April 24, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode of Spill the Tea, host Jason Blitman is joined by professor Nathan H. Lents (The Sexual Evolution) to unpack the sexual history of humans to better understand how we got to today. They talk about the expansive relationship to sex and sexulaity that humans used to have, how our approach to sex and gender comes from hundreds of millions of years of sexual evolution, social and economic monogamy vs sexual monogamy, and the importance of learning and communicating.
Nathan H. Lents is a professor of biology at John Jay College, CUNY, and the author of Not So Different: Finding Human Nature in Animals. He has appeared as a scientific expert in a range of national media, including The TODAY Show, NPR, Access Hollywood, 48 Hours, and Al Jazeera America. He lives in Queens, NY.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello and welcome to GazeReading and this episode of
(00:05):
Spill the T.
I'm your host, Jason Blitman,and I am joined by professor Dr.
Nathan H.
Lent And he and I spill the T onSexual Evolution.
He is the author of the book,the Sexual Evolution, and we get
into it.
And I'm so excited for you tohear this episode.
(00:25):
If you.
I haven't listened to the otherepisode in the series.
I talked to Elda Rator, who isthe VP and publisher of Penguin
Classics, and we talk about whatmakes a classic, a classic.
You could find that wherever youget your podcasts or at gays
reading.com.
A few quick things before wedive in.
If you are new to Gay's reading,welcome if you've joined us
(00:48):
before, welcome back.
Always happy to have you.
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(01:11):
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It's such a good deal.
Highly recommend.
I think that's all I got foryou.
I hope everyone is having awonderful week.
We'll be back with our regularlyscheduled programming on Tuesday
with an author, with a new bookcoming out.
(01:31):
But in the meantime, pleaseenjoy the special spill the t
episode with Nathan, HL.
Jason Blitman (01:38):
I am thrilled to have you here on Gay's reading
today.
And talking about your book, um,the Sexual Evolution, how 500
million years of sex, gender,and mating shape Modern
Relationships.
Nathan H. Lents (01:51):
That's it.
Jason Blitman (01:52):
I think that sort of sums it up.
How did this book come to be?
Nathan H. Lents (01:56):
Well, um, it's, it's interesting that you ask
that because we talk about itnow very differently than we
thought we would because of howmuch the world has changed since
the book was finished lastsummer.
But I'll tell you how the bookcame about is, I've been
teaching the biology of Sex andGender for about 15 years.
And, um, two, two things reallyled to me wanting to write this
(02:19):
book.
One was that.
I teach my class as a seminarwhere we read a lot of papers,
original research in the biologyliterature, so studies that are
done on various animals and, andhow they, you know, how their
reproductive behaviors and howthey construct sex and gender.
And, I became increasinglyannoyed with the way that
scientists.
Biologists, my fellowbiologists, discuss their own
(02:41):
data, discuss their ownobservations.
and my original drafts of thebook actually was quite a bit
more polemical, where I wastaking a lot more, umbrage with
the way that that scientistsdiscuss sex and gender in
animals.
I toned that down quite a bitbecause my editor, I think,
wisely was like, you know, youneed some allies.
You can't just pick oneverybody.
(03:01):
You
Jason Blitman (03:01):
It's like, it's like when they say, you know,
when you have strong feelings,like write the email but don't
hit send.
Yeah.
Nathan H. Lents (03:07):
Yeah, kind of like that.
So we tone, we tone down a lotof the criticisms.
Um, but I, but a lot of'em madeit in there and, and, and a lot
of them do come out when I givebook talks, so you can hear more
about those.
But that was one side.
And then the other side was, youknow, young people, especially
young people, are reallyapproaching these.
Issues much differently than theolder generation.
(03:27):
So, so in, in just twogenerations, at least in the
western world, the approach tosex and gender has changed quite
a bit.
Um, you know, from people, uh,from the approach approaches to
when you get married, I.
You know, for example, um, andhow you think about your own
sexuality, whether or not it'sfixed or fluid, and, you know,
different labels, you know,pansexual, demisexual, none of
(03:49):
these things, you know, theselabels anyway existed not that
long ago.
Um, and even things with genderand gender expression and gender
identity, it's just radicallydifferent.
And young people have had a kindof no labels, no rules approach
to these things, including openrelationships and polyamory and
swinging and all this.
And it freaks.
It freaks older people out.
(04:10):
You know, if you're over the ageof 40 or 50, uh, the young
people are just kind ofincomprehensible to you in terms
of sex and gender.
And so what I wanted to write abook that sort of explains.
This in a way that that remindseveryone that this is not really
anything new, actually, thatother cultures, other times,
other places around the worldhave done this differently.
(04:31):
Um, and creatively morediversely, but other animals
approach sex, gender, and, and,and sexual relationships.
In this much more expansive,broad fluid sort of way.
So what young people are doingnow is a rediscovery of a much
more expansive relationshipwith, with sexuality that we
used to have that, you know,humans used to have in other
cultures, other times, and thatour animal cousins enjoy today.
(04:55):
And I use the word enjoy becauseI think it's a better way to
live actually, to have a, a muchless restrictive approach to sex
and
Jason Blitman (05:03):
Yeah.
It's so interesting that you saythat because it makes me think,
I was watching some TV show, Ithink it was Brooklyn Nine nine,
shout out to Brooklyn nine nine.
Nathan H. Lents (05:13):
Great show.
Jason Blitman (05:14):
It's a great show.
Um, and there was that, therewas a comment made about how
dogs mouths are cleaner thanhumans.
And like that obviously is afallacy.
It makes us feel better abouthaving our dogs lick our faces.
Right.
And I think there's somethingtoo about the.
The same thing about people,people or animals enjoying sex.
(05:35):
Right.
I feel like I was, I was taught,you know, it's like humans and
dolphins are the two creaturesthat quote unquote enjoy sex or
have sex for the sake ofenjoyment.
and of course, upon reading yourbook, I realize that is not
true.
And there's, there's so many,it's so much more than that.
And so it's interesting just tothink like why we even.
Tell ourselves these things inthe first place.
Nathan H. Lents (05:55):
Right.
And I think, as I kind of hintat it in the book, I mean mostly
our approach to this has beendue to very recent social
constructions around sexuality.
And I think, I think that a lotof biologists looked out at the
natural world and they squintedreally hard to see sex the way
that they, they think it shouldbe in human.
(06:16):
So, so it was much easier tosort of live with yourself in a
consistent way.
If animals only have sex forprocreation and they mate for
life and they're allheterosexual and all that, that
kept it simple.
If, if that's how animals do it,then that must be, that's why
it's right for humans to do itthat way and all of that.
And of course all of that'sbullshit.
(06:36):
It's all bullshit.
Jason Blitman (06:37):
right.
Before we get into some, uh,more nitty gritty and specific
things to, things that interestme as as gay reading, let's just
say among the things we want to,among the questions we want to
answer today is, what is sexualevolution?
Nathan H. Lents (06:56):
Mm-hmm.
Well, um, so the, the, well, youmean the title
Jason Blitman (07:01):
yeah.
Yeah.
I think just like conceptually,what, like if someone said, what
does sexual evolution mean?
I think obviously we can deduceand make our own assumptions,
but to you, in your, in your, asyou're embarking on writing this
book, what does that mean?
How do you define sexualevolution?
Nathan H. Lents (07:19):
So to me it's in recognition that sex has a
long history.
Hu humans did not just fall outof the sky, you know, a few
thousand years ago, right?
Humans are the product.
Of millions, hundreds ofmillions of years of evolution.
And that is seen all throughoutour body, all throughout our
behavior.
There's a long history to almosteverything about us, to truly
(07:41):
everything about us has a verylong history, and sex is no
different.
So the way that we approach sex,the way that we approach gender,
the way that we have sex witheach other is the result of
hundreds of millions of years ofevolutionary tinkering and
selection.
And um, and to me.
To understand, to really trulyunderstand sex as a behavior,
(08:02):
um, in, in forgetting about sexbodies for a second, but just
think about the behavior of sex.
You can't divorce it from itshistory.
I.
You have to, you have to reallyappreciate the long history of
sexual creatures doing whatsexual creatures do.
Because if you wanna understandthe politics of the United
States, right, you have tounderstand its history.
You cannot understand thecurrent state of affairs without
(08:25):
also looking backwards in timeto see how we got here.
And it's the same sort of thingwith biology.
You really evolution.
Um, you can't subtractevolution.
From anything about the humanexperience and expect, and
expect to understand it allbecause there's a lot of stuff
that's weird and quirky aboutour biology.
It really calls out for anexplanation and evolution
(08:45):
usually provides thatexplanation or at least
tentatively, uh, provides thatexplanation.
So I, that's why, that's what Imean by it.
Jason Blitman (08:52):
yeah, no, I, I love that.
Thank you for, for sharing that.
I was in conversation, I don'tknow, a couple years ago now
with the author and historianPeter Franco Pan about his book
The Earth Transformed and what'sfascinating is he is a historian
writing a book of, I mean, it,it was like a.
800 page book that essentiallywas the history of the world.
(09:15):
The first chapter was called theDawn of Time, and it really
takes us to today and part ofwhat, what the book tries to
unpack is that there's alwaysbeen global warming.
The earth has sort of alwaysbeen in peril and the earth will
continue to spin after humansare long gone.
Right?
And, and so it's veryinteresting.
I think that we as humansreally, uh, latch on to the time
(09:39):
and place that we are existing.
Nathan H. Lents (09:41):
Right.
As if it's always been this way,this is the right way.
This is, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's true.
We are, we are a very recentappearance on this planet.
Uh, and we've transformed theplanet tremendously since we've
arrived, almost, almost alwaysfor the negative, for for the
worse.
Um, and I mean, humans have,have invaded every, you know,
landscape that they arrive inand totally transform it.
(10:03):
Um, which by the way is kind ofthe conclusion I draw in the
book.
If you go all the way to the endof the book, well wait a minute,
actually, no one's gonna readthe book.
Jason Blitman (10:11):
Right.
Don't, don't give, don't, don'tgive away the ending.
No, no, no.
That's, that's what, that's whyI shared what Peter Frankel Pan
said in his book.
Um.
Uh,
Nathan H. Lents (10:19):
You gotta read.
You gotta read it.
Jason Blitman (10:22):
again, there are so many things I wanna talk
about, but I think that, youknow, a very hot topic,
particularly in the queercommunity is monogamy.
And you do go on to sort of talkabout your chapter is
fantastically called monogamish,which is one of my favorite
words.
Um, can, can you talk aboutmonogamy, social monogamy versus
(10:45):
sexual monogamy?
Uh.
And in whatever you feel, uh,appropriate, you don't need to
like come out and give me awhole lecture, although I would
happily sit here and appreciateit, but I don't want to put you
on the spot like that.
Nathan H. Lents (10:59):
Right.
Well, so monogamy, is really,you have to understand the two
sides of it.
There's social or economicmonogamy, which is just the
tendency to pair up.
And lots of animals do this.
Lots of animals pair up by far,not all of them, but like for
example, birds are, are the kindof the stars of monogamy.
They do tend to pair up.
Um, whereas mammals, only about15% of mammal species pair up.
(11:22):
Um, that's, that's monogamy theattachment, um, that two
individuals have.
And you, you form arelationship.
That's a, that almost alwaysinvolves sharing of resources,
sharing of a homestead, livingtogether, raising children
together if there are children,that kind of thing.
That, that relationship thattakes priority over all other
relationships.
That's what monogamy is.
It's en enduring, you know, forbirds will often just do it for
(11:44):
one season, but whatever that,that long-term relationship
that's monogamy.
And humans, it's, it, it's, it'snot a hundred percent universal,
but pairing up is a humantendency.
We tend to do this, we tend topair up in these one-to-one
relationships.
Um, sexual monogamy or sexualfidelity is the exclusion of,
you know, of all other sexualpartners in favor of the one
(12:07):
that you are bonded with, right?
So.
You, you would be sexualmonogamies only even possible if
you're already sociallymonogamous.
But it turns out that socialmonogamies pretty common,
especially in birds.
Sexual monogamy is almostunheard of in the natural world.
It's very, very, very rare.
And we only have appreciatedthat for a couple of decades
(12:28):
because when, when monogamy wasstudied in birds, for example.
The tendency to pair up,including multiple seasons in
some species, we assumed that itwas sexually faithful.
Um, it was purely an assumption.
It was not really true ortested.
And when DNA testing wasinvented, so paternity testing
(12:50):
essentially for birds, all ofthe ornithologists all around
the world, one by one startedtesting their species and.
Kind of scratching their headsgoing, oh my gosh, they are not
sexually exclusive in thesepairs.
It's almost no birds aresexually exclusive.
The females will accept extrapair populations.
The males will engage in extrapair populations.
(13:12):
And there's various reasons whythey do that.
And that's, that's how I openthe chapters.
Talk about what do they get outof it?
Why would you want to, what's,why is it not count?
'cause all these people wouldthink it's counterproductive to
the para bond, but it's reallynot.
And.
Um, so we, no hu no birds arereally sexually faithful among
mammals.
It's all small minority thatthat pair up anyway.
Right?
(13:32):
So it's only about 15, well, I'msorry, it's 15% of primates, uh,
are monogamous only about 8% inthe whole mammal family.
But of those primates, do youknow how many species have found
to be sexually faithful?
Eight, eight species out ofsomething like 6,000 mammal
species out there.
So it's a tiny, tiny minority.
(13:53):
Sexual fidelity is just not acommonplace thing out in the
animal world, including amongcreatures that parabon.
So when humans approach theissue of monogamy, um, I wanna
be clear that I'm not sayingthat.
That if you choose to besexually monogamous, that that's
unnatural and we shouldn't dothat, and we need to teach
people differently.
That's not at all what I'msaying.
(14:14):
What I am saying though is weare peculiar for wanting sexual
monogamy, uh, as a society, as aculture.
We didn't use to have it in ourculture that much anyway.
And so it's not, it's not abiological imperative at all.
So you don't, we're not builtfor monogamy.
(14:34):
Now, I don't think we're reallybuilt for anything else either,
in particular.
I think we're very flexiblybuilt when it comes to our
sexuality.
Um, but the really, the only bigcriticism or push pushback that,
that is a corollary of that isif anyone tries to tell you that
open relationships areunnatural, well, that's just not
true
Jason Blitman (14:53):
Sure.
Nathan H. Lents (14:54):
because, because among the para bonded
species that are out there,they're almost all in what we
would call open relationships.
Jason Blitman (15:00):
and when, I don't know how familiar you are with
the history of monogamy amongsthumans, but how was that
introduced?
Nathan H. Lents (15:11):
Well in different regions of the world,
um, what we think of as likemarriage, kind of.
Um, and, and this is not myexpertise either.
I'm a
Jason Blitman (15:20):
yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's right.
Nathan H. Lents (15:21):
but the way I see it, the lens, I, I say my
conclusion of all the readingthat I've done on this is that,
um, really the one-to-onerelationships emerged, um, after
Polygeny.
So Polygeny became the firstkind of, social control where
you had a single male dominatinga small group of females, and
that was what families lookedlike.
(15:43):
So a single powerful, uh, male,uh, dominating a small group.
And that was the,
Jason Blitman (15:48):
I want to, I wanna interrupt.
Just to say per your book, I wasshocked to see that that's how
gorillas function,
Nathan H. Lents (15:55):
Yeah, many do.
Yeah.
In ing.
Yeah.
So you have a single dominantmale that, that dominates over a
small group of, uh, females.
Um, and just whether it's inhumans or gorillas or lion or
whatever, a lot of males,especially straight guys, think
that sounds very attractive.
What they're missing is thatwhat it means is that most males
(16:16):
don't get that.
Right.
They're, they die trying.
Um, and even if they'resuccessful, they're always
looking over their shoulderbecause the harem, you know, the
next male would love to deposethat one male.
So it's a very despotic,despotic, kind of hierarchical
way that's actually not pleasantfor anyone involved, right?
But the genes involved in, in,you know, the, the mail being
(16:38):
spread, you know, to supportthat.
So evolution doesn't always comeup with, uh, fun solutions.
Polygeny was sort of first, andthen monogamy came essentially
as a pushback against Polygeny.
Um, by, by males.
Mostly by males.
Uh, try to have some form ofequity.
Then you get to marriage.
So when civilization started to,uh, build on top of, uh,
(16:59):
agriculture, then you started tohave city states, and then you
have eventually civilizations,which are just cultural steam
rollers, right?
So they just sort of mow downall of the.
Microcultures all around andabsorb almost like a planet,
forming and collecting rocks,right?
It's the same kind of thing, butwith cultures.
And once you have these bigcivilizations where it's Greece,
roam, it really, Rome is whatwe're talking about in, in the
(17:21):
West.
Um, you had to have a system forestablishing inheritance.
So you have powerful, powerfulfamilies with, with resources
and who gets them when, when thenext generation, you know, when
people die and all this.
So this invented the concept oflegitimacy.
Like a legitimate heir.
And so a, a man, a woman, afamily who gets the, the, the
(17:43):
house, uh, in the nextgeneration.
Interestingly, sexual fidelity,again, not implied in that I.
So, so monogamy was called theRoman custom, uh, throughout
most of Europe, and it kind ofspread really by force.
Um, but it didn't include, youknow, sexual faithfulness.
Um, at least not originally.
That sort of came when thechurch, when the Christian
Church, uh, took over the RomanEmpire.
(18:06):
Their values started to then,so, so the, the Roman Empire had
the tentacles and then thechurch, you know, got in that,
on, on the structure that wasalready sort of existed
politically and then enforced,uh, Christian values onto the
marriage structure and,
Jason Blitman (18:21):
Oh, that's so interesting.
Nathan H. Lents (18:22):
Yeah, so it's a very recent sexual fidelity is a
very recent idea, even in theWest.
Jason Blitman (18:27):
Well, and I think to simplify for me in my brain,
the social versus sexualmonogamy, learning about birds
and sort of how it was, it, itwasn't'cause they liked hanging
out.
It was, it was because theyneeded each other, right?
One, one is, one is sitting onthe gag while the other one is
out, you know, getting food and,and vice versa.
(18:49):
And, uh, I love my husband and Ihave no intention of, of
breaking up with him, but I needmy health insurance.
You know?
Right.
So that's, I think that's theversion of sitting on the egg
Nathan H. Lents (18:59):
That's right.
Economic monogamy.
It's economic monogamy.
And, and that's why birds arethe masters of monogamy is
because their eggs require thatconstant incubation.
So somebody has to be, in orderto develop properly, the eggs,
really, somebody has to besitting on'em pretty much all
the time.
Whereas in mammals, you know,the pregnancy is internal.
So that's why mammals are notparticularly prone to monogamy
(19:20):
as a group.
It, you know, pri primates do ita little bit more than others.
But, um, it's just one way to,to solve that problem if you're
a mammal.
Um, the, the problem of takingcare of young and, and all of
this, and family structures inanimals, I really do view them
as vehicles for raisingfamilies.
That doesn't mean that everymember has to personally be
(19:40):
involved in procreation, but thewhole village is involved right?
In raising the next generation.
And so.
Um, you know, the people, peoplemake a big deal about what's the
comparison of the human familyand other animals.
You know, I, I, I have to be socareful in doing that because,
you know, they don't live likewe live.
(20:01):
Right.
And the social forces are, are,are the key part of that.
So
Jason Blitman (20:05):
you talk a bit about in the book and, uh, in
some other.
Conversations that you've hadabout taboos and you know, it's
interesting because taboos aretaboos because they're not
things that are out in the openand they're, they're sort of,
uh, behind the, the closeddoors, sex being one of those
(20:27):
things.
And I think sexual non-monogamyor sexual monogamish, uh, is a
part of that.
And I'm, I'm curious, as you'vesaid, things have changed.
Even in the last few years, youwere saying things we're talking
about things differently thanwhen you were even writing the
book.
Um, can you share a little bitabout what you've seen change in
(20:49):
the short term and maybe whatyou c could project in the long
term?
Yeah.
Nathan H. Lents (20:54):
Yeah.
Well, so in the short term,we've definitely seen, are you
talking about in humans?
I, I
Jason Blitman (20:59):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Nathan H. Lents (21:00):
Yeah.
Um, so young people now underthe age of, uh, 30, we'll say.
Uh, much more likely to identifyas queer, much more likely to be
in open relationships orpolyamory, uh, or, or, or, um,
ask skewing relationshipsaltogether.
Um, and I've had, you've heard,hear more and more of these
terms like, uh, relationshipanarchy, which are essentially
kind of a no, absolutely norules, no structure, uh,
(21:23):
approach to relationships,relationships.
Um, I, I think one, one thingthat's I do wanna say about it
is that it doesn't escape thedrama, right?
Jason Blitman (21:33):
Oh, no, no, of course not.
Nathan H. Lents (21:35):
People are like, oh, well that have people
like this just solved theproblem of jealousy.
And I'm like, oh my gosh.
No.
Jason Blitman (21:42):
No.
And if someone has learned howto solve jealousy, please call
me.
I need to know
Nathan H. Lents (21:48):
And, and they won't because if you, if you, as
I talked about in the chapter,other animals experience that,
right?
And it's not that conflict.
The reproductive conflict, ifyou will, is not going anywhere.
Jason Blitman (21:59):
right.
Nathan H. Lents (22:00):
So these other kinds of relationships are not
necessarily meant to, you know,be one size fits all and we can,
you know, solve all of ourproblems.
It's just another approach.
And.
Um, personally, I, I see prosand cons with all of them, and
my opinion's always been, Hey,you know, work it out for
yourself, you and your partners,whatever your partner or
partners, you know, work it out.
(22:20):
And, you know, honesty,transparency go a long way.
Um, and, but if you think it'sa, an escape from, you know,
having a jealous partner, forgetabout that.
I mean, it's, in many ways it'sa lot worse.
Um, but, but.
But, but you see this, this bigdifference among people under 30
and under 40, um, and marriagerates, uh, interesting though.
(22:42):
So marriage rates are decliningbig time and, and age of first
marriage is, is, is, is on therise.
However, divorce rates are alsofalling, and they've been
falling since the early twothousands, really since the late
nineties.
Um, the rates of divorce, um,are plummeting because people
wait much longer and, and decideto get married after they've
already done a lot of the thingsthat cause relationship trouble,
(23:04):
um, early in your life, youknow, financial insecurity and,
and professional, you know,establishment and prioritizing,
you know, family versus careerversus, you know, all of these
things kind of get worked out inyour twenties and then people
are starting to get married.
So marriages are actually morestable than they had been.
Uh, from the 1960s through thenineties, marriages are more
(23:27):
stable now.
Part partly of that is, is uh,same-sex marriages tend to be
more stable than opposite sexmarriages, but that's working
out too.
I mean, we now have gay divorcethat we never had that problem
before.
Right.
So that's a new problem.
Jason Blitman (23:39):
right.
With gay marriage comes GayDivorce.
Nathan H. Lents (23:41):
Yeah.
But, but mar gay marriages dotend to be more stable than
opposite sex ones for theobvious reason that you're
rarely forced into it by socialpressure.
Um, but um, anyway, I think it'sinteresting.
People concentrate a lot aboutmarriage, race, declining Those
who are, you know,reactionaries, but they're not
celebrating the decline ofdivorce rates.
(24:03):
Because to me, a divorce is muchmore of a disruption than just
waiting to get married.
Right.
So, I don't know.
You know they,
Jason Blitman (24:11):
And percentage wise, you would think they sort
of balance each other out.
Nathan H. Lents (24:15):
somewhat.
I mean, you do have, you do.
Right now we have now themajority of adults for the first
time since they've had data areunmarried.
That's never happened before.
So the majority of it's areeither formerly married or not
yet married.
That's now only about half of usadults are in a, in a marriage.
(24:35):
Um, and that's very, you know,upsetting and unsettling to some
people'cause they think thatthat's the only way that humans
should be.
Right.
So, you know, it's a failure ofour society when this doesn't
happen.
So personally, I don't see theguy crumbling from something
like that,
Jason Blitman (24:48):
Yeah, right.
Like that's complicated in itsown way of like why that
societal pressure comes, comesinto play.
Um, and so, so the, you don'thave a crystal ball,
Nathan H. Lents (25:02):
Mm.
Jason Blitman (25:03):
but in terms of trends,
Nathan H. Lents (25:06):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blitman (25:07):
what, what does the future of.
Monogamy of sexual evolution,what does that look like to you?
And, and, and I Maybe that,maybe, I mean, next year, maybe,
I mean, in 20 years.
And I think, you know, just sortof, obviously none of this is
fact or based in, you know,anything specific.
But based on your, yourexperience and your awareness,
(25:29):
what would you say?
Nathan H. Lents (25:31):
Yeah, so the trend I see is, is an increasing
number.
Of people approaching monogamyfrom an open or polyamorous kind
of position.
I think that that's prettyclearly on the rise.
Like, and we can project thatout for a little while.
Uh, these things tend to move inpendulums, but there's also
progress to the pendulum, ifthat makes sense.
So you'll have
Jason Blitman (25:49):
Two steps forward, right?
Nathan H. Lents (25:51):
kind of thing.
Yeah.
You'll see some of that becausethere's some pushback.
Um.
You know, even among youngpeople, you know, they see, you
know, they'll have a badexperience and then they'll go
fleeing back to maybe my parentswere right, you know, kind of a
thing.
Um, it's interestingly though,whenever something goes wrong in
a traditional relationship, noone questions whether the
traditional relationship itselfwas the problem.
(26:12):
But every time an openrelationship goes wrong, people,
they, oh, well that's why.
What did you expect?
You know?
Um, and it's, that's a lot ofpressure to carry on.
And, um, but you know, thespeaking of pressure.
I, I hope that one thing thatwill come out of this is
understanding that the societydoesn't have to be structured
any particular way, uh, forthings to work out.
(26:35):
You know what I mean?
Like, you don't have to havemarriage as the dominant way
that families are mademonogamous, you know, dyads
one-to-one.
That the fact that, that peoplethink that's the only way
western society could haveworked out.
That's, that's remarkably to methat people think that when you
consider the diversity ofrelationships around the world,
culturally and historically, SoI hope that we'll come out of
this as a more diverse approachto marriage and family life.
(26:59):
Um, whether or not, um,non-monogamy becomes dominant
over sexual monogamy, that Iwould be very.
Hesitant to make any predictionson because I, I do think there
will be, you know, a maturingthat goes on as we all kind of
get used to this as, assomething that goes on The gay
community is a, you know, good20 years ahead of the straight
(27:21):
community on most of thesetrends.
Um, and what you'll see is a lewhat I see anyway is a bit of a
leveling off, uh, a fair numberof gay men.
Uh, and I'm, I am particularly,uh, talking about men in this
example.
Um, having explored sexual, um,non-monogamy, um, open
relationships and you, you'restarting to see people kind of
(27:43):
retrench and go back in and say,well, that was fun for a couple
of years, and a couple of bumpsand bruises and we're back into
a closed, uh, a marriage, youknow, uh, for all the reasons
I've talked about.
You know, they thought it was anescape from jealousy, thought it
was an escape from some of thisconflict, but it's just another
variety of that conflict.
there's also an additionalsocial cost when you are against
(28:06):
the grain, right?
So that you, you do feel some ofthat pressure just by the fact
that you are different thansocietal expectations and that
pressure comes home to roost,you know,
Jason Blitman (28:16):
Mm.
Nathan H. Lents (28:17):
So, you know, with your family, with whatever,
and your family might be finewith it, but then your partner's
family isn't fine with it.
So they try to destabilize your,your relationship because of
that, because of theirnon-approval.
Maybe, maybe not on purpose, butyou know.
They want something better fortheir son, for example.
And so they try to, you know, soyou have whispers in your ear,
which when relationshipsencounter difficulties, which
(28:38):
they will, those voices in the,in your ear become a little bit
louder.
So I think that this will, likeI said, there's a maturing and a
leveling off that will happenand, and then we can see sort of
the natural prevalence of this.
Jason Blitman (28:49):
Yeah.
You know, something also, ofcourse that comes up in the book
and in life in general and inthis podcast all the time is, is
the idea of binary
Nathan H. Lents (28:58):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blitman (28:58):
binary thinking.
And it, it, it permeates I thinkevery sort of conversation that
we're having, including thisone.
And, and for me in particular,to speak to my own experience,
I, when I heard the term openrelationship.
I assumed a door wide open, afree for all, a, you know, no
(29:23):
rules, all fun, and, and forsome reason I just had these
crazy expectations in my ownmind because of society or
because of, I guess in my mindit was the opposite of.
Monogamy.
Right.
Uh, and so just, I sort of wannasay out loud to say to you to
(29:45):
sort of talk in general aboutthe idea of that it isn't that
black and white, you know, Ilike to use the term and
sometimes, uh, a jar instead ofopen,
Nathan H. Lents (29:56):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blitman (29:56):
right.
Just to sort of paint thepicture that it, it, the door
can be cracked.
It doesn't, it doesn't have tobe a free for all.
And you can within your, your.
Partnership, define it foryourself, which I think for me
was a big unlock.
Just in terms of like,regardless of how you want to
move forward, to be on the samepage about what it means to you
(30:20):
in a relationship, um, is reallyimportant.
Nathan H. Lents (30:24):
I, I think it is, it can be a very empowering
exercise to approach thesethings and decide within a
couple, uh, how, how, where therules are, where the boundaries
are, where the, um.
You know, where, how you want todefine essential relations, all
these kinds of things.
And one good thing that tends tocome outta this is a lot of very
(30:45):
open, honest, frank, vulnerablecommunication.
Um, and any marriage anywhere isgoing to be better off for
having more open communication,more dialogue, more
vulnerability.
I can't imagine a marriage beingworse off for having
Jason Blitman (31:00):
Talking too much
Nathan H. Lents (31:01):
detail.
Yeah.
Um, but I think, so I actuallyhad a section of the
introduction originally that wasall kind of taken out during
editing, where I talked aboutjust some of the most common
rules that people.
Uh, and, you know, use in theseopen relationships.
And, you know, some people havelike a, well, you know, only
when you're out of town, uh, ornever in the home, or like in
(31:24):
the marital bed, uh, or I don'twanna know, I don't wanna hear
about, you know, don't ask,don't tell.
And then other people are like,no, full disclosure, I want
names and faces and, you know,it's all over the place.
Jason Blitman (31:35):
Right.
Resumes
Nathan H. Lents (31:37):
Yeah.
Jason Blitman (31:38):
credit score.
Right,
Nathan H. Lents (31:39):
Or only they play together.
You see that a lot too.
Like we can play together butnot on our own.
And there's good reasons whyeveryone, you know, these are
all potentially good rules.
Um, what, what you do end upwith though is a lot of these
rules, boundaries, uh, pitfallsis what those become, right?
Because they're, anytime youhave a rule is an opportunity
for rural breaking
Jason Blitman (31:59):
Yep.
Nathan H. Lents (32:00):
So, yeah, so you end up with this kind of,
this navigating and what happensis a lot of times the people who
are, who aren't in the marriage,but who are tangentially uh,
involved, can feel very kind ofdepersonalized, dehumanized as
if they're now just a means toan end.
Like I, okay.
I'm just.
Sexual gratification for you.
That's all that's allowed orwhatever, or, oh, well I, if I
(32:22):
had met you in another city, wecould have sex, but because I
live here, we can, you know whatI mean?
And it makes the other personfeel very expendable and very,
so, you know, it's one of thesethings where I think we're
evolving into all of that too,and being, being an extra person
in somebody else's marriage, um,until you've done it yourself,
you know, there's some, we someweird psychology.
(32:42):
Um, that's involved, thatnothing has really prepared us
for.
Um, and that was the thing youmentioned, like when you heard
open marriage, you had thisexpectation because who were
your role models for that?
Who sat you down and talked toyou about any of these?
Nobody.
Right.
So we're all having to inventthis stuff for ourselves.
So of course there's gonna behiccups, there's gonna be fender
benders, um, um, along the waythat's normal.
(33:04):
And I, there's always peoplejust aren't too terrified of
making mistakes and, you know.
Jason Blitman (33:09):
Yeah.
Nathan H. Lents (33:10):
Grace and forgiveness also go a long way,
right?
Jason Blitman (33:13):
You know, it's interesting just like thinking
about role models and exposurein general.
You know, my husband and I talkall the time about.
Uh, having a limited number ofqueer role models in a
generation or two above us.
Um, certainly not, or, uh, it's,it's uncommon that they might be
married or uncommon that theyhave children or un like there
(33:35):
are a lot of un non-com thingsor uncommon things.
Um.
I have 2, 1, 1 comment and one,one question, but I, in our, in
the last apartment building thatwe lived in, one of our
neighbors or a, a neighbor ofours, they were in a polyamorous
relationship and the couple thatwas living in the apartment,
(33:57):
they were not the primarycouple.
Nathan H. Lents (34:01):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blitman (34:01):
And so to know that like one person had their
primary partner living in adifferent city and a secondary
partner was the one that theywere sort of sharing their
everyday life with.
Was a very new experience to seeand
Nathan H. Lents (34:17):
That's quite unusual.
Jason Blitman (34:18):
So unusual.
I was like, well, and, andfascinating.
And of course like the more youthink about polyamory for me,
I'm just like, oh, there'salways someone to cook.
There's always someone to clean.
There's always, you know, ifyou're not in the mood, there's
someone in the mood.
I was just like, oh, there's a,there are positives to having
multiple people around.
But from there, you know, youtalked about, things that can
(34:41):
lead to a social cost and, beinga neighbor to a polyamorous
relationship at first wasjarring simply because it was
something I'd never experiencedbefore, your work is very
specific and so I'm, I'm askingthis sort of as a person in the
world who is very familiar withall of this, do you as a human,
(35:06):
have advice for navigating thetaboo?
For breaking it down?
Nathan H. Lents (35:11):
Yeah.
Well, so yeah, you, you have tolearn, you have to spend a, you
know, a little time doinghomework is what I, why I say,
because you have to fill in someof these gaps that society
didn't provide for you, youknow, some of this knowledge.
So, um, people who just marchinto an open situation, never
having done it before, neverhaving read much, whatever are
just, or they're destined tomake.
(35:31):
Errors and mistakes and things.
So you want to communicate alot, communicate a lot before
you even start your journey.
Communicate a lot.
And also read, learn from otherpeople's experiences and that
way you can propose somehypothetical situations and talk
them through.
And then once you've kind offeel comfortable, you've done
some.
And they're great books outthere, right?
Some of them are in therecommended reading of, of my
(35:53):
book, but there's lots moreJust, you know, Google Ethical,
Non-Monogamy.
And you'll see, you'll see lotsof good.
Things to read.
I read, you know, Dan Savage'scolumn for years.
Um, and I, I, of course listenedto to his podcast.
So I think that's a goodstarting point to just see
whatever other people are doingand talk it out with your
partner.
But then also don't get toorigid with yourself, with your
(36:14):
partner, and allow someunderstanding, some grace just
because you know, you can do allthis learning and then your
first experience might changeyour mind about something.
You know, so be open to changingyour mind.
Be open to taking a break and,and not being too, you know,
locked in on anything.
And that doesn't necessarilylead to relationship anarchy,
which is, you know, the extremein some cases.
(36:36):
Um, and I know a couple peoplewho approach their relationships
with this anarchy.
No hierarchy, no primary, nosecondary, um, you know, and
they have boyfriends, they have,uh, hookup buddies.
They'll also just kind of,things happen, all this, and
they have all, and I'm alwayslike.
There's also friends withbenefits, which are different
than hookup buddies, right?
They have all these differentlevels to it.
(36:57):
And I'm just like, I talked tothis guy for about 45 minutes
and I needed a nap just, just todigest everything I'd
Jason Blitman (37:03):
or like to take a look at the Google sheet or
something like I.
Nathan H. Lents (37:08):
right?
And but their approach is like,no, we don't put anything in
sheets.
We don't keep track it.
It's all non non accounting.
They're trying to get away fromthe accounting and
Jason Blitman (37:16):
Yeah, that's fair.
That's
Nathan H. Lents (37:18):
Yeah, I think that's fine in your twenties.
Jason Blitman (37:21):
right?
Nathan H. Lents (37:21):
harder to pull off as you get older.
cause stability, there'ssomething to be said for
stability.
Right.
But, um, but you know, I oftensay like, people are like, I've
been accused of like, oh, you'retrying to tear down monogamy and
marriage and all this.
I'm like, not at all.
Not at all.
I, I think if someone's happywith a very, um, you know,
restrictive as I would put it,relationship, you know, married,
(37:43):
monogamous.
Heterosexual, whatever.
And you're happy.
No one's gonna challenge you.
You're fine.
No, you, you don't needprotection for your marriage.
You're the default.
No one cares.
No.
And no one's gonna try toconvince you otherwise.
And if they do, then they'rejust, you know, they're
evangelizing.
But, but if you can accept thathumans can approach these things
(38:04):
differently, maybe you'll giveyour neighbor the same
understanding that you expect inreturn.
You know?
That's all I'm saying.
Jason Blitman (38:10):
Totally.
Well, and you know, again, I, Iam, I am pro whatever anyone is
choosing for themselves in thesame way that you are
Nathan H. Lents (38:18):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blitman (38:19):
though, I say this all the time about
vegetarianism.
Nathan H. Lents (38:24):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blitman (38:24):
You're allowed to one day really crave a burger
and eat a burger, and you'restill a vegetarian.
And that's okay.
That one day you had a burger,life goes on, you know, and so
I, I, not to evangelize anyone,but to the, to someone who might
be really digging their heels inon monogamy, might say, if one
(38:44):
day you really want a burger, I.
It's fair, right?
Like it's fair to, to wantsomething extracurricular or
whatever that means becausewe're human, because we make
mistakes, because we can breakour social contract.
Because if there are rules, thatmeans that rules can break, you
know?
Uh,
Nathan H. Lents (39:03):
then hopefully it leads to a conversation.
Jason Blitman (39:05):
right,
Nathan H. Lents (39:06):
because there are, there are moments of, let's
say, infidelity of rule breakingthat can reveal, you know, deep
cracks in something.
And there's other moments thatwere just like, oh, I had a
little too much to drink.
And, you know, the, you know,and, and, and to contextualize
that, you know, for what it isand what it isn't.
And I, you know, here's thething.
(39:27):
I didn't know anybody who wasnon-monogamous growing up, but
one thing I did.
Find very strange was when youwould see a lifelong marriage
dissolve because of a singleindiscretion.
Even as a kid.
Even as a kid, I knew that waswrong.
I was like, that's insane thatyou walk away from a whole life
that you've built togetherbecause one person or the other
made a mistake.
And how many moments in yourlife have you been not at your
(39:51):
best?
Right.
We're no one is at their bestall the time.
Right?
You, we all have low points.
We all have rock bottom.
We all have, uh, psychologicalchallenges and your needs get
the better of you or whatever.
Come on.
Like, can't we?
I've, I've always known thatthat was, that was, and I, I
will say that even morally wrongto walk away from a marriage for
a single indiscretion.
Jason Blitman (40:11):
And that's, that's sort of what I, what I'm
saying.
Okay.
We have to talk about the, thegay stuff.
There's a lot of gay stuff inthe book too.
Can you share, again, I don'twant to give too much away from
the book, but, but one of myfavorite takeaways was about the
humpback whales.
Would
Nathan H. Lents (40:27):
Uh huh.
Jason Blitman (40:28):
you mind sharing a little bit about the humpback
whales?
Nathan H. Lents (40:30):
So, you know, humpback whales had never been
seen to have sex.
Um, they just hadn't beenobserved'cause they're fairly
shy about it in the wild andthey won't mate much in
captivity.
And so people had never reallydirectly observed humpbacks
having sex.
It finally happened in the fallof 2023.
Two humpbacks were, were spottedcopulating off the coast of
(40:53):
Oahu.
And it was two men, two males.
Uh, uh, having sex and, um, theyare ba so baling whales.
The toothless whales, um, areknown for their singing, right?
You have blue whales and, and,uh, humpback whales and, and
they sing their songs for hoursand, and they, they travel
distances.
And we've, again, always assumedthat the males were singing to
(41:15):
the females, but all this time,males could have been singing to
other males, and the singingcould have been.
Um, not just about attraction,but it could have been, you
know, scaring someone off.
It could have been establishingterritory.
We're still figuring out whatthe hell these whale songs are
really for.
Um, and I like that examplebecause it's one of these things
where animal male animals havebeen having gay sex all this
(41:39):
time, and we just didn't, wejust didn't call it that we
either we didn't know or wedidn't call it that.
And, uh, Bruce Beman makes thispoint.
He was like, you know, you wouldhave.
Males humping each other withanal penetration and orgasm.
But that was a dominantstruggle.
The scientist would not callthat sex.
(41:59):
That wasn't sex, that was adominant struggle, a dominant
competition.
Um, but, but then if a male justsniffed a female, that was a
sexual interaction.
You know what I mean?
So, and that's part of what I'vebeen reacting to in the book is
the way that scientists approachthis and why wouldn't we call
two males having sex, havingsex?
I mean, if it, if it's notprocreative.
(42:21):
Well, then turns out that we,gay people have never had sex.
I, I guess I've never had sex.
And so it's like, of course it,it's, yeah.
Yeah.
It's absolutely sex.
It's just there's, and, andthat's why that's the lead up to
the next chapter in the bookwhere I talk about the many
purposes of sex.
Sex does so many differentthings for a social species.
It's not just about fertilizingthe next generation.
(42:42):
It performs a lot of importantsocial functions.
And when you think of it thatway and when you realize it,
that it's that way, of course.
Two, two males and two femaleswill have sex because there's
lots of other things that theyget out of it.
It's not just about procreationanyway, so why wouldn't they do
it?
In fact, it would be weird ifthey didn't, you'd be writing
off half the population.
Um, if you were strictly gay orstrictly straight, you would
(43:05):
just, you would miss out on allthese social opportunities.
So.
Jason Blitman (43:08):
And you know, you go on to then talk about sexual
diversity and you know, I'mcurious, why do you think we
fear sexual diversity?
Even though it's a feature ofour species?
Nathan H. Lents (43:21):
Social control.
I, I, I think that, I think thatsocial control gets so embedded
and so taught, and the power oftaboo, um, is really strong.
And the reason I, the reason Isay that so confidently is that
there are lots and lots of othercultures that don't have any of
these taboos.
And it's not like they, it's notlike they struggle with it and
they have to teach, they, theydon't have to unteach these
(43:43):
taboos.
If you don't put these taboosthere in the first place, they
won't form, right?
And so there's lots of culturesthat.
Um, and, and by the way, they'renot all great, right?
It's not all positive, right?
There are, there are culturesout there that don't really
respect consent or or age ofconsent, so I'm not, I'm not
saying, hey, it's all fine.
(44:03):
I'm just saying that there isn'ta biological imperative.
That's all I'm saying on a lotof these things and that we can,
we can, we can take it or leaveit on a lot of, a lot of these
different things, but I do thinkit does come down to social
control.
But, but there's one taboo thatdoes seem almost universal, and
that is, as you mentioned, wehave sex in private
Jason Blitman (44:22):
Yeah,
Nathan H. Lents (44:23):
and that's not, animals don't do that, right.
They don't go off and secretly.
Jason Blitman (44:28):
a lot of things in private.
Nathan H. Lents (44:29):
do a lot of things in private, and that's,
that's one thing that there's,there's something interesting
there to explore and I don'tknow what it is, I don't know
what it is, but there's, youknow, it has to, I'm sure it has
to do with a little bit withpaternity certainty and that
kind of thing, and obscuringthat, whatever.
But, um.
And, and we lived in verytight-knit small social groups.
We evolved that way for hundredsof thousands of years.
Very small groups, you know, 150or members or less.
(44:52):
You knew everyone there.
And so it, it's conceivable thatsex in private was also a way to
you to reclaim autonomy.
Um, you know, that, that, thatway you were in control of what
other people knew about yoursexual life,
Jason Blitman (45:08):
I mean, and that's true with clothing.
Nathan H. Lents (45:11):
mm-hmm.
Clothing's also very humanpeculiar, right?
Jason Blitman (45:14):
Yeah.
Well, and it's like, it's, it'san element of privacy.
We are keeping pieces of ourbody that we don't wanna share
with other people.
Private,
Nathan H. Lents (45:22):
And there's, and you could think about the
reasons why that would besocially beneficial.
So I think that's kind of nudityand sex and private, I think are
part of that same coin.
Jason Blitman (45:32):
Yeah.
But it's so interesting'causelike if we were to get naked,
sort of.
Literally and metaphorically, ifwe, if we got rid of our
clothing, if we were more openwith our thoughts, feelings,
desires, hopes, dreams,whatever, uh, it would sort of
break down all of that socially.
So it's really like, it's theglue that's, it's, it's, it's
(45:55):
this weird chicken egg, thething that's keeping society
Nathan H. Lents (45:56):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blitman (45:58):
together.
Nathan H. Lents (45:58):
Yeah, I, I think in general that, that, you
know, that the modesty, thesecrecy, that all that is, it's.
Is it a net positive or is a netnegative?
I don't know.
I think it, it opens upopportunities for coercion and
manipulation.
Definitely has a dark side toall of it, but at the same time,
it's also nice to have, I reallylike my privacy.
You know, it's something that'sa, an important value to me.
(46:20):
I'm a fairly private with a lotof things I do, so, you know, I
don't know if it's a netpositive or net negative.
I, I, that's, that's, that'sreally for sociologists, I
guess, to
Jason Blitman (46:29):
Totally.
Yeah.
Well, and it just aninteresting.
Thing for us as humans to thinkabout, because this is sort of
how we're going about our dailylives,
Nathan H. Lents (46:38):
Yeah, exactly.
We're steeped in it and youknow, and people have talked
about like, for example, sexdifferences when it comes to
behavior.
And I, if you notice, I don'ttalk about sex differences when
it comes to behavior.
I do a little bit when it comesto biology, but not behavior
because we still to this dayhave no idea how much culture
imprints gender.
(47:00):
In a way that's not bi, you knowwhat I mean?
Like no one's been raised freeof gendered culture.
So we really have no idea howmen and women might behave
differently if they weren'timprinted on this.
They, they, we are told to doand want different things even
before we're born.
Right, that's, newborns aredescribed differently by even
(47:22):
the most progressive parentsbased on whether they're male or
female.
You know, if it's a male,they'll say they're strong and
robust and tough and big, and,and there's no biological
differences between little boysand little girls at infancy,
right?
There's not size difference,strength difference, none of
that stuff.
But the, the women, the, thelittle girls are delicate and
(47:43):
cute.
And the boys are robust andstrong.
And so when you think aboutthat, that imprinting starts
literally on the first day oflife, we have no idea how
different men and women would befree from that.
So apply that same logic ontorelationships, onto being queer,
onto, um, you know, marriage,um, when, you know, the, the
(48:07):
taboos associated with that areso deeply embedded that we don't
know.
We don't know what we would belike free of that.
Jason Blitman (48:13):
Right.
There are so many greatchapters.
There's, you know, great chapterabout gender and sex.
There's a great chapter aboutthe gauging.
I'm so excited for folks tocheck that out.
I'm curious, before I let yougo, is there anything in the
process of you writing this bookthat surprised you or that you
discovered?
Nathan H. Lents (48:32):
Yeah.
I would say the most surprisingthing is basically everything
that's in chapter two, which is.
Which is gender and animals.
So I believe that the same thingprior to about 15 years ago.
The same thing that biologistsare teaching, you know, all over
the world, is that there's malebehavior and female behavior and
animals behave in male typicalways and female typical ways,
(48:54):
and that's all there is to it.
I was totally unprepared beforeI did the research for this, on
how much diversity there iswithin the sexes in animals.
There are different ways to be amale.
When, whether you're a sunfishor a cricket or a gorilla,
there's ma there's not just onekind of male.
There's male diversity andthere's female diversity, and
(49:17):
there's your, these are realbiological differences.
It's not just like a strategythat you can pick and choose
from, and today you'll try this,and tomorrow you'll try that,
or, or when you get bigger,you'll try something else.
There are different flavors ofmaleness, different flavors of
femaleness in the animal world.
And when I was teaching thisclass, I was telling you about
on sex and gender, and we keptencountering examples of gender
(49:39):
diversity right there in thepapers that we're reading.
And the scientists themselvesmissed it.
Like they just did.
They just ignored it.
There was this one on BluegillSunfish that talked about, um,
oh, well there's these, um, theycalled them, uh, coupled, uh,
males, but then if you look at,and they kind of discarded them.
'cause they didn't build nests,they didn't attract females.
(50:00):
They didn't do what we expectmale sunfish to do, but 40% of
the offspring were fathered bythose other males.
40%.
That's not.
It's small, like that's asignificant part of the social
life of Bluegill Sunfish is tobe a different kind of male.
You can't just dismiss 40% ofthe males as being suboptimal,
whatever.
They have a different strategy.
(50:21):
A strategy that's clearlysuccessful.
So that's, that was the mostsurprising thing to me, was
gender diversity in animals.
I wasn't expecting to see that.
Jason Blitman (50:28):
That's so cool.
What a fun thing for you tolearn.
Um, Dr.
Nathan Lz.
Nathan, HL.
Thank you for being here.
The sexual evolution.
I I, to the listeners, I hopethis conversation helped break a
little bit of those taboos,enlightened you a tiny bit and
the book, uh, I know will do thesame.
So I'm so excited for you tocheck it out and thank you again
(50:50):
for being here.
Nathan H. Lents (50:51):
Thank you for having me.
This was a wonderfulconversation and I'll be
subscribing to your podcast.
Don't worry.
Jason Blitman (50:55):
Oh, fantastic.
Hello and welcome to GazeReading and this episode of
(00:05):
Spill the T.
I'm your host, Jason Blitman,and I am joined by professor Dr.
Nathan H.
Lent And he and I spill the T onSexual Evolution.
He is the author of the book,the Sexual Evolution, and we get
into it.
And I'm so excited for you tohear this episode.
(00:25):
If you.
I haven't listened to the otherepisode in the series.
I talked to Elda Rator, who isthe VP and publisher of Penguin
Classics, and we talk about whatmakes a classic, a classic.
You could find that wherever youget your podcasts or at gays
reading.com.
A few quick things before wedive in.
If you are new to Gay's reading,welcome if you've joined us
(00:48):
before, welcome back.
Always happy to have you.
If you like what you're hearing,please share us with your
friends.
Follow us on social media atGaze Reading and like, and
subscribe wherever you get yourpodcast.
So you'll be the first to knowwhen a new episode drops.
also, I'm partnering withAardvark Book Club to do An
exclusive introductory discountwhere you can get your first
(01:11):
book for$4 and free shipping.
Just go to art vark bookclub.com.
Use the code gaze reading andyou can get your first order for
$4.
It's such a good deal.
Highly recommend.
I think that's all I got foryou.
I hope everyone is having awonderful week.
We'll be back with our regularlyscheduled programming on Tuesday
with an author, with a new bookcoming out.
(01:31):
But in the meantime, pleaseenjoy the special spill the t
episode with Nathan, HL.
Jason Blitman (01:38):
I am thrilled to have you here on Gay's reading
today.
And talking about your book, um,the Sexual Evolution, how 500
million years of sex, gender,and mating shape Modern
Relationships.
Nathan H. Lents (01:51):
That's it.
Jason Blitman (01:52):
I think that sort of sums it up.
How did this book come to be?
Nathan H. Lents (01:56):
Well, um, it's, it's interesting that you ask
that because we talk about itnow very differently than we
thought we would because of howmuch the world has changed since
the book was finished lastsummer.
But I'll tell you how the bookcame about is, I've been
teaching the biology of Sex andGender for about 15 years.
And, um, two, two things reallyled to me wanting to write this
(02:19):
book.
One was that.
I teach my class as a seminarwhere we read a lot of papers,
original research in the biologyliterature, so studies that are
done on various animals and, andhow they, you know, how their
reproductive behaviors and howthey construct sex and gender.
And, I became increasinglyannoyed with the way that
scientists.
Biologists, my fellowbiologists, discuss their own
(02:41):
data, discuss their ownobservations.
and my original drafts of thebook actually was quite a bit
more polemical, where I wastaking a lot more, umbrage with
the way that that scientistsdiscuss sex and gender in
animals.
I toned that down quite a bitbecause my editor, I think,
wisely was like, you know, youneed some allies.
You can't just pick oneverybody.
(03:01):
You
Jason Blitman (03:01):
It's like, it's like when they say, you know,
when you have strong feelings,like write the email but don't
hit send.
Yeah.
Nathan H. Lents (03:07):
Yeah, kind of like that.
So we tone, we tone down a lotof the criticisms.
Um, but I, but a lot of'em madeit in there and, and, and a lot
of them do come out when I givebook talks, so you can hear more
about those.
But that was one side.
And then the other side was, youknow, young people, especially
young people, are reallyapproaching these.
Issues much differently than theolder generation.
(03:27):
So, so in, in just twogenerations, at least in the
western world, the approach tosex and gender has changed quite
a bit.
Um, you know, from people, uh,from the approach approaches to
when you get married, I.
You know, for example, um, andhow you think about your own
sexuality, whether or not it'sfixed or fluid, and, you know,
different labels, you know,pansexual, demisexual, none of
(03:49):
these things, you know, theselabels anyway existed not that
long ago.
Um, and even things with genderand gender expression and gender
identity, it's just radicallydifferent.
And young people have had a kindof no labels, no rules approach
to these things, including openrelationships and polyamory and
swinging and all this.
And it freaks.
It freaks older people out.
(04:10):
You know, if you're over the ageof 40 or 50, uh, the young
people are just kind ofincomprehensible to you in terms
of sex and gender.
And so what I wanted to write abook that sort of explains.
This in a way that that remindseveryone that this is not really
anything new, actually, thatother cultures, other times,
other places around the worldhave done this differently.
(04:31):
Um, and creatively morediversely, but other animals
approach sex, gender, and, and,and sexual relationships.
In this much more expansive,broad fluid sort of way.
So what young people are doingnow is a rediscovery of a much
more expansive relationshipwith, with sexuality that we
used to have that, you know,humans used to have in other
cultures, other times, and thatour animal cousins enjoy today.
(04:55):
And I use the word enjoy becauseI think it's a better way to
live actually, to have a, a muchless restrictive approach to sex
and
Jason Blitman (05:03):
Yeah.
It's so interesting that you saythat because it makes me think,
I was watching some TV show, Ithink it was Brooklyn Nine nine,
shout out to Brooklyn nine nine.
Nathan H. Lents (05:13):
Great show.
Jason Blitman (05:14):
It's a great show.
Um, and there was that, therewas a comment made about how
dogs mouths are cleaner thanhumans.
And like that obviously is afallacy.
It makes us feel better abouthaving our dogs lick our faces.
Right.
And I think there's somethingtoo about the.
The same thing about people,people or animals enjoying sex.
(05:35):
Right.
I feel like I was, I was taught,you know, it's like humans and
dolphins are the two creaturesthat quote unquote enjoy sex or
have sex for the sake ofenjoyment.
and of course, upon reading yourbook, I realize that is not
true.
And there's, there's so many,it's so much more than that.
And so it's interesting just tothink like why we even.
Tell ourselves these things inthe first place.
Nathan H. Lents (05:55):
Right.
And I think, as I kind of hintat it in the book, I mean mostly
our approach to this has beendue to very recent social
constructions around sexuality.
And I think, I think that a lotof biologists looked out at the
natural world and they squintedreally hard to see sex the way
that they, they think it shouldbe in human.
(06:16):
So, so it was much easier tosort of live with yourself in a
consistent way.
If animals only have sex forprocreation and they mate for
life and they're allheterosexual and all that, that
kept it simple.
If, if that's how animals do it,then that must be, that's why
it's right for humans to do itthat way and all of that.
And of course all of that'sbullshit.
(06:36):
It's all bullshit.
Jason Blitman (06:37):
right.
Before we get into some, uh,more nitty gritty and specific
things to, things that interestme as as gay reading, let's just
say among the things we want to,among the questions we want to
answer today is, what is sexualevolution?
Nathan H. Lents (06:56):
Mm-hmm.
Well, um, so the, the, well, youmean the title
Jason Blitman (07:01):
yeah.
Yeah.
I think just like conceptually,what, like if someone said, what
does sexual evolution mean?
I think obviously we can deduceand make our own assumptions,
but to you, in your, in your, asyou're embarking on writing this
book, what does that mean?
How do you define sexualevolution?
Nathan H. Lents (07:19):
So to me it's in recognition that sex has a
long history.
Hu humans did not just fall outof the sky, you know, a few
thousand years ago, right?
Humans are the product.
Of millions, hundreds ofmillions of years of evolution.
And that is seen all throughoutour body, all throughout our
behavior.
There's a long history to almosteverything about us, to truly
(07:41):
everything about us has a verylong history, and sex is no
different.
So the way that we approach sex,the way that we approach gender,
the way that we have sex witheach other is the result of
hundreds of millions of years ofevolutionary tinkering and
selection.
And um, and to me.
To understand, to really trulyunderstand sex as a behavior,
(08:02):
um, in, in forgetting about sexbodies for a second, but just
think about the behavior of sex.
You can't divorce it from itshistory.
I.
You have to, you have to reallyappreciate the long history of
sexual creatures doing whatsexual creatures do.
Because if you wanna understandthe politics of the United
States, right, you have tounderstand its history.
You cannot understand thecurrent state of affairs without
(08:25):
also looking backwards in timeto see how we got here.
And it's the same sort of thingwith biology.
You really evolution.
Um, you can't subtractevolution.
From anything about the humanexperience and expect, and
expect to understand it allbecause there's a lot of stuff
that's weird and quirky aboutour biology.
It really calls out for anexplanation and evolution
(08:45):
usually provides thatexplanation or at least
tentatively, uh, provides thatexplanation.
So I, that's why, that's what Imean by it.
Jason Blitman (08:52):
yeah, no, I, I love that.
Thank you for, for sharing that.
I was in conversation, I don'tknow, a couple years ago now
with the author and historianPeter Franco Pan about his book
The Earth Transformed and what'sfascinating is he is a historian
writing a book of, I mean, it,it was like a.
800 page book that essentiallywas the history of the world.
(09:15):
The first chapter was called theDawn of Time, and it really
takes us to today and part ofwhat, what the book tries to
unpack is that there's alwaysbeen global warming.
The earth has sort of alwaysbeen in peril and the earth will
continue to spin after humansare long gone.
Right?
And, and so it's veryinteresting.
I think that we as humansreally, uh, latch on to the time
(09:39):
and place that we are existing.
Nathan H. Lents (09:41):
Right.
As if it's always been this way,this is the right way.
This is, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's true.
We are, we are a very recentappearance on this planet.
Uh, and we've transformed theplanet tremendously since we've
arrived, almost, almost alwaysfor the negative, for for the
worse.
Um, and I mean, humans have,have invaded every, you know,
landscape that they arrive inand totally transform it.
(10:03):
Um, which by the way is kind ofthe conclusion I draw in the
book.
If you go all the way to the endof the book, well wait a minute,
actually, no one's gonna readthe book.
Jason Blitman (10:11):
Right.
Don't, don't give, don't, don'tgive away the ending.
No, no, no.
That's, that's what, that's whyI shared what Peter Frankel Pan
said in his book.
Um.
Uh,
Nathan H. Lents (10:19):
You gotta read.
You gotta read it.
Jason Blitman (10:22):
again, there are so many things I wanna talk
about, but I think that, youknow, a very hot topic,
particularly in the queercommunity is monogamy.
And you do go on to sort of talkabout your chapter is
fantastically called monogamish,which is one of my favorite
words.
Um, can, can you talk aboutmonogamy, social monogamy versus
(10:45):
sexual monogamy?
Uh.
And in whatever you feel, uh,appropriate, you don't need to
like come out and give me awhole lecture, although I would
happily sit here and appreciateit, but I don't want to put you
on the spot like that.
Nathan H. Lents (10:59):
Right.
Well, so monogamy, is really,you have to understand the two
sides of it.
There's social or economicmonogamy, which is just the
tendency to pair up.
And lots of animals do this.
Lots of animals pair up by far,not all of them, but like for
example, birds are, are the kindof the stars of monogamy.
They do tend to pair up.
Um, whereas mammals, only about15% of mammal species pair up.
(11:22):
Um, that's, that's monogamy theattachment, um, that two
individuals have.
And you, you form arelationship.
That's a, that almost alwaysinvolves sharing of resources,
sharing of a homestead, livingtogether, raising children
together if there are children,that kind of thing.
That, that relationship thattakes priority over all other
relationships.
That's what monogamy is.
It's en enduring, you know, forbirds will often just do it for
(11:44):
one season, but whatever that,that long-term relationship
that's monogamy.
And humans, it's, it, it's, it'snot a hundred percent universal,
but pairing up is a humantendency.
We tend to do this, we tend topair up in these one-to-one
relationships.
Um, sexual monogamy or sexualfidelity is the exclusion of,
you know, of all other sexualpartners in favor of the one
(12:07):
that you are bonded with, right?
So.
You, you would be sexualmonogamies only even possible if
you're already sociallymonogamous.
But it turns out that socialmonogamies pretty common,
especially in birds.
Sexual monogamy is almostunheard of in the natural world.
It's very, very, very rare.
And we only have appreciatedthat for a couple of decades
(12:28):
because when, when monogamy wasstudied in birds, for example.
The tendency to pair up,including multiple seasons in
some species, we assumed that itwas sexually faithful.
Um, it was purely an assumption.
It was not really true ortested.
And when DNA testing wasinvented, so paternity testing
(12:50):
essentially for birds, all ofthe ornithologists all around
the world, one by one startedtesting their species and.
Kind of scratching their headsgoing, oh my gosh, they are not
sexually exclusive in thesepairs.
It's almost no birds aresexually exclusive.
The females will accept extrapair populations.
The males will engage in extrapair populations.
(13:12):
And there's various reasons whythey do that.
And that's, that's how I openthe chapters.
Talk about what do they get outof it?
Why would you want to, what's,why is it not count?
'cause all these people wouldthink it's counterproductive to
the para bond, but it's reallynot.
And.
Um, so we, no hu no birds arereally sexually faithful among
mammals.
It's all small minority thatthat pair up anyway.
Right?
(13:32):
So it's only about 15, well, I'msorry, it's 15% of primates, uh,
are monogamous only about 8% inthe whole mammal family.
But of those primates, do youknow how many species have found
to be sexually faithful?
Eight, eight species out ofsomething like 6,000 mammal
species out there.
So it's a tiny, tiny minority.
(13:53):
Sexual fidelity is just not acommonplace thing out in the
animal world, including amongcreatures that parabon.
So when humans approach theissue of monogamy, um, I wanna
be clear that I'm not sayingthat.
That if you choose to besexually monogamous, that that's
unnatural and we shouldn't dothat, and we need to teach
people differently.
That's not at all what I'msaying.
(14:14):
What I am saying though is weare peculiar for wanting sexual
monogamy, uh, as a society, as aculture.
We didn't use to have it in ourculture that much anyway.
And so it's not, it's not abiological imperative at all.
So you don't, we're not builtfor monogamy.
(14:34):
Now, I don't think we're reallybuilt for anything else either,
in particular.
I think we're very flexiblybuilt when it comes to our
sexuality.
Um, but the really, the only bigcriticism or push pushback that,
that is a corollary of that isif anyone tries to tell you that
open relationships areunnatural, well, that's just not
true
Jason Blitman (14:53):
Sure.
Nathan H. Lents (14:54):
because, because among the para bonded
species that are out there,they're almost all in what we
would call open relationships.
Jason Blitman (15:00):
and when, I don't know how familiar you are with
the history of monogamy amongsthumans, but how was that
introduced?
Nathan H. Lents (15:11):
Well in different regions of the world,
um, what we think of as likemarriage, kind of.
Um, and, and this is not myexpertise either.
I'm a
Jason Blitman (15:20):
yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's right.
Nathan H. Lents (15:21):
but the way I see it, the lens, I, I say my
conclusion of all the readingthat I've done on this is that,
um, really the one-to-onerelationships emerged, um, after
Polygeny.
So Polygeny became the firstkind of, social control where
you had a single male dominatinga small group of females, and
that was what families lookedlike.
(15:43):
So a single powerful, uh, male,uh, dominating a small group.
And that was the,
Jason Blitman (15:48):
I want to, I wanna interrupt.
Just to say per your book, I wasshocked to see that that's how
gorillas function,
Nathan H. Lents (15:55):
Yeah, many do.
Yeah.
In ing.
Yeah.
So you have a single dominantmale that, that dominates over a
small group of, uh, females.
Um, and just whether it's inhumans or gorillas or lion or
whatever, a lot of males,especially straight guys, think
that sounds very attractive.
What they're missing is thatwhat it means is that most males
(16:16):
don't get that.
Right.
They're, they die trying.
Um, and even if they'resuccessful, they're always
looking over their shoulderbecause the harem, you know, the
next male would love to deposethat one male.
So it's a very despotic,despotic, kind of hierarchical
way that's actually not pleasantfor anyone involved, right?
But the genes involved in, in,you know, the, the mail being
(16:38):
spread, you know, to supportthat.
So evolution doesn't always comeup with, uh, fun solutions.
Polygeny was sort of first, andthen monogamy came essentially
as a pushback against Polygeny.
Um, by, by males.
Mostly by males.
Uh, try to have some form ofequity.
Then you get to marriage.
So when civilization started to,uh, build on top of, uh,
(16:59):
agriculture, then you started tohave city states, and then you
have eventually civilizations,which are just cultural steam
rollers, right?
So they just sort of mow downall of the.
Microcultures all around andabsorb almost like a planet,
forming and collecting rocks,right?
It's the same kind of thing, butwith cultures.
And once you have these bigcivilizations where it's Greece,
roam, it really, Rome is whatwe're talking about in, in the
(17:21):
West.
Um, you had to have a system forestablishing inheritance.
So you have powerful, powerfulfamilies with, with resources
and who gets them when, when thenext generation, you know, when
people die and all this.
So this invented the concept oflegitimacy.
Like a legitimate heir.
And so a, a man, a woman, afamily who gets the, the, the
(17:43):
house, uh, in the nextgeneration.
Interestingly, sexual fidelity,again, not implied in that I.
So, so monogamy was called theRoman custom, uh, throughout
most of Europe, and it kind ofspread really by force.
Um, but it didn't include, youknow, sexual faithfulness.
Um, at least not originally.
That sort of came when thechurch, when the Christian
Church, uh, took over the RomanEmpire.
(18:06):
Their values started to then,so, so the, the Roman Empire had
the tentacles and then thechurch, you know, got in that,
on, on the structure that wasalready sort of existed
politically and then enforced,uh, Christian values onto the
marriage structure and,
Jason Blitman (18:21):
Oh, that's so interesting.
Nathan H. Lents (18:22):
Yeah, so it's a very recent sexual fidelity is a
very recent idea, even in theWest.
Jason Blitman (18:27):
Well, and I think to simplify for me in my brain,
the social versus sexualmonogamy, learning about birds
and sort of how it was, it, itwasn't'cause they liked hanging
out.
It was, it was because theyneeded each other, right?
One, one is, one is sitting onthe gag while the other one is
out, you know, getting food and,and vice versa.
(18:49):
And, uh, I love my husband and Ihave no intention of, of
breaking up with him, but I needmy health insurance.
You know?
Right.
So that's, I think that's theversion of sitting on the egg
Nathan H. Lents (18:59):
That's right.
Economic monogamy.
It's economic monogamy.
And, and that's why birds arethe masters of monogamy is
because their eggs require thatconstant incubation.
So somebody has to be, in orderto develop properly, the eggs,
really, somebody has to besitting on'em pretty much all
the time.
Whereas in mammals, you know,the pregnancy is internal.
So that's why mammals are notparticularly prone to monogamy
(19:20):
as a group.
It, you know, pri primates do ita little bit more than others.
But, um, it's just one way to,to solve that problem if you're
a mammal.
Um, the, the problem of takingcare of young and, and all of
this, and family structures inanimals, I really do view them
as vehicles for raisingfamilies.
That doesn't mean that everymember has to personally be
(19:40):
involved in procreation, but thewhole village is involved right?
In raising the next generation.
And so.
Um, you know, the people, peoplemake a big deal about what's the
comparison of the human familyand other animals.
You know, I, I, I have to be socareful in doing that because,
you know, they don't live likewe live.
(20:01):
Right.
And the social forces are, are,are the key part of that.
So
Jason Blitman (20:05):
you talk a bit about in the book and, uh, in
some other.
Conversations that you've hadabout taboos and you know, it's
interesting because taboos aretaboos because they're not
things that are out in the openand they're, they're sort of,
uh, behind the, the closeddoors, sex being one of those
(20:27):
things.
And I think sexual non-monogamyor sexual monogamish, uh, is a
part of that.
And I'm, I'm curious, as you'vesaid, things have changed.
Even in the last few years, youwere saying things we're talking
about things differently thanwhen you were even writing the
book.
Um, can you share a little bitabout what you've seen change in
(20:49):
the short term and maybe whatyou c could project in the long
term?
Yeah.
Nathan H. Lents (20:54):
Yeah.
Well, so in the short term,we've definitely seen, are you
talking about in humans?
I, I
Jason Blitman (20:59):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Nathan H. Lents (21:00):
Yeah.
Um, so young people now underthe age of, uh, 30, we'll say.
Uh, much more likely to identifyas queer, much more likely to be
in open relationships orpolyamory, uh, or, or, or, um,
ask skewing relationshipsaltogether.
Um, and I've had, you've heard,hear more and more of these
terms like, uh, relationshipanarchy, which are essentially
kind of a no, absolutely norules, no structure, uh,
(21:23):
approach to relationships,relationships.
Um, I, I think one, one thingthat's I do wanna say about it
is that it doesn't escape thedrama, right?
Jason Blitman (21:33):
Oh, no, no, of course not.
Nathan H. Lents (21:35):
People are like, oh, well that have people
like this just solved theproblem of jealousy.
And I'm like, oh my gosh.
No.
Jason Blitman (21:42):
No.
And if someone has learned howto solve jealousy, please call
me.
I need to know
Nathan H. Lents (21:48):
And, and they won't because if you, if you, as
I talked about in the chapter,other animals experience that,
right?
And it's not that conflict.
The reproductive conflict, ifyou will, is not going anywhere.
Jason Blitman (21:59):
right.
Nathan H. Lents (22:00):
So these other kinds of relationships are not
necessarily meant to, you know,be one size fits all and we can,
you know, solve all of ourproblems.
It's just another approach.
And.
Um, personally, I, I see prosand cons with all of them, and
my opinion's always been, Hey,you know, work it out for
yourself, you and your partners,whatever your partner or
partners, you know, work it out.
(22:20):
And, you know, honesty,transparency go a long way.
Um, and, but if you think it'sa, an escape from, you know,
having a jealous partner, forgetabout that.
I mean, it's, in many ways it'sa lot worse.
Um, but, but.
But, but you see this, this bigdifference among people under 30
and under 40, um, and marriagerates, uh, interesting though.
(22:42):
So marriage rates are decliningbig time and, and age of first
marriage is, is, is, is on therise.
However, divorce rates are alsofalling, and they've been
falling since the early twothousands, really since the late
nineties.
Um, the rates of divorce, um,are plummeting because people
wait much longer and, and decideto get married after they've
already done a lot of the thingsthat cause relationship trouble,
(23:04):
um, early in your life, youknow, financial insecurity and,
and professional, you know,establishment and prioritizing,
you know, family versus careerversus, you know, all of these
things kind of get worked out inyour twenties and then people
are starting to get married.
So marriages are actually morestable than they had been.
Uh, from the 1960s through thenineties, marriages are more
(23:27):
stable now.
Part partly of that is, is uh,same-sex marriages tend to be
more stable than opposite sexmarriages, but that's working
out too.
I mean, we now have gay divorcethat we never had that problem
before.
Right.
So that's a new problem.
Jason Blitman (23:39):
right.
With gay marriage comes GayDivorce.
Nathan H. Lents (23:41):
Yeah.
But, but mar gay marriages dotend to be more stable than
opposite sex ones for theobvious reason that you're
rarely forced into it by socialpressure.
Um, but um, anyway, I think it'sinteresting.
People concentrate a lot aboutmarriage, race, declining Those
who are, you know,reactionaries, but they're not
celebrating the decline ofdivorce rates.
(24:03):
Because to me, a divorce is muchmore of a disruption than just
waiting to get married.
Right.
So, I don't know.
You know they,
Jason Blitman (24:11):
And percentage wise, you would think they sort
of balance each other out.
Nathan H. Lents (24:15):
somewhat.
I mean, you do have, you do.
Right now we have now themajority of adults for the first
time since they've had data areunmarried.
That's never happened before.
So the majority of it's areeither formerly married or not
yet married.
That's now only about half of usadults are in a, in a marriage.
(24:35):
Um, and that's very, you know,upsetting and unsettling to some
people'cause they think thatthat's the only way that humans
should be.
Right.
So, you know, it's a failure ofour society when this doesn't
happen.
So personally, I don't see theguy crumbling from something
like that,
Jason Blitman (24:48):
Yeah, right.
Like that's complicated in itsown way of like why that
societal pressure comes, comesinto play.
Um, and so, so the, you don'thave a crystal ball,
Nathan H. Lents (25:02):
Mm.
Jason Blitman (25:03):
but in terms of trends,
Nathan H. Lents (25:06):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blitman (25:07):
what, what does the future of.
Monogamy of sexual evolution,what does that look like to you?
And, and, and I Maybe that,maybe, I mean, next year, maybe,
I mean, in 20 years.
And I think, you know, just sortof, obviously none of this is
fact or based in, you know,anything specific.
But based on your, yourexperience and your awareness,
(25:29):
what would you say?
Nathan H. Lents (25:31):
Yeah, so the trend I see is, is an increasing
number.
Of people approaching monogamyfrom an open or polyamorous kind
of position.
I think that that's prettyclearly on the rise.
Like, and we can project thatout for a little while.
Uh, these things tend to move inpendulums, but there's also
progress to the pendulum, ifthat makes sense.
So you'll have
Jason Blitman (25:49):
Two steps forward, right?
Nathan H. Lents (25:51):
kind of thing.
Yeah.
You'll see some of that becausethere's some pushback.
Um.
You know, even among youngpeople, you know, they see, you
know, they'll have a badexperience and then they'll go
fleeing back to maybe my parentswere right, you know, kind of a
thing.
Um, it's interestingly though,whenever something goes wrong in
a traditional relationship, noone questions whether the
traditional relationship itselfwas the problem.
(26:12):
But every time an openrelationship goes wrong, people,
they, oh, well that's why.
What did you expect?
You know?
Um, and it's, that's a lot ofpressure to carry on.
And, um, but you know, thespeaking of pressure.
I, I hope that one thing thatwill come out of this is
understanding that the societydoesn't have to be structured
any particular way, uh, forthings to work out.
(26:35):
You know what I mean?
Like, you don't have to havemarriage as the dominant way
that families are mademonogamous, you know, dyads
one-to-one.
That the fact that, that peoplethink that's the only way
western society could haveworked out.
That's, that's remarkably to methat people think that when you
consider the diversity ofrelationships around the world,
culturally and historically, SoI hope that we'll come out of
this as a more diverse approachto marriage and family life.
(26:59):
Um, whether or not, um,non-monogamy becomes dominant
over sexual monogamy, that Iwould be very.
Hesitant to make any predictionson because I, I do think there
will be, you know, a maturingthat goes on as we all kind of
get used to this as, assomething that goes on The gay
community is a, you know, good20 years ahead of the straight
(27:21):
community on most of thesetrends.
Um, and what you'll see is a lewhat I see anyway is a bit of a
leveling off, uh, a fair numberof gay men.
Uh, and I'm, I am particularly,uh, talking about men in this
example.
Um, having explored sexual, um,non-monogamy, um, open
relationships and you, you'restarting to see people kind of
(27:43):
retrench and go back in and say,well, that was fun for a couple
of years, and a couple of bumpsand bruises and we're back into
a closed, uh, a marriage, youknow, uh, for all the reasons
I've talked about.
You know, they thought it was anescape from jealousy, thought it
was an escape from some of thisconflict, but it's just another
variety of that conflict.
there's also an additionalsocial cost when you are against
(28:06):
the grain, right?
So that you, you do feel some ofthat pressure just by the fact
that you are different thansocietal expectations and that
pressure comes home to roost,you know,
Jason Blitman (28:16):
Mm.
Nathan H. Lents (28:17):
So, you know, with your family, with whatever,
and your family might be finewith it, but then your partner's
family isn't fine with it.
So they try to destabilize your,your relationship because of
that, because of theirnon-approval.
Maybe, maybe not on purpose, butyou know.
They want something better fortheir son, for example.
And so they try to, you know, soyou have whispers in your ear,
which when relationshipsencounter difficulties, which
(28:38):
they will, those voices in the,in your ear become a little bit
louder.
So I think that this will, likeI said, there's a maturing and a
leveling off that will happenand, and then we can see sort of
the natural prevalence of this.
Jason Blitman (28:49):
Yeah.
You know, something also, ofcourse that comes up in the book
and in life in general and inthis podcast all the time is, is
the idea of binary
Nathan H. Lents (28:58):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blitman (28:58):
binary thinking.
And it, it, it permeates I thinkevery sort of conversation that
we're having, including thisone.
And, and for me in particular,to speak to my own experience,
I, when I heard the term openrelationship.
I assumed a door wide open, afree for all, a, you know, no
(29:23):
rules, all fun, and, and forsome reason I just had these
crazy expectations in my ownmind because of society or
because of, I guess in my mindit was the opposite of.
Monogamy.
Right.
Uh, and so just, I sort of wannasay out loud to say to you to
(29:45):
sort of talk in general aboutthe idea of that it isn't that
black and white, you know, Ilike to use the term and
sometimes, uh, a jar instead ofopen,
Nathan H. Lents (29:56):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blitman (29:56):
right.
Just to sort of paint thepicture that it, it, the door
can be cracked.
It doesn't, it doesn't have tobe a free for all.
And you can within your, your.
Partnership, define it foryourself, which I think for me
was a big unlock.
Just in terms of like,regardless of how you want to
move forward, to be on the samepage about what it means to you
(30:20):
in a relationship, um, is reallyimportant.
Nathan H. Lents (30:24):
I, I think it is, it can be a very empowering
exercise to approach thesethings and decide within a
couple, uh, how, how, where therules are, where the boundaries
are, where the, um.
You know, where, how you want todefine essential relations, all
these kinds of things.
And one good thing that tends tocome outta this is a lot of very
(30:45):
open, honest, frank, vulnerablecommunication.
Um, and any marriage anywhere isgoing to be better off for
having more open communication,more dialogue, more
vulnerability.
I can't imagine a marriage beingworse off for having
Jason Blitman (31:00):
Talking too much
Nathan H. Lents (31:01):
detail.
Yeah.
Um, but I think, so I actuallyhad a section of the
introduction originally that wasall kind of taken out during
editing, where I talked aboutjust some of the most common
rules that people.
Uh, and, you know, use in theseopen relationships.
And, you know, some people havelike a, well, you know, only
when you're out of town, uh, ornever in the home, or like in
(31:24):
the marital bed, uh, or I don'twanna know, I don't wanna hear
about, you know, don't ask,don't tell.
And then other people are like,no, full disclosure, I want
names and faces and, you know,it's all over the place.
Jason Blitman (31:35):
Right.
Resumes
Nathan H. Lents (31:37):
Yeah.
Jason Blitman (31:38):
credit score.
Right,
Nathan H. Lents (31:39):
Or only they play together.
You see that a lot too.
Like we can play together butnot on our own.
And there's good reasons whyeveryone, you know, these are
all potentially good rules.
Um, what, what you do end upwith though is a lot of these
rules, boundaries, uh, pitfallsis what those become, right?
Because they're, anytime youhave a rule is an opportunity
for rural breaking
Jason Blitman (31:59):
Yep.
Nathan H. Lents (32:00):
So, yeah, so you end up with this kind of,
this navigating and what happensis a lot of times the people who
are, who aren't in the marriage,but who are tangentially uh,
involved, can feel very kind ofdepersonalized, dehumanized as
if they're now just a means toan end.
Like I, okay.
I'm just.
Sexual gratification for you.
That's all that's allowed orwhatever, or, oh, well I, if I
(32:22):
had met you in another city, wecould have sex, but because I
live here, we can, you know whatI mean?
And it makes the other personfeel very expendable and very,
so, you know, it's one of thesethings where I think we're
evolving into all of that too,and being, being an extra person
in somebody else's marriage, um,until you've done it yourself,
you know, there's some, we someweird psychology.
(32:42):
Um, that's involved, thatnothing has really prepared us
for.
Um, and that was the thing youmentioned, like when you heard
open marriage, you had thisexpectation because who were
your role models for that?
Who sat you down and talked toyou about any of these?
Nobody.
Right.
So we're all having to inventthis stuff for ourselves.
So of course there's gonna behiccups, there's gonna be fender
benders, um, um, along the waythat's normal.
(33:04):
And I, there's always peoplejust aren't too terrified of
making mistakes and, you know.
Jason Blitman (33:09):
Yeah.
Nathan H. Lents (33:10):
Grace and forgiveness also go a long way,
right?
Jason Blitman (33:13):
You know, it's interesting just like thinking
about role models and exposurein general.
You know, my husband and I talkall the time about.
Uh, having a limited number ofqueer role models in a
generation or two above us.
Um, certainly not, or, uh, it's,it's uncommon that they might be
married or uncommon that theyhave children or un like there
(33:35):
are a lot of un non-com thingsor uncommon things.
Um.
I have 2, 1, 1 comment and one,one question, but I, in our, in
the last apartment building thatwe lived in, one of our
neighbors or a, a neighbor ofours, they were in a polyamorous
relationship and the couple thatwas living in the apartment,
(33:57):
they were not the primarycouple.
Nathan H. Lents (34:01):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blitman (34:01):
And so to know that like one person had their
primary partner living in adifferent city and a secondary
partner was the one that theywere sort of sharing their
everyday life with.
Was a very new experience to seeand
Nathan H. Lents (34:17):
That's quite unusual.
Jason Blitman (34:18):
So unusual.
I was like, well, and, andfascinating.
And of course like the more youthink about polyamory for me,
I'm just like, oh, there'salways someone to cook.
There's always someone to clean.
There's always, you know, ifyou're not in the mood, there's
someone in the mood.
I was just like, oh, there's a,there are positives to having
multiple people around.
But from there, you know, youtalked about, things that can
(34:41):
lead to a social cost and, beinga neighbor to a polyamorous
relationship at first wasjarring simply because it was
something I'd never experiencedbefore, your work is very
specific and so I'm, I'm askingthis sort of as a person in the
world who is very familiar withall of this, do you as a human,
(35:06):
have advice for navigating thetaboo?
For breaking it down?
Nathan H. Lents (35:11):
Yeah.
Well, so yeah, you, you have tolearn, you have to spend a, you
know, a little time doinghomework is what I, why I say,
because you have to fill in someof these gaps that society
didn't provide for you, youknow, some of this knowledge.
So, um, people who just marchinto an open situation, never
having done it before, neverhaving read much, whatever are
just, or they're destined tomake.
(35:31):
Errors and mistakes and things.
So you want to communicate alot, communicate a lot before
you even start your journey.
Communicate a lot.
And also read, learn from otherpeople's experiences and that
way you can propose somehypothetical situations and talk
them through.
And then once you've kind offeel comfortable, you've done
some.
And they're great books outthere, right?
Some of them are in therecommended reading of, of my
(35:53):
book, but there's lots moreJust, you know, Google Ethical,
Non-Monogamy.
And you'll see, you'll see lotsof good.
Things to read.
I read, you know, Dan Savage'scolumn for years.
Um, and I, I, of course listenedto to his podcast.
So I think that's a goodstarting point to just see
whatever other people are doingand talk it out with your
partner.
But then also don't get toorigid with yourself, with your
(36:14):
partner, and allow someunderstanding, some grace just
because you know, you can do allthis learning and then your
first experience might changeyour mind about something.
You know, so be open to changingyour mind.
Be open to taking a break and,and not being too, you know,
locked in on anything.
And that doesn't necessarilylead to relationship anarchy,
which is, you know, the extremein some cases.
(36:36):
Um, and I know a couple peoplewho approach their relationships
with this anarchy.
No hierarchy, no primary, nosecondary, um, you know, and
they have boyfriends, they have,uh, hookup buddies.
They'll also just kind of,things happen, all this, and
they have all, and I'm alwayslike.
There's also friends withbenefits, which are different
than hookup buddies, right?
They have all these differentlevels to it.
(36:57):
And I'm just like, I talked tothis guy for about 45 minutes
and I needed a nap just, just todigest everything I'd
Jason Blitman (37:03):
or like to take a look at the Google sheet or
something like I.
Nathan H. Lents (37:08):
right?
And but their approach is like,no, we don't put anything in
sheets.
We don't keep track it.
It's all non non accounting.
They're trying to get away fromthe accounting and
Jason Blitman (37:16):
Yeah, that's fair.
That's
Nathan H. Lents (37:18):
Yeah, I think that's fine in your twenties.
Jason Blitman (37:21):
right?
Nathan H. Lents (37:21):
harder to pull off as you get older.
cause stability, there'ssomething to be said for
stability.
Right.
But, um, but you know, I oftensay like, people are like, I've
been accused of like, oh, you'retrying to tear down monogamy and
marriage and all this.
I'm like, not at all.
Not at all.
I, I think if someone's happywith a very, um, you know,
restrictive as I would put it,relationship, you know, married,
(37:43):
monogamous.
Heterosexual, whatever.
And you're happy.
No one's gonna challenge you.
You're fine.
No, you, you don't needprotection for your marriage.
You're the default.
No one cares.
No.
And no one's gonna try toconvince you otherwise.
And if they do, then they'rejust, you know, they're
evangelizing.
But, but if you can accept thathumans can approach these things
(38:04):
differently, maybe you'll giveyour neighbor the same
understanding that you expect inreturn.
You know?
That's all I'm saying.
Jason Blitman (38:10):
Totally.
Well, and you know, again, I, Iam, I am pro whatever anyone is
choosing for themselves in thesame way that you are
Nathan H. Lents (38:18):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blitman (38:19):
though, I say this all the time about
vegetarianism.
Nathan H. Lents (38:24):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blitman (38:24):
You're allowed to one day really crave a burger
and eat a burger, and you'restill a vegetarian.
And that's okay.
That one day you had a burger,life goes on, you know, and so
I, I, not to evangelize anyone,but to the, to someone who might
be really digging their heels inon monogamy, might say, if one
(38:44):
day you really want a burger, I.
It's fair, right?
Like it's fair to, to wantsomething extracurricular or
whatever that means becausewe're human, because we make
mistakes, because we can breakour social contract.
Because if there are rules, thatmeans that rules can break, you
know?
Uh,
Nathan H. Lents (39:03):
then hopefully it leads to a conversation.
Jason Blitman (39:05):
right,
Nathan H. Lents (39:06):
because there are, there are moments of, let's
say, infidelity of rule breakingthat can reveal, you know, deep
cracks in something.
And there's other moments thatwere just like, oh, I had a
little too much to drink.
And, you know, the, you know,and, and, and to contextualize
that, you know, for what it isand what it isn't.
And I, you know, here's thething.
(39:27):
I didn't know anybody who wasnon-monogamous growing up, but
one thing I did.
Find very strange was when youwould see a lifelong marriage
dissolve because of a singleindiscretion.
Even as a kid.
Even as a kid, I knew that waswrong.
I was like, that's insane thatyou walk away from a whole life
that you've built togetherbecause one person or the other
made a mistake.
And how many moments in yourlife have you been not at your
(39:51):
best?
Right.
We're no one is at their bestall the time.
Right?
You, we all have low points.
We all have rock bottom.
We all have, uh, psychologicalchallenges and your needs get
the better of you or whatever.
Come on.
Like, can't we?
I've, I've always known thatthat was, that was, and I, I
will say that even morally wrongto walk away from a marriage for
a single indiscretion.
Jason Blitman (40:11):
And that's, that's sort of what I, what I'm
saying.
Okay.
We have to talk about the, thegay stuff.
There's a lot of gay stuff inthe book too.
Can you share, again, I don'twant to give too much away from
the book, but, but one of myfavorite takeaways was about the
humpback whales.
Would
Nathan H. Lents (40:27):
Uh huh.
Jason Blitman (40:28):
you mind sharing a little bit about the humpback
whales?
Nathan H. Lents (40:30):
So, you know, humpback whales had never been
seen to have sex.
Um, they just hadn't beenobserved'cause they're fairly
shy about it in the wild andthey won't mate much in
captivity.
And so people had never reallydirectly observed humpbacks
having sex.
It finally happened in the fallof 2023.
Two humpbacks were, were spottedcopulating off the coast of
(40:53):
Oahu.
And it was two men, two males.
Uh, uh, having sex and, um, theyare ba so baling whales.
The toothless whales, um, areknown for their singing, right?
You have blue whales and, and,uh, humpback whales and, and
they sing their songs for hoursand, and they, they travel
distances.
And we've, again, always assumedthat the males were singing to
(41:15):
the females, but all this time,males could have been singing to
other males, and the singingcould have been.
Um, not just about attraction,but it could have been, you
know, scaring someone off.
It could have been establishingterritory.
We're still figuring out whatthe hell these whale songs are
really for.
Um, and I like that examplebecause it's one of these things
where animal male animals havebeen having gay sex all this
(41:39):
time, and we just didn't, wejust didn't call it that we
either we didn't know or wedidn't call it that.
And, uh, Bruce Beman makes thispoint.
He was like, you know, you wouldhave.
Males humping each other withanal penetration and orgasm.
But that was a dominantstruggle.
The scientist would not callthat sex.
(41:59):
That wasn't sex, that was adominant struggle, a dominant
competition.
Um, but, but then if a male justsniffed a female, that was a
sexual interaction.
You know what I mean?
So, and that's part of what I'vebeen reacting to in the book is
the way that scientists approachthis and why wouldn't we call
two males having sex, havingsex?
I mean, if it, if it's notprocreative.
(42:21):
Well, then turns out that we,gay people have never had sex.
I, I guess I've never had sex.
And so it's like, of course it,it's, yeah.
Yeah.
It's absolutely sex.
It's just there's, and, andthat's why that's the lead up to
the next chapter in the bookwhere I talk about the many
purposes of sex.
Sex does so many differentthings for a social species.
It's not just about fertilizingthe next generation.
(42:42):
It performs a lot of importantsocial functions.
And when you think of it thatway and when you realize it,
that it's that way, of course.
Two, two males and two femaleswill have sex because there's
lots of other things that theyget out of it.
It's not just about procreationanyway, so why wouldn't they do
it?
In fact, it would be weird ifthey didn't, you'd be writing
off half the population.
Um, if you were strictly gay orstrictly straight, you would
(43:05):
just, you would miss out on allthese social opportunities.
So.
Jason Blitman (43:08):
And you know, you go on to then talk about sexual
diversity and you know, I'mcurious, why do you think we
fear sexual diversity?
Even though it's a feature ofour species?
Nathan H. Lents (43:21):
Social control.
I, I, I think that, I think thatsocial control gets so embedded
and so taught, and the power oftaboo, um, is really strong.
And the reason I, the reason Isay that so confidently is that
there are lots and lots of othercultures that don't have any of
these taboos.
And it's not like they, it's notlike they struggle with it and
they have to teach, they, theydon't have to unteach these
(43:43):
taboos.
If you don't put these taboosthere in the first place, they
won't form, right?
And so there's lots of culturesthat.
Um, and, and by the way, they'renot all great, right?
It's not all positive, right?
There are, there are culturesout there that don't really
respect consent or or age ofconsent, so I'm not, I'm not
saying, hey, it's all fine.
(44:03):
I'm just saying that there isn'ta biological imperative.
That's all I'm saying on a lotof these things and that we can,
we can, we can take it or leaveit on a lot of, a lot of these
different things, but I do thinkit does come down to social
control.
But, but there's one taboo thatdoes seem almost universal, and
that is, as you mentioned, wehave sex in private
Jason Blitman (44:22):
Yeah,
Nathan H. Lents (44:23):
and that's not, animals don't do that, right.
They don't go off and secretly.
Jason Blitman (44:28):
a lot of things in private.
Nathan H. Lents (44:29):
do a lot of things in private, and that's,
that's one thing that there's,there's something interesting
there to explore and I don'tknow what it is, I don't know
what it is, but there's, youknow, it has to, I'm sure it has
to do with a little bit withpaternity certainty and that
kind of thing, and obscuringthat, whatever.
But, um.
And, and we lived in verytight-knit small social groups.
We evolved that way for hundredsof thousands of years.
Very small groups, you know, 150or members or less.
(44:52):
You knew everyone there.
And so it, it's conceivable thatsex in private was also a way to
you to reclaim autonomy.
Um, you know, that, that, thatway you were in control of what
other people knew about yoursexual life,
Jason Blitman (45:08):
I mean, and that's true with clothing.
Nathan H. Lents (45:11):
mm-hmm.
Clothing's also very humanpeculiar, right?
Jason Blitman (45:14):
Yeah.
Well, and it's like, it's, it'san element of privacy.
We are keeping pieces of ourbody that we don't wanna share
with other people.
Private,
Nathan H. Lents (45:22):
And there's, and you could think about the
reasons why that would besocially beneficial.
So I think that's kind of nudityand sex and private, I think are
part of that same coin.
Jason Blitman (45:32):
Yeah.
But it's so interesting'causelike if we were to get naked,
sort of.
Literally and metaphorically, ifwe, if we got rid of our
clothing, if we were more openwith our thoughts, feelings,
desires, hopes, dreams,whatever, uh, it would sort of
break down all of that socially.
So it's really like, it's theglue that's, it's, it's, it's
(45:55):
this weird chicken egg, thething that's keeping society
Nathan H. Lents (45:56):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Blitman (45:58):
together.
Nathan H. Lents (45:58):
Yeah, I, I think in general that, that, you
know, that the modesty, thesecrecy, that all that is, it's.
Is it a net positive or is a netnegative?
I don't know.
I think it, it opens upopportunities for coercion and
manipulation.
Definitely has a dark side toall of it, but at the same time,
it's also nice to have, I reallylike my privacy.
You know, it's something that'sa, an important value to me.
(46:20):
I'm a fairly private with a lotof things I do, so, you know, I
don't know if it's a netpositive or net negative.
I, I, that's, that's, that'sreally for sociologists, I
guess, to
Jason Blitman (46:29):
Totally.
Yeah.
Well, and it just aninteresting.
Thing for us as humans to thinkabout, because this is sort of
how we're going about our dailylives,
Nathan H. Lents (46:38):
Yeah, exactly.
We're steeped in it and youknow, and people have talked
about like, for example, sexdifferences when it comes to
behavior.
And I, if you notice, I don'ttalk about sex differences when
it comes to behavior.
I do a little bit when it comesto biology, but not behavior
because we still to this dayhave no idea how much culture
imprints gender.
(47:00):
In a way that's not bi, you knowwhat I mean?
Like no one's been raised freeof gendered culture.
So we really have no idea howmen and women might behave
differently if they weren'timprinted on this.
They, they, we are told to doand want different things even
before we're born.
Right, that's, newborns aredescribed differently by even
(47:22):
the most progressive parentsbased on whether they're male or
female.
You know, if it's a male,they'll say they're strong and
robust and tough and big, and,and there's no biological
differences between little boysand little girls at infancy,
right?
There's not size difference,strength difference, none of
that stuff.
But the, the women, the, thelittle girls are delicate and
(47:43):
cute.
And the boys are robust andstrong.
And so when you think aboutthat, that imprinting starts
literally on the first day oflife, we have no idea how
different men and women would befree from that.
So apply that same logic ontorelationships, onto being queer,
onto, um, you know, marriage,um, when, you know, the, the
(48:07):
taboos associated with that areso deeply embedded that we don't
know.
We don't know what we would belike free of that.
Jason Blitman (48:13):
Right.
There are so many greatchapters.
There's, you know, great chapterabout gender and sex.
There's a great chapter aboutthe gauging.
I'm so excited for folks tocheck that out.
I'm curious, before I let yougo, is there anything in the
process of you writing this bookthat surprised you or that you
discovered?
Nathan H. Lents (48:32):
Yeah.
I would say the most surprisingthing is basically everything
that's in chapter two, which is.
Which is gender and animals.
So I believe that the same thingprior to about 15 years ago.
The same thing that biologistsare teaching, you know, all over
the world, is that there's malebehavior and female behavior and
animals behave in male typicalways and female typical ways,
(48:54):
and that's all there is to it.
I was totally unprepared beforeI did the research for this, on
how much diversity there iswithin the sexes in animals.
There are different ways to be amale.
When, whether you're a sunfishor a cricket or a gorilla,
there's ma there's not just onekind of male.
There's male diversity andthere's female diversity, and
(49:17):
there's your, these are realbiological differences.
It's not just like a strategythat you can pick and choose
from, and today you'll try this,and tomorrow you'll try that,
or, or when you get bigger,you'll try something else.
There are different flavors ofmaleness, different flavors of
femaleness in the animal world.
And when I was teaching thisclass, I was telling you about
on sex and gender, and we keptencountering examples of gender
(49:39):
diversity right there in thepapers that we're reading.
And the scientists themselvesmissed it.
Like they just did.
They just ignored it.
There was this one on BluegillSunfish that talked about, um,
oh, well there's these, um, theycalled them, uh, coupled, uh,
males, but then if you look at,and they kind of discarded them.
'cause they didn't build nests,they didn't attract females.
(50:00):
They didn't do what we expectmale sunfish to do, but 40% of
the offspring were fathered bythose other males.
40%.
That's not.
It's small, like that's asignificant part of the social
life of Bluegill Sunfish is tobe a different kind of male.
You can't just dismiss 40% ofthe males as being suboptimal,
whatever.
They have a different strategy.
(50:21):
A strategy that's clearlysuccessful.
So that's, that was the mostsurprising thing to me, was
gender diversity in animals.
I wasn't expecting to see that.
Jason Blitman (50:28):
That's so cool.
What a fun thing for you tolearn.
Um, Dr.
Nathan Lz.
Nathan, HL.
Thank you for being here.
The sexual evolution.
I I, to the listeners, I hopethis conversation helped break a
little bit of those taboos,enlightened you a tiny bit and
the book, uh, I know will do thesame.
So I'm so excited for you tocheck it out and thank you again
(50:50):
for being here.
Nathan H. Lents (50:51):
Thank you for having me.
This was a wonderfulconversation and I'll be
subscribing to your podcast.
Don't worry.
Jason Blitman (50:55):
Oh, fantastic.
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