The relationship between science and the public is very complicated, and we're in such a period of

sort of our political tribe in general touting how science-y we are and how those dumb conservatives

aren't sciencey, but everyone's an asshole on this. No one actually follows the science. As soon as

following the science becomes ideologically inconvenient, people throw the science out the window. It's the same thing with journalism. People claim to value journalism

and reporting, but as soon as someone reports something they don't want to hear, they throw

the journalists under the bus. Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Down. My guest

is science writer and occasional, well, more than occasional, culture critic, Jesse Single.

If you're a fan of this show, chances are you're also a fan of Blockton Report It,

the podcast Jesse co-hosts with Katie Herzog, who herself has been a guest here twice.

Jesse's new book, The Quick Fix, Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills,

takes a series of deep dives into long-held assumptions about society and human behavior.

For instance, the myth of the super predator, the so-called power pose, even the concept of implicit bias.

We take these ideas as truths, but as Jesse explains, many are based on faulty methodology

and shoddy interpretation. He talks with me about all of that, as well as a subject that is

not in the book, his research into childhood and adolescent gender dysphoria

and its relationship to the recent surge in young people identifying as transgender or non-binary.

This work, despite his very careful methodology, has incurred the wrath of a certain corner of

trans activism, mostly on Twitter, and we talk about why he thinks that is

and how much it should matter. I do feel like I have to warn you about the compulsive

Amazon checking because it's probably not a good thing to do.

It's totally unavoidable. It's like, especially for the first book, there's, it's not,

it's inevitable. But maybe you want to limit to yourself to like 30 times a day.

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