In this episode Garth interviews Lisa Diamond from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, UT. They discuss teacher-centric talks on sexuality and gender amid heightened scrutiny and safety concerns for instructors and students, especially as anti-DEI laws have eliminated campus resource centers, and classrooms may be the only remaining gathering places for marginalized students. Lisa believes that textbooks quickly become outdated and that psychology must be taught as an evolving social science with imperfect methods and shifting lenses. She emphasizes that humans are spectrum-based but prone to flawed categories; identity labels can be personally, socially, and politically meaningful yet differ from scientific groupings. She traces how research categories historically excluded bisexual and non-binary people and notes that large-scale data revealed bisexuality as a majority pattern within LGBTQ populations. They discuss how algorithms and social media fuel polarized realities, and Lisa advocates using discomfort awareness, empathy, in-person dialogue, and structured student interactions to counter bias and teach through controversy.

[Note. Portions of the show notes were generated using Descript AI.]