: Yeah, it pretty much ends there. Yeah. I love that. I think Neil's just too nice and intrapersonally because I think he really had been fed up like, oh, okay. Yeah you care about their health. That's why you're doing this. And I just love it because that also was once again, nothing to do with the sports competition conversation that they started with. And he just just never, he can't even start to analyze or listen in any way to Neil. And he's, he's like yelling at him during this and he never has any fucking idea. Yeah. Some of that was him smoking. But yes.

0:21:26 Lydia: I know. Scoffs like audible scoffs when. Yes. No. But there were some audible scoffs. Yeah yeah.

0:21:33 Thomas: Yeah, yep. Audible scoffs.

0:21:35 Lydia: That just was really gross to me.

0:21:36 Thomas: It's my band name. Yeah yeah.

0:21:39 Lydia: You know, like you asked him a question. He's trying to answer the question and you're going to scoff at what he's saying. Like you don't even understand what he is talking about. You're not even listening. So rude.

0:21:47 Thomas: Unbelievable. So that's that. Let's be done with Bill Maher for now.

0:21:51 Lydia: Sounds good. Get me out of there.

0:21:52 Thomas: Yeah so in the end Bill Maher's a fucking idiot and he, his deal is, can't we just appease the fascists? That always works. And here's my bargain. Everyone do only things that I think are right. And everyone's an idiot, but me, here's the deal. You know, we'll, it's like, I love it. He says, we will give up stuff that I hate in order for you to give up something that I don't like. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to give up stuff. That I hate. That's a cool deal. God, I just couldn't get over that. But after a brief break, I want to actually, you know, talk about the science here a little bit.

0:22:23 Thomas: So granted, I am not a scientist. I don't know. But I just yeah,

0:22:26 Lydia: Despite knowing the technical term. Yeah. Hmm.

0:22:28 Thomas: I did want to talk about this a little bit. I don't want to make a big deal about it, but I do want to maybe just model that we can have like a nuanced conversation about trends stuff. And I do. So this is so interesting because this Scientific American article referenced like a controversy. It was such a fascinating experience to me because the controversy was from 2011. And when I read it, I was like, oh, this is back when and don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to both sides, but there, it actually is true. There was a time when there would be these bullshits, but it actually was the people on the left who were kind of misrepresenting something that was happening that used to happen sort of. I know it still happens like here and there, but I just had this instant feeling of like, oh yeah, when I started podcasting and doing like atheistically speaking, that was what I focused on because I was around left people and I wanted to explain like, Oh, here's when they're getting something wrong. And then I quickly realized like, Oh, nevermind. This isn't helpful. Yeah. And like, There's this side, this fascist that wants to ruin

0:23:20 Lydia: That's a waste of time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:23:24 Thomas: Everybody's lives. I'll just focus on that. But for like a year, and I just had this weird feeling of like, oh, wow, this would have been something in 2011. Who knows? Maybe it was. I don't think it was, but it would have been something where I would have been like, hey, everybody, in an effort to make a claim about women in sports, you're repeating something that's actually like a controversy that isn't a controversy, really.

0:23:45 Thomas: It was almost nice. I was like, boy, remember when one would go the other way and now it's just all nonstop anti -woke lies. Every single time I look more into a story, the anti-woke side is lying. And that's that like the end of story.

0:23:47 Lydia: Took you back.

0:23:58 Thomas: You know, it's like, ah, there used to be a time when our media wasn't the, our environment, our information environment wasn't 100 % fucking dominated by this nonsense. How nice, you know, the privilege to be the side that was kind of misrepresenting something once, but no, this article is about, I already read the title earlier, but it was about the, you know, men didn't evolve to hunt and women to gather. I already don't love that terminology because I feel like it's like humans evolve such that men might hunt women. You know, like it is kind of weird to talk about men evolving and women evolving separately because like you can't, men can't reproduce with each other. And yeah, yeah,

0:23:58 Lydia: Yeah, that's yeah. You can put that on the editor. The title decision. Yeah yeah.

0:24:34 Thomas: But like I am not going to come at this from a science point of view because I am non -scientist. You know if I had wanted to like critique it I would look into the authors and look into other experts in the field. But like I'm going to take this as a given or at least a good faith argument because it seems to be in the scientific American. And it seems to be written from a place that makes sense where they're trying to debunk this old guy's theory. And I am all for debunking fucking scientific theories from the 60s or whatever that were probably based on sexism that were just assumptions of the time. It was apparently this anthropologist, Richard B. Lee and Irvin DeVore, published Man the Hunter, an edited collection of scholarly papers presented at a 1966 symposium on contemporary hunter -gatherer societies.

0:25:17 Lydia: It's a mouthful.

0:25:17 Thomas: And so I think this is fascinating. Thing. This is an interesting article that's doing, I think, an important thing. By the way, this is from November, 2023. So I already kind of covered that, but it was the thing that was from a year prior from the thing, that Bill Maher was, you know, so stupid. But anyway, their point they're making is like, yeah, you the consensus has been that men did the hunting and women did the not. And they go through some literature and they're like, hey, even in these people's own data, they did have an example of this contemporary, because there are still like contemporary hunter -gatherer societies

0:25:26 Lydia: That was a year prior to that.

0:25:47 Thomas: Somewhat, you know, and they're like, here, I'll just read the sentence. For example, Hitoshi Watanabe focused on ethnographic data about the Ainu, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but A -I -N -U, an indigenous population in northern Japan and its surrounding areas. Although Watanabi documented Ainu women hunting often with the aid of dogs, he dismissed this finding in his interpretations and placed this focus squarely on men as the primary meat winners. Yeah, I think there's a bunch of this throughout our science, And I love this. I love I think basically all of our fucking science should be reanalyzed through social justice lens or just or I don't even want to say that just like an accuracy lens. That's what that's what kills me about it is it's just accuracy.

0:26:27 Lydia: Now were there perhaps biases at the time in that particular society that would have caused them to portray something a little differently.

0:26:32 Thomas: Yeah, sexist, racist biases. And it sucks that this gets cast as like, oh, let's take a feminist lens. In one sense, that's true. But in another sense, I think it's unfair because it almost legitimizes the idea that this is a different way to analyze it other than just like, no, it's just looking for the truth better. You know, like if we take away, yeah, re -looking at the same shit, but without a sexist assumption, because a lot of this work dates back to the fucking 60s and 40s and 30s. You know, like a lot of, a lot of the fundamental, like foundational works of some of these fields are just racist white men who at the time had a bunch of racist, sexist assumptions. Does that mean that all their science is invalid? Absolutely not. But like, there's definitely going to be bias. And I love this idea. It seems like a great article for the Scientific American to, to look into this and, and look into the this particular thing and say, hey, this idea that men were the hunters and women were the gatherers or whatever is not valid. Here's our evidence.

0:26:53 Lydia: Refining our understanding. Yeah yeah of course yeah right

0:27:30 Thomas: Here's Our Argument. Now, I don't know if they're right. Right. Like maybe there's some other scientists will be like, yeah, OK, but actually look at these examples. Who knows? But that's a scientific. Yeah, exactly. And I'm not a scientist. I would like to read both of those articles and decide for myself, maybe. So that sounds like science to me. Contrary to Bill Maher's trying to waterboard Neil deGrasse Tyson until he admitted it's not science. You admit it's that it's like fucking OK. I like it because I don't think you ever watched the movie Prey, but I actually I really liked it. It. I watched it and it's a EY. No, they're spelled the same way. Whoa, my God.

0:27:35 Lydia: Right that's science exactly yeah yeah no p -r -e -y or p -ra -y -or is spelling

0:28:08 Thomas: So it's the predator. It's like a pre quote, whatever. And it's set in like, I almost said hunter gatherer time is not. It said in like a 1800s maybe, or no, I think it's earlier than that. And there's Native Americans portrayed, or actually I shouldn't even say that. Cause I forget where they are. It was just indigenous people on this continent.

0:28:09 Lydia: Arbitrary yeah in a land of some sort yeah

0:28:24 Thomas: Yeah. I don't know if it's in Canada, who knows like what the, you know, I love it. It's a great movie. And this is the perfect reason for why this article is important is because when something like that happens and it portrays a woman like hunting in that movie, all these fucking idiot men online are like, feminist movie, whatever. Yeah.

0:28:44 Thomas: To the point where I don't really care one way or the other, because like I could actually believe that it was true that people in the past kept women in the fucking proverbial kitchen or whatever. That might've been true, you know, or might not.

0:28:42 Lydia: That's so annoying Well, especially if they were menstruating, they were locked away to their tent and not allowed to interact with anybody. Yeah.

0:29:01 Thomas: So I I guess the only thing I'm saying is I don't even think it's like crucial to feminism per se that like historically women were hunters because I could imagine that there was a patriarchy that didn't allow them to be hunters back then. You know, like, so I don'T really care. I just wish that we could portray things accurately and then it wouldn't be about people doubting it because of politics all the time.

0:29:22 Thomas: Because I think the truth is actually there were women did hunt. It seems like based on this article, there's plenty of examples of women hunting. That seems to be demonstrated. Now, once again, I'm not a scientist. Just maybe there's counter arguments, but like, instead of reacting to that as, oh, that's the wokest doing a woke and portraying a woman as a hunter, I wish people had the ability and our politics allowed people to be like, oh that's interesting, maybe women hunted, you know?

0:29:45 Lydia: You know, and like the other piece of it that's so interesting to me, too, is like when you look at like the animal kingdom, there are so many examples of animals in which the female did all the freaking hunting work. Yeah.

0:29:56 Thomas: Yeah. The male animals do nothing sometimes, they're just like bullshit. So true.

0:29:59 Lydia: They sleep. And then, yeah. Yeah. And I'm just, yeah, thinking about like lions, like this premier animal, like a really, really cool animal. I love lions. It is.

0:30:09 Thomas: It's one of the top animals.

0:30:11 Lydia: It's the king of the animal kingdom. Lionesses primarily are the ones that are doing all the hunting. So like, why would it be so strange to think that humans, female humans or whatever, are also engaging in hunting practices?

0:30:27 Thomas: Yeah and so then the article goes into, I think, a really interesting exploration of actually what are the differences between men and women and male and female like hormones and how would that manifest in terms of

0:30:28 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:30:39 Thomas: Hunting and it's interesting and it is like here's the thing I said it earlier but like it's undeniable and nobody reasonable denies that testosterone has an effect and estrogen has an affect on musculature on bodies on whatever it just does but it's interesting to talk about and this article makes the case that like it gave women and men different abilities that both work for hunting.

0:31:02 Thomas: You know, like women have better super endurance. So estrogen is better for endurance.

0:31:07 Lydia: One that goes back to that long distance swimming that Neil deGrasse Tyson brought up. Yeah, yeah, yep,

0:31:09 Thomas: Exactly. Exactly. It does. Totally right. Men undeniably have better on average, of course. Certainly there's overlap. And that's important to say, like there's plenty of men who are the most bullshit of athletes and plenty of women who could smoke me in every single conceivable sport. But on average men have more fast twitch muscle, which is going to make a huge difference when it comes to most sports. Yeah. Which is a lot of sports.

0:31:28 Lydia: Anything that involves like needing to make a quick response speed versus endurance, sure.

0:31:38 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And power as well. But when you get to like super endurance, then it's a different story. I think it's interesting. And so there's arguments to be made. Then they relate it to sports, which I actually fully, I appreciate. I think It's interesting scientific discussion. It's also an interesting cultural discussion because you could make the argument that if women had been in charge of everything, perhaps sports as we know it would be things that women are better at.

0:32:04 Thomas: I think that's the best argument for like, if you're trying to defend the sentence in question, which was the inequities between male and female athletes as a result of not inherent biological differences between sexes, but of biases in how they're treated in sports. If you wanted to defend that, I think the best defense would be that. It would be like, yeah, if You say like men and women, men are better at quote unquote sports than women. Well, what if society had been dominated by like a female point of view and all the sports were like distance sports or whatever?

0:32:29 Lydia: Well and not only that I mean like we see an example of that with things like gymnastics right like they become like the lesser sports and when you look at like male gymnastics events they're totally different versus female gymnastics events and then you try and get males and females to switch and try and do each other's events and And how challenging that is. Like, that is such an interesting idea. Yeah.

0:32:49 Thomas: Yeah. And it's a great example. Yeah. Great example. Because like, which one is gymnastics?

0:32:56 Lydia: Right. Exactly. Yeah.

0:32:57 Thomas: Yeah. It's like, who's better at gymnastics? Well, it's what we decide is what humans, it's society decides. Now, I think that's a totally reasonable, interesting thing to think about. However, my personal view as a sportsman and looking at the evidence is that I think that is true, but not quite true enough to fully dismiss this idea of differences between men and women's sports, because it would be hard to conceive of many sports, enough sports. Like there's a gajillion sports, and if you Google it, all the records are held by men. Like it's just across the board. And the place where women start to have an advantage, I'm looking at this and I laugh because it's like after events get past 196 miles. And I was like, yeah, okay. I don't think it's, like, well, we could have just as easily had sports be 196 -mile runs. It's like, nah, that's kind of crazy. Those are insane. They take forever, you know? Like I think that sports, maybe it's possible. And it's certainly somewhat true. Like it's certainly some amount true and very worthwhile. The gymnastics comparison, excellent comparison. There's plenty of places where I think this is true. But I also think that it's just going to be true that like fast twitch muscle is going to be

0:34:04 Thomas: An advantage in most of what anyone would probably conceive of as a sport, but not everything.

0:34:09 Lydia: Rock climbing. Rock climbing is not necessarily something you would need to have fast twitch muscle.

0:34:14 Thomas: But then, yeah, but men have a huge advantage in terms of strength to weight ratio.

0:34:19 Lydia: I don't. Man, I don '— Yeah. Yeah.

0:34:21 Thomas: Go ahead and see the average pull -ups for men and women. It's not even because women have more weight in their lower body. But there's also lower body and climbing. There's also other sports that maybe use more lower body and use more balance. So yeah, the nuance point I'm trying to make is I think there's a lot to be said for that argument. And I agree with it a lot, but just not a hundred percent. I just think that it's also true that the differences in these hormones do make it such that like anything involving being the fastest at anything, unless you go for 195 miles, you know, anything like that is going to, the records will be dominated by men. So I think it's a little hard to make that claim that like, yeah, it's just totally arbitrary. If we decided that all the sports were different, then women would dominate. And I think that would be tough to, that'd be a tough case to make, I think. Yeah.

0:34:33 Lydia: All right. Mm -mm. What about something like shooting, though?

0:35:06 Thomas: So, okay. So this is why I wanted to talk about this is because I wish we could have a nobody fucking freaks out. We're interested in this topic conversation about this and we can, and that's what I want to do, but yeah, but like, unfortunately it's so for one, on the right is just completely fucking lost and bigoted on this. And then I think there's like components of the left that I think out of very good motives, really try to like cherry pick their data to make the case that like, it's somehow all equal. Like I heard from these people, they comment and I respect them. I respect where they're coming from. But I hear from listeners occasionally who are like, yeah, there's no difference. They make thecase that like while women have been kept out of men's sports, and that's true. And they

0:35:19 Lydia: So you think. Just kidding. Mm. Yeah.

0:35:50 Thomas: Can point and it's once Once again, like fully acknowledging so much validity in these arguments, I fully do. But I think they take it maybe a step too far and are like, ah, and that's why there wouldn't be any difference, actually, if we raised women exactly the same way. And it's like, that's not true. The evidence, as I am reading it in a fair -minded way, as best I can, is that, no, these muscle differences and these chemical differences do make a difference.

0:36:15 Thomas: But I thinks it's also really interesting to look at when women were kept out of men's sports when women like competed and then did well. And so men like shut them out. Yeah, totally valid. There's one argument that really bothers me that actually Eli made one time and I shut him down that I think in my mind, I want to call it out because I think it's actually dismissive of female athletes, even though it's not trying to be, because some people make the argument like, oh, we don't even coach women well, because that we just think of them as little men. It's actually in this article, like the trainers just think OFM as smaller men. And so they don't know how to train them. And if we, you know, if we if they had the same training as men. They could, it's like, I think this comes from people who don't know sports. You're not going to tell me that Serena Williams isn't fucking training her ass off in the best possible way.

0:36:55 Thomas: Like they are, it is an industry. It is a huge industry. Female athletes are very serious. They are incredibly competitive. They are doing everything they can to win. And this is just not true. Like it might be historically true where you can find examples where women weren't given the advantages and still now not given the same advantages a hundred percent. But the nuance for for me is yes, absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely. And still it's just across the board. The records are on average nine to 12 % lower for women than men across theboard. And I think that's fine. Like whatever, you know, who cares, but we could still talk about these disadvantages. And by disadvantages, I don't mean the gender ones. I mean that society is disadvantaging women when it comes to participation in sports. A big one is like chess.

0:37:38 Thomas: That's not a sport, but bigots will use chess as like, well, there's no strength advantage in chess. It's just women Women are just not as smart. And you look at the truth of that and it's like fucking awful to be a woman and try to play in competitive chess because of the sexism and abuse and the fucking everything.

0:37:50 Lydia: Yeah I believe it yeah harassment

0:37:53 Thomas: And are you given the same training? Are you given in the same resources? Does society think you should be a good chess? You know, it's, like, we are nowhere, anywhere close to being able to say that the results we're seeing in the world are the natural product of a fair competition between men and women.

0:38:03 Lydia: Right yeah and like think about the particular countries where where like chess is very very important to them like some of those countries are intense patriarchies they are not interested in women unless like I guess yeah queen's gambit or something like that like like this rare oh dang it anya taylor joy is not an an amazing chess player?

0:38:25 Thomas: That's not, that was fiction. That was fictional. No, the, oh gosh. I have such a intellectual crush on the best female chess player ever. Her name is, I can almost remember it. Uh, give me a second. What? Yeah, exactly.

0:38:35 Lydia: She must mean a lot to you then. I said she must mean a lot for me.

0:38:39 Thomas: The fact that I can almost remember her name. No, cause it's the, uh, it's this guy Polgar.

0:38:43 Thomas: Polgar who put together, you know, that giant chess book that I have? That's a million puzzles of chess.

0:38:48 Lydia: I Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah Oh,

0:38:48 Thomas: It's like huge. Yeah. He wrote that. He had two daughters and he trained them in chess.

0:38:53 Lydia: You've told me about this.

0:38:54 Thomas: Yeah, it'S awesome. And they're both amazing. One of them, I think, eventually kind of moved on, was like, all right, maybe not like as good. And the other one was like she's incredible. She's fucking phenomenal. She is the only woman. Well, I haven't checked this recently, but I believe she is the woman to beat a male champion, but she like beat Kasparov, I thing. Anyway, this is off the top of this is out the dome, as they say, but she's so fucking cool. And her experience, too, was also horrible, even though she was raised like her. I think her dad was really, really good when it came to like you are every bit as good as these men. You can do what these men can do and really tried to raise them like that. And look at the difference it might have made. Now, they're also naturally gifted as well.

0:39:31 Thomas: But like but she was incredible. She's still she's still alive.

0:39:31 Lydia: Sure sure, but I could take her. I'm just kidding.

0:39:35 Thomas: She'S I think she'S a little older. Jesus Christ. Yeah, no, I know. Like, that would be so fucking funny. Imagine if the men had that view like oh yeah well a high school chess player male can take this champion it's like not at all no

0:39:38 Lydia: I know I was being you not me me. Yeah.

0:39:49 Thomas: But it's stuff like that where it's like you hear from her about how shitty it was and it actually broke my heart I know I'm on a tangent but it broke my heart because Kasparov said a really shitty sexist thing about her like a long time ago I think he's since apologized but I used to like Gary Kasparoff like even someone like that about her who was incredible was still dismissive like just imagine all the dismissive bullshit toward women and that's an example of chess but in sports and I think there's the nuances I think think that's 92 % a great argument and totally right. And we got to look at it. I just think that if you look at the data, there's still going to be a gap when it comes to sports involving fast twitch.

0:40:23 Thomas: I don't know if there'd be a cap involving chess. I Don't think there would be, there's no reason for it.

0:40:23 Lydia: The only pushback I would give is I think it depends on maybe the particular sport because like there are some sports where there are just different rules if you're competing in men's versus women's, right? The length of time for the match for tennis, for example, right, you only do three versus five for men or something.

0:40:41 Thomas: Yeah. They're shorter for women. Yeah, which is interesting because women have the better endurance. Isn't that funny?

0:40:47 Lydia: Yeah yeah it is funny and and you know I was I was actually, I was looking at this law review article, surprisingly in a law review article, but going back to gymnastics, they had some really interesting thoughts on this where they said other rules communicate that women's athleticism should emphasize stereotypically feminine qualities. Artistic gymnastics, for instance, evaluates both men and women on acrobatic ability, but also evaluates women on elegance and grace while emphasizing strength and power for men. Both men and woman perform a floor routine on a 39 by 39 foot mat. But after that, there are major differences. Women's floor routines last up to 90 seconds, are performed to music of the gymnast's choice, contain acrobatic elements as well as several required dance elements, and are scored on factors including artistry. Men's floor proteins are only 70 seconds long, are not performed to Music, are composed of, quote, mostly acrobactic elements combined with other gymnastic elements of strength and balance, flexibility and handstands, and include no dance elements or artistry component to the scoring. So it's thinking about kind of like within each sport, how are women and men set up to compete in that sport, even within their own

0:41:50 Lydia: Sex? It's interesting to think about. And Neil deGrasse Tyson's point about within wrestling, it's not enough for it to just be men within their on sport and women within their sport. You have to further designate weight classes because that's equity within those sports. And so I think like there's so much nuance here. There's so much interesting discussion here. And so that's the only pushback I would give on like looking at records specifically.

0:42:04 Thomas: It makes a huge, huge huge difference. Yeah.

0:42:14 Thomas: Oh no, I totally. And maybe I'm wrong. It's hard to conceive of because it's just like a weird counterfactual, but like maybe I am wrong that if you're in parallel earth and it's a matriarchy or whatever, maybe all this, maybe that's right. Like all the sports would be stuff that women are better at. It is just hard to imagine because of speed and strength being so core to like most sports. That is my only pushback. It might be that like it is half and half or something. I do not know. Maybe there would be half the sports that women dominate at and half the sport that men dominate at. And that would be interesting. What if that was what we considered sports, you know?

0:42:42 Lydia: And I think the important thing here is that we don't know. And I don't think anybody knows. And that's why we should talk about it. That's why we should discuss it. Explore it.

0:42:49 Thomas: I didn't even get to the debunk. I realized maybe I should have done this first because it did undermine my confidence in this article. Maybe I should have done that first because I'm just critiquing an article as a dude. So they use an example that's just wrong. It's wrong in just a verifiable way that I'm going to tell you about. So what's disappointing about this article, in addition to the many really interesting things about it, is when I look at the claims right around that sentence, they don't really... Like you and I I just now, I think we're giving the best arguments for why that claim might be true, but the arguments the article gives are kind of not good. First off, it talks about the long distance stuff, which totally valid there. It is a little undermined by just how long it has to be. Again, I just don't think it's realistic that like all our sports would be 200 mile races. Like there's just fucking crazy. Some of them, sure. But like, that's a long, if it was like, oh, at the 10 mile mark, then women are better. Then it would be like, Oh, okay. Yeah. That's, you know, there's going to be a lot of races that might be 10 miles. Now it makes a reference. It's in the very paragraph that the inequity between male and female, that the sentence is. So it goes on to say, as an example, and well, I'll read it again just so we know what the claim we're making. Inequity between female and male athletes is a result not of inherent biological differences between the sexes, but of biases in how they're treated in sports. I actually think that's not correct, at least as they're defending it here.

0:44:06 Thomas: Because the examples they use, one was the coaching thing that I said, and I just, that's just wrong. Like, sorry. And it's not a science thing. That's a claim about sports that they make, which is why I'm more comfortable arguing with it. Women's sports have unbelievable trainers, female fucking trainers who are training women as hard as they possibly can.

0:44:22 Lydia: Even looking at a sport like cheer and watching female coaches in that space like you're always trying to get like the most intense athletic performance you can out of your athletes.

0:44:32 Thomas: And I think it's actually unintentionally dismissive of female athletes to say that, oh, they're just not even getting the coaching. They're not.

0:44:38 Lydia: And it's dismissive of their coaches too. Yeah, yeah. I agree.

0:44:38 Thomas: It's like, yeah, exactly. That's amazing female coaches. So they use that as one of the examples. So that's already not good. And then they say, as an example, some endurance running events allow the use of professional runners called pace setters to help competitors perform their best. Men are not permitted to act as pacesetters in many women's events because of the belief that they will make the women quote artificially faster as though women were not actually doing the running themselves. This is a complete bullshit and I'm sorry to say it, but it's interesting. And I love, I love a good debunk and I also love sports. And so I wanted to take you through this because that's always fun.

0:45:13 Lydia: Take me there.

0:45:14 Thomas: So this is just wrong. This, and, and this comes from, yeah, end of show. This comes from that two...

0:45:16 Lydia: Over. Wow, men really are better than women.

0:45:25 Thomas: The end. We're Bill Maher now. This comes from a 2011... This was the International Association of Athletics Federations. They decided that women who run alongside men in road races cannot set world records. Now, people have legitimate qualms with that because it seemed arbitrary to do it right then and there and invalidate the previous record that had kind of just happened.

0:45:47 Lydia: Yeah, like felt a little convenient. Yeah?

0:45:48 Thomas: Yes, but it's not invalid for the reasons that people are saying. So first off, the claim about professional pace setters is just not right. That's true in some races, but is not relevant to this thing. Maybe tell me what you think that means. So it was some endurance running events allow the use of professional runners called pace setters to help competitors perform their best. Men are not permitted to act as pace setter in many women's events because of the belief that they will make the women artificially faster. So what do you think is happening in that description? Like based on that set, we'll do the classic debunk. What do you thing is the claim they're making there? Based on this paragraph, how do these races work for men and how do they work for women? This is trying to make you think that there's pace setters that just run to kind of set the pace of the race.

0:46:33 Thomas: And if they have men do it for women, the women get too good because like they aspire to run at that pace. And so they run faster. That's absolutely what they intend with this.

0:46:42 Lydia: I guess like a way to think about that is like like you're going for a jog with your partner or something and there's like some competition going on there and like the man starts to speed up so then you start to speed up and that that would be an unfair advantage women would be outperforming themselves like what they would actually be doing otherwise

0:47:00 Thomas: So I had to reverse engineer what they're talking about here and they've confused two things. So there are things such as pace setters in certain contexts for races, but not the thing that is the rule that they're taught. So I Googled the rule like men are not, you know, allowed. I just Googled what that was to try to track it down. It is this 2011 thing. So if that were what it was, then that would make sense. Like if it's like, oh, hey, just because like like you're saying, if you're jogging, the difference between jogging with another person who's like they barely ever run and you jog with your friend who's like a competitive runner is like, Oh shit, I can keep up with that or something, you know? Yeah, exactly.

0:47:32 Lydia: Or jogging by yourself they're all very different psychologically

0:47:37 Thomas: And so the way they're making the claim and they're making you think it's like, oh, that's not fair because the women are still running faster. It's just they're using the pace of the men to run faster. And that's Not at all. What's happening this rule change about the men being no longer permitted to act as pace setters is not strictly speaking the right wording, but it's close enough that I think it confused these authors to thinking that's what it was.

0:48:02 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:48:02 Thomas: So here's a truth about running that we need to know in order to talk about this.

0:48:05 Lydia: That it sucks I'm just kidding

0:48:07 Thomas: So no, no. Do you know what drafting is?

0:48:09 Lydia: Oh like what happens with cars right like if you're behind a big rig or something like that

0:48:14 Thomas: So someone in front of you. Yeah.

0:48:14 Lydia: Yeah lowers that wind resistance or or something

0:48:17 Thomas: Someone in front. No, that is what it is. It's drafting is the thing you're doing behind them. In short races, maybe it doesn't make as much of a difference, but it makes a huge difference if you're running behind somebody on the long scale. And we're talking this rule was about marathons. So imagine, you know, two and a half hours of running.

0:48:20 Lydia: Go

0:48:32 Thomas: If you're an app like a world records around two hours, but like two hours of running, the difference between being behind somebody breaking up the air resistance for you, it makes it tremendous difference. You might not think so, but but it does. And so think about it already. There's no way that the men's records are going to be allowed to have a professional like person running in front of them, breaking up the wind for that doesn't make sense, which is what this paragraph would seem to suggest.

0:48:55 Thomas: You know, some endurance running events allow the use of professional runners called pace setters to help competitors perform their best. That's not, that's not true of the thing we're talking about here. What's really going on is that when it comes to marathons and I'll focus on marathones, I think it applies to like any endurance road race based on the wording of the rule. So the The key misunderstanding here comes in that the wording used like pacing, like because the women were being paced essentially by the men who are ahead of them in this race. And I think that's why the authors confused it with pace setters,

0:48:55 Lydia: Right yeah yeah

0:49:27 Thomas: But they were just using that term to mean the men were ahead of them. So because of the wind resistance thing, if you have someone running ahead of you, you run a little faster. And if you think about it in a mixed gender race, and we're talking about world records, mind you. So definitionally, whoever's setting a world record is the fastest person. So like a male road world record means there's no one ahead of them in that race. Like definitionally they are having to run out front, but women setting world records, there would be a difference between when they're setting a world record in a women only race because no one is ahead of them versus a mixed gender race where men are going to be ahead of them the whole time. And so the I, I, whatever, IAAF that was like making this decision, maybe they worded it badly or something, but a bunch of people people in 2011 were like, whoa, you're saying that women can't run as fast if they're, you know, like they just misinterpreted it to mean that women were like getting an advantage from men. And it was just kind of a bad faith interpretation of the language. But really when you put it the way I just put it, which is the reality, doesn't that make sense?

0:50:03 Lydia: Right

0:50:31 Thomas: Like we're talking about just the women's world record relative to other women. And I think this is a really interesting thing. Now there's another part of it where there's like race strategy, where you can actually intentionally slow down and draft behind someone and then eventually pass them.

0:50:30 Lydia: Yeah

0:50:45 Thomas: But that's different than the key distinction in the mixed races is that the men and women aren't competing directly against each other. So it might be that, yeah, like the woman who sets the world record, maybe she drafts behind a woman for a while, like she's in second or something, but she's still competing to beat that person. So there's like the competition between them and there's going to be the strategy and the the like dynamic interplay there to like, okay, now's my time when I'm going to pass, you know?

0:50:44 Lydia: Right right yeah exactly like anytime you watch a race and stuff like and you see you know someone in third doesn't mean that they're actually in third it might mean that their going to find their moment to pump it up and come to the outside to get in front and like the way the movement happens between all erasers I think is always really

0:51:23 Thomas: So like, yeah. And so what this is saying is, well, it's not really fair if you set a world record behind a man, because for one men are bigger than women, just that's like objectively true when it comes to these runners, men are a little bigger. They're break, they're, they'RE breaking up more wind. They'RE breaking more. TheyRE breaking up the air resistance. Yeah. Even more than women would. So that's another reason once again, to compare women's world records to women's world records.

0:51:32 Lydia: Interesting right right surface

0:51:50 Thomas: They were saying, hey, it's not fair that this woman set a world record when she got to run behind men the whole time. And this woman had to run ahead herself.

0:51:50 Lydia: Area

0:51:59 Thomas: So here's the mistake they made. They said, well, those ones no longer count. They said like, that's no longer the world record.

0:51:58 Lydia: Right right oh wow no

0:52:07 Thomas: Exactly right. And so the objection at the time, yeah. And that's what's funny is like, and that's where I lost confidence in these writers a little bit is because they kind of make reference to this, but the problem people had was like, hey no, no, just make it two separate records.

0:52:08 Lydia: They just need to be categorized gee come on people yeah yeah

0:52:20 Thomas: Like, it's not fair to like get rid of this one because one person had just run like a really good time, but she was running behind two Kenyan men in the London marathon. The reason I'm so confident in saying like, this is a thing they just got wrong is it's objectively true if you look at the numbers that these are two different records. Like it's significantly different.

0:52:37 Thomas: And to this day, what they did is they went back on it and they said, okay, you're right. We'll do two separate reports. And that's good. They have a record for, and it's all women to women. It's not like there's no, there's nothing, there's No value judgment being made about, about men and women in this. But when you look at race results, the women's world record, when there are men running too, like the mixed world record is an entire like six minutes ahead of the women'S only record. So yeah, obviously you would want that to be two different records. And this article tries to use this as an example of the sexism of sports where it's saying like, oh, as if they didn't earn it themselves. Yeah.

0:53:12 Lydia: And it's so unnecessary because there's plenty of other they're examples.

0:53:17 Thomas: Yeah, there are good examples. Yeah! Undeniably the current records as they stand, it's about a six minute difference. Well, that's six minutes in any race of anything is fucking a lot.

0:53:25 Lydia: Yeah, that's crazy.

0:53:26 Thomas: Like that's significant. It's also cool to note that like the women's marathon world record, if this information is right, currently seems to be 215 .50 for the just women only. The men's is like 201. There was an unofficial one that got below two, but nobody's officially gotten below two. It'S cool that they're that close, you know, but it just goes to show even in an extended race, a marathon being a competition that we think of as quite long, still that endurance difference doesn't kick in for women yet, you know, because you have to make the race really long. And that's kind of why I was making the point I was. Like, I think good faith all around, there's interesting ways in which women would be better at sports than men if we define sports differently. I think that's totally valid. But also just the nuance of, yeah, but still the fast switch muscles and the strength ratios and all that stuff, that is going to make a difference in most sports that we would probably ever consider sports.

0:54:12 Thomas: But I just thought that was just fascinating to look at because it reminded me, it was just quaint to be like, oh yeah, they all kind of people in 2011, the environment under Obama and like this leftist uprising, you know, it was like, hey, we get to look at stuff and be like, you're being unfair. And it's like, oh, they were wrong about that. Like, I miss that. I miss when when that was the dynamic that was happening when we were interpreting stuff. Yeah. Like we're trying to be more left and feminist and interpreting stuff and occasionally making mistakes because we were just quick to assume something was anti -feminist when it wasn't.

0:54:31 Lydia: What a world that was. I know.

0:54:42 Thomas: And I wish we lived in that world still, you Know, yeah, it really was. It really does point out that you need to to look at the details. You need to look at the nuance. When I explained that rule to you, it went from like, wow, this sounds insane that they're saying the women didn't earn it because they were pacing on the men to like, oh no, that's actually a hundred percent right.

0:54:44 Lydia: It was a better world. It really, really was. Yeah yeah.

0:55:00 Thomas: Because you're talking about women records versus other women. Six minutes is a long ass time. Like that's how much of a difference it makes. And so, and it's just kind of fascinating because the same thing doesn't apply to men because definitionally a man setting the world record can't have anyone in front of them. Like maybe they can for some part of the race, but that man that is in front of them is someone they're they're competing with. And so there's this strategy of like, when should I pass it?

0:55:22 Lydia: Right.

0:55:22 Thomas: You know, so like, that's considered fair game. And women have that too, when it's women only. But because when you're running in mixed races, which is a lot of marathons, like, you know, Boston Marathon, London, like a lot Of them are going to be mixed, and they don't want to change that. But that just means it has to be a different category of record for the women as well.

0:55:37 Thomas: So really interesting. And that's a great solution. Because it's not like the women can't do both of those, like women can run in women only and women can Run. And for some reason, it's not the same woman who holds both records. I'm not sure why exactly, but whatever it could be.

0:55:50 Lydia: Yeah we see that in plenty of other sports too, right?

0:55:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:55:52 Lydia: Like swimming and stuff. There's events in which it's mixed and events in which it's not.

0:55:58 Thomas: And so there you go. I just want to do a nice refreshing, like debunk of something that, you know, and also I still want to say there's plenty of validity to this article. And I think the correct thing to do is not to declare knee jerk. This is unscientific, even though nuance of nuances, I think this sentence Bill Maher isolated is wrong. I think it's not, at least it's demonstrated by the article itself because the article self uses this, which is a horrible, this is just a wrong example. It's like incorrect. And it uses other other ones that are more, you know, they're more arguable. I disagree with like one or two of them. And then I agree with a bunch of other ones. So like, I would say they didn't, in my mind, they didn'T back up this claim in this article. Does that mean the claim's untrue? I don't know. Like, I think you could imagine an article that's written rather than kind of like an anthropology perspective written by women who, or just anyone who's more familiar with sports and could like make the case because maybe they would make this same case, but better using

0:56:50 Thomas: Different examples. And that's what we should do, not have this knee -jerk crybaby reaction. They're like, say it's unscientific. Say it. You gotta say it without me explaining what it is. Like, it's just fucking nonsense.

0:57:03 Lydia: It's so crazy like like to write off Scientific American for for this piece in particular which has sparked I think a really interesting discussion between the two of us at least and I don't know I have thought about things and learned things and stuff like that is science.

0:57:15 Thomas: And I think it's all correct about the hunter -gatherer stuff from what I can tell. I'm not a scientist, but like, it seems like it's correct. And if it's not, it's at least arguable and then someone could argue the other way, but that's science. Yeah. It's like, there's going to be different interpretations, but yeah, totally. And it's really interesting interesting to actually look at from an unbiased lens what women were doing historically without trying to put it in the patriarchal lens that a lot of these male scientists from olden times did.

0:57:24 Lydia: Well argued yeah yeah yep mm -hmm mm -huh yeah

0:57:40 Thomas: And that's a totally valid endeavor. It's better science. It is actually better science it's not even just like oh it's also science. No it's actually doing the science correctly. So super fun. I enjoyed that. Hope folks enjoyed that as well. And fuck Bill Maher. Let's see any other closing thoughts.

0:57:55 Lydia: Oh man yeah he's the worst.

0:57:56 Thomas: He sucks and

0:57:57 Lydia: Go watch A Bug's Life.

0:57:57 Thomas: Trans women are women. Trans women should be allowed to compete in sports, provided there's like certain regulations that the governing bodies used to, I think, have good views on. Now they don't.

0:58:07 Lydia: Well and and that there's not going going to be a one size fits all approach for every single sport across the entire world, that it needs to be evaluated sport by sport, potentially like within age ranges. Like there's probably a lot of nuance here that should be explored.

0:58:13 Thomas: Yeah, it's going to be different. Absolutely. Totally.

0:58:23 Lydia: And that's what we should be focused on.

0:58:25 Thomas: Because of anti -woke people like Bill Maher and anti -woke scare stories, we're now in a worse place than ever in trans people in sports and every other woke issue or quote unquote woke issue. So that fucking sucks. So let's keep debunking and trying to fight back against the misinformation. And that's what we're trying to do here. So thanks so much for listening. See you next time.

0:59:02 Lydia: Let me just say, if boys have to poop, they're going to be sitting on a toilet exactly like a girl. So there you go.

0:59:07 Thomas: Important. Glad you said that. Oh, that's the wokest doing a woke. Joke.

0:59:13 Lydia: This premier animal, like a really, really cool animal. Phoebe's like hustling Arlo with a card game. I don't know if she's playing war or something, but yeah.