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In this episode, Colin breaks down one of the most disturbing academic papers we’ve ever covered—a peer-reviewed article that doesn’t just question the idea of childhood sexual innocence, but calls for it to be dismantled entirely. The authors argue that society should stop viewing children as needing protection from sexuality, claiming that “childhood pleasure is indispensable” to building a “just sexual future.” They describe “pre-adolescent children’s erotic capacities” as being “pathologized” and call innocence itself a “colonial fiction” that must be “challenged, reinvented, and reinterpreted.” They even go so far as to propose integrating “erotics” into sex education and reframing children as “pleasurable beings.” It’s not hyperbole — this is real scholarship published by the American Sociological Association, and it’s laying the intellectual groundwork for policies that dismantle important safeguards for children against sexual predators.

Then, in a rapid-fire lightning round, Colin highlights two more jaw-dropping examples of academia at its worst: a paper claiming that scientists conducting field research abroad are oppressive colonizers and a doctoral dissertation based on communing with “spirit guides,” rabbits, and ancestral archetypes as “data.” But it’s not all bad. Colin wraps up with an example of science done right: a rigorous critique of “transgender brain” research that debunks myths and shows how evidence-based methods should actually look.

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