Oestrogen Expert: Birth Control Changes Who You Are…Would You Still Love Them If You Came Off It?! Oestrogen Makes You More Attractive!

0:00:05 Are you saying that you’d recommend that a woman looking for a partner gets off the birth control pill until they find one?
0:00:10 Yeah, I mean researchers found when women who were partnered to attractive men went off hormonal birth control
0:00:15 They were more attracted to their partner, but for women who were partnered with less attractive partners
0:00:20 They became less attracted to their partners and reported being less sexually satisfied
0:00:22 It’s quite frightening
0:00:28 Dr. Sara Hill is a leading research psychologist and professor uncovering the shocking effects the contraceptive pill has had on women
0:00:32 relationships and society and what we can do about it
0:00:38 There’s been nothing more instrumental to women’s ability to be able to achieve independence than the birth control pill
0:00:40 And so we’re very cavalier and just giving it to people
0:00:43 Oh, well you should go on it for this and you should go on it for that
0:00:47 But it has huge costs and when I started to dig into the research
0:00:54 I found there’s at least five different things the birth control pill does to change who we are and these risk factors
0:00:57 They’re swept under the rug by their doctors who are prescribing it first
0:01:02 It changes our emotional states with increased risk for developing anxiety and depression
0:01:08 And then it influences our ability to put on muscle mass and it can also affect our sexual function
0:01:14 Because it turns off that estrogen surge that makes us feel sexier and makes us want to have sex and there’s more
0:01:21 But we also know that it affects men in two different ways and this is implications for society around us. I’ll tell you why
0:01:25 So so what are the alternatives for women?
0:01:27 Let’s dive down into that first
0:01:34 Quick one before we get back to this episode just give me 30 seconds of your time
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0:02:14 Thank you. Thank you so much back to the episode
0:02:20 Dr. Sarah Hill
0:02:27 What is the mission that you’re on if you had to sort of encapsulate it into a couple of sentences
0:02:31 All of the work you’re doing into a couple of sentences and the impact it has on
0:02:34 People like me, but also my partners my mother and my sisters
0:02:38 Who read and understand your work? What is that mission?
0:02:46 is to help women understand themselves and I think that you know part of that is doing the science that helps to uncover the
0:02:51 Insights that help women understand themselves and then also being able to communicate that to women
0:02:56 I think that you know for a very long time because of the way that medicine has been set up
0:02:59 the the focus has been primarily on men and
0:03:06 Most of the things that we think that we know about health and functioning and the human body and brain is based on
0:03:13 Research conducted in men and so it’s taking that back and helping women actually understand themselves as themselves
0:03:17 So would you say that this conversation is just for win? No, absolutely not
0:03:21 No, this is a conversation for women for women’s partners and those who love women, right?
0:03:24 And so I think that it’s a conversation for everyone
0:03:29 I have these conversations because I’m interested in the subject matter and as I read through your work at the top of your work
0:03:34 I saw that you know, you really have a focus towards women’s health and women’s issues, but I can’t explain how
0:03:40 Unbelievably fascinating and enlightening it was for me as someone who is a boyfriend and a partner to a woman
0:03:48 But also when when we talk about the evolutionary psychology that sort of is intertwined throughout your work
0:03:53 I was able to understand so much about me as a man and the way I am and
0:04:02 The way that I develop and my testosterone and all those kinds of things and also attraction and mating preferences and all these things from looking through your work
0:04:08 Why why are you so focused on this subject matter? What is it? What’s the sort of in your heart?
0:04:14 I mean for me, it’s really fascinating to consider the way that hormones influence who we are and
0:04:21 Then to think about something like the birth control pill, which almost all women are on at some point in their life and
0:04:30 Understanding that this actually by changing women’s hormones has the impact of kind of fundamentally changing some really important things about themselves
0:04:37 I mean, this is really huge and this has consequences for everything ranging from who women are attracted to and
0:04:41 Might be choosing as partners to women’s mental health, right?
0:04:44 And it could end up having consequences on the shape of the world around us
0:04:52 We already know that birth control has had an impact on women’s ability to do things like go to school and get advanced degrees
0:04:56 And we see this played out when we look at college classrooms that are becoming
0:05:00 Increasingly female and one of the big reasons for this is the birth control pill
0:05:06 It’s like by allowing women to know with almost perfect certainty that they’re not going to get pregnant
0:05:09 This is allowed women to make plans
0:05:16 Which means that they can dream bigger and achieve more than most of us would have ever dreamed possible like 50 or 100 years ago
0:05:21 Right, and so the pill changes everything right by changing women. We change the world
0:05:24 This has implications for women
0:05:28 This has implications for their partners and this has implications for society around us
0:05:30 We’re seeing some of the
0:05:35 Downstream positive impacts of this and then there’s also some of the sort of downstream consequences
0:05:40 Which I think society’s now trying to understand and contend with and I think one of them you mentioned there is that more women in
0:05:46 Classrooms, I think more women are college educated now in the US or becoming college educated and they’re running more and more and more
0:05:49 and it’s interesting because
0:05:51 There’s a study which you cite in your work
0:05:58 I think it was in your book where I read it that shows women still have a preference for men who have more resources
0:06:00 And I was wondering isn’t this doesn’t this create a little bit of a
0:06:07 Fundamental issue because if more and more women have more and more resources in many cases much more than men
0:06:09 But they have a preference for
0:06:11 Men that have more resources
0:06:14 Isn’t there isn’t an issue here?
0:06:20 Yeah, no, there’s actually there is an issue there and in fact there have been people including my former
0:06:27 Mentor David Buss who’s who have talked about this idea that there’s a mating crisis going on and that
0:06:30 women who are becoming increasingly college educated and
0:06:38 You know getting access to resources of their own that they do continue to exhibit and increase preference for partners with resources
0:06:42 Women are what we call hypergamous, right?
0:06:48 Which means that we like to mate up in terms of achievement and educational attainment and when you have a
0:06:55 Populist like we do in the US of women who are now on average more educated than men
0:06:58 it makes it more difficult to find a
0:07:05 Suitable partner if you’re a woman with an advanced degree and you want somebody who has at least as much education for you
0:07:07 That’s going to lead to a more narrow pool of mates
0:07:14 And in fact what we see is that there are an increasingly like large number of women who are just choosing not to get married
0:07:17 And are choosing to stay single and in fact there’s a wonderful
0:07:22 book called all the single ladies that is about this very phenomenon and
0:07:29 Women are increasingly choosing to opt out of long-term mating if they’re not able to find the relationship that they want
0:07:33 So two questions there on the first point is how do we know that women are dating?
0:07:40 Upwards and to the right right we know that women are dating upwards because that’s what women express a preference for and it’s also who
0:07:42 Women tend to marry so when you look at
0:07:44 for example
0:07:46 you know data looking at
0:07:53 The education levels of people who get married in age of people when they get married women generally will marry somebody who’s older and
0:07:55 Generally earns more money than they do themselves
0:08:00 And you know this is something that isn’t specific to the US
0:08:02 This is something that we tend to find
0:08:06 Cross-culturally that women tend to express a preference for this and yes
0:08:13 It has become more common for women to be open to partnering with people who earn less money than themselves for example
0:08:16 Or have less education than themselves than what it used to be
0:08:22 But it’s still not what it would be if women were actually more willing to make that trade-off
0:08:30 What we see is that instead of choosing to marry down what many women are choosing to do is simply not get married at all
0:08:34 Are they making that choice or is it just a lack of good options?
0:08:37 I think yes and yes, right?
0:08:41 I think that they’re making that choice because there isn’t there aren’t good options
0:08:47 So I think that many women feel the the constraint of the fact that there’s not as many partners available as
0:08:53 You know that have the qualities that they’re looking for in a long-term partner and as a result of that
0:08:56 They’re just making the choice when it’s between that like, you know
0:09:00 just staying single and not partnering with somebody that they desire or
0:09:07 Partnering with somebody who has fewer resources than they do or less education than they do themselves. They’re choosing the former
0:09:09 they’re instead choosing to be single instead of
0:09:16 Having to partner with somebody who doesn’t you know sort of meet what their exacting standards are. Are they still having sex?
0:09:22 Yeah, you know, that’s a good so sex is down like so like sex is trending downward
0:09:27 What we tend to see is that people are having a lot less sex than they used to they’re having sex later
0:09:33 They’re having less their fewer people are not virgins and that’s a double negative
0:09:38 More people are virgins when they’re graduating high school and college than there were in the past
0:09:40 This is becoming increasingly common
0:09:47 It’s also really interesting when you consider that in face of the fact that we have something like hormonal birth control
0:09:53 We have birth control where you have you know an opportunity for men and women to be able to have sex
0:10:00 Without the having to have the fear of pregnancy and yet people are having less sex and that’s a very complicated
0:10:07 Issue that requires a lot of untangling to get to the bottom of but one of those factors is the fact that
0:10:10 It’s harder for you know
0:10:19 Imagine that you’re a college-aged woman and you are looking for somebody who at least is you know on par with you in terms of their
0:10:21 educational attainment
0:10:26 Most college campuses are like 60% female and just simply playing the odds
0:10:30 I mean women are gonna have a harder time finding somebody within their pool
0:10:34 That they can get together with and this is going to mean less
0:10:40 Dating for some of these women and then less sex if women have more money and more
0:10:44 Independence as a result of that money and success in education
0:10:48 Why don’t they just date down as in why don’t they date men that are broke?
0:10:55 Right. Yeah. Well, you know, we have inherited this mating psychology from our distant ancestors
0:10:59 Who are very much more reliant on men for things like provisioning
0:11:07 Resource access and even protection than what contemporary women need and this is because throughout most of our evolutionary history
0:11:12 We spent our lives, you know having to be pregnant regularly
0:11:18 Lactating caring for young children and we’re very heavily dependent on the ability
0:11:27 Of our partner to gain access to things like food and the other resources that we’re not able to get access to when we are
0:11:30 You know, very pregnant or dealing with young children
0:11:36 Like I don’t know if you’ve ever gone hunting before or met a two-year-old, but like the two things don’t mix, right?
0:11:40 The children are loud. They’re not gonna allow you to sneak up on a buffalo
0:11:43 It’s not an ideal situation for women
0:11:50 So women historically have been very dependent on men for resources and we’ve inherited that that brain because over the course of
0:11:53 evolutionary history women who would have placed an emphasis on
0:11:57 You know choosing partners who have these kinds of qualities
0:12:03 They would have been more likely to have surviving offspring who then passed that tendency or that preference onto their offspring
0:12:06 who’d passed that preference down to their offspring and so
0:12:12 Human, you know contemporary human women even though we’re able to gain access to resources of our own
0:12:15 We still have that preference, right?
0:12:18 We’ve inherited that preference from our successful ancestors
0:12:24 Because women who had that preference would have performed better than women who didn’t pay attention to that sort of thing
0:12:26 so
0:12:27 Oftentimes people think
0:12:32 Things are the way they are because of a patriarchy or because of sort of social factors
0:12:37 Yeah, but you’re saying that there are sort of innate biological differences and evolutionary differences in men and women
0:12:44 That go beyond our sort of sexual organs and stuff. Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah, you know
0:12:49 And in fact the patriarchy which just refers to you know male control of resources
0:12:55 Wouldn’t really exist if women didn’t desire resources and their partners
0:13:02 Because the reason that men tend to control a lot of resources is because women demand resource access on the part of their partners
0:13:04 And if women didn’t care
0:13:08 Then men wouldn’t work so hard to get access to them, you know
0:13:16 there’s this really great quote by Aristotle on asses where he once said without women all the power and money in the world would be
0:13:19 Completely meaningless and I think that there’s a lot of wisdom in that
0:13:24 Men work so hard to control the resources not because men together are banding
0:13:28 You know together and trying to hoard the resources and keep them from women
0:13:32 I don’t think that that’s really how the world works and I think if you have a look around
0:13:36 We’d see that that’s not really how the world works instead
0:13:40 It’s an epiphenomenon of the fact that men are competing amongst, you know
0:13:45 Amongst whoever else has access to resources to get resources of their own, right?
0:13:50 And because women value this and their choice of partners oftentimes men will go to greater lengths to get them
0:13:57 Right one of the reasons not the only reason but certainly one of the reasons that we see that more men tend to be in
0:14:00 You know positions of being a CEO for example
0:14:06 It’s because oftentimes men are more willing to make the trade-offs that you have to make to get into those positions
0:14:14 Because men are wired that way right and the reason that they’re wired that way is because they’ve inherited these tendencies to want this despite the costs
0:14:21 Because it would have paid off in terms of being able to attract better partners a greater number of partners
0:14:24 Right and then being able to have your children do better, right?
0:14:29 And so, you know the patriarchy yes, that is something that exists, right?
0:14:34 We do tend to see that men tend to control resources more frequently than women in most societies around the world
0:14:40 But this isn’t because men are banding together and trying to keep exclude women instead
0:14:43 It’s just a product of men’s evolved psychology
0:14:49 I’m trying to work as hard as I can to get access to resources in part because women require them
0:14:53 And men are much more likely to take risks aren’t they as you say?
0:15:00 So as you’re speaking I was thinking about the gambling statistics that I read that said the vast majority of gambling addicts are men
0:15:03 So I was just thinking about that in the context of like
0:15:10 entrepreneurship and these kinds of things is that to say that men are going to be more entrepreneurial?
0:15:17 Yeah, yeah, you know, I would think so yes and the reason being that it is about risk right and women oftentimes
0:15:25 Again, you know a lot of this has to do with this this the psychology that we’ve inherited and throughout most of our history
0:15:32 Women were caring for young children. I mean this was you know kind of what our bodies made us just have to do
0:15:35 It’s like our our bodies are wired for
0:15:42 Having babies right and this doesn’t mean that this is what women should do right or what women need to do or that you know
0:15:47 That that this is somehow destiny women to do one, you know this set of activities
0:15:49 But instead throughout most of our history
0:15:56 we spent a lot of our time pregnant and caring for young children and that has selected for our psychology to be very risk-sensitive and
0:16:05 Risk-averse and what we tend to see is that women are more risk-averse than are men and we can see this play out in terms of things like
0:16:12 Gambling right we know that overwhelmingly men tend to be the ones who are gambling addicts relative to women
0:16:18 But also in terms of good risks, right because you do see something like being a being an entrepreneur
0:16:23 For example, which is something that does come with a pretty big risk attached to it
0:16:25 I’m meaning that you know, there’s a big boom and bust
0:16:32 But it the the risk associated with the possibility of a bust is something that women’s
0:16:39 Psychology is a little bit less tolerant of relative to men’s. I think one of the interesting observations
0:16:43 I’ve had as a investor, but also as an entrepreneur myself is
0:16:48 Then maybe data to support the fact that more men are likely to start businesses
0:16:53 But it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re better at it and part of that links to what you said about this
0:17:00 Relationship with risk because being prone to risk in business doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be good at
0:17:09 Entrepreneurship and I often tend to find that when you have a woman leading a business, they’re much more accurate and honest with their forecasting and much more
0:17:15 Yeah, realistic about what the business is actually capable of and men tend to over forecast
0:17:22 In terms of business performance they tend so but then also I think it’s interesting because I had Kevin O’Leary
0:17:26 Who’s the shark on Shark Tank in the USA say that in his portfolio of investments from Shark Tank?
0:17:30 The best performing investments that he had were women and I think again
0:17:35 I think from memory what he was saying was when it comes to forecasting and
0:17:42 Taking more calculated risks when women tend to be better at that than men, right?
0:17:44 Which is an interesting
0:17:46 Yeah, no, I think that it’s totally spot-on
0:17:52 That you know men tend to be riskier and they tend to have a little bit more hubris
0:17:54 I mean there’s a tendency
0:18:02 To assume that they’re going to and they have an exaggerated belief about how successful they’re going to be because in part
0:18:07 You know, I think it ultimately boils down to the differences in our mating psychology
0:18:13 And then also the psychology of parenting compared to provisioning and I think that for men
0:18:20 You know seeing the world in a way that’s distorted in terms of assuming that things are going to be better than they are
0:18:26 It’s going to allow them to be able to better attract mates, for example, because they’re buying their own story
0:18:32 You know, it’s like they’re buying their own story about how great everything is going to be even if it’s not necessarily all that great
0:18:38 This leads people to take risks and and with big risks come big rewards and historically
0:18:45 Potentially for men those rewards could potentially translate into additional mating opportunities
0:18:49 That have a direct impact on men’s ability to pass down genes for women
0:18:54 It’s not so much, you know, because even if you have the best idea ever
0:18:58 That’s going to get you access to the greatest number of mates possible
0:19:04 The number of offspring that a woman can potentially have into the future is dependent completely on the limits of her own
0:19:12 reproductive biology so a woman with access to ten partners can only pass down the same number of genes as a woman with access to one
0:19:17 Whereas the same hasn’t been true for men right for men who have access to ten partners
0:19:25 This can lead to ten times as many offspring is what they can have if they have access to one and this creates an asymmetry and the potential benefits
0:19:29 Fitness benefits related to men and women
0:19:38 From winning big right and so men’s psychology is geared toward wanting to do things that are and having their brain
0:19:42 Tell themselves stories about how successful things are going to be to act as a carrot
0:19:47 That then leads them to want to pursue those types of things even when it’s highly risky
0:19:52 So if I become a billionaire, yeah, then I can afford to and I will attract
0:19:59 potentially hundreds of thousands of partners and then I can have hundreds of thousands of kids because I can afford to and I’m
0:20:05 Going to have so much interest because I’m a high resource high status male whereas a woman if she becomes a billionaire
0:20:13 She can only have one kid every nine months or 12 months. Whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah, and that’s actually there’s an evolutionary biology
0:20:16 There’s a principle behind that it’s called the Bateman principle
0:20:21 It refers to the fact that men’s fitness can increase with each partner
0:20:25 They have access to and for women it tops out after one, right?
0:20:32 So the potential reproductive returns from having access to novel partners is greater for men than it is for women
0:20:38 Right and this does not mean that this is what most men do right most men don’t translate their increased
0:20:45 Their increased status and their increased access to resources by gaining access to an astronomical number of partners
0:20:51 But historically that’s something that men sometimes do right if we look at history
0:20:54 I’m you’ll see in particularly in
0:20:58 Polygenous cultures where you have men who are able to have access to multiple partners at the same time
0:21:04 Those men who have the most resources and have the highest status tend to have multiple wives
0:21:10 Right they tend to have a greater number of children right and we are the descendants of people who would sometimes make that decision
0:21:18 Right and so what we tend to see is that that is shaped men’s mating psychology and shaped men’s achievement motivation psychology in ways
0:21:20 That helps to promote
0:21:25 Um, you know gaining access to resources in part because gaining access to resources
0:21:31 Leads to a greater fitness return than what gets is available to women from doing the exact same thing
0:21:38 This wasn’t a long time ago in human history either because my granddad in Nigeria
0:21:42 Mm-hmm. I I’ve never met the guy. Um, I don’t believe he’s still alive
0:21:44 I’ve never been close to him
0:21:52 Um, but I was told that he had 10 or 14 wives, right and so I was told that I have 30 40 cousins in Nigeria, right?
0:21:56 Yeah, I mean, I’m doing okay financially, but I probably don’t have the means
0:22:01 It means to meet them all and become friends with all of them. Um, but uh, yeah, I uh
0:22:06 That’s pretty pretty striking that just sort of one generation above my dad
0:22:09 was this a man that had
0:22:15 Multiple wives and so when you say that that’s in that could be part of passed down to me in some way
0:22:21 Yeah, that’s what a proclivity to have to want to acquire more resources so that I can support more people
0:22:27 It’s quite frightening. I don’t think that it’s something to be frightened of I think that you know
0:22:30 When we understand that the tendencies that we’ve inherited
0:22:35 Actually think that it gives us greater appreciation for the kinds of decisions that we actually end up making
0:22:42 Why is it that you know, especially in cultures like the US and I think about in European culture
0:22:47 We’re monogamously mating, you know species we long we form these long-term pair bonds
0:22:50 And so then we also have to ask ourselves, you know
0:22:59 Given that this is something that is possible for men right to increase their their reproductive output simply by gaining access to new partners
0:23:05 Why is it that most men don’t do this? What are the benefits when you look at contemporary hunter-gatherer groups?
0:23:12 Where humans are living in ways that are more similar to the way that our ancestors likely lived than what we do currently?
0:23:17 What you tend to see is that those children who have an investing father around?
0:23:27 Their probability of survival is vastly higher than that of the children of women who do not have an investing partner around
0:23:32 One of the other parts of the answer is that women generally don’t want to share, right?
0:23:36 And so what you get is by men being willing to restrict
0:23:44 Their own what we call reproductive value, which just refers to the number of potential children that they can have into the future
0:23:46 That increases the quality of partner
0:23:50 They’re going to be able to have because most women don’t want to share
0:23:57 And so if you are a woman who is of high value meaning that you have a lot of the qualities that men desire in their partners
0:24:01 You can be really picky and say no, I’m not going to share
0:24:05 And so if you want to mate with me then that means that you’re going to have to make some decisions
0:24:11 Because you know imagine that you’re a man and just based on all of the qualities that you have
0:24:15 Let’s say that your mate value is and let’s assume that mate value has a 1 to 10 scale
0:24:19 Okay, so there’s a 1 to 10 scale and you’re a 7, right?
0:24:23 All the qualities. I’m just I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about the royal you
0:24:32 The reason the reason the reason I’m making you and again. I’m saying the royal you a seven is because so I’m just
0:24:38 Bear with me here. Imagine that you’re a seven, right? And you’re a seven without being willing to I know without
0:24:41 I know it sounds sad, but just got to trust me here
0:24:48 Okay, you’re about your value of seven is because you are not really willing to commit to a long-term relationship, right?
0:24:51 So you’re you have all these resources and you have you know
0:24:56 And you’ve got your attractiveness, and you’ve got your good genes and all the other things but a dog, right?
0:25:00 Yeah, but you’re not willing cost. Yeah, exactly. We’ve got a podcast
0:25:07 All this like great stuff going for you, but you’re not willing you’re not going to just you know commit your resources and to
0:25:10 One person and you meet somebody who’s just you know
0:25:16 She’s amazing and she she also has a podcast and she’s gorgeous and though and she’s a nine
0:25:24 You can increase your value to her just by willing being willing to invest by being willing because women desire that because women
0:25:31 Generally place a priority on somebody’s willingness to stick around and it continue invest to continue to invest resources in just her
0:25:37 You can increase your value from a seven to a nine or a ten just by virtue of being willing to commit
0:25:41 How does a woman know if I am high status or not?
0:25:46 Like on the ways that I can just like signal that I am if I go to the gym and then I don’t know
0:25:51 I got nice aftershave and perfume and I’m wearing I don’t know a cool t-shirt. What are what are the cues?
0:25:55 How does the brain know that I’m a good reproductive partner? Right? Yeah, no, that’s a really great question
0:26:02 It’s really interesting because a lot of the qualities that men value in their partners like for women are things that are
0:26:06 immediately available just based on physical appearance because we know that men have
0:26:10 place a priority on cues related to fertility and
0:26:16 Reproductive value and reproductive value is just essentially a person’s reproductive shelf life
0:26:23 If you were my coach and you were trying to train me to be high value to women
0:26:28 Even though maybe I’m not like even though maybe I don’t have a lot of money and I don’t have a lot of I don’t know
0:26:32 Resources what kind of like things would you give me? What kind of advice would you give me?
0:26:36 I would probably encourage you to play up your
0:26:40 nice guy attributes and your willingness to commit
0:26:47 And you know your willingness to for example and interest and things like having children for example
0:26:53 Because these are qualities that women desire and their choice of long-term partners and being able to have those qualities
0:26:58 I think is something that can certainly, you know, give you a leg up in terms of made attraction
0:27:01 So you you tell me to be a nice guy. I would say I would say to be a nice guy
0:27:07 The nice guys get laid nice guys do get laid. I think that I think that nice guys are less likely to
0:27:15 Have short-term, you know, casual sex. They probably a fewer casual sexual partners than non nice guys
0:27:18 But it’ll certainly get you access to women
0:27:23 Yeah, I I mean I was reading in your book about how
0:27:30 Mating and attraction preferences change for a woman throughout her cycle. Yeah, so throughout a woman’s
0:27:33 28-day cycle
0:27:35 Does she always want a nice guy? No
0:27:43 So women’s partner preferences and the types of qualities that women tend to prioritize in their choice of partners do change across the menstrual cycle
0:27:51 And this changes with our sex hormones. So during the early part of the menstrual cycle both sets of sex hormones
0:27:56 So our estrogen and progesterone, which is our second primary sex hormone
0:28:00 They are low and then as estrogen begins to increase
0:28:07 Which is something that happens as eggs start to mature in the ovary and as the eggs are maturing
0:28:13 they release estrogen and as an egg as a dominant egg is chosen and
0:28:17 Begins to fully mature so that way it will be released at ovulation
0:28:24 Which is how many days into the cycle. Um, usually estrogen really starts to surge right around day nine of the cycle
0:28:31 But it really hits its like high point usually right around day 14, which is when ovulation occurs
0:28:38 So estrogen begins rising sharply around day nine of the cycle and again the first day of the menstrual cycle is the day that
0:28:43 Is the day that your period arrives. So that’s day one about day nine
0:28:49 So about a week and a half after your period started most women will start to have a pretty dramatic increase in estrogen
0:28:57 Climb, climb, climb, climb, climb, it will peak around day 14, which is when ovulation occurs
0:29:02 And this is when an egg of course is released and pregnancy is possible from sex
0:29:07 So from day nine to day 15 till date. Yeah till day 15 day nine to day 15
0:29:14 Are usually like that’s usually when we sort of book and the fertile window and during this time
0:29:21 Not surprisingly, women experience a change in their sexual psychology, right?
0:29:25 So women become increasingly attuned to all things sex
0:29:31 So what we tend to see is that women’s sexual desire increases right around that time in the cycle
0:29:39 Women have more sex during that time in the cycle women masturbate more during that time in the cycle and women become more
0:29:44 exacting about who it is that they desire as a romantic partner or a sex partner and
0:29:50 In particular what we tend to see is that as estrogen is increasing across the cycle
0:29:58 So too does women’s interest in cues that historically have been related to high genetic quality or genetic
0:30:07 Compatibility within their choice of partners. So two of the traits that we know to be particularly pronounced in terms of women’s interest
0:30:13 Near high fertility in the cycle are cues related to testosterone and masculinity and
0:30:17 The reason for this one is because testosterone is a known
0:30:20 immunosuppressive
0:30:26 Meaning that it has the effect of suppressing the immune system and so people who have
0:30:28 Relatively high levels of testosterone
0:30:34 This is a cue that their bodies are in such good physical condition, right?
0:30:41 Their immune system is so strong and robust that it can handle being suppressed by testosterone
0:30:46 So people who have higher testosterone are believed to have greater immunocompetence
0:30:51 Relative to people with lower levels of testosterone and what we tend to see is that low and behold
0:31:01 During that peak fertility time in the menstrual cycle when estrogen is high that women exhibit a greater preference for cues related to
0:31:08 Testosterone in men. So we find for example that women desire a more masculinized male faces
0:31:14 Voices and behavior at high fertility in the cycle compared to low fertility in the cycle
0:31:20 How’d you test this you test this by looking at what it is that women are looking for and you look at it over time
0:31:27 So just to give you an example of one of the sort of most robust studies that’s been done looking at this phenomenon
0:31:32 Researchers had a group of women bring home a bunch of little plastic tubes
0:31:37 In a freezer bag and they had them spit into these little
0:31:41 saliva collection tubes every day of the cycle
0:31:47 Across two menstrual cycles on those same days when women were taking a saliva sample
0:31:50 they were also evaluating the attractiveness of male faces and
0:31:58 The thing that the women didn’t know is that the researchers knew the testosterone levels of the faces of the men that they had
0:32:03 Them looking at because the researchers had men come into the research lab beforehand and it took their
0:32:10 Morning testosterone levels over the course of several days to get an average morning testosterone level for these men and
0:32:14 So when they got all the saliva samples from the women
0:32:20 They assayed all of their saliva and they were able to look at women’s estrogen changes across the cycle
0:32:26 And then how it related to their facial preferences for men and what they found was first
0:32:32 That of course estrogen tended to increase and peak during this fertile window
0:32:37 So days nine or so to day 15 women’s estrogen levels were high
0:32:41 And during this time what they also found is that women’s preference for
0:32:46 Testosterone levels in the faces of the men they preferred also increased
0:32:52 And so there was this really beautiful overlap between women’s estrogen levels and their preference for testosterone
0:32:57 Going to show that estrogen loves testosterone, right?
0:33:04 So women during this estrogenic phase in the cycle have a heightened preference for cues related to facial masculine
0:33:08 Masculinity they also have a greater preference for vocal masculinity
0:33:13 So women at high fertility in the cycle also like the sound of more masculinized male voices
0:33:17 They tend to like more social dominance in terms of behavior
0:33:21 Relative to what we tend to see when women are at low fertility in the cycle
0:33:24 So I’m more likely to get laid if I
0:33:29 Yeah, there you go. I think that voice right there that you did. I think it’s going to get you all the girls
0:33:32 You think I do I do I would I would try that one out at the bar tonight
0:33:35 They must then find that and I think I read this in your work
0:33:37 I’m well, I did read it in your work. I’m just pretending I knew it and
0:33:42 They also found that men who have high testosterone levels are
0:33:45 More likely to be in a relationship
0:33:49 The next year than men that don’t have high testosterone levels
0:33:54 Yeah, so we know that we know from research that not only, you know
0:34:00 Do women desire testosterone in their partners women choose men with higher levels of testosterone as their partners
0:34:06 So they’ve done studies looking at whether or not men are partnered over time
0:34:11 Right based on what their testosterone levels are at time one and then looking at whether or not
0:34:16 They’re married at time two and what we tend to find is that low and behold men with higher levels of testosterone
0:34:18 Are more likely to be married at time two
0:34:25 Suggesting that men are probably more likely to be chosen as partners when they have higher levels of testosterone
0:34:27 relative to when they do not and
0:34:33 Something that I found really bizarre. No one’s ever explained to me is I also read I believe it was in your book
0:34:39 Oh, I’ve been in it in a video. I watched of yours. Um, they found that men who had a baby
0:34:45 Had plummeting testosterone levels. Yes, like how does the how does the my body know that I have a baby?
0:34:50 Isn’t that fascinating? It like the exact mechanisms. I don’t know exactly what they are
0:34:56 But the connection between the brain and the rest of the body. I mean, it’s it’s it knows everything
0:35:03 I mean, it knows everything and what the research finds is that yes when men get into a long-term relationship, for example
0:35:08 Men’s testosterone decreases a little bit, right? And we tend to you know, culturally
0:35:12 We have this narrative about testosterone where it’s like more is better, right?
0:35:16 And it’s always seen as something that men should have a lot of and you see it
0:35:19 there’s testosterone clinics on all these different corners
0:35:25 Because you know this idea that men need lots of testosterone and to have low testosterone means that you have a problem
0:35:27 But it doesn’t always mean that at all
0:35:31 And what we tend to see is that when men are good into a long-term relationship
0:35:34 testosterone takes a little dip and when men have
0:35:42 Children that they’re caring for testosterone takes another dip and the reason for this is that it’s not always in a man’s best
0:35:47 Interest to have their foot on the gas pedal of sexual desire and attraction all the time
0:35:53 It’s just not necessarily the best thing to do if you’re a man engaged in a long-term relationship
0:35:56 Or you’re a man who’s caring for young children
0:35:59 It would be better to take some of that effort
0:36:05 They’d be spend, you know looking at the next door neighbor and you know looking at her shorts or whatever it is that you’re looking at
0:36:11 And instead using that effort to channel it toward caring for your children caring for your partner
0:36:16 So nice guys, don’t get laid as much
0:36:23 So nice guys might not get laid as much and when you look at short-term casual sexual behavior in particular
0:36:27 We tend to find that the ones who are more successful with that as a mating strategy
0:36:31 It tend to be men with higher levels of testosterone. There’s just no question about that
0:36:34 Nonetheless
0:36:40 Being somebody who’s willing to invest and willing to have long-term relationships with women generally is going to
0:36:43 Get you in a good position
0:36:49 To be able to find a partner and this is something that anybody can do to increase their value to women
0:36:55 And so you could be somebody who has low testosterone, right? You’re lacking these cues to
0:37:00 High genetic quality or even genetic compatibility, right? Like let’s say that your
0:37:05 Immune genes which is one thing that women also pick up on at high fertility as they tend to pick up on
0:37:13 Qualities related to somebody having different immune genes than themselves men who are lacking these things completely
0:37:21 Can can make themselves desirable to women simply by virtue of being the type of person who’s willing to invest in a committed
0:37:23 Relationship because it is something that women value
0:37:26 This is a bit of a side point and I haven’t seen this in any of your work
0:37:30 But it just came to mind because I just think of a conversation I had with one of my friends
0:37:39 Attraction for me is such a delicate thing. It’s almost it’s almost it’s when it is unconscious and I we often think of attractiveness is maybe
0:37:44 you know, this body part on the person is a certain shape or their face looks like this but
0:37:48 The older I’ve gotten and the more I look back on my life the more I’ve come to believe that there’s almost
0:37:55 Like a thousand tiny little micro expressions or something in the air which makes us attractive to someone else
0:37:57 And so when we’re giving people advice on how to be attractive
0:38:01 I wonder if most most of the advice is pretty futile because it’s deeper than that, right?
0:38:05 It’s so much deeper than that. Yeah, so I in you’re totally right about that
0:38:10 I mean the fact is attraction is idiosyncratic and finicky, right?
0:38:13 So all of us when we think about the things that we find sexy and attractive
0:38:18 There’s gonna be a lot of ways that you’re gonna disagree with other people, right?
0:38:23 Like you’re gonna think that somebody like is so sexy to you and other people might say, you know, she’s alright
0:38:30 But it doesn’t really do it for them and there is a there is an element to our attraction that is very person-specific
0:38:36 And idiosyncratic right and mate might there be some evolutionary roots behind all of that?
0:38:42 Maybe right so it could be for example that the kinds of qualities that you find, you know
0:38:49 Just really attractive in another person that that make you feel so attracted to them might be cues that they are a really compatible mate for you
0:38:53 And maybe that’s why you have a very sort of you specific response to that person
0:38:55 But there are also dimensions that are shared, right?
0:39:04 So we know for example that men tend to place a greater emphasis relative to women on cues related to physical attractiveness and that physical
0:39:10 Attractiveness tends to be related to things that have historically been related to fertility, right?
0:39:12 So for example having an hourglass body shape
0:39:19 We know that this is something that’s related to a woman’s level of sex hormones and that women with higher levels of estrogen
0:39:25 For example are more likely to put on fat around their butt and their thighs and less likely to put on fat around their waist
0:39:32 Relative to women with higher or lower levels of estrogen, right as estrogen levels decline when women age
0:39:39 Their bodies become more straight up and down than they do hourglass and this has to do with changes in estrogen and
0:39:44 And so we know that that’s something that men generally desire to a greater extent than women, right?
0:39:50 We also know that men tend to place a greater emphasis on cues related to youthfulness, right?
0:39:56 So the cues that are related to maturity in a face, that’s something that women tend to have a heightened preference for
0:40:00 So if somebody has sort of an older, you know an older face
0:40:03 They tend to be seen as more attractive like so like
0:40:10 50 year old George Clooney seems more attractive most women think that that looks more attractive than you know 25 year old
0:40:20 George Clooney and and we see that now because our brains have inherited this tendency to find cues related to wisdom and
0:40:23 status and
0:40:30 resource acquisition all of which come with greater age and women have in height have inherited that preference for those kinds of qualities
0:40:35 Because that would have given them a mating related advantage relative to preferring a more youthful face
0:40:38 Conversely for men
0:40:45 They would have been penalized if they had a preference for maturity in the face of a potential partner
0:40:49 Because if you like women who have signs of maturity and wisdom and resource acquisition
0:40:54 Ability you’d probably choose somebody who’s approaching menopause, right?
0:40:58 And that’s not going to lead to any gene transmission at all, right?
0:41:03 And so we tend to see that men have a heightened preference for cues related to youthfulness and faces
0:41:09 And so even though yes, there are differences or there are differences between individuals and there is some idiosyncrasy
0:41:16 That tends to characterize human-made choice. There are a lot of things that we can actually make some pretty strong predictions about too
0:41:22 So there are some overall themes that tend to characterize men’s and women’s partner preferences
0:41:24 Is it true that?
0:41:30 Men are less attractive to successful women. Is there any sort of evolutionary basis for that?
0:41:36 I do know that research finds that men don’t place as much of a priority on that that compared to women
0:41:41 But I don’t know that they penalize them exactly, right?
0:41:47 If you had somebody if you show a man a photograph of a woman who’s dressed like a CEO
0:41:53 And she’s gorgeous and you show a man a picture of a woman who’s dressed like a Burger King service, you know person
0:42:00 And she’s drop-dead gorgeous men are going to find her similarly attractive in both conditions
0:42:05 It doesn’t matter the woman can be doing it doesn’t matter what the woman is doing and there’s been research that shows this
0:42:09 they’ll show men and women photographs of people in different types of outfits and
0:42:15 The men’s ratings of how attractive the women are has just everything to do with how attractive the women are
0:42:20 For women rating men, it all depends on what they’re wearing, right?
0:42:26 do they show cues to resource access do they not show cues to resource access and women tend to
0:42:33 modulate how physically attractive they find men based on whether or not they have these cues related to provisioning ability
0:42:38 So I don’t know if there was a really attractive and there are a lot of really attractive
0:42:40 females in positions of power
0:42:45 Men will find them just as attractive as they do somebody who’s not in a position of power
0:42:50 Although they may be, you know, potentially less likely to choose them as a long-term mate
0:42:58 you know, if there’s issues related to power dynamics and that sort of thing that they don’t want to mess with what about jealousy and
0:43:00 specifically is
0:43:05 The term intersex of women being jealous of women men being jealous of men
0:43:12 You mentioned the second ago that if you know 60% of the college educated or college attendees or 70% of them are women and
0:43:15 There’s only a pool of 30% which are men
0:43:24 Isn’t there going to be a ton of competition amongst women and what direction does that competition travel in? Is it low status women?
0:43:27 Having competition with high status women or is it what is it?
0:43:34 I mean the competition when you have cases where there’s an asymmetrical sex ratio and like we do on college campuses
0:43:40 I mean women are very competitive amongst one another for access to the men that are available
0:43:44 And oftentimes the way that this like the form that this tends to take
0:43:51 Is that women become increasingly likely to be willing to do whatever men want of them in order to be chosen as a mate
0:43:56 And what we’ve tended to see on college campuses is because men are more oriented
0:44:01 Toward casual sex and non-committed relationships than women are
0:44:09 What we tend to see is that short-term hookups and casual sex tend to be very common on college campuses
0:44:14 And in part this is the result of the fact that women are competing for access to mates
0:44:21 And one of the ways that they can compete for access to mates is to be willing to do whatever it is that men want in terms of
0:44:23 providing, you know
0:44:27 The structure of their relationship and if men are only looking for casual sex
0:44:33 Even though women are tend to be more oriented toward long-term relationships. They’re going to be
0:44:37 More inclined to just give in to whatever it is that the men desire
0:44:44 As a means to be able to get a partner are women more competitive with beautiful women or women that are less
0:44:51 Stereotypically and socially considered beautiful. Oh women are more competitive with beautiful women
0:44:57 I mean, there’s just no question about that and the reason for this is that given that this is something that men desire in their partners
0:45:05 Um, this is the primary dimension by which women compete for access to partners, right? And so this is the big this is the big one
0:45:08 um, given men place a really
0:45:12 Pretty strong priority on physical attractiveness in their choice of partners
0:45:17 And in fact, one of the biggest predictors of a woman’s upward social mobility in the u.s
0:45:24 Is how physically attractive a woman is and in fact, that’s a bigger predictor of a woman’s upward mobility than her education level
0:45:30 Or even her socioeconomic status of origin when you say upward social mobility
0:45:33 What do you mean? I mean the ability to transcend the social class in which you were born
0:45:38 So if you’re somebody who was uh, you know working class or middle class or upper class
0:45:44 your ability to transcend those ranks of um, of you know, socioeconomic status is
0:45:48 More strongly predicted by physical attractiveness than a woman’s education level
0:45:53 And that’s like a tough thing to have to that’s a tough nut to you know, a tough nut to crack
0:45:56 tough pill to swallow
0:45:57 so
0:45:58 women are more
0:46:00 competitive against
0:46:03 beautiful women
0:46:09 In the lens of society and stereotypically yes, and and one of the ways that women compete against one another
0:46:18 Is by derogating their competitors right and derogating their competitors just meaning saying mean things about them or saying mean things to them
0:46:23 And a lot of times those mean things that they have to say have to do with a woman’s attractiveness
0:46:29 Right, they’ll try to downplay how attractive she is to other people by saying things like um, you know
0:46:33 Oh, she’s had a lot of work done right. That’s the thing that you’ll hear women say
0:46:37 About each other or two men about other women
0:46:43 And and this is something that’s done to try to manipulate other people’s perceptions of that woman’s value
0:46:47 But because attractiveness plays such an important role
0:46:51 In terms of a woman’s ability to successfully attract a romantic partner
0:46:55 Um, this is a dimension in which women are fiercely competitive
0:46:58 Even when they don’t want to say that they are and want to pretend that they’re not
0:47:05 Right, I think that the barbie movie was you know, sort of got at some of these kinds of issues and just this idea that women
0:47:11 Want to pretend like none of this stuff matters right and that it’s not that important and that we don’t value this stuff
0:47:18 But nonetheless, um, this is still a very important domain of competition for women always has been I think it probably always will be
0:47:20 Are women more likely to trust a
0:47:23 beautiful woman or a woman that is less
0:47:28 stereotypically beautiful because I was thinking about this um, this thing about
0:47:30 gay male shopping sales associates
0:47:36 It was a test that you did right? Yeah, so this was I have um, one of my former
0:47:41 This is digging deep. So um, this is one of my former students
0:47:45 Um, who was really into and so he’s a gay man
0:47:50 and just to set the stage for all of this he became really interested in the
0:47:57 Friendship that tends to form between gay men and straight women, which is actually, you know, it there’s a
0:47:59 This is something that happens everywhere
0:48:05 So having like the gay man and the straight woman friendship is something that’s not just, you know
0:48:06 Something that we see in Europe in the u.s
0:48:10 It is sort of cross-culturally ubiquitous and he was trying to understand this
0:48:15 relationship and one of the things that he noted in his research is that um
0:48:21 The people who tend to form friendships most frequently with gay men are beautiful women
0:48:27 It’s like attractive women who who are more competitive and potentially may perceive
0:48:33 more competition on the part of other women and they form these friendships because
0:48:38 Gay men can provide them with really important information
0:48:43 That’s relevant on the mating market that is not colored by one
0:48:48 Intersexual competition, right? So if you say do these pants make me look fat, right? Your
0:48:53 Your gay man friend isn’t going to tell you no, they look great
0:48:57 Even though they make you look terrible because they’re trying to send you out and look terrible
0:48:59 right, so there’s no
0:49:03 Like there’s no thread of competition in that relationship
0:49:09 And there’s also not the fear that this person’s just trying to get you in bed, right? And so there’s this there’s this really nice trust
0:49:13 um that women can have with um with gay men
0:49:16 This is your brain on birth control. Yes
0:49:19 Why did you choose to write this book?
0:49:25 I chose to write this book because I was on hormonal birth control for more than a decade of my life
0:49:30 And i’m a psychologist who studies women and women’s brains
0:49:37 And I had absolutely no idea that any of the things that the birth control pill does to the brain were happening to me
0:49:43 And so I went off of hormonal birth control after being on it for more than a decade straight
0:49:48 And when I went off it, I felt like I woke up. It was like I had this moment
0:49:52 It was about three months after I discontinued it
0:49:58 Where all of a sudden I realized that over the last three months like I had been feeling things more deeply
0:50:02 I’d been interested in sex in a way that I hadn’t been in a long time
0:50:10 I was exercising and going to the gym again. I was downloading new music onto my what was then an ipod
0:50:12 um for the first time I know
0:50:16 Yeah, it’s like it’s like it’s like an archaic iphone people
0:50:20 I was like downloading new music onto my phone and my ipod. I was
0:50:25 Cooking again. It was like I was just interested in pleasure. I had more energy
0:50:29 I was feeling things more deeply and I thought what is this?
0:50:34 And I was on it, you know during the time that I was on birth control
0:50:38 I never had any issues with it like I wasn’t one of those people who had
0:50:44 A negative mood related side effects and I didn’t know that I was experiencing any side effects at all
0:50:48 And it was only after I went off of it and started to realize how much more
0:50:56 Alive I felt that I started to dig into the research behind the way that hormonal birth control changes women
0:51:02 And it was then that I learned that people had been studying this in some cases for 30 years
0:51:07 On the way that hormonal birth control changes the way that women think feel and experience the world
0:51:13 And it was then that I knew that I had to share this information with other women because here I was as somebody who’s on the pill
0:51:21 Studies women studies women’s brains. I’d even published papers on the effects of women’s changing
0:51:27 Hormones over the cycle and the way that they influence women and it never even occurred to me
0:51:33 That my birth control was changing me and I knew that if I didn’t know that the birth control pill was changing me
0:51:35 That nobody else knew it either
0:51:40 And so that led me to dig into the science behind hormones hormonal birth control
0:51:47 And how that changes women. Um, and I put together that book to tell everybody the things that I learned
0:51:50 Pretty dangerous subject matter to take on
0:51:55 It can seem like a dangerous subject matter to take on and and you know if for good reason
0:51:58 Hormonal birth control and having a reliable way
0:52:06 To prevent pregnancy has been by far the biggest game changer that women have ever experienced, you know in history
0:52:12 There’s been nothing that has been more instrumental to women’s ability to be able to achieve
0:52:17 Political and economic independence for men than the birth control pill
0:52:22 Um, and because of this saying anything that is critical of the birth control pill
0:52:27 Um can be seem very dangerous, right because it’s like, um, oh, no, don’t say that too loudly
0:52:32 Or else they’re going to take our birth control away or oh, no, don’t say that too loudly
0:52:34 Like what else are we going to do?
0:52:39 Um, but this book was really important to me to be able to present to women
0:52:42 All of the different ways that hormones influence us
0:52:49 And the surprising ways that hormonal birth control can change who we are in the way that we experience the world
0:52:55 And then give that information to women so that way when they’re making decisions about whether to be on or off of
0:53:00 Hormonal birth control they have all the information about the trade-offs that they’re making
0:53:04 And this will allow them then to make decisions about whether or not to be on it
0:53:11 Depending on what’s going on in their own lives because everything that I’ve learned about the way that the birth control pill changes women
0:53:16 Means that the answer that you come to when you’re asking yourself the question
0:53:22 Do I go on this or do I not go on this is going to be very woman-specific right for some women
0:53:24 The decision is still going to be yes
0:53:28 I am willing to make these trade-offs and for other women the answer is going to be no
0:53:33 I am not willing to make these trade-offs and whether or not we make those sort of where we land on that
0:53:37 It’s going to differ depending on where we are in our life and and so on and so forth
0:53:44 And so it was really important to me to present this information as a way to really empower women to be able to make
0:53:47 Informed decisions about who they want to be
0:53:50 Right and how they want to regulate their fertility
0:53:55 What do you wish you were told on that day when you’ve first given that little packet of pills
0:54:00 What what do you think they if they were being completely honest with you and they knew what you know now
0:54:07 What is the sort of the list of things you would have said to a young Sarah about this decision to me?
0:54:13 The the one thing and then we can kind of dive down into what this all means, but the thing that
0:54:16 Would have really made a difference to me
0:54:19 Is that your hormones make you who you are?
0:54:23 And when you change your hormones you change who you are right?
0:54:29 So the birth control pill is going to change you it changes the version of yourself that your brain creates
0:54:33 And so if you’re going to be going on this you need to understand what that does
0:54:35 So this of course begs the question
0:54:37 What does it do?
0:54:42 Right and there are several things that the birth control pill does right and there’s at least
0:54:48 Five different things that the birth control but does to change who we are right it changes
0:54:51 Our sexual desire and who we’re attracted to
0:54:57 It changes our emotional states right it can affect our moods it can affect
0:55:02 Our ability to regulate and to manage stress
0:55:05 right it influences
0:55:07 sexual desire and sexual function
0:55:12 It influences our ability to be able to put on muscle mass
0:55:18 And affects our like nutrition and fitness goals right it affects all of us
0:55:26 And not knowing all of that and not knowing the potential risks of having side effects related to mental health
0:55:32 And libido all the way to everything you know to like who a person is attracted to
0:55:37 I wish I would have known that that probably would have you know impacted again
0:55:46 Decisions that I would have made about staying on it when I didn’t need to because there was there’s no reason to change who you are
0:55:53 Um, if you don’t need the contraceptive benefits, so on that first point then it changes who you’re attracted to your sexual desire
0:55:55 how
0:56:02 Well, so mechanistically the way that this happens has everything to do with the hormonal changes that are initiated by the birth control pill
0:56:08 And so just to talk about the mechanics of this first and then talking about the downstream effects of it next
0:56:13 Mechanically what goes on when you take hormonal birth control is you are suppressing
0:56:17 Ovulation right and the way that that that birth control does this
0:56:22 Is it does this by giving you a combination of hormones or a single hormone?
0:56:28 That tells your brain not to stimulate the ovaries and not to ovulate
0:56:33 Right and it does this by way of a synthetic progesterone called a progestin
0:56:38 And progestins which are in all forms of hormonal birth control
0:56:41 When they get picked up in the hypothalamus in the brain
0:56:49 That sends a signal that the brain should not stimulate the ovaries and should not lead to egg maturation and egg development
0:56:56 And when this happens when the brain is not stimulating the ovaries, this means the body is not producing estrogen
0:56:58 Right so estrogen levels are kept really low
0:57:05 And instead you get this daily dose of a synthetic progesterone or progestin that is supplanting that
0:57:12 Right many forms of hormonal birth control in addition to having that synthetic progesterone or progestin
0:57:17 That’s that turns off the brain’s communication with the ovaries
0:57:21 It also has a relatively low level of estrogen that is also added
0:57:27 So combination hormonal birth control pills contain progestin and a little bit of estrogen
0:57:29 But the estrogen levels are kept really low
0:57:34 And the progesterone levels or the progestin levels are the the dominant hormone
0:57:37 And you get that same hormonal message every day
0:57:40 Right when you do that
0:57:48 What happens when you flat line a woman’s own production of hormones and replace them with a daily dose of synthetic progesterone
0:57:52 This does a few things to sexual like women’s sexual psychology
0:57:59 The first thing that it does is it turns off that estrogen surge that you get right prior to ovulation
0:58:02 That’s related to a heightened preference for sex
0:58:09 You know it increase like that estrogen surge is related to an increased preference for testosterone markers and mates
0:58:14 Right, it’s related to women’s interest in sex. It’s related to sexual function
0:58:21 All of those things that increase right prior to ovulation that helped to promote reproduction sexual reproduction
0:58:25 All of those things are turned off on women on hormonal birth control
0:58:31 Because instead they’re getting the same daily message in which progestin is the dominant hormonal message
0:58:37 And estrogen levels are really low. So that’s the first thing that happens. They’re still horny, right? That’s all
0:58:42 Yes, I mean they still will have sex and they still want sex
0:58:48 But many women report experiencing a real decrease in their libido when they’re on hormonal birth control
0:58:52 That’s a very common response. Um, and the reason for this is twofold
0:58:59 One one of the things that’s a big factor in promoting women’s sexual desire and um and libido
0:59:03 Is estrogen and as estrogen is rising in the cycle
0:59:09 Because when estrogen is rising, this is a time in the cycle when sex can lead to conception
0:59:16 This is something that’s known to fuel the female sexual response. So the women’s sexual response and their sexual desire
0:59:20 Um all increases with estrogen levels across the cycle
0:59:24 So when you take hormonal birth control and that’s flat lined, which is what it does
0:59:30 This means that sexual desire is kept more constant across the cycle
0:59:33 So you do tend to find that women who are using hormonal birth control
0:59:38 tend to have fewer peaks and valleys in sexual desire than naturally cycling women do
0:59:41 But on the whole it tends to be lower
0:59:46 The other thing that happens on hormonal birth control that can lead to a decrease in libido
0:59:50 Is that all of those synthetic hormones that are in hormonal birth control
0:59:55 They tend to lead to an increase in what’s known as sex hormone binding globulin
0:59:57 Which is a real mouthful
1:00:04 But what it does is that this is that this is something that’s released by the liver and it binds up free testosterone
1:00:08 Right, so it binds up to testosterone and makes it inactive in the body
1:00:13 And testosterone even though we tend to think of it as like a guy thing and like this is a male hormone
1:00:18 It’s actually really important in terms of promoting women’s sexual desire
1:00:27 And women who are on hormonal birth control have levels of free testosterone that are about 60 lower than that of their naturally cycling peers
1:00:31 And so what this means again is that you have another
1:00:35 You know blow to women’s sexual desire when they’re on hormonal birth control
1:00:41 Those low levels of estrogen and then really low levels of free testosterone
1:00:46 Those two things work together to suppress sexual desire in women
1:00:49 And it can also change attraction
1:00:56 Because as we noted when women are approaching, you know ovulation their estrogen levels increase
1:01:03 And this is something that research finds to be related to women’s interest in testosterone markers in men
1:01:06 researchers more recently said
1:01:13 If that’s true, you know, what happens when you put women on hormonal birth control and estrogen levels are kept really low
1:01:19 And what they find is that low and behold women who are using hormonal birth control
1:01:25 Do seem to have a dampened preference for cues related to masculinity and testosterone
1:01:32 In partners relative to what’s observed in naturally cycling women, which specifically means that
1:01:38 A woman on birth control is less likely to be interested in a guy who is what?
1:01:42 A guy who has um really masculinized features
1:01:44 So for example, if you see a face
1:01:52 That has high levels of testosterone generally men will have like more deep set eyes. They tend to have a wider
1:01:54 jaw
1:01:58 And in the bodies they tend to have broader shoulders in a more narrow ways
1:02:02 Men with more deep voices men who have um
1:02:09 Cues to like behavioral cues to social dominance. That’s also something related to testosterone
1:02:13 And what the research finds is that women who are using hormonal birth control
1:02:20 Do prefer a less masculinized male face relative to what is observed in naturally cycling women
1:02:26 I mean, this is slightly concerning if you’re a man, right? Because if my partner’s on the pill and then she comes off the pill
1:02:31 She might not like me. Right. Yeah. No, and that’s like a that’s a real important question
1:02:33 I mean, it’s very provocative because what does that mean?
1:02:38 And there have been some research studies that have looked at that exact question
1:02:44 And one of the best studies that’s looked at this question is one that was a longitudinal study of married couples
1:02:50 They followed women who were using hormonal birth control at the time that they met their partner
1:02:56 And then they just followed them over time to see what would happen when women discontinued the pill
1:03:00 What happened when they discontinued was that there were real
1:03:05 Significant changes in how attracted women were to their partner
1:03:10 Um, depending on whether they chose them using hormonal birth control
1:03:15 But what was interesting about it is whether the women became more or less
1:03:19 Attracted to their partner depends on how attractive their partner was
1:03:24 And so what the researchers found is that women who were partnered to attractive men
1:03:26 When they went off hormonal birth control
1:03:35 They were more attracted to their partner and were more sexually attracted to their partner and more sexually satisfied within their relationship
1:03:37 Relative to where they were beforehand
1:03:42 But for women who were partnered with less attractive partners, they had the opposite effect
1:03:49 So when they went off hormonal birth control, they became less attracted to their partners and reported being less sexually satisfied
1:03:52 With their partners than where they were beforehand
1:03:56 And so this suggests that yes, it is a very real possibility that if you
1:04:02 Have a partner who chose you when you’re using hormonal birth control that this can change
1:04:05 Attraction within the context of the relationship
1:04:11 But whether that’s good or bad probably depends on a bunch of other dimensions that you need to take into effect
1:04:14 Including partners attractiveness
1:04:18 So if you’re not a very good looking guy, you probably want to stay on it run for the hills
1:04:25 No, I mean honestly, you know, it’s one of these things where you know, this is you can really quickly become alarmed with this
1:04:28 Right. The good news is this and that is
1:04:36 Most women who are who choose their partners when they are on hormonal birth control go off of hormonal birth control
1:04:40 And then there’s really not a huge shake-up in their relationship
1:04:46 Right. And the reason for this is the way that hormones influence us is they kind of nudge us a little bit one way or the other
1:04:50 Right. They kind of nudge us toward preferring this type of mate or that type of mate
1:04:55 It’s generally not these big sweeping changes where all of a sudden it’s like the wool comes off your eyes and you’re like
1:04:59 What in the world was I thinking right? These are little nudges
1:05:06 It’s just that for some people who are teetering on the edge of not necessarily being attracted to their partner
1:05:09 Going off hormonal birth control can tilt them out of attraction
1:05:14 right the same is true for I’ve talked to people who’ve had the experience of
1:05:20 Feeling like they were lesbian and all of a sudden they feel like they’re bisexual or women who are bisexual
1:05:25 And then they go off of the pill and all of a sudden they realize that they’re not interested in women anymore
1:05:27 I mean it’s like sexual orientation
1:05:33 Attraction of all sorts whether it’s you know, who you’re attracted to in terms of the sex you’re attracted to
1:05:39 Or who you’re attracted to in terms of the specific partners that you’re attracted to all of those things are influenced by sex hormones
1:05:43 And you know when sex hormones kind of nudge you this way or the other way
1:05:49 Depending on where you fall in that distribution of you know, sort of where you are in terms of sexual orientation
1:05:54 Or am I attracted to this mate or that mate those people who are on the tails
1:05:58 Can get nudged into a place that puts them into the uncomfortable situation
1:06:02 Where they realize that they’re no longer attracted to the person they chose on the pill
1:06:04 as a man
1:06:07 Is my attraction going to change if my partner comes off the pill
1:06:13 Um, so there is evidence that suggests that women are more attractive to men
1:06:18 When they’re naturally cycling relative to when they’re on hormonal birth control
1:06:25 And so chances are if you have a partner um, that you are attracted to when she’s on hormonal birth control when she goes off of it
1:06:28 It’s actually going to lead to an increase in attraction
1:06:33 So there’s a ton of research that finds that men find women sexiest
1:06:38 They think that they smell better. They think that they you know that they look more attractive
1:06:44 Men will tip women more um at you know at strip clubs
1:06:49 When the women are at high fertility across the cycle relative to low fertility across the cycle
1:06:53 Meaning that men are cued into estrogen levels and
1:06:56 sent
1:07:02 physical, you know visual appearance and even just the way that women act and move so they’ve done studies or they have
1:07:08 A men looking at women moving um seeing that just seeing their silhouettes move like behind a sheet
1:07:15 Right, so they’ll see women walking or dancing and they have them walking or dancing at high or low fertility across the cycle
1:07:20 And men find the women more attractive when they just see their outlines
1:07:24 Moving at high fertility compared to low fertility
1:07:27 So men’s brains are wired to pick up on estrogen cues
1:07:32 And this makes perfect sense when we consider the evolutionary process that designed us
1:07:35 Right because over the course of evolutionary history
1:07:38 Men who were really dialed in to women’s estrogen levels
1:07:43 They would have passed down more genes than men who didn’t really pay attention to those cues
1:07:50 Because estrogen across the lifespan is linked with fertility and estrogen across the cycle is linked with fertility
1:07:58 Right, it’s it’s linked with fertility no matter which way you look at it. And so men who are really cued into um estrogen levels
1:08:04 They would have done really well. Um, and so if you or a man your partner chose you and she was using hormonal birth control
1:08:07 And now all of a sudden she starts cycling again
1:08:11 My guess is that most men will experience an increase in attraction to their partner
1:08:18 Particularly at high fertility in the cycle because there’s so much research that suggests that this is exactly what should go on
1:08:19 Here’s a
1:08:24 Here’s one where I’ve put a few dots together. If my partner is on the birth control pill
1:08:32 Are my testosterone levels going to be lower? That’s a fascinating question. It’s one I’m super interested in
1:08:38 So I actually was just I just had this conversation not that long ago with my my graduate students in my lab
1:08:44 There is research that suggests that men’s testosterone levels increase in response to the scent
1:08:52 Of fertile women, right? So when women are at high fertility if men sniff t-shirts that they’re wearing or in one study
1:08:56 They actually had men sniffing the air that was being
1:09:03 Piped through a nebulizer that had a woman’s panty liner in it. That was either worn at high or low fertility. So
1:09:06 smelling women’s vaginal secretions
1:09:10 Both of those things have been shown in research to be related
1:09:18 To an increase in testosterone levels in men. So it increases men’s testosterone levels to be around these cues to high fertility
1:09:26 So what happens then when men are spending their time or are partnered with somebody who’s on hormonal birth control?
1:09:31 Right, so given that um estrogen levels can increase testosterone does a lack
1:09:34 Of estrogen presence
1:09:36 lead to lower levels of testosterone on average
1:09:43 And this is a question that we do not have a research answer to but it’s one that’s incredibly fascinating because here we are
1:09:46 right 2024 almost 2025
1:09:52 And we have a testosterone crisis on our hands, right men’s testosterone levels are much lower
1:09:56 And then what they used to be 50 or even 50 years ago
1:10:03 And it’s possible that one contributor to this is the fact that so many women are using hormonal birth control
1:10:08 And when you have on average lower levels of estrogen in the population
1:10:13 Might this then also predict lower levels of testosterone in men
1:10:18 And the answer to that is we don’t know another possibility with that by the way
1:10:22 And one that I think is so interesting is you know
1:10:26 We talked about kids and we talked about the fact that men’s testosterone levels
1:10:33 Will decrease when men are in long-term relationships, and then they’ll decrease a little bit more when men have children that they’re caring for
1:10:37 And another possibility for men’s lowered levels of testosterone
1:10:43 I mean in addition to all the you know trash that’s in the water and you know all the chemicals that were
1:10:51 That were exposed to is the fact that men are now responsible for more caregiving and you know than than they ever have been in history
1:10:54 Right with many women, you know being in the workforce
1:10:59 Men are having to also do more in the home than they ever did before and so it’s also possible
1:11:05 That some of the differences that we see in testosterone levels that have changed over time may be the result of men
1:11:08 Their body’s actually decreasing testosterone
1:11:15 Production in response to their changing roles in the home, which is also sort of a fascinating possibility
1:11:17 Are you at all concerned that there’ll be a bit of a
1:11:21 Population collapse if we don’t start having more kids
1:11:26 Gosh, you know, I have thought about that. I don’t I can’t spend
1:11:28 You know, it’s like if you talk about something like that
1:11:33 It almost sounds like like you can take the next step and say that it’s everybody’s you know
1:11:36 Obligation to reproduce and that women need to be having more babies
1:11:39 and so I I hasten like
1:11:47 If I say yes, I do think about that I hasten to add that that is you know, not women’s responsibility
1:11:51 To make sure that they’re having babies, but I do wonder what’s going to happen
1:11:58 You know because people are not reproducing the way that they used to and and there’s a lot of people now who are choosing
1:12:03 Not to have children at all. And so what is that going to do? I I have no idea
1:12:06 But I I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be good
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1:14:05 Just for a second because I’ve had so many conversations on this podcast about
1:14:08 men’s issues in the state of the
1:14:11 The world for men right now. It’s quite an interesting
1:14:14 moment with like the depression statistics and
1:14:16 suicidality and
1:14:18 sexlessness and all these things
1:14:22 And I don’t know if you’ve even got an answer to this question
1:14:24 but
1:14:26 What advice would have you got a son?
1:14:27 I do
1:14:31 What advice do you give to a young man? How old is he?
1:14:33 He’s he’s 15. He’s 15 perfect
1:14:38 He’s like right at the age where he’s just about to figure out what it is to be a man
1:14:39 Right
1:14:43 What advice are you giving to him about like what is a good man in the modern world?
1:14:50 Is it okay to be masculine like yeah, yeah, no, I think yes. I think that there’s I think there’s room for masculinity
1:14:52 like I and honestly
1:14:58 Sex demands it. I mean, I so I teach a class called evolution sex in the brain
1:15:02 And one of the things that we talk about is just how
1:15:05 problematic
1:15:09 You know sex has become because there’s so much of a
1:15:14 Dance with like seduction, you know, it’s like everybody knows when
1:15:21 Sort of, you know, masculinity has gone too far. It’s like, you know, when you see it when somebody is, you know
1:15:23 Like touching a woman when she’s
1:15:27 Asking not to be or harassing somebody. It’s like we all know what that looks like
1:15:31 But then there’s also, you know, seduction requires
1:15:35 Like, I mean the whole idea of seduction is this idea that men
1:15:42 Um can lead women into sexuality and so trying to have a conversation with my son
1:15:50 About, you know, it’s like everything has to you know, he has to make sure that if he’s um interacting with girls that there is consent
1:15:55 And that that is consensual any sort of a physical touch that goes on but at the same time
1:15:58 You know, like I would never
1:16:00 at the
1:16:02 You know, I can imagine
1:16:09 Thinking, you know, is it okay if I touch your breast, you know, like like I can’t imagine that
1:16:16 I can’t imagine living in that world. I mean, it’s it’s a really tricky world to be in being a male is hard
1:16:20 I mean, that’s like a hard line to toe because on the one hand you’re
1:16:28 You know, you don’t want to do something that’s obviously going to be detrimental or hurtful to a woman or violate her in some way
1:16:35 But on the other hand, you know, you can go too far with the permissions in a way that can be really bad for sex
1:16:42 And because attraction and sexual desire is all about sort of the push and the pull of the masculine and the feminine
1:16:49 But also if you’re if you’re a low status male like I was at the start of my career when I’m 18 no money
1:16:51 Like working in a call center
1:16:54 You know, not really any friends
1:16:58 Can’t can barely well couldn’t provide for myself let alone anybody else right
1:17:04 And in terms of dating dynamics, we often hear that the like top 10 percent of men are pretty much having all the fun
1:17:08 Right. Yeah, that’s probably true. And then the bottom 50 percent of men
1:17:13 Haven’t had sex for like a year or something crazy like that. So if you’re in that bottom 50 percent of men
1:17:19 But that’s not the case going the other way is it because it’s much easier for a woman to acquire sex if she sought
1:17:23 Sort it. I mean you did studies on this, right? Well, yeah, I mean if a woman is looking for sex
1:17:26 It’s not hard to find like any woman who is
1:17:31 Listening to this right now if she decided to go and have sex tonight
1:17:34 She’d probably be able to find a taker
1:17:39 What was the study of the actor the beautiful actor on a campus? Oh, yes. No, that’s a wonderful study
1:17:44 So that’s a classic social psychology study that was done at the university of florida a number of years ago
1:17:46 what the researchers did is they had
1:17:50 A male and female model so an really attractive person
1:17:56 Approach strangers on campus and they would introduce themselves. They would just say hello
1:18:01 I’ve been noticing you around campus and find you very attractive
1:18:06 And after they made this introduction, they would then follow this with one of three requests
1:18:09 It would either be would you like to go on a date with me?
1:18:14 Would you like to go back to my apartment with me or would you like to go and have sex with me?
1:18:20 Right, and then they simply made note of what the person said, right? Did they say yes or did they say no?
1:18:26 And what they found was that for both men and women 50 percent agreed to the date, right?
1:18:32 So I’ve been noticing around campus. I find you very attractive. Would you go on a date with me? 50 percent of men 50 percent of women said yes
1:18:37 After that the sex is diverged in pretty pretty marked ways
1:18:44 Right, what they found is that very few women almost zero women said yes to go back to the apartment with the person
1:18:49 And a full zero percent of women said that they would go back and have sex with the person
1:18:52 This isn’t what they found for men, right for men
1:18:59 What they found was that men were more likely to agree to go back to somebody’s apartment with them than they were to the date
1:19:05 And men were most likely to agree to just have sex almost 80 percent of men agreed
1:19:09 Yeah, I would love to go and have sex with you and the men who said no
1:19:16 Usually we’re in a relationship, right or noted that like their parents were in town and they wouldn’t be able to go back to their apartment
1:19:18 and so
1:19:26 This goes to show some real differences when it comes to men’s and women’s sort of tendency towards sexual opportunism
1:19:29 And the fact is, you know historically
1:19:36 Women have had huge costs related to sexual behavior just simply because women to reproduce
1:19:42 Have a minimum investment of nine months time in pregnancy and then subsequent time spent breastfeeding
1:19:52 Right and so for women who are sexually opportunistic in other words willingness to consent to sex without strings or investment
1:19:56 Women would have been penalized for that right because throughout most of our evolutionary history
1:20:03 That could result in a pregnancy and it could result in a pregnancy for which you have no one to help co-invest
1:20:05 For men on the other hand
1:20:09 Being willing to consent to sex without commitment
1:20:11 That’s an evolutionary win
1:20:17 Right, that’s a potential gene transmission opportunity because short-term sex of course can lead to pregnancy
1:20:23 And if there is no expectation of further investment, it’s very low cost
1:20:32 Right, so the costs and benefits related to short-term casual sex are vastly different depending on whether or not you have a male or female body
1:20:37 So if your son comes home one day and says mum listen, I’ve tried my best
1:20:40 Um, I can’t seem to persuade a woman to give me a chance
1:20:46 Right, then I would say go to the gym and be a nice guy. Well, I mean honestly, you know
1:20:51 Be a nice guy for a nice guy, well, no, well, no, but a nice guy can can form relationships
1:20:53 Right, if he’s looking for a girlfriend
1:20:58 I think one of the ways that you can get a girlfriend is by being willing to can being willing to
1:21:03 Invest in a woman like if you’re a jerk, you know, you’re gonna have a harder time
1:21:06 Um, even if you’re an attractive jerk if you were like
1:21:10 An attractive nice guy, you’d probably do better as long as you’re not too nice, right?
1:21:14 Because that might give off like low testosterone cues. I’m not really sure but these like
1:21:20 Bad boys, they seem to get a lot of this sort of sexual attention, right?
1:21:24 What is that about? But that’s but that’s like despite the fact that they’re bad boys
1:21:28 I mean, so so it depends on how we’re defining bad boys. Okay. So kind of arrogant a little bit
1:21:35 Yeah, yeah, so a lot of those are cues related to testosterone, right? So having you know being risk tolerant
1:21:38 So being willing to do things that are really risky
1:21:44 And you know and and being a little bit arrogant because you know, you’re always going to succeed
1:21:50 I mean, those are cues related to status and related to sometimes uh testosterone levels
1:21:54 Right and so we know that women like both of these things and their partners
1:22:00 And so because of that those men will tend to do pretty well on the mating market for for men who um,
1:22:03 You know, don’t have those qualities
1:22:05 So so men who are not, you know
1:22:15 Risk seeking and are not arrogant. Um, that’s not necessarily going to not do them favors unless
1:22:19 That also is you know an indicator that they have
1:22:24 Other qualities that aren’t working for them. You can have somebody who’s very successful
1:22:29 Right and has high testosterone. Who’s not a jerk, right? And that guy will do pretty well
1:22:34 Why would you tell your son to go to the gym? I would tell my son to go to the gym because um,
1:22:38 It’s like one way that you can naturally increase your testosterone levels is by building muscle
1:22:41 And also another thing that that does
1:22:46 Um, is that muscle mass is related to reductions in anxiety
1:22:49 And the reason for this is because if you’re a big dude
1:22:52 It means that you’re going to be able to protect yourself
1:22:58 And so your brain makes the adjustment and it makes you more confident and less anxious when you have um
1:23:04 When you have some muscle mass and so I would say go and do those things and then also doing the things that you can
1:23:08 To get access to resources and status, right? So study
1:23:18 And work hard. Um, because ultimately people who do that tend to do well and people um, who do well financially and do well in terms of
1:23:20 You know ascending the status hierarchy
1:23:25 They tend to also do well in the mating market if they’re men. Have you got a daughter?
1:23:28 I sure do your daughter comes home. Mom. I’ve tried my best
1:23:31 And no one’s interested
1:23:37 Right. Yeah. No. So for my daughter, then I would say then you just need you need to wait
1:23:42 Right. You’re probably you are probably in the wrong. You are probably in the wrong mating pool
1:23:48 Um, would be my would be my advice to her. Why? Um, my advisor. Well because
1:23:53 So a few things so many of the things that women, um
1:23:59 Sort of possess that men desire in their choice of partners. Um, are
1:24:08 Things that women don’t have that much control over right? It’s like a woman’s like youth and and reproductive value and these things related to fertility
1:24:13 Women tend to hate the gym. I mean, I guess I might tell her to hit the I might tell her to hit the gym
1:24:14 I’d probably make her feel better
1:24:20 But I don’t think that I would tell her like, you know, you should probably go and get your hair done and
1:24:22 you know, um
1:24:27 I’m trying to think. Oh, well go off the birth control pill. So that if she was on the birth control pill, but she is not
1:24:31 Um, but I’m just thinking in an abstract way
1:24:35 Like what I would what I would tell her like things that women can do to increase their attractiveness to men
1:24:43 I mean, it’s like, okay. Go be more beautiful. Like what are you gonna say? Um, and so like I said my
1:24:47 Real advice if my daughter said this would I would say you
1:24:49 Like probably need a different pool of mates
1:24:52 What if she was 35 if she was 35?
1:24:57 Good question. So if she was 35, what would I recommend? Like
1:25:05 Is this like what I would actually recommend to my daughter or do you are you trying to get at like what should a woman do?
1:25:11 Because here’s here’s I have two different answers, right? So if a woman is just like looking for if you want me to write
1:25:17 A pamphlet called 35 year old woman here are the things you need to do to find a partner
1:25:23 I mean, it would have a whole list of unsavory like things that you know, I mean, it would be like
1:25:29 Consider Botox men are attracted to women who have features related to youth and fertility
1:25:33 consider having a
1:25:39 Brazilian butt lift because men are also interested in this. Why don’t you also consider, you know, um,
1:25:45 Spending time on your hair and makeup, but I don’t think I would write that book
1:25:49 You know, that’s not the advice that I that’s not the advice that I would I would give
1:25:55 Do men find confidence attractive in women because this is I was thinking about this as you’re speaking because
1:26:00 I can think of many people that I know many women and men but many women that I know that are
1:26:05 um, you know, maybe you know approaching their forties and they’re beautiful
1:26:09 But they’re single and they don’t want to be single
1:26:15 And it’s not necessarily it’s not necessarily a physical thing. It appears, but it seems to be more of like a self-esteem
1:26:22 confidence thing and I can see how in men confidence matters like if they’re stood up straight and they exert those like
1:26:27 Those signals of dominance or not dominance, but like a high status, right? That’d be attractive
1:26:31 Is it the same and women are men attracted to like confident women? Yes or no
1:26:36 So women who are seen as more confident like that is seen as more attractive, for example
1:26:42 Like somebody who has some self assurance of themselves instead of you know, sort of like kicking their toe on the ground
1:26:46 Generally, um, people find that attractive both men and women
1:26:50 But the degree to which that is prioritized is hugely different between the sexes
1:26:58 And if you are a woman and you sort of go out and exude those cues related to like social dominance, for example
1:27:00 and social status
1:27:06 That’s not going to necessarily get you a mate. And in some cases it might actually detract from your
1:27:13 attractiveness as a mate because people seem to view women who are in positions of power
1:27:17 more negatively than how they perceive men
1:27:20 and women who are in positions of power, they’re sort of a
1:27:29 There’s a there’s definitely a double standard there and there and this is something that has been fairly well studied
1:27:32 Where they find that there’s nobody more polarizing
1:27:38 In the world than powerful women. So for example, you know, somebody like Kamala Harris who is running for president
1:27:42 People seem to either really love her or really hate her
1:27:46 So there’s this polarization that happens with powerful women
1:27:50 this happens for anybody who’s run for any political office that is a female
1:27:56 you get these sorts of issues and women who are confident and um
1:28:04 and uh, direct and assertive are seen as being cold and and you know, like we call girls bossy
1:28:07 Right when they have these kinds of qualities, whereas
1:28:11 If it’s a boy or men it’s like leadership potential
1:28:16 And so there is a double standard in how we tend to perceive this and it’s not, you know
1:28:18 over the course of evolutionary history
1:28:24 Women did well when they chose um high status men, right? That would have preferred that would have given them
1:28:27 preferential access to resources for themselves and their children
1:28:36 We don’t get that same kind of a pattern for men choosing women, right? Men who chose women who were, you know, high in status and um
1:28:39 You know socially dominant
1:28:46 That doesn’t necessarily translate into anything that’s going to correspond to increased reproductive success a bit of a
1:28:49 sort of correlated but uncorrelated point
1:28:57 People talk about daddy issues and in your work. I’ve kind of seen hints of an explanation for daddy issues
1:29:00 I if my father isn’t around that has a big impact on who I am
1:29:06 Is there any truth to this idea that people can have daddy issues? Yeah, no, there absolutely is and so
1:29:14 And when I when I say this, you know daddy issues just simply referring to the fact that women whose fathers are not invested in them
1:29:21 Or absent during childhood that these women will tend to have more unrestricted or precocious sexual development and sexual behavior
1:29:25 Relative to what we see in women who grow up with investing dads
1:29:29 So just to give you an example of some research that’s been done looking at this
1:29:34 Research finds that women who grow up in a household without an investing dad
1:29:41 So dad is either gone or dad is there but you know in name only so he’s not really investing in in
1:29:46 In the family those women go into puberty significantly earlier
1:29:50 Then do girls who grow up in two-parent homes with investing fathers?
1:29:54 They also tend to have an earlier age at which they begin having sex
1:29:57 Relative to women who have two dads in the home
1:30:01 And they tend to have a greater number of sexual partners sort of over time
1:30:06 Relative to girls who grow up with two parents in the home. Wouldn’t they then also go into menopause earlier?
1:30:13 That’s a really great question. And there is some evidence that suggests that there may be a decrease in ovarian reserve
1:30:17 That might go on but there hasn’t been anything linking that to menopause just yet
1:30:24 Which is the amount of eggs they have in their ovaries. What role does the father play on our sexual preferences and decision making?
1:30:26 So if my if my dad
1:30:32 Am I taking as a woman? Do I take cues on what a good partner is from looking at my dad?
1:30:35 I have not seen any research that has looked at that
1:30:41 I’ve seen some research looking at whether women prefer partners who are kind of similar to their dads
1:30:44 And they do seem to
1:30:47 And which is interesting in its own right
1:30:51 But I do not know anything about
1:30:52 men
1:30:59 Like and their preferences and whether or not their sons then tend to emulate those preferences. That’s an interesting question
1:31:07 So on the on the subject of stress, what is the impact that the birth control pill has on how a woman experiences stress?
1:31:14 Well, the research finds that when women are on hormonal birth control that they have a blunted cortisol response to stress
1:31:16 And cortisol is a stress hormone, right?
1:31:23 And we all know it as this bad guy, right this idea like, oh no high cortisol and that’s you know
1:31:28 Seen as something that’s bad because when you experience high levels of cortisol for a long period of time
1:31:33 It actually is bad, right? So chronic stress causes all kinds of problems, right?
1:31:36 It makes you put on visceral fat. So it makes you put on belly fat
1:31:40 It um dumps fat and blood into your bloodstream
1:31:45 In ways that can raise your triglycerides and put you at a greater risk for heart and cardiovascular problems
1:31:48 It’s not good
1:31:49 but
1:31:55 Having dynamic spikes in cortisol in response to stressful events is actually incredibly adaptive
1:31:59 Um, and it’s something that allows us to be able to regulate
1:32:05 Manage and cope with stress, right? There’s a reason we experience cortisol in response to stress
1:32:09 And what what research finds is that for women who are using hormonal birth control
1:32:15 That you get a no, you know, a blunted or absent cortisol response to stress
1:32:20 And this is the sort of thing that we tend to see in people who’ve experienced ptsd
1:32:26 Or trauma because people who’ve experienced ptsd and trauma their stress responses
1:32:30 Get shut down by their bodies because they’ve experienced so much stress
1:32:37 That their body is like no more cortisol release for you because cortisol in the long term is not good, right?
1:32:39 It is it is detrimental to the body
1:32:41 And so what research finds
1:32:47 Is that people with ptsd and people who’ve had trauma they have a blunted or absent cortisol response to stress
1:32:53 Because their body just doesn’t allow them to release it anymore because it’s chronically being released
1:32:55 And we see the same thing in women who are using hormonal birth control
1:32:59 So they experience a blunted or absent cortisol response to stress
1:33:05 And this is something that can lead to dysregulated responses in everything ranging from their immune system
1:33:13 Which is regulated in part by cortisol because that helps to regulate the inflammatory response that we have both the stress and also injury
1:33:21 And it can lead to things like our ability to regulate our emotional responses because we know that cortisol has something to do with that as well
1:33:27 And we know from so much research now that women who are on hormonal birth control that they have
1:33:34 dysregulations in in emotional responses oftentimes with these women being at an increased risk for developing
1:33:38 Things like anxiety and depression, right?
1:33:43 And this may in part have something to do with the differences that we have in cortisol
1:33:50 In your book you mentioned that in a study in demarc women on the pill were 50 percent more likely to be diagnosed with depression
1:33:54 Within six months of starting the pill compared to naturally cycling women
1:34:01 And researchers showed that women who were on the pill were two times as likely to have attempted suicide than naturally cycling women
1:34:09 Yeah, it’s pretty stark. I mean there are some real risk factors that come up when women are using hormonal birth control
1:34:14 And these are things that oftentimes are swept under the rug by their doctors who are prescribing it
1:34:17 Right, the fact is especially for teenage girls
1:34:20 Going on hormonal birth control can
1:34:24 significantly increase your risk of developing a mental health disorder
1:34:29 And significantly increase your risk of attempting or being successful at suicide
1:34:32 And this is something that’s absolutely
1:34:38 Necessary especially for mothers of young girls and young girls who are being put on these pills
1:34:45 Because they’re the ones who asymmetrically bear the burden of the increased risk of mental health related problems
1:34:50 And the thing about these girls is that we don’t know whether or not these patterns are reversible
1:34:57 Because the teenage brain is still developing and to go into a teenage brain that’s still developing
1:35:05 And suppress normal hormonal variation that occurs across the cycle and instead replace it with synthetic hormones
1:35:08 We have no idea what this does to brain development
1:35:14 And this is an important question because brain development that occurs during the pubertal transition
1:35:20 That is when the brain is remodeling itself from its child version of itself into the grown-up version of itself
1:35:24 That remodeling job is being coordinated by sex hormones
1:35:27 And so the idea that we’re going to replace that, you know
1:35:35 These these naturally occurring variation in sex hormones and replace it with synthetics and that is not going to have any impact on brain development
1:35:42 Doesn’t seem realistic. How old is your daughter? She’s 17 17. So she’s right. She’s she’s at the age now
1:35:45 Where she’s making the decision you mentioned Ellie. She’s not on birth control. Yes
1:35:49 How did you feel when it came time to make that decision? I mean for me
1:35:56 It’s all about like what, you know weighing the risks and the benefits and so for me the first, you know
1:36:02 Risk and benefit question is is there a risk that this person is going to get pregnant, right?
1:36:05 And so if she’s not in a sexual relationship, I don’t have to worry about it
1:36:08 It’s a no-brainer. You’re not going on hormonal birth control
1:36:11 If she is sexually active then the question becomes
1:36:15 Is there a way that we can protect her from pregnancy?
1:36:19 That doesn’t introduce these exogenous hormones these synthetic hormones
1:36:25 That are going to shut down her own hormone production and potentially impact brain development
1:36:29 Thankfully, there are options. Um, so there’s not great
1:36:32 Right and they’re not for everyone but for example
1:36:35 Um, there’s a copper iud
1:36:42 Which is an intrauterine device that um that prevents pregnancy without changing women’s sex hormones
1:36:48 And so I think that’s a really good option for sexually active teenagers. Is that the coil? Yes. It’s the coil
1:36:51 It’s the it’s the um, it’s the copper coil because there’s two different types of coils
1:36:55 Where does that go? It goes up in the vagina. It goes up um into the cervix
1:36:59 Okay, and it sits there for a long time sits there for a long time sits there for like five years
1:37:02 Is how long it can stay in there without having to be replaced?
1:37:07 And it’s a really great option um for women to be able to protect themselves without having to think about it
1:37:13 Right, and that’s really important when we’re talking about teenagers because a lot of times they don’t make the best decisions
1:37:17 Um, their frontal lobes are not done done developing and because of this
1:37:24 They don’t always plan and they don’t always think things clearly, you know, think think things through clearly
1:37:27 Um, and so for a teenager who’s not necessarily going to be
1:37:34 All that on top of things when it comes to using things like condoms, which is a barrier method that requires that you actually use the condom
1:37:37 Right, you can’t just have them
1:37:41 And then protect yourself from pregnancy or something like the fertility awareness method
1:37:46 Which is where women keep track of where they are in their cycle and then um, you know
1:37:52 And then uh use or abstain from sex or use a barrier method when they’re at high fertility
1:37:55 And then they don’t have to worry about it at low fertility
1:38:01 I don’t necessarily recommend those highly for teenagers if possible. Just because it requires a lot of thought
1:38:05 And like I said teenagers aren’t always great at thinking through things
1:38:10 What about that thing that goes in the arm a lot of the girls in my school when I was in secondary school
1:38:16 We’re getting the little thing in their arm. Yeah, so that is the implant. So that’s um here in the u.s
1:38:22 The one that people are on is called nexplanon and that gives a saint it gives a daily dose of a um synthetic
1:38:29 Progesterone or a progestin and that daily dose of that hormone is of course keeping the brain from stimulating the ovaries
1:38:34 And so it’s keeping hormones flatlined and so that is something that yes is incredibly effective
1:38:37 And yes, it is brainless because you don’t have to think about it
1:38:42 Which is great because the best birth control is birth control. They don’t have to think about
1:38:48 But you’re getting a daily dose of this hormone that’s shutting off your ovulation
1:38:53 And so you’re going to experience all of the changes that women experience when using hormonal birth control
1:38:58 When you’re using that right it can change who you’re attracted to it can change your sex drive
1:38:59 It can change your mood
1:39:02 It can change your ability to regulate your stress response
1:39:06 It can change your ability to put on muscle mass from working out. There’s some new research
1:39:08 that finds that
1:39:12 women who are using hormonal birth control who are doing the exact same
1:39:16 exercises as women who are naturally cycling over a 12 week period
1:39:22 Right put on less muscle mass and had lower levels of testosterone relative to what you see in the women
1:39:27 Who are naturally cycling and of course that’s what they find because women who are
1:39:31 Using hormonal birth control their testosterone levels are kept suppressed
1:39:33 And this is one of the big stimulators that we know
1:39:39 Of muscle growth and same with am pk levels are tend to be high when estrogen is high
1:39:42 And that’s also something that promotes much muscle growth
1:39:47 And that’s lower in women who are using hormonal birth control relative to natural cyclers
1:39:51 And so, you know, it also can influence that it influences
1:39:55 everything and so the idea that
1:39:56 you know
1:39:58 hormonal birth control
1:39:59 is
1:40:02 The answer for women when it comes to regulating fertility
1:40:05 I just don’t think that it is, you know
1:40:10 It’s an answer and it’s one that we need to we need to make sure all women have access to it who need it
1:40:16 But you know my whole message with everything with my book and everything else has always been
1:40:22 We need more answers like we need better answers and it seems like things might be moving in that way
1:40:25 there’s more research being done on things um that you know
1:40:32 Male contraception and not just male hormonal contraception because I don’t think that’s the answer either because the idea of
1:40:37 Suppressing men’s hormone production to such an extent that they no longer produce viable sperm
1:40:44 Which is how they’re looking at it. By the way, I don’t think that’s the answer. That’s just shifting men would sign up
1:40:48 It’s like crazy. I know I don’t know. I don’t think men would sign up either. I’m like, who would take this?
1:40:50 Yeah, I like this is madness
1:40:55 But that’s what they’re working on and it just shifts the problem. You know it shifts it onto men
1:41:01 But there are some really interesting things that are happening in terms of like for example, there’s um
1:41:03 Can I ask you a question on that? Do you think that if
1:41:08 The shoe was on the other foot and men had to take the pill. So suddenly there was a thing that came out
1:41:13 It’s like, oh, you’re a man and you can take a pill. It messes with your hormones a little bit. They’re gonna be like
1:41:16 artificially, um replaced with this pill
1:41:19 Do you think men would take it? No
1:41:26 No, I don’t I think some men would but do I think most men would take that? Absolutely not. No way
1:41:32 No way, Jose. I wouldn’t take it. I’m just gonna be honest. Yeah. No, I don’t know any but I honestly
1:41:37 I don’t know any men who’d say yeah sign me up for that. I mean the fact is like if you look
1:41:42 So why do women take it women take it because we have no choice. Okay, because you’re gonna bother
1:41:44 It’s like we’re the ones who get stuck with the pregnancy
1:41:49 You know for men their other option like if they say no, I’m not gonna take this
1:41:53 Is that their partner will be on the pill? But then if the partner’s not on the pill either
1:41:58 Yeah, the partner’s not on the pill then um, you know, then they’ve got to figure something else out
1:42:02 But a lot of times what ends up happening is the women end up going on the pill
1:42:06 And it’s because for women pregnancy is so costly
1:42:12 That it’s hard for us not to be the ones who are bearing the the price of birth control because the fact is
1:42:19 We’re always the one who who end up ultimately having to pay the largest cost your daughter. She’s 17 years old
1:42:25 You said that when you went on the birth control pill, it changed you and after you came off it you quote and quote woke up
1:42:31 So, of course, you’re presumably you’re scared if you’re losing changing your daughter, right? Well, yeah
1:42:35 I mean under your analogy should be asleep
1:42:37 Right. Yeah
1:42:44 Yeah, no, I don’t want I don’t want that and I also especially don’t want that when she’s during this period in her life when her brain is still developing
1:42:46 Because like I said, there has been
1:42:55 Hardly any research that has looked at what happens to brain development when you introduce synthetic sex hormones to women when their brains are developing
1:43:01 And the research that does exist looking at this question doesn’t paint a very good picture of it
1:43:04 It looks like it can put women on a long-term risk of
1:43:09 Developing major depressive disorder over the course of their lifetime even after they’ve gone off of it
1:43:12 And so no, I don’t you know
1:43:15 The idea of having my daughter on hormonal birth control is not
1:43:22 Something that I want to have happen, especially when her brain is developing. She texts you now and says I’m just gonna start taking the pill mom
1:43:26 How’d you feel? How would I feel? I would feel like if that was the best
1:43:33 I mean if if if she really it couldn’t tolerate the the iud the the copper iud that doesn’t have the hormonal side effects
1:43:35 Then I would say better that than pregnant
1:43:42 The fact is teenage pregnancy is one of the biggest predictors of a woman ending up in poverty
1:43:47 And that’s a much bigger deal than whether or not a woman feels like she’s awake or asleep
1:43:55 And so sadly that’s where we are and it’s my hope that as we move forward and the more that we start to recognize
1:43:58 That birth control as an issue for women hasn’t been solved
1:44:03 Right and that we need more options besides just changing women’s hormones
1:44:08 It’s my hope that things are going to get better and that we push for more options. I mean, I think that
1:44:11 It’s so long been considered, you know
1:44:14 We think that birth control is solved
1:44:18 And and it’s not and so I’m hoping that there’s going to be more options
1:44:25 And so that way, you know later on my daughter’s daughters and her daughter’s daughter’s daughters have more things to choose from than just
1:44:29 change me
1:44:32 Or you know come at risk of a teenage pregnancy
1:44:38 What kind of emails do you get like what’s the most popular email you get from just the world?
1:44:42 The most popular email I get is thank you. I knew that this was going on
1:44:45 I had absolutely no language to describe it
1:44:51 You nailed it. That’s what I get the most and it’s not like you nailed it. Sarah. Wow. You wrote such a great book
1:44:54 But instead I knew that this had to be happening to me
1:45:01 You know, I knew that I didn’t feel the same and and this is it like of course of course it happened
1:45:05 I mean, I think for a lot of people we have a blind spot with the birth control pill
1:45:06 I mean it’s like
1:45:12 Almost everybody goes on it and we don’t think about the fact that our hormones are an important part of what our brain uses
1:45:14 To create the experience of being who we are
1:45:17 Right. And so we’re very cavalier and just giving it to people
1:45:21 We’re like, oh, well, you should go on it for this and oh, you’ve got some acne
1:45:25 You should go on it too and oh your period sometimes you spot between your periods
1:45:30 You should go on the birth control pill. It’s like we don’t think about the fact that when we’re making those changes
1:45:32 that’s changing who women are
1:45:34 and um
1:45:39 Yeah, so the most frequent thing that I get is like thank you for making me myself again
1:45:44 Thank you for helping identify what I knew was going on when I was on it
1:45:47 And I didn’t have the words to describe it
1:45:54 Yeah, and I I I say this and I touch on the subject in particular because I’ve got so many friends who were in a relationship
1:46:00 Where their partner in their 20s turned around to them and said I’m not interested in sex anymore or just their libido fell off a cliff
1:46:03 And they ultimately broke up
1:46:07 And they never really had an answer for it. They just thought, you know, that person’s broken or that, you know
1:46:12 Women just don’t like sex. It’s funny because when my partner turned around to me that night in bed and said to me
1:46:14 I remember where I was, I was in Jamaica
1:46:18 This sounds super weird. I was in Bob Marley’s old house. Oh my gosh. I love it
1:46:24 That’s what they told me it was anyway. Maybe that was just a sales pitch. She didn’t pay extra for that hotel
1:46:27 but they told me I was in Bob Marley’s old house and um
1:46:30 Yeah, she turned around to me in bed and she said
1:46:33 I’m not interested in sex
1:46:35 But loads of women
1:46:38 On it don’t aren’t interested in sex either. I spoke to my friends. They’re not interested either
1:46:42 And that was like the the pitch of it and I remember thinking as a man, obviously
1:46:46 You just feel really emasculated by it because you’re like it must be something to do with me. Um
1:46:49 We ended up breaking up
1:46:51 She went off for a year
1:46:58 And went to barley did her own thing worked on herself. I think around this time is when she stopped the birth control pill
1:47:01 Started thinking about a lot of a lot of other things and when she came back
1:47:04 It was just a totally different person like we ended up getting back together
1:47:07 Just a totally different person like and I say this because
1:47:10 I don’t want people to give up
1:47:15 Right when the libido gives up, right. Yeah. No, I know. I know. I totally know what you mean
1:47:17 No, and I think that that’s I think yes
1:47:22 Yes, yes that she probably has a high sex drive amina. I’m just trying to keep up at this point
1:47:28 No, I love it. No, I love it. I think that um, especially with the birth control pill. It’s like there’s a tendency
1:47:35 Um to fear that everything is permanent and like if you go on it that it ruins you and that it’s going to break you
1:47:39 um, and the the research just doesn’t quite point in that direction
1:47:42 Unless you’re a teenager if you go on it as a teen
1:47:46 We don’t yet know ultimately what that does to brain development long term
1:47:49 But if you go on it as an adult and then you discontinue it
1:47:54 You can go back to being the person that you were right and um, yeah
1:48:00 And that can include the recovery of your sexual desire even if you think that it’s lost
1:48:05 Dr. Sarah hill we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest
1:48:07 Not knowing who they’re going to be leaving it for
1:48:10 and the question left for you
1:48:12 is
1:48:15 Hmm, okay
1:48:20 What is the legacy that you want to leave behind?
1:48:27 I want to make the world a place where women understand themselves and that women are understood as themselves
1:48:30 And not as being some sort of a
1:48:33 malfunctioning male
1:48:39 Thank you. Thank you for all the work you do. It’s so interesting for me. It’s so interesting for me as a man
1:48:44 But as men we have mothers. We have sisters. We have partners
1:48:47 So helping us understand women
1:48:53 And in all in every facet of the world understanding that’s their health their reproductive health their sexual health
1:48:55 Why they are the way that they are
1:49:01 Helps us be better sons better brothers better husbands better boyfriends
1:49:03 in a way that
1:49:05 I think is really really important for
1:49:08 Both of us as sexes to like get along
1:49:14 Because otherwise, you know before I understood the menstrual cycle and I had conversations about menopause and I’ve had these conversations with you today
1:49:21 It’s so easy to jump to conclusions about the opposite sex when you’re a man. It’s so easy to like misinterpret things and
1:49:28 Understanding how pertinent hormones are to how we feel and how we behave in our mental health and our libido and all of these things
1:49:33 Again, I think it breeds empathy. It breeds empathy and understanding and awareness which
1:49:36 um, I think
1:49:39 Will allow us to have the relationships we hope to have with the people that are
1:49:45 You know our mothers our sisters and our partners and had I known some of the things that I know now from reading your book
1:49:46 but also
1:49:51 From learning more broadly about the subject matter of like women’s sexual health and women’s health and women’s reproductive health
1:49:56 A lot of my life would have been different and that’s coming from as a man
1:49:59 A lot of my life would have been different and at some day, you know, I’m gonna have a daughter
1:50:04 I hope someday and I think that it’s also informing me about how to be a better father for my daughter someday
1:50:09 Which I think is really really important and sometimes I do hope that men click these episodes
1:50:13 And I hope they I could probably look at the numbers, but I hope they they understand the importance
1:50:16 of understanding all this subject matter to them because
1:50:21 Yeah, I mean we we live and we inhabit this world together in 50 percent of our
1:50:24 um, the inhabitants of this planet are women and
1:50:28 And also there’s something which I
1:50:29 Was quite illuminating in your work
1:50:35 Which is I think I used to be in the of the opinion that only women had fluctuations
1:50:37 in
1:50:43 Their hormones and feelings and I think I’ve joked before with my male friends that like we’re all just like this me and my friends
1:50:48 Right, whereas our partners are like whoo, right? Yeah, but I’ve come to learn that that’s also not true
1:50:49 No, that’s also not true
1:50:55 No, men’s hormones change dynamically across the day and they’re higher in the morning than they are later on in the afternoon
1:50:59 And they change in response to environmental cues. So beautiful women
1:51:06 You know the win or loss of your favorite sports team the win or loss your favorite political candidate the presence of a weapon
1:51:09 All of these things can change men’s testosterone levels
1:51:15 And so men’s hormones change quite wrapped like, you know rapidly and in ways that are more unpredictable than
1:51:22 Women’s because women’s hormones do cycle, but they cycle predictably and if you tell me a woman’s
1:51:26 Age and the first day of her last menstrual cycle. I can tell you with almost
1:51:33 Really high degree of certainty what’s going on with her primary sex hormones and the same is just not the truth for men
1:51:36 So how the pill changes everything
1:51:38 Or this is your brain on birth control
1:51:42 I’ll put them both below. I’ll link them both below the uk and the us version
1:51:45 I guess the us version is going to change the uk title, right?
1:51:50 Well, no, it’s now it’s called. This is your brain on birth control. How the pill changes everything
1:51:53 Okay
1:51:54 It’s not on here
1:51:59 I know that’s because we change they they changed the subtitle when we went to paperback. Oh, okay
1:52:03 I know it’s all very confusing. I’ll link it below anyway. So everyone can um
1:52:06 Thank you so much for writing such a
1:52:08 Pre-eminent book on this subject because it’s so so important
1:52:11 And i’m so excited to see the science and the conversation evolve on all of these subject matters
1:52:16 Um, where do people find you if they want to ask you questions or send you emails or learn more?
1:52:23 Yeah, well, they can find me online at sarahehill.com and that’s sarah with an h and i am on
1:52:27 Instagram is my most active platform and it’s sarahehill
1:52:30 phd
1:52:32 Um, and that’s my handle
1:52:34 Thank you so much sarah. Thank you in pleasure
1:52:39 I’m going to let you into a little bit of a secret
1:52:42 And you’re probably going to think that i’m a little bit weird for saying this
1:52:46 But our team are our team because we absolutely
1:52:50 Obsess about the smallest things even with this podcast when we’re recording this podcast
1:52:54 We measure the co2 levels in the studio because if it gets above a thousand parts per million
1:52:58 Cognitive performance dips. This is the type of one percent improvement
1:53:04 We make on our show and that is why the show is the way it is by understanding the power of compounding one percent
1:53:10 You can absolutely change your outcomes in your life. It isn’t about drastic transformations or quick wins
1:53:13 It’s about the small
1:53:17 Consistent actions that have a lasting change on your outcomes. So two years ago
1:53:21 We started the process of creating this beautiful diary and it’s truly beautiful inside
1:53:26 There’s lots of pictures lots of inspiration and motivation as well some interactive elements
1:53:29 And the purpose of this diary is to help you identify
1:53:35 Stay focused on develop consistency with the one percents that will ultimately change your life
1:53:37 We’re only going to do a limited run of these diaries
1:53:40 So if you want one for yourself or for a friend or for a colleague or for your team
1:53:44 Then head to the diary.com right now. I’ll link it below
1:54:08 [Music]