This Is Your Brain on Birth Control The Surprising Science of Women, Hormones, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

Right. And she taught me that male testosterone levels are mediated by the fertility of the women in their local ecology.

It's your brain, this is your brain on birth control by Sarah Hill.

We discuss her new landmark book, This is Your Brain on Birth Control, The Surprising Science of Women, Hormones, and the Law of Unintended Consequences.

And that's become a trope and a satirical, and what would, a satirical cliche.

And so I spent most of my career trying to understand behavior using the lens of Darwin's theory of evolution by selection.

I think it's one of the flaws in Dawkins thinking, for example, is that you can reduce reproduction to sex, but that's foolish because human beings have a high investment strategy in relationship to the propagation of their children.

I don't know if the evolutionary biologists have been able to calculate out the relationship between establishing a reciprocal relationship with a great hunter or great warrior versus the costs of men competing to elevate a given man to the highest possible position.

my book, This Is Your Brain on Birth Control is sold everywhere that books are sold

It's like dropping a bomb on your house to blow out a candle. It'll do the job but it won't only do that job.

It really felt that way I felt like I woke up and it was sort of funny because it was about three or so months after I had gone off of the pill and I was in the car I still remember this moment because over the course of that three months I'd sort of begun to feel like I had more energy and things just seem more exciting like life just felt exciting it felt like there was like opportunity kind of you know around any corner and I just felt energized and alive.

I feel like getting into trouble and he was like what does that mean? And I said I have no idea.

It's like college again or it's like my late 20s again I mean they're just really really different people and they're like yeah I think I want to get into boxing and I'm like who are you you played bridge last week and now you want to start boxing who are you.

It's almost in some ways you can think of it as being like the anti testosterone therapy because essentially what is doing is this suppressing women's you know sex hormones right so it's like suppressing their levels of estrogen progesterone and also in a huge way testosterone.

It's like dropping a bomb on your house to blow out a candle. It'll do the job but it won't only do that job.

It was sort of funny because it was about three or so months after I had gone off of the pill and I was in the car I still remember this moment because over the course of that three months I'd sort of begun to feel like I had more energy and things just seem more exciting like life just felt exciting it felt like there was like opportunity kind of you know around any corner and I just felt energized and alive.

I feel like getting into trouble

It's almost like you got younger

It's like dropping a bomb on a house to try to put out a candle like it'll do the job but a lot of other stuff is going to get messed up in the process.

The pill changes us because it changes the version of our personality that we express.

It's like dropping a bomb on your house to blow out a candle. It'll do the job but it won't only do that job.

It was like walking out of black and white into color.

I feel like getting into trouble.

It's like dropping a bomb on a house to try to put out a candle like it'll do the job but a lot of other stuff is going to get messed up in the process.