Would You Love the Same Man On and Off the Pill？ ｜ Dr. Sarah Hill ｜ EP 403 (EzDucLhmI50)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=EzDucLhmI50

Research has been showing now for about 20 years that when women are in the point in the cycle when estrogen is high, that that’s associated with an increased preference for testosterone cues. And this, of course, begs the question, well, then what happens if a woman is on hormonal birth control and is never in the estrogen-dominant phase of her cycle? Then what happens? And researchers have since asked that question, and what they tend to find is that women who are on hormonal birth control will desire a somewhat less masculine male face and male voice. And there’s been some research even showing that if women chose their partners when they’re on hormonal birth control and then discontinued it, that this can lead to changes in how they perceive and how attracted they are to their partner. The Brain on Birth Control Hello, everyone watching and listening. Today, I’m speaking with researcher, professor and author Dr. 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. We break down and analyze sex-based differences in regret, competition and academic striving, the balance between life exposure and safeguarding when raising a child, the practice of mate choice copying among women, and why our hormones are a foundational part not just of our physical makeup, but of who we are most deeply and who we have the potential to become. So, Sarah, I thought for years that the 20th century would basically be remembered for three things. The hydrogen bomb, the transistor, the microchip, and the pill. And that the pill was perhaps the most revolutionary of the three, and that it was also equivalent to a speciation mutation, that that’s how profound it is. Now, the first chapter of your book, This Is Your Brain on Birth Control, is what is a woman. And that’s become a trope and a satirical cliché. And people laugh at the fact that it’s even being posed, but actually don’t think it’s that funny, because I think that with the advent of hypothetically 100 percent reliable birth control, the question of what is a woman actually becomes a real question, because a woman who has voluntary control over reproductive function is not the same creature as a woman who doesn’t, and not even a little bit. And so then the question, so imagine this, and then we can talk through the book. If sex is no longer tied to reproduction, then in principle, women’s sexual behavior can become equivalent to men’s sexual behavior, because the risk is now the same. If women are acting like men sexually, then why aren’t they men? Like, how are they different? And then if sex is no longer tied to reproduction tightly, and women are free from involuntary child rearing and bearing, then how are they different from men in the broader labor market and with regards to general productivity? And the answer is, we have absolutely no idea. And that’s where the question comes up. So I’d like to know, why did you start the book with this question, what is a woman? The way you open something is obviously to some degree the way you frame it. So why did that phrase jump out at you? Well, for me, it was really important, because my background is in evolutionary biology. And so I spent most of my career trying to understand behavior using the lens of Darwin’s theory of evolution by selection. And one of the big sort of paramounts of that theory and something that’s really cornerstone to it is the differences between the sexes, and that you have biological males and biological females, and how do we define them? How do we define what is a male, what is a female? And what a male is, is the sex that has the smaller mobile gametes, that has less investment in offspring, and females have the metabolically expensive immobile gametes, and they have a relatively large minimum investment. And so one of the big ways and sort of the foundation of all reliably occurring sex differences in all sexually reproducing species are these small differences. And it doesn’t seem like it would be that big of a deal, like, wow, your sex cells are smaller than my sex cells, like, who cares? But that actually turns out to be completely foundational in terms of setting the stage for different minimum levels of investment in offspring, which then sets the stage for the evolution of sex differences. Okay, so let’s dive into that a little bit, because people need to understand exactly what this means. So you relate sex differences, when you’re trying to define a woman, to the difference in size between the sperm and the egg. And an egg is pretty small, and it doesn’t look like much of an investment, but a sperm is way smaller. But the thing that’s so interesting about that is that you could say that that difference is fractal in nature, is that it’s echoed at every single biological level all the way up the chain to overt behavior. Right, and so the definition of a woman, the definition of female, maybe even more broadly, female is the sex that invests more, is compelled to invest more in sex and reproduction. And reproduction wouldn’t be just sex. This is another thing that the narrower evolutionary biologists get wrong. 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. And so reproduction for human beings doesn’t end with sex. For mosquitoes, it ends with sex. For human beings, it just starts with sex. Then we have an 18-year investment, and at least the first three years of that falls, I would say, by necessity, more heavily on women, and really heavily on women. I think they say among chimpanzee females, the chimpanzee mother carries its infant something like 500 miles clasped to its chest in the first year. Right? And so a woman, another issue maybe, too, is that is a woman a single organism, or is a woman a part of the mother-infant dyad? Right, right. Right, so that’s a whole, that’s a can of worms that we can open. There’s this whole theory, it’s Hamilton’s theory of inclusive fitness, which is just this idea that your own fitness, just in terms of what your genetic representation in future generations is likely to be, is something that depends both on your own genes, but then also the genes of your relatives. And for women in particular, who have all of that invested in their offspring, that this, I mean, it is an extension of yourself. And our relatives are an extension of ourselves, and there’s no relationship that is like, that evolution has shaped in a way that favors just unmitigated investment in the relationship between mother to child. Because there’s certain 50% relatedness, so mothers always know that this is their child. You have mother’s reproductive value, meaning the possibility that she could translate her energy into additional reproduction. That is decreasing, while that of her infant is increasing, and so it’s essentially like passing the evolutionary baton from one generation to the next between these two individuals who have the highest levels of relatedness as possible in nature outside of identical twins. So I’ve wondered about this with regard to the transformation at puberty in female emotional response. So the personality data indicates that boys and girls are approximately equivalent in terms of their sensitivity to negative emotion. But that changes at puberty. And so, and the change seems permanent, and it seems like it’s hormonally mediated. And so I’ve been trying to understand, and so what happens at puberty is that women become more sensitive to the entire panoply of negative emotions, because they clump together. And so, and you might say, well, that’s cultural, but it’s not, because if you look at the societies that have advanced, the farthest in terms of gender equality at the social and economic levels, the differences in trait neuroticism, so that’s that sensitivity to negative emotion, between men and women are larger than they are in less egalitarian societies. So when the society becomes egalitarian, the genetic differences maximize rather than minimize. OK, so then the question is, well, why would women be more sensitive to negative emotion? Because that comes at a cost, and the cost is, at minimum, higher levels of depression and anxiety, but also higher general levels of unhappiness. So then you think, OK, they’re more sensitive to threat. Why is that useful? Well, they’re smaller than men at puberty, and so they should be more sensitive to physical combat threat. But they’re sexually vulnerable, and that’s a huge deal, and not to be underestimated. And I mean, in most societies, for most of human history, an unaccompanied woman was a target of attack. Right, right. So but then the third thing that’s most important, I think, I want to know what you think about this, is that, well, women are more attuned to threat because they’re proxies for the vulnerability of their infant. And so women may pay a psychological cost for being more sensitive to threat, which is that they’re more unhappy and that they’re more anxious, but the benefit of that is that they’re more alert to any signs of danger or predation or threat in the environment, and they can alert, well, they’re going to alert their husband, generally speaking, or the rest of the community to that. Now, that also means they’re going to be more susceptible to false positives. They’re going to respond to threat when there’s none there, but if you’re taking care of a dependent infant and you’re over-responsive to threat, that’s probably the right place to tune your errors. And that seems to me also a reflection of this increased investment by women, so they have an increased emotional investment in their offspring, as well as an increased physiological investment. Right. Right, so I’ll start with the woman piece, but there’s also some interesting things that happen with testosterone that turn that off. And so I want to be able to return to that as well. But with women, I mean, absolutely. The thing that we need to remember is that the process of evolution by selection didn’t wire us to be happy or satisfied or any, it’s like it has designed us to survive and to reproduce, and part of that means that we’re going to feel kind of terrible some of the time. And part of women’s design, sort of the design of our psychology, is such that it does, it’s like a smoke detector. It’s tuned to picking up on even subtle cues of possible danger, just because the potential costs associated with what would happen if that danger is real is much greater for women for a lot of different reasons, some of which you’ve touched upon. I mean, there’s one, is that women are mothers. So it’s like you hear like you’re eating for two, you’re feeling danger for two. You’re having to protect yourself and your offspring. You’re more physically vulnerable because, of course, you’re physically, you know, women are smaller and have less upper body strength. Sexual vulnerability, for the reasons you talked about, I mean, unfortunately, sexual violence has been something that’s been present as long as we’ve been around, and it certainly is something we see in all species. With choosy females, you’ll have males who want to override that choice. And so there’s a lot of reasons that women need… Manipulation, too. It’s not merely that women are overpowered physically, it’s that they’re also susceptible to very devious manipulation on the part of Machiavellian and psychopathic men. And they need to be alert to that form of deception as a threat as well. Right, and even also with other females. And the reason for this is that, you know, when you think about the cause, for a woman, if she’s duped, so let’s just talk about sexual deception. Right, if a woman is duped, she could end up pregnant. There’s a nine-month investment there. And if you look especially at historical, you know, types of populations like modern hunter-gatherer groups, if you have a woman who doesn’t have a father investing in the child, the risk of infant mortality is like 80%. I mean, it’s very high. And the risk of death during childbirth even is very high. So women are putting their lives at risk every time they get pregnant. And then to get pregnant and have a really high-risk infant that’s not getting invested in. And their reputation too. Yeah, and their reputation. There’s so many costs to that. And the costs just aren’t that, you know, it’s not symmetrical for men. The costs of those things aren’t the same. And so our brains are wired to be differently sensitive to those kinds of cues, because the consequences are so much more dire if you have a female body compared to if you have a male body. Do you know, is there a literature on… Okay, want to… Tell me if I got this wrong. Okay. So we talked about the different reproductive strategies, say, of mosquitoes and human beings. Mosquitoes have like a zero investment strategy. You have a million offspring. All of them die, but like one, but that’s okay, because that’s replacement. Whereas human beings, it’s unbelievably heavy investment. And then you look within human beings, women invest more than men. Then you could look within men, and you could say there are men who invest less and men who invest more. Okay, so the men who invest less, they’re the short-term mater types. Now, I’ve been looking into the personality predictors of short-term mating strategies, and they’re not that positive. So the personality theorists who’ve been investigating the so-called dark tetrad, which is a group of, you might say, undesirable descriptors, psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, which is manipulativeness, and sadism, because they had to add that to it, those traits are much more pronounced among men and women, but particularly among men who adopt a short-term mating strategy. And so now, so one of the things I’m wondering about is, it’s related to that, so that men who adopt that short-term mating strategy, they love them and leave them, right? There’s no, let’s say, there’s little post-coital regret, there’s no guilt or shame associated with short-term mating opportunities. Do you know if there’s a literature detailing the difference in response to short-term mating episodes between men and women? Are women more likely to evince regret in the aftermath of short-term mating episodes, one-night stands? Oh yeah, absolutely. There’s a rich literature in sexual regret, and exactly as you would expect, when you look at what people regret sexually, women regret more these short-term mating opportunities that they participated in. Men more often regret those that they didn’t participate in. So men often… Yes, missed opportunities. So men’s sexual regret tends to sort of cluster around things that they wish they would have taken advantage of and they did not, whereas women’s tends to cluster more, and I really wish I wouldn’t have had sex with that idiot. Right, right. Now, do you know, is there a personality literature that’s looked at individual differences in post-short-term sex regret? So are the women less likely to show regret, also more likely to have dark tetrad personality traits? Like, there’s got to be predictors of regret. Right now, you’d expect neuroticism would be one, because that would just predict negative emotion in general. I suspect agreeableness is another predictor, is that the women who are more agreeable, compassionate, polite, more inclined to care-take and bond, so I would suspect that it’s the more feminine women who are more likely to show post-coital regret. I suspect the same thing would be true of men. I bet you the more feminine men are also more likely to manifest that pattern of regret. Diversify your savings with physical precious metals while stockpiling silver in your home safe. 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Yeah, so I think with women, a lot of it, so in the personality literature, I’d only known that there was a dark triad. Yeah, no, it’s expanded. They had to add sadism. That’s real fun, eh? Yeah, I noticed it. Positive delight in the suffering of others. Yeah, wow. Wow, I wonder if he’s got a brother. That’s just a terrible quality. That’s for sure. So no, I’m not terrible. I’m familiar with that, but when I think about things, I tend to think about just because personality isn’t really my area. The evolutionary area, I tend to think about the, like, you know, my prediction would be, from an evolutionary perspective, would be that we would see women experiencing more sexual regret when the costs are higher, right? So like, what are the costs associated with having made that decision that you made, right? So whether it’s reputational costs, so for example, a woman who has more to lose reputationally from having capitalized on that short-term mating strategy, I think that she would experience stronger sexual regret. You could predict that by looking at the relative … So imagine there’s a continuum of men with regards to the socioeconomic status markers of their potential as providers. I suspect that this might seem obvious, but it would be nice to see it demonstrated, that the larger the gap between the woman and the man in terms of status … Yes. … the more regret. Yes, no, I would think so. Because she sold herself short, and the risk of that is too high. Right, yes, no, absolutely, absolutely. And also, I mean, even the things that would influence her biological costs, right? So for example, if we’re talking about short, like, immediate regret, a woman who’s near high fertility in her cycle, where pregnancy is possible, I’m assuming that inter hormonal thing would be predicting, would be telling her, like, oh shit, like, that was terrible, like, why did you do that? Or, and I would also expect, you’d see more sexual regret at peak fertility across the lifespan. See, now we have a perfect study design. We can look at personality, dark tetrad traits, and number of days deviation from maximum fertility as predictors of short-term coital regret. Yes, and across a lifetime, too. And we can spend three years getting that through an ethics committee. And then another three years trying to get it published. Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, all right, so back to what is a woman. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so what we’ve talked about so far is that what is the definition of female. Okay, and the female is the member of sexually reproducing species who invests more at least at, see, that’s the issue, at least at the level of the gamete. Do you want to explain to everybody what a gamete is, just so we know? Yeah, so a gamete is a sex cell, and it’s your egg or it’s your sperm. So it’s like 50 percent, it has 50 percent your genetic material in it, and it is fused with a gamete of the other kinds. If you make eggs, it fuses with sperm, and that is how we produce life. And yes, the initial greater investment that women make is just the starting point of, as you said, it’s like fractal. Yeah, yeah. Exponential increased investment, because a selection continues to reinforce greater investment because of that large initial investment. It’s like a hand of poker. Right, if you put in 500… It’s like a seed crystal that makes a diamond around it. Right, exactly. So if you put in $500inthefirstroundofbettingandw{e}^{\prime }replayingpokerandIputinabuck,youhavemoretoloseifthathandgoessidewaysthanIdo.Andthatechoesallthewayupthechain.Okay,sotha{t}^{\prime }sveryinterestingtoo,becausethepeoplewhoclaimthatsexualidentityismerelyculturallyconstructedfailtotakeintoaccountthefactthatthatdifferenceininvestmentechoesateverysinglelevelofthebiologicalladder.Right,i{t}^{\prime }snotmerelysomething...I{t}^{\prime }scertainlynotsomethingtha{t}^{\prime }sreducibletochromosomaldifference,whichisanotherwayofdefiningthedifferencebetweenmenandwomen.Youdid{n}^{\prime }tpickthat,youpickedinvestment.Okay,sowhydidyoupick...I{t}^{\prime }snotjustyou,Iknowthattendstobethebiologicalstance,butwouldyousaythatthechromosomaldifference,X-XversusX-Y,isoflessersignificancethantheinvestmentissueordoesitmatterbecausethe{y}^{\prime }resotightlylinked?Well,theyaresotightlylinked,butImean,honestly,ifevolutionbyselectiondoes{n}^{\prime }tseeit,itdoes{n}^{\prime }tmatter.Like,inalotofways,thegearsandsprocketsthatcreateus,thosepieces,likeifyo{u}^{\prime }retryingtomakepredictionsaboutbehaviorandwhattypesofthingshavebeenreinforcedbythisprocessofinheritingtraitsthatwork,meaningthattheypromotesurvivalandreproductionandthosethatdo{n}^{\prime }t,i{t}^{\prime }sonlywhatselectionseesthatmatters,anditneverseesourchromosomes.Whatitseesisinvestment,right?Andthoseindividualswhohavethisreallylargeminimuminvestmentandthe{y}^{\prime }reonlyabletoproduceXnumberofoffspringinsteadofXprimenumberofoffspring,thoseindividuals,thebestwaythattheycanincreasetheprobabilityofcontinuingtheirgeneticlineageisthroughaheavyinvestmentstrategy,andtha{t}^{\prime }slesstrueforthisothersex.Andsosex,biologicalsex,andagain,itstartsoffwiththesesmalldifferencesinthesizeofoursexcells,butthensortofrecapitulatesateveryandallthesedifferentlevelsofinvestment.Imagine,justforthesakeofargument,howthatwouldrecapitulateevencognitively.Rightnow,men,forexample,menunderstandthatther{e}^{\prime }sarelationshipbetweenhowsuccessfultheyareandhowattractivetheyaretowomen.Andpartofwhatmotivatesthemisthegameofthatcompetition.SoIworkedwithhigh-endlawyersforabout15years,bothmenandwomen,andfoundsomeveryinterestingdifferencesinthat.Butthemenevenregardedthemoneytheymadeinbonusesattheendoftheyearforoutstandingperformance.Theywere{n}^{\prime }tsointerestedinthemoney,theywereinterestedinthemoneyasameansofkeepingscore,itwasameansofwinningthecompetition.Andyoumightsay,well,competitionforwhat?Andtheanswertothatis,well,le{t}^{\prime }scallitcompetitionnotforstatusexactly,butforreputation.Buttheconsequenceofastellarreputationisthat,andmenwhohavethataremuchmoreattractivetowomen.Andyoumightsay,well,womengoafterwealth,butIthinktha{t}^{\prime }snonsense,andIthinktha{t}^{\prime }salsobeliedbytherelevantevolutionarybiologytheory,becausewhatitshows,andtellmeif{I}^{\prime }vegotthiswrong,isthatwomenusewealthasamarkerforattractivenessbecausetheyusewealthasamarkerforcompetence.Andwhatthe{y}^{\prime }reafteristheabilitytogeneratewealthandtoshareitandtobegenerouswithit.Ithastobeboth,productivityandgenerosity.Andadecentmarkerforthecapacitytogeneratewealthiswealth,althoughi{t}^{\prime }snottheonlycriteria.Sowomenarelookingforcompetence,andmen,i{t}^{\prime }saverystrangethingaboutmen,theycompeteamongthemselvesforcompetence-basedreputation.Andnow,I^{\prime }vebeentryingtofigureoutwhy,becauseyoucanimagineamoviescenariowherethequarterbackofthefootballteamwinsamajorchampionship,andalltheothermenputhimonhisshouldersandbringhimoutofthestadium,andhesleepswiththecheerleaderthatnight.Andyoumightaskyourself,well,whyintheworldwouldthemengrouptogethertoelevateagivenmantothatsortofstatusifitmeansthath{e}^{\prime }sgoingtobetheonethatsuccessfullyreproduces?Andmysuspicionisthatmenlearnedtovaluecompetenceprobablyasaconsequenceofhunting.Soanygivenhunter,nomatterhowgoodheisathunting,isgoingtofailinmosthunts.Sonow,ifmenbandtogethertohunt,thenthecollectivesuccessismuchlarger.Andsowhatthatmeansisthatifyo{u}^{\prime }regoingtobeahunterthatprovidesacross-huntingbouts,yourskillasahunterisonedeterminant,butyourinterpersonalskillinnegotiatingandestablishingrelationshipswiththerestofthehuntersisevenmoreimportant.Soamonghunter-gatherers,forexample,ifyo{u}^{\prime }retheonewhobringsdowntheanimal,i{t}^{\prime }sincumbentonyoutodownplayyourcontributionandtodistributethebestpartsoftheanimaltootherpeople.Andyo{u}^{\prime }redoingthattofosteryourreputationasagenerousperson,andyo{u}^{\prime }redoingthatinparttoensurethatther{e}^{\prime }sreciprocityinfooddistributionacrossmultiplehunts.Now,themenaregoingtobewillingtoelevatethehighesthuntertothehighestposition,becauseIthinki{t}^{\prime }sintheircollectiveinterest,i{t}^{\prime }sintheircollectiveinterestandintheirindividualinteresttobethefollowersofthebestman.AndIthinktha{t}^{\prime }ssoimportantintermsoftheirownreproductivefitness,whichwouldbetiedtotheprovisionoffoodacrosshunts,thatthe{y}^{\prime }rewillingtotakethereproductivehittha{t}^{\prime }s,whatwouldyousay,implicitinelevatinganygivenmanamongallothermen.Youcouldthinkaboutthatintermsofhunting,andyoucouldthinkaboutthatintermsofcombat,too.Ifyouputthemostheroicwarrioronyourshoulders,yougivehimanevolutionaryedge.Butifyo{u}^{\prime }reinhisgroup,well,thenyo{u}^{\prime }vegotthebenefitsofbeingwiththegreatestwarriorandthegreatesthunter.AndsoIdo{n}^{\prime }tknowiftheevolutionarybiologistsareabletocalculateouttherelationshipbetweenestablishingareciprocalrelationshipwithagreathunterorgreatwarriorversusthecostsofmencompetingtoelevateagivenmantothehighestpossibleposition.I{t}^{\prime }saveryweirdthingthatmendo.No,Ithinkyouhitthenailonthehead,though.Imean,Ithinkthatthebenefitsofaligningyourselfwithsomebodywh{o}^{\prime }sverypowerful,that,Imean,thinkaboutit,ther{e}^{\prime }ssomebody,andle{t}^{\prime }ssaythath{e}^{\prime }s1.0andyo{u}^{\prime }resortof1.1,andsother{e}^{\prime }ssomebodywh{o}^{\prime }sabetterperformerthanyou,youcouldgetyourasskickedifyoukeeptryingtohavetofightwiththisguy.Sother{e}^{\prime }sabigcosttoyoutotryingtooverturnthisperson,andther{e}^{\prime }salotofbenefitsofaligningwiththepersonwh{o}^{\prime }salsoreallycompetent.Tha{t}^{\prime }sespeciallytrueifi{t}^{\prime }saParetodistributionintermsofcompetence,right?Becausethereallycompetentpersonmightbelike100timesmorecompetent.Well,right,exactly.AndsoIthinkthatther{e}^{\prime }salotofbenefitsthatcome,especiallytomen,becauseofthehuntingcontextofaligningwithanothermaninthatcontext.Andther{e}^{\prime }salsothistendencyinother,sothishasbeenverywellstudiedinnon-humananimals,butweseeaverysimilarversionofthisinhumans.Buthaveyoueverheardofleckingbehavior?Soalekisaplacewheremaleswithinaspecieswillgathertoattractmates.I{t}^{\prime }salmostlikeaclub.I{t}^{\prime }slikethefrogs,likefrogs,forexample,arealeckingspecies,andthemaleswillallgotothisdisplayarea,andtheycroak,right?Andthisiswhatattractsthefemales.Andsothefemaleswillgotowardwheretheyheartheloudest,mostimpressivecroak,becausethatmalegenerallyislargerinbodysizeandhashigherlevelsoftestosterone.Sotheloudermaleattractsallthefemales.Andsothemalesallwanttohangoutwiththisguybecauseh{e}^{\prime }sattractingallthewomen.Andthesameistrueifmenalignthemselveswithsomebodywh{o}^{\prime }sreallyhigh-performer.Imean,ifyougooutfordrinkswithTomBrady,i{t}^{\prime }snottoobadtobeTomBrady\mathrm{2.0.}Right,right,right.Tobaskinthereflectedglory.Yeah,tobaskinthereflectedglory.Well,andthewomenwouldalsoassumethatiftheextraordinarilyhigh-statusmaleishangingaroundwithsomecharacterwholookslikeadweebonthesurface,thattheremightbehiddendepthsandutilitytohischaracter,oradvantagesinthemerefactthath{e}^{\prime }sproximal.Absolutely.Sowomenusethatalot.Andinfact,someofmyveryearlyresearch,thisisgoingdeep,thisiswhenIwasingraduateschool.Istudiedthisphenomenoninhumans,matechoicecopying,becausethisisanotherthingthatyouseeinfemalesofotherspecies,butyoualsoseeitinus.Andthisismalestendtobeasomewhatambiguousstimuluspackage,becausemostmales,alotofthequalitiesthatwomenarelookingfor,are{n}^{\prime }timmediatelyavailablejustbasedonphysicalappearance.Sowomenhavetokindofsussout,like,whatisthereaboutthisguy?Andsowhenwomenseeabeautifulwomanwithkindofanaverage-lookingguy,thefirstthingtheythinkis,what?Hemustberich!Orhemusthavesomereallyamazingpersonality,orhemustbereallyhighinstatus.Andi{t}^{\prime }sa...Iwonder,isthatmagnifiedifh{e}^{\prime }sunattractive?Becauseoneofthethingsyoumightsuspectisthatifaverybeautifulwomaniswithamanwh{o}^{\prime }sverynondescript,thattheremustbesomethingabouthimtha{t}^{\prime }sabsolutelystellar.Absolutelystellar,yes.Andsothemagnitudeofthegapbetweenthewoman,howbeautifulthewomanis,andthentheappearanceoftheman,sortofislinkedwiththedegreetowhichwomenperceivethathehastheseamazinghiddenqualitiesthatmakehimadesirablepartner.Thebiggerthegap,themoreamazingthequalities.Thesmallerthegap,thelessamazingthequalities.Tha{t}^{\prime }sveryfunny.Sothepropermatingstrategyis,ifyo{u}^{\prime }respectacularlyunder-indowedmale,istohireabeautifulwomantogotoclubswithyou.Absolutely.Andyouwouldactuallyprobablydobetterthanamoreattractivemanwiththesamewoman,becausepeoplewouldthinkthatyoumustreallyhavesomethinggoingontohaveattractedherandlooklikethat.Right,right.Oh,tha{t}^{\prime }sinsanelycomplicated.Tha{t}^{\prime }sinsanelycomical.Tha{t}^{\prime }sinsanelycomical.Allright,allright.So,okay,sowhatisawoman?Sow{e}^{\prime }vedefinedthatasthesexthatinvestsmore,andwepointedoutthatacrossalltheway,echoingallthewayupthebiologicalladderfromthecellulartothecognitive,women,females,arethesexthatinvestsmore.Ohyeah,theotherthingaboutthatwasthat,well,womenaregoingtoinvestmore,too,because,andyoualreadypointedthisout,buti{t}^{\prime }sworthmakingitclearer,becausetheyhaveto.SoIthink,atonepoint,Ilookeduptheworl{d}^{\prime }srecordformostchildrenawomaneverhad,andIthinkitwasinthehundreds,actually.Maybenot,maybe{I}^{\prime }vegotthatwrong.Maybe{I}^{\prime }vegotthatwrong.Itdoes{n}^{\prime }tmatterexactly,becauseyoucouldimagineifawomanhadasetoftripletseveryyearfor10years,thenthatwouldgiveher30infants.Sowecouldsaytheupperboundonfemalefertilitywithregardsspecificallytoherchildrenisgoingtobenomorethan50.Andtha{t}^{\prime }sagenerousestimate.Whereaswithmen,i{t}^{\prime }slike10,000,100,000,ther{e}^{\prime }snolimit.Ther{e}^{\prime }snone.Sowomenaregoingtoinvestmoreintheirchildren,too,becauseeverychild,andyoualreadypointedthisout,iscomparativelymorevaluable.Thenyoualsosaidsomethinginteresting,whichisthatasawomanages,herchildrenactuallybecomecomparativelymorevaluablethanshedid.Sodoesthismean,thisisastrangething,though.Isthereevidencethatwome{n}^{\prime }slovefortheirchildrenincreasesastheirchildrenage?Imean,becausewomenaresoinvestedininfants,i{t}^{\prime }shardto,maybei{t}^{\prime }slikethis.Ido{n}^{\prime }t,so{I}^{\prime }venotseenanythingspecificallythathasaddressedthatveryquestion,buttheyhavedonestudieswheretheylookatthedifferencebetween,forexample,oldermothersandyoungermothers.I{t}^{\prime }saworldofdifference.Imean,whenyoulookattheamountofinvestmentthatgoeson,ifyo{u}^{\prime }reanoldermothercomparedtoayoungermother,oldermothersinvestmore,theyspendmoretimeinvesting,andallofthesethingsthatyouwouldexpect,giventhattheirreproductivewindowisclosing.Soi{t}^{\prime }sliketheopportunitycostsofinvestinginthatchildarelessthanitwouldbeifyo{u}^{\prime }rea20-year-oldwoman.Soifyo{u}^{\prime }rea20-year-oldwomanandinvestinginanexistingchild,ther{e}^{\prime }sanopportunitycostthatcomestoyoufornotusingthatenergytohaveanotherchild,right?Andsoyo{u}^{\prime }renotmakingthattrade-offwhenyo{u}^{\prime }reanoldermother.Theholidaysarerapidlyapproaching,butwecanfindpeaceandcalminthecrazinessoftheseasonwithHalo,thenumberoneChristianprayerappintheworld.ImmerseyourselfinChristmasandAdventprayers,meditations,andpeacefulChristmasmusic.HaloalsooffersanextensivelibraryofBiblereadingplansaccompaniedbyinsightfulreflectionsandaudio-guidedmeditations.Whetheryo{u}^{\prime }reaseasonedBiblereaderorjuststartingyourjourney,Haloprovidesaplatformforyoutoengagewithscripturelikeneverbefore.AgreatplacetostartiswithFatherMikeSchmit{z}^{\prime }sBibleinaYearinwhichheoffersbriefdailyreadingsandreflectionsavailableontheHaloapp.TheHaloappalsohelpsyouconnectwithacommunityoflike-mindedindividualssharingexperiences,insights,andencouragementalongthepathtospiritualgrowth.ThisChristmas,joinHal{o}^{\prime }sChristmasPrayerChallenge,AdventwithC.S.Lewis.Forthe25daysleadinguptoChristmas,youcanfocusontherealreasonfortheseasonwithprayer,meditation,andChristmasmusiconHalo.Downloadtheappforfreeathalo.comslashJordanforthreemonthsfree.Tha{t}^{\prime }shalo.comslashJordan.Andso...Doyouthinkther{e}^{\prime }sanoptimumtherethatwedo{n}^{\prime }tknow?Because,youknow,JonathanHaidtwroteTheCoddlingoftheAmericanMind,okay?And{I}^{\prime }vebeenveryinterestedinthisriseofwhatIliketothinkofasthedevouringmother,isthattheover-investedparent.Yes.Insteadofputtingthatontheshouldersofthegivenparent,I^{\prime }vebeentryingtounderstandtheculturalcontextthatmightmakeover-investmentmorelikely.Soyoucanimagine,well,fewerchildren.Yes.Soifyouhave10children,yo{u}^{\prime }reobviouslynotgoingtoinvestin...Yo{u}^{\prime }renotgoingtoattendtoeachofthemasmuch.The{y}^{\prime }regoingtoattendtoeachothermore.Somoreone-childfamilies,okay?Olderparents.Yes.Sothe{y}^{\prime }regoingtobemoreconservativetobeginwith,moreconservativeasyougetolder,butthe{y}^{\prime }realsogoingtoinvestmoreintheirchildren,right?Andsoolderandthenalsoricherparents,becauseifyo{u}^{\prime }reolder,yo{u}^{\prime }rericher.Andsopartofthereasonthatchildrenarecoddled,asfarasIcantell,tothedegreethattheyare,andoverprotected,isbecausemothersarenotoldenoughtobegrandmothers.The{y}^{\prime }rerich,andtheyonlyhaveonechild.Right,andtoomuchtimeontheirhands.Toomuchtimeontheirhandsalso,becausehistorically,womenwouldhavebeenoutgatheringfoodallthetime,andnowifyouhavewomen...Andther{e}^{\prime }splentyofwomenwhoworkandarestilloverindulgingintheirchildren,butalotoftimeswhenyouseethis,ittendstohappenmorefrequentlyandmoreexaggeratedlyinhomeswherewomenare{n}^{\prime }tworkingoutside.Yeah,sooneofthethings{I}^{\prime }vetalkedtomydaughterandmydaughter-in-lawaboutwhenthe{y}^{\prime }retryingtofigureouthowtooptimallycarefortheiryoungchildrenandItalktoalotofmyclientstoo,becausetheyfacethesameproblem,ishowdoyoubalance,asawoman,howdoyoubalancetheneedofyourchildren,especiallyundertheageofthree,forcontinuous,intensematernalpresence,withthepursuitofyourowninterests?Andmysenseisthatther{e}^{\prime }sanoptimizedbalancethere,becauseoneofthethingsthatchildrenshouldseeisthatadults,includingwomen,havegoodthingstodowiththeiradulttime.Andsotha{t}^{\prime }sagoodthingtomodel.Butthenalso,ifyouhaveyourownpursuitsasawoman,thenyo{u}^{\prime }renotgoingtointerferetoomuchinyourchil{d}^{\prime }slife,becauseyouactuallyhavealife.AndoneofthethingsIthinkthatprotectschildrenagainstthatproclivityofmaybeexcessivelyneuroticwomentoover-investisthattheyhavetheirownthingstodothatareimportant.Yeah,Imean,havingnothingelsetodobutjustshineloveonyourchildandover-investthemandmakesuretheyneverfalldown,thisishistoricallyunprecedented.Youknow,mostofhumanhistory,Noonewasthatrich.Well,Imean,yeah,womennever,itwaslikewealwaysplayedaroleinsubsistence.Eventhoughwomenwerealsomothering,theywerealsofindingfood,andtheywerealsotendingtowhateverthedwellingwasandhavingtomaintainrelationshipsandhavingtogoandgetwater.Andthechildrenwerehavingtogotoworkandhelpwiththesethings.Andsoitwasaverydifferentsituationwherenownobodyisactuallyhavingtodoanythingtorunthehouseholdbecausether{e}^{\prime }sstaff,andyouhavechildrenthatare{n}^{\prime }thavingtowork.Youhaveparentswhodo{n}^{\prime }thaveanything,ormothersinparticular,whodo{n}^{\prime }thavesomethingelsetha{t}^{\prime }ssortofpullingtheirtimeawayfromjustspendingalltheirtimethinkingaboutJohnnyandhisman.I{t}^{\prime }salsonotdilutingtheirinsanity.Youknow,ifyo{u}^{\prime }reinatribalgroup,Imean,oneoftheadvantagestohavingtwoparentsisthattheaverageoftwoparentsis,onaverage,moresanethaneitheroftheindividuals.Right?Right,right,right.Andwell,andpartlywhatyoudoinamarriageisyoukeepeachothersane.Youseewhereyourpartnerhasatendencytowardsexcess,andyoureinthatin,right?Andyoudothatforeachother,andhopefullyyoudothatwitheachothe{r}^{\prime }sbestinterestsandthequalityoftherelationshipfirmlyinmind.Andyoudothatforthechildrenaswell.Inamorecommunal,child-rearingenvironment,achildisgoingtohave,insomerealway,multiplemothers,likeaunts,forsure.Andinatribalgroup,mostpeoplearekinanyways.Andsotheroleofmotherisgoingtobedistributedenoughsothatevenifanygivenmotherisabitaddledinherpreoccupations,ther{e}^{\prime }sgoingtobeotherpeopletowhomthechildcanturn.Inanarrownuclearfamily,wherether{e}^{\prime }sanoverindulgentmother,le{t}^{\prime }ssay,whohasfartoomuchtimeonherhands,thechildcanbeshieldedfromallotherpotentialinfluences,whichisalsosomethingthatthemorenarcissisticallyoverindulgentmotherislikelytoarrange.Soi{t}^{\prime }sinteresting,becausewhatitsuggestsisthat,whatitindicatesisthateventhoughhumanbeingsareahigh-investmentspeciesandeventhoughwomenarethehigher-investmentsexwithinthatconfine,thereisapointwhereinvestmentbecomesaburdenratherthananadvantage.Right,absolutely.Absolutely.Imean,ifyourchildrendo{n}^{\prime }thavetohavetheopportunitytolearnhowtonavigatetheenvironmentontheirown,theyhavenonavigationskills.AndIthinkthattha{t}^{\prime }sessentiallywhatw{e}^{\prime }reseeing.Whydidyouusethewordnavigationthere?Iusedthewordnavigationbecauselifeisajourney,right?Imean,wehavetonavigateourenvironment,wehavetolearnhowtoacquireresources,wehavetolearnhowtomanageotherpeople,wehavetolearnhowtogetalongwithotherpeoplethatwedo{n}^{\prime }tlike.Imean,ther{e}^{\prime }salotofthingsthatwehavetodo.Wehavetonavigatethroughstorms?Andsoifyourresponsetoyourchildis,ther{e}^{\prime }llbenostormsinyourlife.Right,or{I}^{\prime }llclearallofyourstorms,do{n}^{\prime }tworry.Andthenallofasuddenyouputchildrenoutintheworldandtheyhavenocopingskills.Yeah,theydo{n}^{\prime }thaveanycopingskills.Andweseethisalot,asacollegeprofessor,Iseealotofthis.Andataprivateschoolwithaveryhighpricetag,wherew{e}^{\prime }llhavestudentswhocomein,andi{t}^{\prime }sreallyawake-upcallaboutwhatlifeislike,becausethe{y}^{\prime }vehadparentswhoareverywell-meaning.Ithinkthattheparentswhodothis,theyhavethe...Godpreserveusfromwell-meaning.Yeah,Iknow.Ithinkthattheythinkthe{y}^{\prime }redoingtherightthing,buti{t}^{\prime }snot,ifyoucarrysomebodytoolong,theirmusclesatrophy.Andyouca{n}^{\prime }tdothat.Iheardagoodrulefroma,Ithinkitwasmybrother-in-lawwhotoldmethis,andhehadspentalotoftimecaringforveryelderlypeople.Andhesaidthattheappropriateruleofthumbforeldercareisneverdoanythingforyourclientthattheycandothemselves.Andthereasonforthatisthatyoufacilitate,youdevourtheirindependence.Right,andsothen,ther{e}^{\prime }saninterestingparadoxherewithregardstolove,right?Becausether{e}^{\prime }sthelovethateradicatesemotionaldistressinthemoment.OK?Andthenther{e}^{\prime }sthelovethatisdevotedtofosteringadaptivebehavioroverthemediumtolongrun.Andtha{t}^{\prime }salovetha{t}^{\prime }smuchmorealliedwithjudgment.So,forexample,ifyoucallyourchildoutontheirmisbehavior,youcausethemshort-termemotionaldistress.Butthelong-termbenefitofthatisthatiftheyintegratetheimpulsesthataremakingthem,le{t}^{\prime }ssay,undulyaggressiveorreactive,thenthe{y}^{\prime }regoingtobemoreacceptabletotheirpeersandtothebroadersocialcommunity.Soyo{u}^{\prime }llallowthemtobehurtintheshorttermforalong-termgain.Now,doyouknowiftherearesexdifferencesinthattemporalfocus?Because,see,her{e}^{\prime }stheparadoxasfaras{I}^{\prime }mconcerned,andIwatchwomentrytonegotiatethiswiththeirchildrenatabout12monthsofage.Thethingaboutinfants,becausethe{y}^{\prime }resodependent,isthattheproperresponseofamothertothedistressofaninfantninemonthsandyoungerisfixedthatnow,regardless,right?Soyoucouldsay,inasense,thattheemotionaldistressofaninfantisanomniscientsignalthatcarehastobeadministered.Butoncethechildstartstobecomesomewhatautonomous,andthatstartstooccurwhentheycanstarttocrawl,thenthemotherhastomakeatransitionfromimmediatereactiontoemotionaldistresstoallowingthechildtodwellinthatemotionaldistress,orevensometimescausingitherself.Andtha{t}^{\prime }saverytrickytransformation,becausethewomanhasbecomesoattunedtotheinfantandsobondedtothatinfant,andsoresponsivetoitssignalsofdistress,thattopullbackfrom,Ithinkmostofthewaywomenpulledbackfromthathistoricallywastheyjusthadanotherchild.Iwasjustabouttosaythatexactthing.Ithinkthatourinterbirthratiosandsortoflengtheningthespacingbetweenchildrenhasprobablymadethatconflict,andwecallitweaningconflictinevolutionarysciences,hasmadethatmoredifficult.Exacerbatedit.Yeah,becauseIthinkyoucanhaveachoice.Also,ifyouhavea13-month-oldandnootherchildrenaround,the13-month-oldisaninfant.Butifyouhavea13-month-oldandthenyouhaveaninfant,the13-month-oldisnowachild,clearly.Right?Yeah,well,Isawthiswhenwehadoursecondchild,Julian.Michaelawas18monthsold,Ithinktha{t}^{\prime }saboutright.Andsh{e}^{\prime }sstillprettylittle,butcomparedtoanewborn,shewasanadult.Right?Thatwasalsothepointwheresheturnedmoretome.Andthereseemstobesomethingtha{t}^{\prime }s,apartfromtheinterbirthinterval,le{t}^{\prime }ssay,thereseemstobesomethingtha{t}^{\prime }scrucialabouttherolethatmenplayinthefacilitationofthatlonger-termorientation,becausemenarelesssusceptibletotheemotionaldistressofbothinfantsandtoddlers.Andalongwiththat,Ithinkitgivesmentheopportunitytobelessaffectedbytheemotionaldistressofchildren,andthereforetoprioritizemedium-tolong-termadaptivestrategiesovershort-termgratificationofemotionaldemand.AndIthinktha{t}^{\prime }spartofthecardinalrolethatmenplay,whiletheyareagentsofthepatriarchy,right?The{y}^{\prime }regoingtobesocializingagents.Butseriously,theyseemtometobe...Right.Thewomenareorientedverystronglytowardstheprimarycareofinfantileemotionaldistress,buttha{t}^{\prime }snotagoodlong-termstrategy.OK,soIhaveaviciousquestiontoaskabout...OK,allright.Allright,wetalkedalittlebitbeforewestartedthispodcastaboutthecorruptionoftheuniversities.Yes.OK,nowyouwriteinyourbookafairbitaboutwha{t}^{\prime }sbeentheinterpersonalandsocialconsequencesofwomenmovingenmasseintotheworkforce.SoIhaveapropositionforyou.Allright,le{t}^{\prime }shearthis.Thedefaultmoralethosofwomendoesnotscale.Itdoes{n}^{\prime }tscalebeyondthefamily.Soifyou...Now,I^{\prime }mperfectlywillingtodebatethis,because{I}^{\prime }mhorrifiedbythefactthatitmightbetrue.I^{\prime }vewatchedtheuniversitiestransformthemselvesintoholdingpensforinfants.Yeah,no,tha{t}^{\prime }safact.OK,and{I}^{\prime }vewatchedthemtransformthemselvesintoholdingpensforinfantsastheybecomedominatedbywomenwhodo{n}^{\prime }thavechildren.Soletmesaythis,becauseIwasactuallyjusthavingaverysimilarconversationwithacolleagueofmine,andactuallyher{e}^{\prime }swhat{I}^{\prime }venoticed.Sonowher{e}^{\prime }sthepartwhere{I}^{\prime }mgoingtosaysomethingtha{t}^{\prime }salittlebitawful.OK,OK.Stealyourself.I^{\prime }mlike,well,no,I^{\prime }mjustthinking,I^{\prime }mjustthinking,oh,Lord,I^{\prime }mgoingtogetmyselfintroublewiththis.OK,ifyouare...Tha{t}^{\prime }showyouknowi{t}^{\prime }sprobablytrue.Yeah,Iknow,Iknow.SowhatIamseeingatuniversitiesisthatthereisarealbifurcationintheperformersandthenotperformers.Andthepeoplewhoaretheperformersarethewomen,andthepeoplewhoare{n}^{\prime }ttheperformersaremen,and{I}^{\prime }mgoingtotellyouwhy.Ifyouareamanwhowantsallthethingsthatmenwant,statusandpowerandyo{u}^{\prime }reachievement-orientedandyo{u}^{\prime }rebrightandyo{u}^{\prime }reago-getter,areyougoingtogointoajobwhereyougotoOxfordandmake$60,000 a year? Yeah, no, definitely not. No, you’re not. What types of men do you think are attractive to university jobs? You mean now? I mean ever. You make $60,000ayear.Yeah,butIthinki{t}^{\prime }schanged.Andsowomenwhogointouniversityjobsaregenerallywomen,andthisis{n}^{\prime }tenmassetrue,buti{t}^{\prime }s,inmyexperience,moretruethani{t}^{\prime }snot,arepeoplewhoareverycompetent,driven,motivated,butalsowantflexibilitybecausetheyhavechildren.Iwork60to70hoursaweek,andIgettopickthe60and70hoursaweekIwork.Ilovemyjob.Ihavetwokids.Ispendalotoftimedoingthingswiththem,andIliketheflexibility.AndmostofthereallycompetentacademicsthatIknow,whoarejustkickingassanddoingareallygoodjobintermsofdiscovery,arewomen.Okay,okay.AndsoIthinktheuniversityisfallingapartbecausether{e}^{\prime }salotofpeoplewhoaremediocre,andthe{y}^{\prime }regenerallyoldmen,whoaretryingtomaintainthesystemthatrewardsmediocrity,andthenyouhaveperformerscomingin,andther{e}^{\prime }salotoffissiontha{t}^{\prime }sbeingcreated.Okay,sother{e}^{\prime }stwoelementsatplaythere.Ther{e}^{\prime }sanelementofsex,andther{e}^{\prime }sanelementofperformance.Okay,sole{t}^{\prime }stakethisapartabitandseeifwecangettothebottomofit.Well,firstofall,youca{n}^{\prime }tpathologizethebehaviorofonesexwithoutpathologizingthebehaviorofboth.Right.Sow{e}^{\prime }llusethatasanaxiom.Andthenyouaskedmewhatsortofmenwereattractedtouniversityjobs.WhenIstartedmycareer,theanswertothatwasmen,theonesintheuniversitiesthatwerereallyworking.Ithinkmysupervisorwasagoodexampleofthat.Hewasafootballplayer.H{e}^{\prime }satoughguy.Hewasextremely,extremelycurious.Right,sohewentintoauniversitypositionbecausehewantedtodoresearch.AndIwasfortunate,whenIdidmygraduatetrainingatMcGill,Iwassurroundedmostlybyprofessorswhoactuallywereorientedtowardsdiscoveringthetruthinthecourseoftheirresearch.ButIsawthatovertimedeteriorateinfavorofcareerists.AndIwouldputmostuniversityadministratorsinthebinofcareerists.Andcareeristsareinterestedinthesecondarybenefitsoftheircareer,maybetha{t}^{\prime }ssecurityandmaybei{t}^{\prime }sstatus,andnotinterestedinthepursuit.TheonlypeopleIsawwhopursuedauniversitycareerwhohadjustificationforit,whoweremen,theirjustificationwas,I^{\prime }msointerestedinpursuing,le{t}^{\prime }ssay,scientifictruthandtheexpansionofknowledge,thatIcanfindmystatus,myinterestthere,andifIhaveenoughmoneytoallowthattooccur,thatwillbefine.AndIthoughtthatwasaperfectlyreasonablegame.Now,youbroughtupacoupleofthingsthere.Andletmesaythatther{e}^{\prime }salotofpeoplewhogointoscienceforthat.IwentintosciencebecauseIloveresearch,andIlovediscovery,and{I}^{\prime }mcreative,andi{t}^{\prime }saperfectvenueforacreativepersontojustthinkaboutthingsandthengotestthem.I{t}^{\prime }ssofun.AndIdo{n}^{\prime }tthinkthatwhatIwassayingischaracterizingallpeopleinallthemotivationalstates.Onthewhole,itseemslikewhenwelookatwhoarethesecareeriststhatgointothisfield,andessentiallybecausei{t}^{\prime }slowriskandyouhavethisstability,whenyouhavemenwhoaremakingthatchoice,i{t}^{\prime }saverydifferentphenotypethanawomanmakingthatchoice.Somaybewehaveafeedbackloop.Soimaginethis.Imaginethatastheuniversitiesbecomecomparativelylower-payingandmorematernalintheirorientationtowardsthestudents,theyattractalargerandlargerproportionofrelativelydependentmenwhoare{n}^{\prime }tadventurousenoughtomakeitoutsideofthatshelteredenvironment.Andwhatthatdoesinturn,becausethemenactoutthatpatternofdependency,isitreinforcestheideathattheinappropriatelymaternally-orientedwomenhave,whatwouldyousay,insufficientchargesthattheyneedtotakecareof.Youknow,thingsreallydotendtospiraloutofcontrolwhenapositivefeedbackloopemerges.Right.Soifyouwanttobecomealcoholic,thebestwaytodothatisstarttodrinktocureyourhangover,becauseitworks,butitproducesaworsehangover.Andifyouwanttodevelopagoraphobia,haveapanicattackandthenavoid.Right.Somostformsofseriouspsychopathology,ifyouwanttobecomedepressed,getsadandthenisolate.Right?Somanyformsofpsychopathologyarepositivefeedbackloops,sowecanimaginethatwhenasocialinstitutionstartstospiral,thatther{e}^{\prime }smultiplecausalforcesatworkthatarereinforcingeachother,becausethatwouldalsoproducearapidtransformation.OK,soyoucounteredmypropositionthattheuniversitiesaredeterioratingbecausethe{y}^{\prime }rebeinginvadedbyinappropriatelymaternally-orientedwomenbysaying,yes,butthe{y}^{\prime }realsoinhabitedby,andIdo{n}^{\prime }twanttoputwordsinyourmouth,bymenwhoarelookingforadependentandlesscompetitiveniche.Yes.Isthatafairsummary?Yes.Inkeepingwithwhatyo{u}^{\prime }reobserving?Yes,maybe.Thematernalsideofitthing,Ido{n}^{\prime }tsee,but{I}^{\prime }mawoman,andsoitmightbeharderformetosee.Well,Iseeitintheconcernwithmicroaggressions,withtheconcernwithequity,withallthese...OK.Butlook,wehavethat.Imean,wehavesomuchofthat,andIwasjusttellingoneofmycolleagues,fortheveryfirsttimeinmyentirelife,and{I}^{\prime }vebeenteachingfor15years,thissemesterwasthefirsttimeIdid{n}^{\prime }tjusthaveunfetteredenjoymentteachingmyevolutionarypsychologyclass,andi{t}^{\prime }sbecause{I}^{\prime }mterrified.EverydayIgointomyclass...Istartedtonoticethatin2016whenIwasteaching.Yeah,thatIgointomyclassfeelingterrified.I^{\prime }mtalkingaboutbiologicalsex,andIhavetospendalotoftimetalkingaboutwhatbiologicalsexis,whatgenderis,andtalkingabout...Thetwothingsplayintoeachotherinreallyinterestingways,actually.AndsoIspendtimetalkingaboutthat,but{I}^{\prime }mthinkingtomyself,I^{\prime }mgoingtogettotallydestroyed,becauseeverything,ultimately,inevolutionarybiologycomesdowntosex.AndthereasonIstartedmybookoffwiththechapter,WhatisaWoman?,isthati{t}^{\prime }ssofoundational,thisideathatasabiologicalfemale,thatyouinvestmoreinoffspring.Andwhatthismeansforyouasawomanisitmeansthatthecostsofsexarehigher.Andthiscreatesamatingmarketwherewomenessentiallygettocalltheshotswithsex,andmensortofdothethingsthattheyneedtodoinordertogetchosen.Butthenwhathappenswhenther{e}^{\prime }snoconsequencesforwome{n}^{\prime }ssexualbehavior?Imean,becausethefactthatwomenhaveconsequentialsexualbehaviorhassetthestageforthingslikewomenbeingchoosieraboutsex,menbeingmorecompetitive,tobeabletogetaccesstothethingsthatwomenwantinpartners.Andwhenallofasuddenwemakesexnon-costlyforwomen,whichhasbeenahugeachievementforwomen,butithasthesehugeconsequencesoneverything,becausesomuchofwhoweareandoursocialbehaviorsandthetypesofthingsthatmotivateusaresortofbuiltaroundthissystemofsexbeingcostlyforwomen.Finally,theperfectgiftforsomebodywhohaseverything.Agiftthatwillreacheternity?Whatcouldbebetter?Pre-borngivesthisgift200timeseverydayastheyrescuebabieswhoselivesareinperil.Thesebabie{s}^{\prime }livesarepreciousandbeautiful.Theirheartbeginstoformatconception,andatjustthreeweeksisalreadybeating.Atfiveweeks,abab{y}^{\prime }sheartbeatcanbeheardonultrasound.Bysixweeks,eyesareforming.By10weeks,ababycansuckhisorherthumb.Pre-bornneedsourhelptosavetheseprecioussouls.Forjust$28, you can sponsor an ultrasound and introduce a mother to her baby, which doubles that baby’s chance at life. And right now, through a matching grant, your gift saves twice as many babies. Please give the gift of life. Have your donation matched today by dialing pound 250 and saying the keyword baby. That’s pound 250 keyword baby. Or donate securely at preborn.com slash Jordan. That’s preborn.com slash Jordan. Do you think has … OK. Obviously, the consequences of sex are extremely high for women and then secondarily for men, clearly. And it is because we’re a high-investment species and our children have an incredibly lengthy and costly dependency period. OK, OK, so we’re not going to eradicate that. Now, you could say … Now, because you entitled your book, interestingly, the subtitle, we should just point this out, is that this is your brain and birth control, the surprising science of women hormones and the law of unintended consequences. OK, let’s concentrate on that last part, that law of unintended consequences, because it isn’t obvious to me, and I think this is implicit in your book, if the birth control pill is a biological mutation that exceeds the development of the hydrogen bomb in terms of its explosive consequences, it could easily be that the unintended consequences will swamp the benefits. Now, the benefit … Let’s investigate this as thoroughly as we can. The benefit is that women are no longer prey to the terrifying consequences of sexual interaction. Right. But also more … So, that sounds small, right? Now, in some ways it doesn’t sound small, because the idea of women not being prey to sexual behavior is obviously a big problem, and that’s great that women don’t have to worry about that. But more than anything, in my view, the thing that’s been most important and sort of groundbreaking about the birth control pill and having reliable contraception is that it’s allowed women to plan. Well, OK, so let me ask you about that, because I’m not so sure about that. OK. So, well, it’s not something I want to toss away, because obviously the problem of birth control is a walloping problem. Yes. So, we’re not going to underestimate the complexity of that problem. It’s the complexity of reproduction. And so, but … So, here’s a statistic. Now, half of all 30-year-old women in the West are without children. OK, half of them will never have a child. So, that’s 25 percent of women. Ninety percent of them will regret it. So, now we have a situation now, imagine this propagating across the decades, we have a situation now where one in five women will be involuntarily childless. And that means from the time from 30 onward for 60 years alone. Right. Right, OK, now that’s a walloping cost for 20 percent of women. And they’re just the women who have it the worst. Now, we can set that against the fact that women are much more educated and they’re much more autonomous, and the whole human race has now access to the intellectual capacity of women in a way that just wasn’t possible, say, before the 1960s. We know that women’s educational attainment is the best predictor of their children’s educational attainment after you factor in IQ. We know that the countries that prioritize women’s rights are the countries that are most likely to develop economically. So, there seems to be a huge benefit in the general emancipation of women. But the costs are overwhelming, and it looks to me like they’re mounting. You know, because you also see … I think it’s now 30 percent of Japanese people under the age of 30 are virginal. And the amount of sex that young people in the West are having, at least actual sex, is plummeting. And it’s harder and harder for women to find a long-term relationship. And so, do you believe that … Why do you believe overall, or do you even believe, that the benefits of the pill have outweighed the costs? I don’t know that I believe that. I mean, honestly, I think that this is one of those things where we can’t make … I don’t think that I can make a blanket statement about that for everyone. Do you know what I mean? To me, that’s an individual-level decision. Yes, exactly. So, for me, using birth control for the number of years that I did, absolutely, the benefits outweigh the costs because of how I played things. I mean, it allowed me to get my degrees and start my research lab, and I had my kids when I wanted to. I have two. I have a daughter. Was that enough? Yeah, I was done. Okay, so that was good for you. I was comfortable with that. I felt good about that. Right, so you managed all that. I did, and I think that there are many women who do. There are some women who don’t. And so, I think that the question of whether or not the costs outweigh the benefits, something that’s best answered at the individual basis, which is why I think the best thing that we can do for people is to educate them about what the trade-offs are that you’re making and what the risks and benefits are. Because like you said, I think that there is a… Women are taught almost nothing about their fertility, like nothing. Well, they’re taught lies. Well, yeah, I have women coming into my class talking about how so-and-so had a baby at 40. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m saying, like, no, here’s the fertility curve. Tell me, describe the fertility curve. The fertility curve peaks at 25, and then it begins to decline. So, women are at their most fertile at 25 years of age, and then it begins to decline. It declines very precipitously after 35, and the probability of getting pregnant from a general act of sex is much, much lower than it is when you’re in your 20s. And this is a really hard thing for women to have a wrestle with. That’s for sure. I mean, I look at myself, and I was in graduate school when I had my first child, and I had to make the decision, am I going to incur the cost to my career to go ahead and try to have a baby now? And I know that it’ll be relatively easy for me in biology. 28. Right, right, so you were already, by historical standards, old. Yeah, but I wanted to go ahead and get… Why’d you take the risk? I took the risk because I study women’s fertility. OK, so you knew. And it’s like, so I know, I know exactly what’s going to happen if I wait. And that wasn’t a chance that I wanted to take. And I think that if we do things like educate women on what the costs are that they’re sort of facing, if they choose to restrict their fertility for all of these years, what is the outcome of that? OK, so first of all, they should at least know what the facts are. I don’t think that we’re educating women about this thing. There’s no one who’s lied to more than 19-year-old women. They’re lied to in all sorts of ways. The first lie is there’ll be nothing more important to you than your career. I think that’s a lie because I know almost no one for whom that is true, whether they’re male or female. Like, I think on average, for men, career is more important than it is on average for women. But having said that, men who have a successful family and a successful career are much more likely to value their family over their career. And I think that’s even more true for women. And part of the reason I think that, you can tell me what you think about this, these lawyers I worked with as part of my clinical practice, so I worked with partners of law firms in big law firms in Toronto. And so we have Bay Street in Toronto, which is kind of the equivalent of Wall Street on a Canadian scale. And there are large law firms there that are internationally competitive, especially in the world of finance, because Canada, that’s above its weight on the financial side, partly because of our banks. So I worked with these. So the deal we put forward to the law firms, this little company I was working with, was you send us your best people, and we will endeavor to make them even more productive than they are. Now, in any law firm, there’s a small proportion of lawyers who are hypercompetent at law, but also hypercompetent at generating business. And they’re unbelievably valuable, because they feed all the lawyers in the law firm who can do law but can’t generate business right now. Some of them are men and some of them are women, and the law firms are hypermotivated to keep those women. And they can’t. All the women. All the women quit. You bet, between 28 and 32. So what happens is they’re hyperconscientious and brilliant. They’re usually attractive as well. And so they do extremely well in high school, they do extremely well in college and university, they do extremely well in law school, and they’re on a track, high-achieving track. They climb all the way up this track until they’re senior partners and they’re working like 70 hours a week, and often by this time, but not always, they’re married, and usually to someone who has a high income, and they look around, having hit the pinnacle, and they’re 30, and they think, why the hell am I working 70 hours a week? Now, the male answer to that is to win the contest. And we know that winning the contest makes men sexually attractive, but that isn’t the case at all for women. And so what the women do invariably is bail out and take a job that gives them more flexibility in shorter hours. And are these because they want to have a family? Absolutely. I mean, this is something that’s… And people don’t talk about it very frequently, but you hit the nail on the head. That’s exactly what happens. I mean, women generally want to have more work-life balance than men do, and it’s just because the reward structure is very different for male and female brain of winning the contest, as you say. And for men, there’s a real reward that comes from that, historically, evolutionarily. There isn’t anything more important than winning the contest. And for women, it’s about when… We like to win the competition, but we also value investing in our family and in our relationships and that sort of thing to a greater extent than men. And most women that I know, even women who are really high achievers and have high-performing jobs, also value their family time, and a lot of them aren’t willing to make those costs. I know more people that are women who’ve foregone really big promotions and opportunities to sit on this board or that board, and saying no to it, even though it’s an amazing opportunity, just because they don’t want to compromise their time with their children and their families. And this is, yeah, it’s a real thing for women. It’s a real thing for women. OK, so let me ask you a question about that, too. Tell me what you think about this. My observation of people who practice as scientists is that one in a hundred is an actual scientist. Right, I agree with that. OK, OK. So then, if one in a hundred is an actual scientist, and all the scientific progress depends on that one in a hundred, which is also what you’d conclude if you looked at both publication rates and impact of publications, same preto distribution problem, and men are more likely to hyper-focus on their careers, what happens if we take the men out of those positions and we substitute in women? Because are we going to attenuate the productivity of the highest performers at the highest level of performance? Well, so I don’t think that, you know, I think that when you look at the distributions of, like, let’s just say, supergeniuses. Let’s assume that scientists are supergeniuses, OK? And when we look at things like IQ, and we look at the distribution of IQ between men and women, we know that women have a more clustered around the mean type of a distribution. There’s less variability. And for men, there’s more variability, which means that with men’s IQ distribution, you have fatter tails, meaning you have more men. No wonder you’re terrified about getting into trouble. That’s pretty much what killed Larry Summers. Well, I know, and I talk about this in my class. Nobody has problems with the fact that, you know, if you go to an institution, like an institution for people who are profoundly cognitively, you know, challenged, that the sex ratio there is like two to one male, three to one male. And we know that more males have profound cognitive disabilities relative to women. But on the side of supergeniuses, it’s the same thing. If we see more male supergeniuses, then we do female supergeniuses. But I think with that, sometimes where things get, you know, everybody gets upset about that, which I don’t think is necessary, is that it’s not saying that there’s not female supergeniuses, or it doesn’t make predictions about any individual one case, because patterns aren’t good at making predictions about what happens with you or with you or with you. And yeah, so we know that that’s true. There’s a gazillion publications that have been published to that effect. Whether we want it to be true or not, it is. And what this means is that when you get to the upper echelons of any type of a career that requires a lot of G, or a lot of intellectual power, you do tend to see that there is a little bit of a sex ratio with men to women. This being said, there’s a lot of like really valuable jobs that don’t require as much G that play to some of women’s intellectual strengths. So for example, things like science and medicine are becoming more female, and it’s because those are things that women are really good at. Well, okay, so at those very high levels of achievement, you’re going to require the intersection of rare trades. So imagine in engineering. Okay, so first of all, you have to be more interested in things than people. Okay, so that’s going to skew it male right away. Then you have to be super bright. Now, at the highest echelons, there’s also going to be a bit of a male skew there. And then you might also hypothesize that you also have to be either hyper-dedicated, so that would be conscientious, or hyper-competitive, or both. And so we could be in a perverse situation where, well, let’s play out the extreme case. On average, women will make better scientists than men, but the best scientists will be men. We could be in a situation where we’d have to balance those probabilities. So I wouldn’t say the best scientists are men, because to me, that’s like making predictions about individual cases. So I will say on average, we should expect to see that in the pool of best scientists that is a male bias sex ratio, I would agree with that statement. Okay, so let’s clarify a little bit. Because the absolute best scientist could actually be a woman, and that wouldn’t violate the patterns of it. Yeah, okay, so you said it more precisely. Yes, no, but I think that that matters when you’re talking about something like this. It does matter. It matters a lot. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that we, yeah, so precision support. It’s time to take your winter style to the next level. Dressing for success can help you look better and be more confident. So whether you’re attending an important meeting or networking event, or simply want to impress your colleagues, Mizzen in Maine has everything you need. Their clothing is comfortable, breathable, packable, and machine washable. Their dress shirts are designed to help you close out the year in style. Whether you’re shopping for a special someone this holiday season or giving yourself the gift you really want, Mizzen in Maine is the perfect gift for any guy who works, travels, plays golf, or wants to look and feel great. And let’s be honest, that’s every guy. So what are you waiting for? Spruce up your winter style with Mizzen in Maine. Go to MizzeninMaine.com and use code JORDAN to get 25% off any purchase of $130 or more. That’s M-I-Z-Z-E-N and Maine.com. Promo code JORDAN for 25% off today. Yeah, yeah. Now, okay, so let’s move on to another issue. We talked about what is a woman and that took a long time. And you wouldn’t think so because you would think that would be obvious. And it is because people can perceive the difference between male and female at a second. You are your hormones and you in the time of fertility. Those are the two of the first three chapters. So what do you mean you are your hormones? What I mean is a lot of times, especially culturally, in the US, and I don’t know whether or not this is true elsewhere, I just know my experience is here. We have a tendency to talk about our hormones like there’s something external to us. Like there’s us, our sort of hormone-free rational self, and then there’s us under the control of hormones. And that’s just simply not the way that it works. Our hormones are part of the signaling machinery that our brain uses to create the experience of being the person we are. So they’re like neurotransmitters or anything else. When we consider the fact that there’s a bunch of gears and sprockets that all work together to make us the sort of person that we are with our restaurant preferences and personalities and likes and dislikes, our hormones play a role in that. That’s like part of the machinery. So that shouldn’t be segregated off as part of the tenement. Right, yeah. And so I think that this is something that on the one hand is really obvious because I don’t think if you tell that to somebody they would say, but then what happens when we change people’s hormones? Yeah, right. Well, testosterone is another great test case where here we have a testosterone clinic on every corner these days. And so people are changing their hormonal profile thinking about what it’s going to do to this thing or that thing. So for example, if a man is taking testosterone thinking like, oh, I’ll get my upper body strength back or maybe it’ll improve my libido. Or women go on birth control pills thinking, oh, I won’t have to get my, you know, I won’t ovulate and I won’t get pregnant without thinking about the fact that you’re actually shutting down your body’s ability to produce its own hormones. You’re taking a daily dose of this synthetic hormone. And when you change hormones, because hormones are literally a part of what your brain uses to create you, it changes you. And so that whole chapter is just really trying to orient people. So you’re trying to bring people back into their body in some ways. Well, you can understand why people have a problem with this because imagine you get angry and then later you regret it. You’re going to feel like the anger overtook you, like it was an alien force in some ways. It seems to me that the part of us that we identify with is something like the integrated self. And then that integrated self can fall under the sway of impulses that are more neurologically primordial. And we do feel that as a defeat. We do feel that as a subordination or even as a possession. And so you can see why people have that hesitancy to identify with their hormone-driven impulses. But by the same token, those elements of you that might be excessive when isolated are a part of you and have to be integrated, then they also have benefits that in all likelihood far outweigh their costs. So what do you think the costs are? Now, you talked about hormonal substitution in women with the birth control pill. Now, maybe there’s two aspects to that. One is that the consequence of the suppression per se, and we definitely need to talk about that, and then there’s also the fact that what the normal hormonal regimen is being … What the substitution for that is isn’t the same hormonal profile, right? Because it’s not the same chemical. So let’s start with the consequences of the hormonal transformation. What has that done to women, and what does it do to the relationship between men and women? Yeah, really great questions. I mean, our hormones, we have them for a reason. Like, evolution by selection doesn’t select for costly traits, and hormones are expensive. You know, they’re metabolically expensive. They make our brain reorganize themselves every month. None of that stuff would go on if it wasn’t doing something to promote survival or reproduction. And so by eliminating that, by decreasing or sort of minimizing women’s exposure to cyclicity in their hormonal profiles, you’re essentially changing a lot of the things that are fundamental to being a woman. So just to give some examples of this, for a naturally cycling woman, which is what we’ll call a woman who’s not on the pill, because she’s naturally cycling between her two hormones, hormones go through two different states across the state of a cycle. It starts off with hormone levels are really low when a woman gets her period, which is the first day of her cycle. And then estrogen levels begin to increase as her egg follicles are being stimulated. And as they’re beginning to mature, that releases high levels of estrogen. And when estrogen increases, because it’s nearing the time when women are able to conceive in the cycle, it causes a lot of biological, physiological, and psychological changes that make women primed for sex. So it makes women smell better to men, it makes women look more attractive to men, because their skin becomes more vascularized, their cheeks become rosier, they just look sexier, they smell sexier, they move sexier, their voices are sexier. There’s all of this research that’s been showing that when estrogen levels are rising in the cycle, that it’s associated with… Strippers get more tips. Yeah, they earn more tip money. I mean, it’s a real phenomenon. And this happens, right, as women are entering… So why not flatten that? Why isn’t that just annoying for women? So they can replace that with a more regulated emotional life and one that’s less unpredictable? Right, but yeah, but that’s like equating normal and predictable with the male pattern. Yeah, right, it’s very much like that. And that’s not true. It’s like that’s normal for males and predictable for males, but that’s not true for women, that’s not predictable for women. We’re different entities. And I think that we’ve been in this cultural paradigm that equates normal with male for so long that we’re even afraid to ask the question of what if both of our hormonal states matter? Like, what if there’s two halves to a woman’s soul? Don’t you think it’s okay? It seems to me that, and maybe this is unfair, but it seems to me remarkably perverse that at least some of this can be laid at the feet of the feminists. Well, let’s look at a couple of the strange things that we have as a consequence of the feminist world. We have the insistence that career is going to be the most important part of a woman’s life. Now, the leftist feminists, and they’re generally leftist, are anti-corporate, but they’re pro-career. Okay, so that’s very weird. A career is, to have a career is to be embedded in what the feminists object to as the patriarchy. To subordinate your cyclicity to the hormonal rhythms of a man, you can’t imagine something that would be more like subordination to the demands of the oppressive patriarchy. That kind of sums it up. You’re going to suppress the biological manifestations of femininity in favor of a persona that makes you optimally functional in the corporate patriarchy. Right, so all of that, I mean, there’s so many contradictions at the heart of that, because another one is, we need to hire women in equal numbers as men because of the diversity that they bring to the workforce, but women are just like men. And we do everything we can to suppress their hormonal variation that would in fact make them different. Yeah, no. And you’re right, a lot of the people who really get nervous about talking about cyclicity and talking about hormonal changes are sort of the old guard feminists. I understand where all of that originated. I mean, women, we’ve had a very bad history of being treated pretty poorly because of the fact that our hormones change. But I think that it’s time that we need to move past that and say, you know, all of this, this idea that there’s something problematic about cycling hormones, is assuming that there’s only one way to be that’s correct, and that way is male. And that’s wrong. I mean, to me, I reject that. And yes, our hormones change, and you can say that they make us unpredictable, but it’s actually incredibly predictable. Like, if you throw, give me any woman, you bring her in off the street and put her here, and I ask her how old she is and when was the first day of her last menstrual cycle, I can tell you with pretty good certainty what her hormones are doing at that moment. Right, if I bring a man in off the street, I have absolutely no idea what his primary sex hormone is doing because testosterone is reactive. It increases when there’s a beautiful woman around. It decreases if your sports team loses. It increases if your sports team wins. Your political candidate loses, it decreases. So testosterone is incredibly reactive. So that’s also relevant to why the men would be hanging around the high-status men, because if your sports team wins, then your testosterone levels … Yeah, you can increase your testosterone, and you can go and keep being more. A lot of these ideas that people have been using to reject the idea or object to the fact that women have cycles and that there’s something problematic about that are all very much steeped in the idea that the male way of being is optimal, normal, and correct, and that the female way of being is problematic, and I absolutely reject that. And so when we take the birth control pill, what it does is instead of allowing you to cycle between these two hormones, because you start with this big increase in estrogen, which is coordinating all the activities related to sex and conception, because this is the period in the cycle in which sex can lead to conception. How long a period is that? It’s about four … So that period of time is about five to seven days. So about five days prior to ovulation, and then within 24 hours of ovulation, during that window, which we call the fertile window, sex can lead to conception. And that’s how many days a month? It’s about five to seven. Yeah, right. And then after ovulation, a little temporary endocrine structure forms from the empty egg follicle, and it begins releasing women’s other primary sex hormone, which is progesterone. And when that hormone is being released, it tends to make us sleepier, it makes us hungrier, it lowers our testosterone levels, it does a bunch of things physiologically that are helping prepare women’s bodies for pregnancy, and prepare ourselves for the possibility that an egg might implant. And so women generally are less likely to be going out and doing risky things, and more likely to avoid contaminants. So women’s disgust sensitivity increases. There’s all of these things that go on that are essentially preparing our bodies for this. That’s when they have maximal post-coital regret. I bet that you’re right. Yeah, that’s so funny. And so you get this waxing and waning between these two hormones that are organizing our bodies for two different activities, implantation and conception, or pardon me, sex and conception, and then implantation and pregnancy. And we go in between these two states, and each of these hormonal states is associated with different types of psychological patterns and physiological patterns. I mean, even they’ve done studies where they scan women’s brains every day across the cycle and take hormone measures, and it’s like you see things like white matter density increasing when estrogen is high. Spinal, you get new dendritic spines in the hippocampus when estrogen is present. And then these things retreat when you’re under the control of progesterone, and so we experience all these changes. And that’s a very normal part of being a woman. And when you take the birth control pill, what it does is you get a daily dose of a relatively low level of synthetic estradiol, so estrogen, and a relatively high level of synthetic progesterone, which is called a progestin, because it’s not biologically identical. And this mimics the state that a woman’s body is in during that second half of the menstrual cycle when conception isn’t possible. And what this does is it sends a signal to the hypothalamus not to stimulate the ovaries to produce a new egg, because it’s essentially waiting to see what happens with the one that was just ovulated. And so when you’re taking the pill, you get the same daily dose every day of this synthetic hormonal state that’s kind of keeping you in… So in principle, the body’s reacting as if the woman has been sexually satiated in the most fundamental way. She might be pregnant. She might be pregnant, essentially, is what that is saying. And so one of the logical consequences of that would be, correct me if I’m wrong, she should be less interested in sex, but then this also ties into the change in her preference for men. So let’s talk about that a little bit. Well, one of the things that really shocked me when I came across this, probably 10, 15 years ago, was that there was pronounced variability in the facial, in the faces that women found attractive across the menstrual cycle. And so if you take photographs of the same man and you widen or narrow the jaw, widening jaws is a sign of more classically dominant, it’s the wrong way of thinking about it, confident, masculine faces, you can do it with the same man. And the women who are in their most fertile periods prefer the wider-jawed men. And so, OK, so then I thought, oh, this is a problem, because it means that women who are on the pill prefer feminine men. Then I thought, that’s a real problem, because it might be that women on the pill really don’t like masculine men. Uh-oh, that’s probably a problem, because we have a lot of tension between women and men in our society, and we have no idea how much that’s driven by the fact that the pill is transforming the manner in which females perceive the most masculine men. I mean, it’s terrifying if that’s the case. Right, no, I mean, it’s very provocative, right? That’s the word I would use. It’s incredibly provocative, because research has been showing now for about 20 years that when women are in the point in the cycle when estrogen is high, that that’s associated with an increased preference for testosterone cues. Like you said, vocal, facial and behavioral masculinity are things that women are really zeroing in on right near high fertility in the cycle. And this, of course, begs the question, well, then what happens if a woman is on hormonal birth control and the estrogen is never in the estrogen-dominant phase of her cycle? Then what happens? And researchers have since asked that question, and what they tend to find is that women who are on hormonal birth control desire a somewhat less masculine male face and male voice, and there’s been some research even showing that if women chose their partners when they’re on hormonal birth control and then discontinued, that this can lead to changes in how they perceive and how attracted they are to their partner. Yeah, I read that, tell me if this is right, that if they picked an attractive partner, when they’re off the pill, they find them even more attractive, but if they picked a less desirable partner, when they’re off the pill, they find them even less desirable. So it seems to be, okay, so that’s right, it magnifies the consequence of their choices. Yeah, it’s like all of a sudden the blinders were off. And so now if they chose somebody that they found attractive, because they weren’t really paying that much attention to that and they were choosing that when they were on the pill, all of a sudden the blinders are off, they see it, they love it, they’re attracted to it, their relationship satisfaction goes up, their sexual desire and their relationship goes up, and if the opposite happens, it’s the opposite. So do women on the pill pick friends as mates? Oh, interesting, I’ve never seen a study looking at that, but I mean, it wouldn’t be a far stretch to make that prediction just because it does seem like women who are choosing their partners on the pill, if there’s a pattern that’s found, women are generally zeroing in on qualities that have less to do with sexiness and sexual desire and masculinity, and more zeroing in on things like safety and is this like part of it? Nurturance, companionship. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, well, you can see that women have a very, very difficult choice to make, because they want to pick a guy who can win a competition with other guys, they want to pick a guy who can keep the psychopaths at bay, they want to pick a guy who’s productive, but they also need to pick someone who’s generous and capable of forming responsible relationships. Well, you know, talk about a play of opposites, and you could imagine that any shift in hormonal balance is going to skew that in one direction or another. Right, yeah, I mean, partner choice, I always tell my women in my class, and also the men, the few men that are in my class, because it’s a university and it’s all women now, but what I tell them is it’s all about making trade-offs, and sort of which side of the table you’re stacking your coins, are you stacking your coins more on the sort of sexiness, yeah, keeping the psychopaths at bay, kind of masculinity types of qualities, are you stacking your chips all the way over here, a good caregiver, provider going to help with the children, are you putting them more toward the middle? Everybody makes a trade-off, and essentially what we do, what our hormones do, is they kind of nudge where we put our stack, you know, and what we can see when this happens en masse, as you can see, en masse changes in partner preferences, potentially, which is pretty provocative. Well, we have no idea what the political consequences of that are. Because you could also imagine, this is like the worst-case scenario, imagine that there’s a distribution of women who are affected by hormonal transformation, and some women are relatively unaffected, and some women are tremendously affected. Well, you could imagine that the tremendously affected women would have more impetus to engage politically. Right? So the ones, right. So imagine that there’s a subset of women for whom the birth control pill makes masculine men particularly undesirable. Right. Now, imagine that that transforms itself into political motivation, because it might. I’m not saying we know this, we don’t know it, because we don’t know anything about the relationship between hormonal transformation and political activism. But the probability that there’s no relationship is zero. Right. So we’ve thrown this new monkey wrench into the works in 1960 that’s transformed the relationship between men and women, and we really have no idea what the consequences of that are. No, I was just talking in my class about this, because I think it’s really fascinating, because I think culturally, I mean, we’ve been feeling the tensions that are created by this for a very long time now. And again, I’m somebody, I feel very much like I benefited from the pill. I was on it for a decade, it was a great time in my life to be on it. It didn’t cause me any problems that I’m aware of. I got to have my kids and I wanted to go to invest, and so on and so forth. But at the same time, having women have the opportunity to invest really heavily in their careers essentially sets up these expectations where women are supposed to be both women and men. Yeah, right. And so women now, because it’s not either or. It’s not like, oh, are you going to go to work, or are you going to stay home and take care of your kids? It’s like, no, I’m doing both things. So we’ve set up this expectation where women are supposed to be women and men, and I think women’s mental health is suffering hugely as a consequence of this. I think it’s been very hard for women trying to balance everything with the expectation that they’re supposed to be doing all of it. It also begs the question of what’s left over for the men. Well, and this is what I think is really interesting. So this was the revelation I just had a couple days ago. I actually had it when I was teaching, and I told my students about it, and I’m like, I think I’m onto something with this. But testosterone levels are an absolute nadir right now. I mean, they’re at an all-time low, and there’s a lot of reasons. Could that be a consequence of excess masturbation just out of curiosity? I don’t think so, no. You don’t? Okay, why not? Because I thought it matches the increase in pornography you say. Yeah, no, I completely, yes, and that goes on concurrently. But testosterone levels… No, because usually when men are seeing a lot of attractive women, it makes their testosterone increase, and then that’s not something that takes a major hit after masturbation. So you think that’s been put to rest. So testosterone levels are the lowest. So testosterone levels are super low, and there’s a lot of reasons for this. We know there’s a lot of xenoestrogens in the water, and that might be messing with the hormones. And men are heavier than they used to be, and fat aromatizes testosterone and turns it into estrogen, which also lowers men’s testosterone levels. Another advantage of an all-carb diet. Yeah, so here’s another interesting thing. I don’t know if you know about this research, but it’s really fascinating. Culturally, we tend to think about testosterone as being this thing that is always good to have super high. We think it’s masculinity and virility and protection. But testosterone is, among other things, a hormone of mating effort. It’s like effort that you’re directing toward winning and doing things that are going to attract partners. So it’s linked with men’s interest in extra pair partners and all these other types of counterproductive behaviors within the context of a long-term pair bond. And so what research finds is that when men get married or are in a long-term committed relationship, their testosterone levels decrease a little bit. And this happens absolutely functionally because it’s essentially easing the foot off the gas pedal because it’s keeping men from doing counterproductive things within the context of a pair bond. When men have young children… It tilts the more to the… Oh, okay, go ahead. Men have children, their testosterone levels decrease again. And the more caregiving that men do, the more their testosterone lowers. And this isn’t permanent. This is a shift that men’s bodies make in response to the environmental cues that’s very adaptive and makes a whole lot of sense with our hunter-gathered history. They shouldn’t be sexually attracted to the children, for example. Exactly, they shouldn’t be attracted to the children. If you’ve got young children at home whose survival is dependent on you, you need to keep your eye on the ball and not on the next-door neighbor. And be raising your children. And so I started to think about this, and I was thinking about this idea that women are being expected to be both women and men. Men are being expected to be both men and women. Because men are now doing more household work and more childcare than they ever have before. Which women also tend to find not attractive. Well, no, they do. It creates problems within the relationship, because women lose sexual attraction in that context. But then men’s testosterone levels could be decreasing in response to that, and that could be one of the factors that’s contributing to men’s low testosterone currently. Is that we’ve created this case where women are having to be women and men, and men are having to be men and women. Right, and so what it does perversely for the men is that the men who are adopting the caregiver role more explicitly also put themselves in a terrible position where they’re less sexually desirable. I saw a very funny study at one point. It might have been David Buss, because he does funny studies all the time, because he’s still allowed to. I think what they showed, they showed university-age women the same men engaging in male-stereotyped activities and female-stereotyped activities, like vacuuming, for example. God only knows why that’s female-stereotyped, but that has something to do with nesting, I suppose. Reliably, the women rated the men who were engaged in the more feminine activities as less sexually attractive. Right, yeah, no, absolutely. That is such a … It creates this cruel bind. But I also think … It’s funny. I teach a class called Evolution, Sex, and the Brain, and we ask big questions. So this is a class I really enjoy teaching, because they encourage us to ask difficult questions that nobody really knows the answers to. And one of the questions I always ask them is about seduction, because seduction is such an important part of women’s sexuality. The idea of a man who has some sort of status and dominance, sort of being masculine, and women find that attractive, and they find that sexual, that’s sexually arousing, and there’s this whole literature about the idea of one of the things that men do is sort of awaken women’s sexuality. That’s the kiss of the prince. Well, yeah, and so then the idea that now we’re in this environment where we say that we can’t do that. Yeah, right. But it’s also at the same time, it is important that women have exercise choice, right? And obviously, we don’t want women getting sexually assaulted. And so it’s like, how do we create a space culturally? What is the conversation that we need to be having where it’s like, seduction is OK, except that it’s not? I mean, it’s really tricky. You’re definitely going to get fired. You’re 100% going to … Well, I see one of the things that’s so perverse about the modern university campus is, on the one hand, there’s this absolute insistence that every possible form of sexual behavior is not only to be tolerated, but celebrated or even worshiped. And on the other hand, every single interaction between a young man and a young woman is so rife with danger that it has to be formulated into a contract before it can be undertaken. Right. Well, you get with that sort of absolute licentiousness, you’re going to get a call for tyrannical regulation of sexual behavior, because you can’t have that much looseness without a demand for tightness, but it does beg the question that you’re putting forward. And while one of the answers to that, I would say, this is sort of a sideways answer, is that alcohol is a very bad thing to pour into the mix. Right, yes. Because it’s the case that almost all sexual assault, especially the date-rate types, but even the more violent types, almost all spousal abuse, all of that would disappear if alcohol disappeared. This is a conversation nobody will have about campuses, because part of the problem on campuses is that young men and young women who don’t have that much experience with each other and who are also anxious as a consequence, generally meet each other in alcohol-fueled bouts. And that’s … Like, you would … You can’t say that alcohol causes violent crime, but you can damn near say it. You know, 50 percent of people who are murdered are drunk, 50 percent of the murderers are drunk. The stats are even worse with regards to sexual assault. If without alcohol, yeah, without alcohol, it would almost never happen. So that’s something that could be started as a topic of reasonable discussion on university campuses, like, are there places where young men and young women can congregate and meet that aren’t fueled by alcohol-induced stupidity and recklessness? Now, it’s complicated, because part of the reason that people drink is so that they can engage in alcohol-fueled stupidity, because it’s fun. And one of the problems with the pill is that it actually allows that to occur without it being utterly catastrophic. Now, it’s catastrophic in that the rate of sexual assault skyrockets, and that’s, you know, not trivial, but … Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so you wrote a letter to your daughter at the end of your book, eh? I did. And so, oh, I want to ask you about a couple of other things here. The curious case of the missing cortisol. Let’s do two things. The curious case of the missing cortisol, that’s very interesting. And also, a letter to my daughter. Sure. So, cortisol. This actually is the reason I wrote the book. And I’ll say that it’s the reason I wrote the book, because I was sitting in a research talk about the effects of early life trauma on the stress response in adulthood, and I’m sure you’re very familiar with all of this work, because one of the things that I do research on is early life adversity that affects developmental outcomes. And I was in a research talk on that, and the researcher was just like mentioning, you know, oh, we collected data on X number of men and women, and we only analyzed the data of the men in our sample, because the majority of the women in our sample happened to be on hormonal birth control, and everybody knows that women on hormonal birth control don’t have a cortisol response to stress. And then, yeah, that was me. I was like, wait, who knows this? Who knows that? Like, everybody knows that? And so I went up, and I didn’t hear anything else, because I was just absolutely stunned, because that’s what you see with PTSD, and that’s what you see with people who’ve experienced severe trauma, is no cortisol response to stress. It’s not good. And so I waited until after the talk, and I went and talked to people. You see that in depression, too, if it’s long-term. Yeah, I know. I mean, it’s really, really bad. It means no play in response to stress. No. No. No adaptation in response to stress. It’s funny, because everybody always thinks that cortisol is this bad guy, and like, whoa, it’s got to be great. And it’s like, no, like, stress is the bad guy. Cortisol helps you adapt to stress. Like, cortisol is a good guy who comes in to help sort of restore homeostasis after your body’s gotten all screwed up from whatever, stressing it out. And so I went and I talked to my colleague afterward, and I said, did you say that women on hormonal birth control don’t have a stress response? And he’s like, yeah, they don’t. I was really surprised by it, too. But then I went to the literature. They don’t have an adaptive stress response. Yeah, they don’t, because they report experiencing stress, and their sympathetic stress response is still going off, but they don’t have any cortisol release. And so I went to the literature, and he was right. People had been publishing on this since the 90s, and I’d never heard anything about it. And I was on the pill, and I’m a woman, and I study women’s hormones. Anyway, after that, I was like, what else don’t I know about hormonal birth control? And that was what led me in the rabbit hole that essentially led me to write the book, because there were so many things that the pill does in terms of neurobiologically, like what it does in terms of the brain, and then psychologically, proxymally, like in terms of mood, sexual desire, partner choice, which we talked about in attraction, and stress response. So what’s the consequence of the intent? Okay, so women get stressed, but they don’t have a cortisol response. Okay, so what’s the consequence of that? So here’s the really great answer. Nobody knows. I’ll tell you what we know from research that hasn’t directly linked the things together. We just did a study where we found that you get changes in the inflammatory response to stress in hormonal birth control pill users in ways that’s consistent with the type of inflammatory response that tends to lead to things like autoimmunity, which we know women are at a much greater risk for than men. Does it lead to depression? Because there’s lots of evidence that depression is an inflammatory condition. Depression and anxiety are also some things that we know that being on hormonal birth control puts you at a significant greater risk for. And all of these things are what you would expect in the case when you have a blunted cortisol response to stress. So what does the normal cortisol response do if you’re stressed? Right, so normally, if you and I are, you know, if I’m being filmed, let’s say, to be on a podcast that a lot of people listen to, what would generally start happening about five minutes after I arrived here is my cortisol would start to increase. And it’s doing this because it knows that I am in a high-pressure situation. It could be high-pressure good or high-pressure bad, because stress is something that we get when we’re being chased by a pack of hungry wolverines, but it’s also something that we get on our wedding day or Christmas morning for children is a time when cortisol is really high. Opportunity and threat. It’s essentially flagging your brain something important is happening. So it should heighten attention. Heighten attention. So our brain is aware, it’s on its game. We start creating new neurons in our hippocampus, they’re being birthed in response to cortisol. You should learn when there is maximum opportunity and maximum threat. The hippocampus is crucial for that. Absolutely, and that’s exactly what’s going on. So that’s an important thing that our bodies do, is grabbing on. It’s helping us absorb these important experiences, so that way we can have them for later. It dumps fat and sugar. To change. Yeah, to change. It dumps fat and sugar into our bloodstream, so that way our brain has access to glucose, but also so our muscles do, so we can get away if we need to get away quickly, if we’re being chased. So it should mean that blunted cortisol response should mean that women on birth control don’t update their navigational maps as effectively, because the hippocampus is also the fundamental place of the origin of hippocampal maps. Yeah, for hippocampal maps. Of navigational maps. Yeah, and I’ve never seen any research on that in particular, but I have seen it with emotional memories, and what they find is that women who are on hormonal birth control have a harder time encoding emotionally valence events when you stress them out, which is exactly what you would expect. That means you’re not adapting to the… Right, and I’ve heard… That’s really not good. No, it’s not, and I’ve actually heard from a woman who’s a practicing therapist, because I had gotten several emails, and finally somebody called me, and I answered the phone, which I don’t usually do and I don’t know the number, but it was one of these therapists asking about PTSD and therapy when women are on hormonal birth control, because they all have the same theory that women don’t respond as well to therapy for PTSD… To exposure. Yeah, when they’re on the pill. Oh my God, that’s also… That’s terrible, because there’s no difference between exposure therapy and learning. Right, yeah. Exposure therapy is just the technical use of the learning situation in the therapy context, right? Exactly, yeah, and she said, we don’t get the kinds of outcomes that we need when we have women or on the pill. So what that implies is women on the pill can’t update as well. Yeah, exactly. Jesus, that’s brutal. Yeah, and so this is, I mean, obviously, and here’s the thing that we’re taking just not to ovulate, and in some cases, women are being put on this, teenagers, for their skin. And it’s like we know nothing about the long-term consequences of brain development, of blunting a woman’s own hormone production, and then replacing it with these synthetics. Yeah, so talk about that. There’s no way it doesn’t affect brain development. I mean, it’s like post-puberty brain development is coordinated by our sex hormones. Right. And if you blunt that, for a naturally cycling woman, you go through this period of estrogen and then progesterone and estrogen and progesterone, and when you shut that down and then just put in this daily synthetic dose, the idea that that’s going to lead to the same brain development outcomes Is that an extension of prepuberto hormonal balance? Yeah, I mean, prepuberto hormones are such a disaster because women’s HPG axes are still regulating themselves. I mean, their brains and ovaries are still learning how to communicate, and so women’s cycles tend to be messed up, a little bit screwy at that time, because everything is learning itself. So does putting women on the pill when they’re very young interfere with the full manifestation of puberty? That’s a really great question, and it’s not one that anybody knows the answer to. It seems like a logical conclusion for what you’ve described. Well, exactly. I mean, it’s not something that… And the thing is, we’ve been putting women on these drugs forever. I’ve only seen three studies that have looked at long-term consequences of hormonal birth control use during adolescence on development. The research is pointing in the direction of the fact that using hormonal birth control during adolescence puts you at a greater risk of developing major depressive disorder over the course of your lifetime, even after you’ve discontinued it. Not good stuff. Not something that you want your daughter to be suffering, so that way she doesn’t have acne. And I don’t think that this is being very well communicated to the parents of girls. And I think it’s a travesty. I really do. Mm-hmm. Okay, two more things. The hormones that women are put on aren’t the bioidentical hormone. Okay, so let’s talk about that, and then let’s talk about your… My daughter? Okay. So the synthetic hormones that are in hormonal birth control, you’d think that they would be sort of biologically identical to our body’s hormones. And for the most part, the synthetic estrogen that is in hormonal birth control is. It has nice binding affinity and nice binding specificity to estrogen receptors. The synthetic progesterone or the progestins that are in hormonal birth control are not. And most of them aren’t even synthesized from progesterone. They’re actually synthesized from, most of them, from testosterone. And so chemists modify testosterone molecules in ways that make them able to stimulate progesterone receptors, but they don’t always have perfect binding specificity, meaning that they also bind to other receptors for other hormones, and they don’t necessarily have… They’re messy. and they don’t have good binding affinity, where they’ll stimulate the receptor and then fall off. And then what that means is you need higher doses to make sure that you’re getting enough progesterone… Which increases the degree to which they’re activating things they shouldn’t be activating. Yeah, and that’s actually reason to be the explanation for why women experience the blunt cortisol response in response to stress, is that the progestins in hormonal birth control, some of them will stimulate glucocorticoid receptors, essentially making women’s bodies believe that they’re in a state of chronic stress. And so women’s bodies are then shutting down the stress response. Depression is a consequence of being in constant stress. Well, absolutely. And when you look at the patterns, I mean, the thing about this is that it’s all pointing in this direction, where when you look at the risk of depression, and even the suicide risk for women who are on hormonal birth control, especially in adolescence, so 19 and younger, is really high during the first three months of use. And think about it, this is when their glucocorticoid receptors are probably just being flooded with these non-specific progestins that are stimulating those, making their body think that it’s World War II. You know, and… Oh, that’s just what you need at puberty. Because it’s already World War II. Yeah, I know. And so they’re feeling terrible until their body finally shuts down the stress response, and then you don’t get any stress response to stress, but women actually end up feeling a little bit better because they’re no longer psychologically being put into this state of trauma, like constant trauma. I think that it’s crazy to me that this is the best we can do. I think about how important… Why aren’t we doing better than this? You know, I think that the reason is because… Because there’s nothing more important than this. Fertility regulation is so important for women in terms of being able to meet their goals that most women are willing to put up with all the bullshit that goes along with it because they don’t feel like they have any other choices. Well, they also don’t know. Right, and they don’t know. And then the drug companies are like, you know, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And so it’s like, well, the women are taking it, so who cares? And women are like, you know, we’re just having to deal with it. But we need to do… I know, we need to do better. And I look at what they’re doing now, they’re investing in male birth control, but all that they’re doing is shifting the problem that we have for women and shifting it onto men. So currently what they’re looking at, and you tell me how many men you know that would take this, they’re looking at a gel that men rub on themselves that will lower their testosterone to such a degree that they’ll no longer produce sperm. Oh yeah, that’ll be… I mean, don’t you think that’s going to take off like gangbusters? Yeah, anti-testosterone, that’s going to be real popular. There’s a bunch of guys in the room here lined up to take it. I mean, it’s like nobody’s going to… It’s just a dumb idea, and it causes the same side effects in men that our hormonal birth control does in women, because it’s shutting down their sex hormones. And the men that they try it on are like, these side effects are terrible, I’m not taking this. And these are the side effects that we put up with, because we don’t have another choice. Because we’re the ones who have the baby if we end up with a slip-up. And so I really… My whole push with all of this is not that the birth control pill is terrible and that it’s done all these awful things. I mean, it’s a trade-off, and it’s definitely going to have societal consequences that we haven’t even begun to begin to put our fingers on. But it’s all about educating yourself, what are the trade-offs that are being made when you go on hormonal birth control? And then also putting pressure on people like drug makers and policymakers who are investing in companies and invest in drug companies and other types of technology to do something better, because we need to be able to do better. We need to be able to do better for women. You need to go to Washington and talk to the Republican study committee. I mean, seriously. Seriously, yes, you need to do that. Yeah, seriously. Yeah, I mean, we can do better for women. We can do better for men, we can do better for the people that love them. And so my last chapter in my book, The Letter to My Daughter, I wrote because I have a daughter, I have a 16-year-old daughter. And one of the things that I thought about, just as soon as I was writing this book, was what does this mean for her? Would I recommend for her, if she’s sexually active, when she’s especially a teenager, would I recommend for her to go on hormonal birth control, which I know works, right? And it’s effective and it’s easy to use and it’s easy for a teenager to use, or would I tell her to use something else? And ultimately, my conclusion to that is that the answer to that question is going to be unique to every single woman. And so I included that chapter in the book because I wanted all women to hear what I will say to my daughter when we’re having to make that decision in terms of what are some of the things that you need to think about. That’s how you made it personal. Yeah, because this is a personal choice, and I think that it’s really important that we think about, like, so for example, how old are you? So we’ve been talking about brain development. If my daughter wanted to start hormonal birth control before the age of 19, I would want her not to be on it if there’s any other thing that we can do that I know would prevent her from getting pregnant if she was sexually active. Just because what I know about brain development, after 19, the effects seem to be more or less reversible. Like, I mean, so even if you go on it and something bad happens, if you discontinue it, no harm, no foul, right? But before that time… So the earlier the onset, the worse. Yeah, well, you know, that’s also the case with sexual behavior. So the biggest correlate, one of the biggest correlates of early sexual behavior is antisocial personality. So when it goes back to that dark tetra issue… Yeah, yeah, I can totally see that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And so, you know, thinking about that, and then thinking about what are your life goals? Why do you want to be on it? Because some things, preventing pregnancy, especially if you’re like a teen girl, for example, I mean, that’s like the most important thing you can do, really, because there’s no bigger predictor of poverty for women than single motherhood. Nothing. Especially when you’re a young single mother, that’s just like putting you on the wrong path in terms of what your aspirational hopes are. And so, you know, it’s like considering where you are in your life, considering age, considering the product that you’re on, and then sort of going through the different types of things that are out there, considering non-hormonal options and what the costs and benefits of those things are. Well, we need to be mature enough as a society to actually have a serious conversation with young people about sexual behavior as such. Because one of the things, one of your chapters, I can’t remember exactly the title, is, Why Didn’t I Know This? Right? Well, we’re not very good in our sex education at schools of walking people through the dangers of short-term sexual mating strategies, either. Because you might say, well, I want to be on the pill, I’m 16, because I want to have casual sex, because that’s really the issue. It’s like, well, do you really want to have casual sex? It’s like, what does that mean exactly? What are you sacrificing of yourself? Who is that going to make you attracted to? Who are the males that are most likely to accept that invitation? Because we had this idea, and the pill produced this in large part, that we could divorce sex from its broader context, its broader relational context, let’s say, its political and social context. And I don’t think any of that’s true. And so for a comprehensive sex education, not only would people have to be educated in relationship to the sort of biological realities that you’re describing, they’d also have to be educated in relationship to the psychological realities, the difference between short-term and long-term mating strategies, how that’s associated with personality. It’s very complicated. Yeah, and I think that there’s a lot of, especially in, because we tend to think about high school students or college students and short-term sexual behavior, but a lot of the people seeking birth control are people who are in long-term relationships or just trying to not get pregnant in the context of their long-term committed relationship. And even just having honest, yes, I love the idea of having honest conversations about sexual development and sexual relationships. Those long-term relationships, tell me what you think about this. My sense is that you get to try out about four people in your life, and that’s it. Well, because if you think that fertility window, let’s say it’s in trouble by the age of 30. So you’ve really got, by the time you have a bit of a brain, so let’s say 19, you’ve got 11 years. Okay, so how many people can you get to know, to evaluate for long-term mating suitability in 11 years? Well, five’s a lot, I would say. Right, right. Yeah, no, I think that’s funny. I love that you landed on four. It seems reasonable, right? Yeah, but the thing is, it’s reasonable. It’s very finite. And so that means the importance of your choice of a committed dating partner is likely far more important than you think. Because maybe when you’re 17, you think, I have lots of time. It’s like, well, you’re 17, and you’ve only been alive for 17 years, and 10 years might seem like a long time, but it’s not. Right. Especially when you have to push leaving home, adopting the responsibilities of an adult, becoming educated, establishing a career, finding a long-term partner. You’ve got 10 years to do that. You’re going to be running, especially if you’re female. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. All right, well, any parting words for the young women who are… How has this changed your… Let’s close with this. Yeah. What has learning all this done to your views on birth control? Yeah, that’s good enough. Okay, okay. Let me think about this for a moment. Well, I mean, to me, I had the same blind spot everybody else had. I was on hormonal birth control for more than a decade of my life. All the while, I was studying the effects of women’s hormones on the brain. I was studying psychology and behavior and the way that women’s motivational shifts change in response to hormones. And I never spent one second thinking about what the hormones in my birth control were doing to me psychologically. Like, I have that thing about… It was all benefit, no cost. Yes, I had an absolute blind spot. And so for me, this whole process really removed that blind spot. And I mean, it was embarrassing. It was really embarrassing to be a psychologist. And I like to think I’m a pretty good one. And that I know a lot about a lot and never have to made that connection and really felt like I was like, this is the most embarrassing thing ever. Right, right. But that’s how sort of blind we all are to it. I mean, it’s also one of the things I talk about in the book is like, anabolic steroids are illegal because of the impact they can have on men’s health because they’re sex hormones and they have these nonspecific effects all throughout the body. Hormonal birth control has all these nonspecific effects throughout the body and it’s available over the counter. So, you know, we’ve got… We’ve got some thinking to do. It’s just a total blind spot on the way that we treat these two things. Well, we’ve only had three or four generations to adapt to the biggest biological transformation in our species’ history. Yeah, no, I agree. So we’re in the early days of this, but it is insanely complicated and rife with unintended consequences, which you’re doing a stellar job of pointing out. And hopefully that will help spark a conversation that’s a bit more productive, productive, mature and focused on the fact that everything has a price. Everything has a price. Right. You bet. All right, to everyone watching and listening, thank you very much for your attention, to the Daily Wire people, plus people for facilitating this live conversation, which we’re going to be doing a bunch of in the next couple of months. Thank you for the time and effort expended on that. I’m going to talk to Dr. Hill for another half an hour behind the Daily Wire Plus platform. That’s usually where I delve into more autobiographical issues. Very interested in how people’s interests, how their calling makes itself manifest in their life, often from an early age, so we’re going to find that out. These are very useful conversations to attend to if you’re interested in, well, hearing from people who’ve had a stellar career and often done a good job of balancing that with their life, how they managed it, you know, and you can’t hear too much about that as far as I’m concerned. Thank you, everyone, for your attention. Talk to you soon.