Navigating Identity and Career in a Conservative World

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This chapter explores the profound impact of early life experiences on career choices in neuroscience and psychology, particularly through the lens of growing up in a conservative environment. Personal anecdotes reveal the challenges of coming out, experiences with conversion therapy, and the struggle against societal pressures, all while navigating the complexities of identity in the scientific community.

It’s an updated mega-encore of one of my favorite episodes — with 2024 research — to learn: How many genders are there? How do you know if you’re queer? Is sexual orientation biological, and if so, how? The amazing neuroscientist and endocrinology researcher Dr. Daniel Pfau joins to share their path in academia finding the perfect research, understanding their own genderqueer identity, what animals in nature exhibit queer behavior, how hormones affect our moods, the variation of gender expression, queer lizards, how a strict gender binary is harmful to entire populations, hormone replacement therapy, hormones in sports, gender dysphoria, additional info on the Gender Unicorn and more. They are just charming and kind and wonderful and this episode will help you understand just how many ways there are to be human. I’m off in the woods this week for a wedding, and I can’t think of a better occasion to revisit this one.

Follow Dr. Daniel Pfau at Twitter.com/endokweer

A donation went to MarshaP.org

More links at alieward.com/ologies/NeuroendocrinologyEncore

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Editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media, Steven Ray Morris, Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jacob Chaffee