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Conversations with Coleman

Conversations with Coleman

Hormones, Ideology, and the Cost of Dissent with Carole Hooven

Nov 3, 2025 · 1h 37m

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On this episode

About this episode

My guest today is evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven. If you’ve followed her story, you know she was effectively pushed out of Harvard for articulating a basic biological fact—and doing it politely. We talk through her research on hormones, rough-and-tumble play, aggression, and libido; what puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones actually do; why sports can’t be reorganized around “hormone levels”; and how elite institutions reacted to her saying things they all once taught. This is a conversation about evidence, not slogans—and about the cost of speaking plainly. Carole Hooven is a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an associate in Harvard’s psychology…