January 15, 2025 • 30 mins
Did you know that the composition of a mother’s breast milk changes based on a baby’s saliva? Or that human pregnancy has been compared to running many marathons in a row? These are only a few of the mind-blowing findings researcher and author Cat Bohannon describes in her book, “Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution.” She joins Danielle and Simone to talk about some of the lesser-known superpowers of the female body, and clears up some common misconceptions.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello Sunshine. Ay, fam Today on the bright Side, prepare
to have your mind blown. Okay, we are talking to
author and evolutionary biology expert Cap Bohannan. She's sharing how
two hundred million years of evolution have unleashed the superpowers
of the female body.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Ooh, I'm ready. Okay, It's Wednesday, January fifteenth.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
I'm Danielle Robe and I'm Simone Boyce and this is
the bright Side from Hello Sunshine. We've got such a
great show for all of you today. I am so
excited for this one because I'm a huge science nerd,
so I am ready to geek out all about two
hundred million years of evolutionary biology and really how that
(00:43):
journey has made us all into the badass women that
we are today. Well, our guest today is Cap Bohannon.
She's an author and expert in evolution who has been
boring over two hundred million years of research about female
mammals and she's uncovered some pretty surprising and lesser known
superpowers of the female body.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Absolutely, So, if you've ever wondered about your body shape,
or you've been curious about the benefits of breastfeeding, or
maybe you thought I think I hear way better than
my husband does, or my boyfriend does, or my father does.
There actually may be a scientific or evolutionary reason for it.
You know, one of my favorite things about Kat's work
(01:25):
is that she really tries to correct scientific bias. So
today one of my goals is to try and dispel
myths about women's bodies that we've been taught. Is there
anything in particular you're curious about today.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I'm really curious about the really early stuff, the hunter
gatherer stuff, because I think that, like you were saying,
we have been conditioned to believe a lot of myths
about our bodies and about like our purpose, especially in
an early evolutionary context. But I think there's a lot
more context that we are missing there, So I'm excited
(01:58):
to learn more about that as well as women as mothers.
I'm really curious just about how the whole birthing journey
has evolved since our earliest days on this earth.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, you know, there's a reason that her book is
titled Eve Right, The First Woman. I mean, it's just
a comprehensive must read for anybody interested in gender studies
or biology or the untold stories of women's contributions to
humanity's survival and success.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah, I think she named it so well. It's called
Eve How the female body drove two hundred million years
of evolution? And Danielle's right, you guys, it's going to
blow your mind. It is full of surprising facts that
will make you sound super smart at your next dinner party.
And the YA edition of her book is set to
come out next month on February twenty fifth. If you
want to read it with your daughter or a special
(02:48):
teenager in your life, all right, let's go ahead and
bring her in. Kat Bohannon, Welcome to the bright Side.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Your book is an incredible look at evolution. And you
spent a decade researching mammals with a focus on the
female body. Now we're talking about two hundred million years
worth of data from multiple species. What in the world
made you take this on?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Oh man?
Speaker 3 (03:14):
What made me take it on was actually a night
of drinking, which is fine, I mean, if we're being.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
So honest, Yeah, night of drinking probably, yeah, definitely. Well
aademic I mean so right.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
So it was me and a bunch of neuropostdocs at Columbia, right,
and we're passing a bottle in this unfinished lab they
were building at Columbia, and we were talking about our days,
and this friend of mine was a postdoc and he
had to present his work that day. And the thing
is is that the thing that he and his boss
had been wanting to look at the results weren't all
(03:49):
that interesting. But what this guy was telling me, as
I'm literally swigging a bottle, right, is that for once
he had rats of both male and female bodies, both
male and female, and the sex differences data was huge.
But the postdoc was like, I can't do this now
because my boss thinks this is an interesting and I
(04:09):
know that I'm the only one looking at sex differences
here and how these neurons work, and so I guess
this is now my side gig right, So I'm getting
increasingly drunk. But this is actually the first moment I
ever learned that the female body was understudied. And that's
the moment I found out it was a thing. And
oh man, it's such a thing. It's such a thing.
The female body is so radically understudied. But we are,
(04:32):
thanks to that guy and a lot of other really
smart scientists, starting to change that.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Can I ask why does the medical and academic community
why do they hate us? Like, why do they why
do they overlook us?
Speaker 3 (04:45):
So, first of all, definitely don't find a stronger concentration
of hatin us, US with the ovaries in that population
versus just about any other except for like the actual
manisphere online, like there's a strong concentration of hate there.
But in academia, no, they don't hate us at all.
It's more like on the science side of things, it
(05:07):
was sort of like good science running uk, right, because
you had this thing that happens in female mammals which
is estrous and you and I might call it the
menstrual cycle, Like we cycle through these hormones that have
this cascade up and down, you know, over time in
every species that we study that are mammals. Okay, so
if you're female, that's a thing for a scientist, that's
(05:28):
a confound it's a complication. Easiest way to control for it, weirdly,
was just not studying females, which we thought was fine,
which turned out to totally not be fine.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Then there was also a problem for a long time
in human clinical trials. Unfortunately, for a very long time
it was against the rules to include females of reproductive
age in clinical trials because we were afraid of like
screwing up babies. Basically, we're afraid you might get pregnant,
even if you're not pregnant. Now you might eventually get
pregnant or they're it might be a pregnancy, and so now, bah,
(06:03):
let's not do that. We change the rules in the
nineties because unfortunately what that meant is for decades we
weren't having any women being tested for new drugs coming
on the market. It was a problem. We've started to
correct that. We're starting to see how maybe we should
have corrected that, but it's still true that like women
(06:23):
are only about twenty two percent of all clinical trials suggets,
which is not our portion of the population. Like we're
very low, so low, so you know, things to work on, right,
The good news is we're starting to correct that, but
it's a big gap to fill.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Well when it comes to women being understudied when new
drugs are coming out on the market. You've highlighted that
car crash data actually helped us better understand the differences
between the ways that men and women metabolize certain drugs
like ambient. Can you elaborate on that.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Oh man, Okay, so it turns out women are forty
percent more likely to be diagnosed with sleep disorders at
some point in our lives. Don't know what would be
keeping us up at night. We have it all.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
But yeah, okay, fine, you know, yeah, obviously you're a scientist,
author and comedian. I just have to put that in there.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
If we can't laugh at our bodies, what the heck
are we doing?
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Oh man?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
So, the most common drug for when you have inzombnia,
if you're going to get prescribed something, is probably going
to be ambient. Unfortunately, it turned out that female patients
who had taken ambient the night before were more likely
to get in a car crash the next morning, you know,
like on their way to work than male patients, because
(07:49):
the slope at which the drugs effects left their system
was a bit different than it was in the male
And we didn't know that for a long time because
we hadn't properly tested it for sex differences when it
first came out. We finally changed the rules. You're supposed
to have about half the dose if you've got ovaries.
But when we change the rules, it had been in
(08:09):
the market for twenty one years, so I think we
can do better.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Well, this really points to how high the stakes are here.
This is not just you know, oh, women are sad
because we're not included in medical studies. No, we are
actually dying because you're overlooking us. And this discovery about
ambient this is not the only instance of that where
we've learned years later after the fact how these drugs
(08:38):
are impacting women differently. Opioid's was somewhat similar. Would you
tell us about that one?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yeah, So opioid drugs, these are this controlled class of
drugs that help relieve your pain, and that especially matters
for women all for all kinds of reasons. For one,
we have more chronic pain disorders, so that's a thing.
But it also matters because you know, women's pain matters.
You might have heard of the opioid crisis. They can
also be in many bodies, very addictive.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
So the thing is is.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
That opioid drugs were now learning through retrospective data by
looking back at what happened after they were already on
the market. They're metabolized in female bodies a bit differently.
Female patients tend to need a little bit more of
the same drug if it's an opioid, to have the
same subjective pain relief. Right, And that's a problem for
(09:30):
addiction because if you are told take this amount of
a drug, regardless of your male or female, and do
it this often, if you're having that feeling like your
pain's coming back sooner than when you're supposed to take
it again, then you have to suddenly make this own,
this choice on your own right. You have to decide
do I break the rules and take it sooner. Do
(09:51):
I trust my doctor still to take my pain seriously.
Female pain is often taken less seriously and clinic. There's
been studies on this. It's a right. So that becomes
this unique path of addiction, right for a female patient
where she's having to make choices that she shouldn't have
to make. And it's not because her doctor was trying
to neglect her. It's because the doctor wasn't working with
(10:14):
enough information about how it's different for female patients.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Kat I love that your book gives us the science
and the history and so much of the way that
we understand evolution is through a male point of view.
But you've discovered some myths to the ways that we
perceive human development. This one really stuck out to me.
History would have us believe that men led the charge
in hunting and toolmaking, but you've discovered otherwise.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
I discovered some really good arguments for probably otherwise didn't
have a time machine. But you know what, all those
boys telling the man stories didn't either. So we're on
the same page. We're looking at the same data. And
the data I'm looking at tells me that a lot
of tool use is super super super a female story
(11:03):
even in other primates. Like right now, okay, somewhere in
a number of different places in Africa, a chimpanzee female
is out there hunting with an actual spear. She made
a spear, right, So she took a branch off of
a tree, ripped it off like a little sapling, chewed
it down to a point with her teeth, and she's
out there hunting for actual meat right now. This isn't
(11:25):
like deep human pass right now, and she's actually hunting
really adorable little things called bush babies that are primates.
Don't look it up online, you'll be sad. But she
eats those, okay, But she's doing that with like probably
an offspring on her back and The reason she's using
that spear is because while that bush baby, that tiny
little monkey thing that she's looking forward to having for lunch,
(11:47):
it can't kill her. It could bite her and cause
an infection, or it could bite her baby, and that
could be a problem, right, So better to keep it
at that distance. Put a pointy thing between your body
and the thing that could harm you. Females are often
the innovators because they need to be, because especially for primates,
(12:08):
and we're a primates, we're primates, we are apes, right
for primates, we're often primary caretakers, so we have to
make sure that both our bodies and also anybodies were
responsible for don't get harmed. So the hunting story, the
tool using hunting story, you know with the spears', that's
often a female thing.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Wow, females are the innovators because they need to be.
That is so true and empowering.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
We're taking a short break, but we'll be right back
with Cat Bohannan. We're back with Cat Bohannan. When it
comes to these evolutionary changes, at what point in the
two hundred million year timeline that you studied do you
(13:02):
see the biggest advancements?
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Oh, deep time is such a weird thing. I mean,
we say these words two hundred million years and that's
literally under the feet of dinosaurs. It's kind of hard
to wrap your head around, right, and our species is
only three hundred thousand years, So I mean, your big
evolutionary leaps are going to be like, you know, the
difference between we were still laying eggs for a long
(13:26):
time while making milk, and then we stopped laying eggs
and started having live birth. And then there was that
time where we started being primate like things in the trees,
which was a very long time, and then a long
time again where most primates still living in trees, but
some of us came down from the trees, became bipedal
and started walking around. So I think all of these
(13:48):
are huge leaps, and they're happening at really different scales
of time, which is weird to think about, but also
kind of cool because for me, it reminds me that
our bodies are really old and really new at the
same time.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Are there any other pivotal evolutionary breakthroughs that you can
potentially or probably a tribute to women that you think
are interesting.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Yeah, just that our species exists pretty much that. What
do you mean, Like, literally, these are the bodies where
this thing I'm pointing at. You may not see me
for your podcast people, but like this female woin, this
female body is where evolution happens. This is how generations happen,
This is how things get passed on over time. So
also that, but not simply the fact that we give birth,
(14:40):
but the fact that our species has a really hard
time giving birth compared to other primates. Our pregnancies, our birds,
and our postpartum recoveries are like quantifiably longer and harder
and more prone to crippling complications than they are for
like almost to any other mammal. Like it actually scientifically
(15:03):
sucks for us the way we make babies. It does.
But gynecology is awesome. Now I'm not talking about the
like super problematic history of American gynecology, Okay, I'm talking
about like the very long evolved history of midwiffery, the
very long evolved history of the fact that we as
(15:24):
a species are the only ones that help each other
give birth. We're the only ones that do that because
we evolve to be cooperative, and we evolve to help
each other, and we evolve to share knowledge around this
difficult thing that we have to do. That's why we're here, ma'am,
which is not the story they usually tell you at
(15:44):
the Natural history museums.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Can I go back to what you mentioned about our
births as humans being more painful and just overall awful,
not that I have any experience with this. Now it's chillum, Yeah,
why is that?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Like?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Why us?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
One of the reasons has to do with our actual
arrangement of our hip bones. Right. This theory is called
the obstetric dilemma. But basically it's that, like we used
to move on four limbs, right, and then for a
variety of reasons where like actually maybe two limbs, though,
let's actually have legs and like this giant butt muscle
to hold us up. But to do that, evolution produced
(16:25):
a different pelvic shape, right. It tilted our hip bones
and our overall pelvic bowl in a way that made
us more like gravity stable, so we wouldn't fall over
all the time, right. But also it narrowed the opening
at the bottom of that bowl, which is where our
babies come out. And that started happening right before our
(16:46):
heads started getting really big. So at this point we're
trying to squeeze like a watermelon out of a lemon
sized hole, you know, So if you've met fruit like
that's that's just like a structural problem, right. The other
big deal, actually, which is way more of a problem
even than that, is that our placentas are really greedy.
So a placenta, for those of your listeners who don't know,
(17:09):
it's kind of like a fleshy docking station. It's where
the umbilical cord attaches to the uterine wall. It's how
the baby gets basically everything from you. If you're a
person who's pregnant. Okay, So our placenta is actually really
what's medically called invasive, Like it penetrates the mother's bloodstream,
which then means that it really is interfering with her
(17:33):
immune systems. It's manipulating her blood Pressure's there's no part
of you that isn't pregnant. If you're a person who's pregnant. Yeah, yeah,
it's not just your uterus, it's all of you. Right,
It's rigorous, it's challenging. The metabolic costs of a human
pregnancy have been compared to running many ultra marathons in
(17:55):
a row, not just like a few, but just like
a lot of them. It's been compared to Olympic convents.
It's been like we run out of metaphors because it's
the most metabolically taxing thing a human body can actually do.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
So we're all Olympic medal you super are?
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yes, yes, if you are a person who has been pregnant,
you are already a damn athlete. Okay, so just give
yourself some cred there, because seriously, seriously, so.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
What I love about your work, kat is is that
it really highlights so many of the superpowers that were
just innately imbued with as women. So I want to
get into some of that. I know that there's a
really cool one involving breast milk. I'd love for you
to tell us about it.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Oh man, Yeah, let me first say this is really
really important. You can be a child free person and
that doesn't mean you are failing your evolutionary freaking destiny, okay,
because they're actually we are actually a species that has
evolved to work with one another and have many different
roles in supporting societies that we live in from ancient times,
(19:00):
including not having our own children. Okay, so you are
functional and great even if you never have kids. All right, now,
I'm going to talk a lot about kids though. Okay,
So milk one of the first things to evolve in mammals.
Once mammals have nipples, we have this crazy new it's
kind of like a communication technology. Okay. So if you
are a newborn and you are learning how to suckle,
(19:23):
so if you're any good at it, you are latching on,
which is basically you're forming a docking seal. You're wrapping
your lips around this whole aerial situation, and you are
forming a vacuum in your mouth because you've sealed it right,
your lips around the nipple. Okay, Once you have a vacuum, though,
what you have is this thing called the upsuck, and
(19:46):
that means that you are forming this vacuum by sucking
in your cheeks, like you're taking this space and you're
condensing it right, and it's pulling the milk out. So
you're forming a tide though, because you're not constantly suckling,
you're doing suck suck swallow. Sucks sucks swallow. So if
you've ever seen a diagram of how tides work, you've
got the wave of milk coming in over the top
(20:07):
of the thing, but then you have an undertoe, so
the baby's spit, your spit is being sucked back up
into your mom's boob through her nipple, where it then
distributes throughout the entirety of the breast along all of
those milk tubes you know where it's red like some
kind of weird ancient code. And what it does is
(20:28):
it changes the milk to suit. So if you're sick,
if the baby is sick, the milk changes. It changes
by lots of different measures. It sends more amuno agents
down to like help your young immune system fight off
that cold you've got now with all of your snot
and what have you. Okay, it's also sending down hormonal
(20:49):
signals to help soothe you, help you sleep better. It's
doing a lot of stuff. So like a nipple, weirdly
is a two way communication platform. I mean, a parent
an offspring.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Breastfeeding really is miraculous. Yeah, that's one of my favorite
breastfeeding facts. Thank you so much for sharing that. We've
got to take one more break, but keep those booty seated.
We'll be back soon with more from cap Ohannan. And
(21:23):
we're back.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
You've looked into how women's body shapes have evolutionary benefits,
you actually make the case for having and if I'm
not mistaken, the technical term here is a big booty.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Can you break that down for us?
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Your butt is a thing, specifically the fat that booty.
The booty seems to store special kinds of lipids differently
than other parts of your body. If you're a female person,
I'll give you the technical term. They're long chain pobbly
unsaturated fatty acids or LCPUFAs. But I think i'll make
a three think like fish oil. It's basically that kind
(21:59):
of stuff, and our bodies are bad at making it
from smaller parts, like stitching those long chains together, so
we get it mostly from our diet, already made, and
then store it and weirdly, our butts store more of
it than other fat depots on our body. And it
does turn out that that stuff is really important for
making baby brains and retinas. So the at of post
(22:24):
tissue on your butt and actually your upper thighs and
your hips seems to be metabolically protected. Sort of first
place to gain, last place to lose for a lot
of your life. Okay, unless you are in the third
trimester of a pregnancy, and or you are breastfeeding, then
it's like the kid has a crazy straw straight to
(22:44):
your ass and is just hoovering the stuff into itself. Right,
And so there are a number of people now who think,
number of scientists who think, maybe that's why maybe we
evolve to store this stuff that we need that we're
bad at mai from other parts, because we needed it
to make our stupidly huge human brains and human retinas.
(23:07):
So in other words, it's not like does this dress
make my ass look fat? It's does this dress make
my ass look smart?
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I love you so much. You're just frivolous. This is
the best. It's just you're incredible. It was it was
a dream. It was a dream. And I hope that
every female rapper now incorporates lcpofas into their next song
if I got that.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Right, smart ass booty.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Seriously, though, I also understand that women have stronger senses
of smell, taste, hearing. What's the science behind that.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
For most of the senses? Weirdly female mammals, but humans too,
you know, seem to be better at most of them,
like by a lot of measures, Like we are better
at smell for most of our life. So you're not crazy.
You do smell that one smell in that room that
(24:06):
the dude you're with cannot smell at all, And it's
probably a sex based difference. You are probably slightly better
at detecting these faint scents and figuring out what they are.
We don't entirely know why, we know that it's true
also our hearing. This got to me on kind of
like a personal level. So it does turn out to
(24:27):
be true that most male folk start losing the upper
ranges of their hearing starting around age twenty five or so.
We just we're not sure what's driving it, but we
do know that he's cutting off the top end of
his hearing starting about his mid twenties, which means by
the time he arrives at middle age, most male people
(24:50):
are actually having trouble hearing most female voices. That's because
our voices are higher pitched.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Oh my god, this is why my dad can't ever
hear my mom when she tells him to do something.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Yeah, And so that you know, that kind of got
to me. It's sort of like, so here we are
in all of these boardrooms and these spaces of power,
and dudes can't hear us like come on, like you know,
so they need hearing a sooner than we do, and
it would be good for everyone if they started using them.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
I have a question for you that my mom and
I have been chatting about. She is postmenopause now okay,
and has shared with me so many of the symptoms
that she was dealing with during menopause. And we learn
from a doctor who came on the show that in
(25:42):
the past women weren't really supposed to live this long
like they we weren't living past menopause.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
So one is that true? And two, how has.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Menopause aided in the evolution of our species or has it?
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Yeah? So I think these are really good questions. I
hate this word supposed to know that phrase r because yeah,
because we keep looking to our evolutionary past for guidance
for how to understand how we're supposed to be. The
natural world does all kinds of things I would not
recommend for humans. It's absolutely true that for most of
(26:23):
human history, old people were probably like unicorns, like maybe
you saw someone with gray hair once, because most of
us were dying well before forty Only recently actually if
we greatly improved that. So we don't even know when menopause,
as a phenomenon of which depends on living past fifty,
would have kicked in in human history. We don't assume
(26:45):
that there was a lot of it for most of
human history, but we know that there is now and
it's absolutely about not dying. Congratulations ladies, if you're in menopause,
if you've passed menopause, all it means is you're not dead,
So good job not being dead. You're totally alive. That's
actually all menopause means, and it is weird that we
(27:06):
do it, like most mammals do not live a full
third of their potential lives after having stopped making eggs
and having babies. The reason that menopause is awesome for
our species is because it means that we have enough
(27:27):
women living past age fifty to form societies of the elderly,
and they are incredibly important for our human society's well being.
That's why menopause is awesome.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
So, Kat, your book is called Eve How the female
body drove two hundred million years of human evolution? What
do we have to look forward to in the next
I don't know two hundred million years. What's next for
us in terms of human evolution and the female body.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
I hope that we get better at individualizing medicine for
all of the different ways that our bodies are diverse,
so that we can, I don't know, reduce suffering, because
that's the only goal worth having actually anywhere at all,
that's the major goal. That's what we're doing here. I
hope that that includes better studies into how female bodies
(28:15):
work and when it does and doesn't matter that bodies
are female in terms of how you treat different disorders
and different kinds of pain. I hope that we stop
neglecting women who are getting older as if the problems
and side effects that come with menopause didn't matter just
(28:35):
because everyone goes through it. Actually they do matter. Actually,
we can make this better. We just need more research
to do it. I think at some point we will
develop an artificial womb, and however you feel about that,
I think it's going to be freaking amazing. Right now,
the only way to have children is to have somebody
(28:59):
gestate that child wild, right, and it is always a risk.
There is no such thing as pregnancy without risk. There
is always risk, and there is always some degree of suffering.
Imagine if there were a fully functional, totally non harmful
way of doing that that didn't require anybody to suffer.
(29:21):
How does that change the choices we make? What kind
of freedom does that allow future people with the uterus
to have? Man I actually think it's going to take
a few hundred years. But if we can do that,
then that changes how we understand what people with these
bodies should be obliged to do.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
What an interesting answer. Thank you so much, Thank you
so much for your time.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Yeah, thank you for your time.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Kap Ohannan is a writer who researches the evolution of
narrative and cognition. The YA edition of her book Eve,
How the Female Body Shaped two hundred million Years of
Evolution is out February twenty fifth.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, we're chatting with superstar
Array about her new movie One of Them Days. Join
the conversation using hashtag the bright Side and connect with
us on social media at Hello Sunshine on Instagram and
at the bright Side Pod on TikTok oh, and feel
free to tag us at simone Voice and at Danielle Robe.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Listen and follow the bright side on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
See you tomorrow, folks, keep looking on the bright side.
Hello Sunshine. Ay, fam Today on the bright Side, prepare
to have your mind blown. Okay, we are talking to
author and evolutionary biology expert Cap Bohannan. She's sharing how
two hundred million years of evolution have unleashed the superpowers
of the female body.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Ooh, I'm ready. Okay, It's Wednesday, January fifteenth.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
I'm Danielle Robe and I'm Simone Boyce and this is
the bright Side from Hello Sunshine. We've got such a
great show for all of you today. I am so
excited for this one because I'm a huge science nerd,
so I am ready to geek out all about two
hundred million years of evolutionary biology and really how that
(00:43):
journey has made us all into the badass women that
we are today. Well, our guest today is Cap Bohannon.
She's an author and expert in evolution who has been
boring over two hundred million years of research about female
mammals and she's uncovered some pretty surprising and lesser known
superpowers of the female body.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Absolutely, So, if you've ever wondered about your body shape,
or you've been curious about the benefits of breastfeeding, or
maybe you thought I think I hear way better than
my husband does, or my boyfriend does, or my father does.
There actually may be a scientific or evolutionary reason for it.
You know, one of my favorite things about Kat's work
(01:25):
is that she really tries to correct scientific bias. So
today one of my goals is to try and dispel
myths about women's bodies that we've been taught. Is there
anything in particular you're curious about today.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I'm really curious about the really early stuff, the hunter
gatherer stuff, because I think that, like you were saying,
we have been conditioned to believe a lot of myths
about our bodies and about like our purpose, especially in
an early evolutionary context. But I think there's a lot
more context that we are missing there, So I'm excited
(01:58):
to learn more about that as well as women as mothers.
I'm really curious just about how the whole birthing journey
has evolved since our earliest days on this earth.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, you know, there's a reason that her book is
titled Eve Right, The First Woman. I mean, it's just
a comprehensive must read for anybody interested in gender studies
or biology or the untold stories of women's contributions to
humanity's survival and success.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah, I think she named it so well. It's called
Eve How the female body drove two hundred million years
of evolution? And Danielle's right, you guys, it's going to
blow your mind. It is full of surprising facts that
will make you sound super smart at your next dinner party.
And the YA edition of her book is set to
come out next month on February twenty fifth. If you
want to read it with your daughter or a special
(02:48):
teenager in your life, all right, let's go ahead and
bring her in. Kat Bohannon, Welcome to the bright Side.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Your book is an incredible look at evolution. And you
spent a decade researching mammals with a focus on the
female body. Now we're talking about two hundred million years
worth of data from multiple species. What in the world
made you take this on?
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Oh man?
Speaker 3 (03:14):
What made me take it on was actually a night
of drinking, which is fine, I mean, if we're being.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
So honest, Yeah, night of drinking probably, yeah, definitely. Well
aademic I mean so right.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
So it was me and a bunch of neuropostdocs at Columbia, right,
and we're passing a bottle in this unfinished lab they
were building at Columbia, and we were talking about our days,
and this friend of mine was a postdoc and he
had to present his work that day. And the thing
is is that the thing that he and his boss
had been wanting to look at the results weren't all
(03:49):
that interesting. But what this guy was telling me, as
I'm literally swigging a bottle, right, is that for once
he had rats of both male and female bodies, both
male and female, and the sex differences data was huge.
But the postdoc was like, I can't do this now
because my boss thinks this is an interesting and I
(04:09):
know that I'm the only one looking at sex differences
here and how these neurons work, and so I guess
this is now my side gig right, So I'm getting
increasingly drunk. But this is actually the first moment I
ever learned that the female body was understudied. And that's
the moment I found out it was a thing. And
oh man, it's such a thing. It's such a thing.
The female body is so radically understudied. But we are,
(04:32):
thanks to that guy and a lot of other really
smart scientists, starting to change that.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Can I ask why does the medical and academic community
why do they hate us? Like, why do they why
do they overlook us?
Speaker 3 (04:45):
So, first of all, definitely don't find a stronger concentration
of hatin us, US with the ovaries in that population
versus just about any other except for like the actual
manisphere online, like there's a strong concentration of hate there.
But in academia, no, they don't hate us at all.
It's more like on the science side of things, it
(05:07):
was sort of like good science running uk, right, because
you had this thing that happens in female mammals which
is estrous and you and I might call it the
menstrual cycle, Like we cycle through these hormones that have
this cascade up and down, you know, over time in
every species that we study that are mammals. Okay, so
if you're female, that's a thing for a scientist, that's
(05:28):
a confound it's a complication. Easiest way to control for it, weirdly,
was just not studying females, which we thought was fine,
which turned out to totally not be fine.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Then there was also a problem for a long time
in human clinical trials. Unfortunately, for a very long time
it was against the rules to include females of reproductive
age in clinical trials because we were afraid of like
screwing up babies. Basically, we're afraid you might get pregnant,
even if you're not pregnant. Now you might eventually get
pregnant or they're it might be a pregnancy, and so now, bah,
(06:03):
let's not do that. We change the rules in the
nineties because unfortunately what that meant is for decades we
weren't having any women being tested for new drugs coming
on the market. It was a problem. We've started to
correct that. We're starting to see how maybe we should
have corrected that, but it's still true that like women
(06:23):
are only about twenty two percent of all clinical trials suggets,
which is not our portion of the population. Like we're
very low, so low, so you know, things to work on, right,
The good news is we're starting to correct that, but
it's a big gap to fill.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Well when it comes to women being understudied when new
drugs are coming out on the market. You've highlighted that
car crash data actually helped us better understand the differences
between the ways that men and women metabolize certain drugs
like ambient. Can you elaborate on that.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Oh man, Okay, so it turns out women are forty
percent more likely to be diagnosed with sleep disorders at
some point in our lives. Don't know what would be
keeping us up at night. We have it all.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
But yeah, okay, fine, you know, yeah, obviously you're a scientist,
author and comedian. I just have to put that in there.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
If we can't laugh at our bodies, what the heck
are we doing?
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Oh man?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
So, the most common drug for when you have inzombnia,
if you're going to get prescribed something, is probably going
to be ambient. Unfortunately, it turned out that female patients
who had taken ambient the night before were more likely
to get in a car crash the next morning, you know,
like on their way to work than male patients, because
(07:49):
the slope at which the drugs effects left their system
was a bit different than it was in the male
And we didn't know that for a long time because
we hadn't properly tested it for sex differences when it
first came out. We finally changed the rules. You're supposed
to have about half the dose if you've got ovaries.
But when we change the rules, it had been in
(08:09):
the market for twenty one years, so I think we
can do better.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Well, this really points to how high the stakes are here.
This is not just you know, oh, women are sad
because we're not included in medical studies. No, we are
actually dying because you're overlooking us. And this discovery about
ambient this is not the only instance of that where
we've learned years later after the fact how these drugs
(08:38):
are impacting women differently. Opioid's was somewhat similar. Would you
tell us about that one?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yeah, So opioid drugs, these are this controlled class of
drugs that help relieve your pain, and that especially matters
for women all for all kinds of reasons. For one,
we have more chronic pain disorders, so that's a thing.
But it also matters because you know, women's pain matters.
You might have heard of the opioid crisis. They can
also be in many bodies, very addictive.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
So the thing is is.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
That opioid drugs were now learning through retrospective data by
looking back at what happened after they were already on
the market. They're metabolized in female bodies a bit differently.
Female patients tend to need a little bit more of
the same drug if it's an opioid, to have the
same subjective pain relief. Right, And that's a problem for
(09:30):
addiction because if you are told take this amount of
a drug, regardless of your male or female, and do
it this often, if you're having that feeling like your
pain's coming back sooner than when you're supposed to take
it again, then you have to suddenly make this own,
this choice on your own right. You have to decide
do I break the rules and take it sooner. Do
(09:51):
I trust my doctor still to take my pain seriously.
Female pain is often taken less seriously and clinic. There's
been studies on this. It's a right. So that becomes
this unique path of addiction, right for a female patient
where she's having to make choices that she shouldn't have
to make. And it's not because her doctor was trying
to neglect her. It's because the doctor wasn't working with
(10:14):
enough information about how it's different for female patients.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Kat I love that your book gives us the science
and the history and so much of the way that
we understand evolution is through a male point of view.
But you've discovered some myths to the ways that we
perceive human development. This one really stuck out to me.
History would have us believe that men led the charge
in hunting and toolmaking, but you've discovered otherwise.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
I discovered some really good arguments for probably otherwise didn't
have a time machine. But you know what, all those
boys telling the man stories didn't either. So we're on
the same page. We're looking at the same data. And
the data I'm looking at tells me that a lot
of tool use is super super super a female story
(11:03):
even in other primates. Like right now, okay, somewhere in
a number of different places in Africa, a chimpanzee female
is out there hunting with an actual spear. She made
a spear, right, So she took a branch off of
a tree, ripped it off like a little sapling, chewed
it down to a point with her teeth, and she's
out there hunting for actual meat right now. This isn't
(11:25):
like deep human pass right now, and she's actually hunting
really adorable little things called bush babies that are primates.
Don't look it up online, you'll be sad. But she
eats those, okay, But she's doing that with like probably
an offspring on her back and The reason she's using
that spear is because while that bush baby, that tiny
little monkey thing that she's looking forward to having for lunch,
(11:47):
it can't kill her. It could bite her and cause
an infection, or it could bite her baby, and that
could be a problem, right, So better to keep it
at that distance. Put a pointy thing between your body
and the thing that could harm you. Females are often
the innovators because they need to be, because especially for primates,
(12:08):
and we're a primates, we're primates, we are apes, right
for primates, we're often primary caretakers, so we have to
make sure that both our bodies and also anybodies were
responsible for don't get harmed. So the hunting story, the
tool using hunting story, you know with the spears', that's
often a female thing.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Wow, females are the innovators because they need to be.
That is so true and empowering.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
We're taking a short break, but we'll be right back
with Cat Bohannan. We're back with Cat Bohannan. When it
comes to these evolutionary changes, at what point in the
two hundred million year timeline that you studied do you
(13:02):
see the biggest advancements?
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Oh, deep time is such a weird thing. I mean,
we say these words two hundred million years and that's
literally under the feet of dinosaurs. It's kind of hard
to wrap your head around, right, and our species is
only three hundred thousand years, So I mean, your big
evolutionary leaps are going to be like, you know, the
difference between we were still laying eggs for a long
(13:26):
time while making milk, and then we stopped laying eggs
and started having live birth. And then there was that
time where we started being primate like things in the trees,
which was a very long time, and then a long
time again where most primates still living in trees, but
some of us came down from the trees, became bipedal
and started walking around. So I think all of these
(13:48):
are huge leaps, and they're happening at really different scales
of time, which is weird to think about, but also
kind of cool because for me, it reminds me that
our bodies are really old and really new at the
same time.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Are there any other pivotal evolutionary breakthroughs that you can
potentially or probably a tribute to women that you think
are interesting.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Yeah, just that our species exists pretty much that. What
do you mean, Like, literally, these are the bodies where
this thing I'm pointing at. You may not see me
for your podcast people, but like this female woin, this
female body is where evolution happens. This is how generations happen,
This is how things get passed on over time. So
also that, but not simply the fact that we give birth,
(14:40):
but the fact that our species has a really hard
time giving birth compared to other primates. Our pregnancies, our birds,
and our postpartum recoveries are like quantifiably longer and harder
and more prone to crippling complications than they are for
like almost to any other mammal. Like it actually scientifically
(15:03):
sucks for us the way we make babies. It does.
But gynecology is awesome. Now I'm not talking about the
like super problematic history of American gynecology, Okay, I'm talking
about like the very long evolved history of midwiffery, the
very long evolved history of the fact that we as
(15:24):
a species are the only ones that help each other
give birth. We're the only ones that do that because
we evolve to be cooperative, and we evolve to help
each other, and we evolve to share knowledge around this
difficult thing that we have to do. That's why we're here, ma'am,
which is not the story they usually tell you at
(15:44):
the Natural history museums.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Can I go back to what you mentioned about our
births as humans being more painful and just overall awful,
not that I have any experience with this. Now it's chillum, Yeah,
why is that?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Like?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Why us?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
One of the reasons has to do with our actual
arrangement of our hip bones. Right. This theory is called
the obstetric dilemma. But basically it's that, like we used
to move on four limbs, right, and then for a
variety of reasons where like actually maybe two limbs, though,
let's actually have legs and like this giant butt muscle
to hold us up. But to do that, evolution produced
(16:25):
a different pelvic shape, right. It tilted our hip bones
and our overall pelvic bowl in a way that made
us more like gravity stable, so we wouldn't fall over
all the time, right. But also it narrowed the opening
at the bottom of that bowl, which is where our
babies come out. And that started happening right before our
(16:46):
heads started getting really big. So at this point we're
trying to squeeze like a watermelon out of a lemon
sized hole, you know, So if you've met fruit like
that's that's just like a structural problem, right. The other
big deal, actually, which is way more of a problem
even than that, is that our placentas are really greedy.
So a placenta, for those of your listeners who don't know,
(17:09):
it's kind of like a fleshy docking station. It's where
the umbilical cord attaches to the uterine wall. It's how
the baby gets basically everything from you. If you're a
person who's pregnant. Okay, So our placenta is actually really
what's medically called invasive, Like it penetrates the mother's bloodstream,
which then means that it really is interfering with her
(17:33):
immune systems. It's manipulating her blood Pressure's there's no part
of you that isn't pregnant. If you're a person who's pregnant. Yeah, yeah,
it's not just your uterus, it's all of you. Right,
It's rigorous, it's challenging. The metabolic costs of a human
pregnancy have been compared to running many ultra marathons in
(17:55):
a row, not just like a few, but just like
a lot of them. It's been compared to Olympic convents.
It's been like we run out of metaphors because it's
the most metabolically taxing thing a human body can actually do.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
So we're all Olympic medal you super are?
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yes, yes, if you are a person who has been pregnant,
you are already a damn athlete. Okay, so just give
yourself some cred there, because seriously, seriously, so.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
What I love about your work, kat is is that
it really highlights so many of the superpowers that were
just innately imbued with as women. So I want to
get into some of that. I know that there's a
really cool one involving breast milk. I'd love for you
to tell us about it.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Oh man, Yeah, let me first say this is really
really important. You can be a child free person and
that doesn't mean you are failing your evolutionary freaking destiny, okay,
because they're actually we are actually a species that has
evolved to work with one another and have many different
roles in supporting societies that we live in from ancient times,
(19:00):
including not having our own children. Okay, so you are
functional and great even if you never have kids. All right, now,
I'm going to talk a lot about kids though. Okay,
So milk one of the first things to evolve in mammals.
Once mammals have nipples, we have this crazy new it's
kind of like a communication technology. Okay. So if you
are a newborn and you are learning how to suckle,
(19:23):
so if you're any good at it, you are latching on,
which is basically you're forming a docking seal. You're wrapping
your lips around this whole aerial situation, and you are
forming a vacuum in your mouth because you've sealed it right,
your lips around the nipple. Okay, Once you have a vacuum, though,
what you have is this thing called the upsuck, and
(19:46):
that means that you are forming this vacuum by sucking
in your cheeks, like you're taking this space and you're
condensing it right, and it's pulling the milk out. So
you're forming a tide though, because you're not constantly suckling,
you're doing suck suck swallow. Sucks sucks swallow. So if
you've ever seen a diagram of how tides work, you've
got the wave of milk coming in over the top
(20:07):
of the thing, but then you have an undertoe, so
the baby's spit, your spit is being sucked back up
into your mom's boob through her nipple, where it then
distributes throughout the entirety of the breast along all of
those milk tubes you know where it's red like some
kind of weird ancient code. And what it does is
(20:28):
it changes the milk to suit. So if you're sick,
if the baby is sick, the milk changes. It changes
by lots of different measures. It sends more amuno agents
down to like help your young immune system fight off
that cold you've got now with all of your snot
and what have you. Okay, it's also sending down hormonal
(20:49):
signals to help soothe you, help you sleep better. It's
doing a lot of stuff. So like a nipple, weirdly
is a two way communication platform. I mean, a parent
an offspring.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Breastfeeding really is miraculous. Yeah, that's one of my favorite
breastfeeding facts. Thank you so much for sharing that. We've
got to take one more break, but keep those booty seated.
We'll be back soon with more from cap Ohannan. And
(21:23):
we're back.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
You've looked into how women's body shapes have evolutionary benefits,
you actually make the case for having and if I'm
not mistaken, the technical term here is a big booty.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Can you break that down for us?
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Your butt is a thing, specifically the fat that booty.
The booty seems to store special kinds of lipids differently
than other parts of your body. If you're a female person,
I'll give you the technical term. They're long chain pobbly
unsaturated fatty acids or LCPUFAs. But I think i'll make
a three think like fish oil. It's basically that kind
(21:59):
of stuff, and our bodies are bad at making it
from smaller parts, like stitching those long chains together, so
we get it mostly from our diet, already made, and
then store it and weirdly, our butts store more of
it than other fat depots on our body. And it
does turn out that that stuff is really important for
making baby brains and retinas. So the at of post
(22:24):
tissue on your butt and actually your upper thighs and
your hips seems to be metabolically protected. Sort of first
place to gain, last place to lose for a lot
of your life. Okay, unless you are in the third
trimester of a pregnancy, and or you are breastfeeding, then
it's like the kid has a crazy straw straight to
(22:44):
your ass and is just hoovering the stuff into itself. Right,
And so there are a number of people now who think,
number of scientists who think, maybe that's why maybe we
evolve to store this stuff that we need that we're
bad at mai from other parts, because we needed it
to make our stupidly huge human brains and human retinas.
(23:07):
So in other words, it's not like does this dress
make my ass look fat? It's does this dress make
my ass look smart?
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I love you so much. You're just frivolous. This is
the best. It's just you're incredible. It was it was
a dream. It was a dream. And I hope that
every female rapper now incorporates lcpofas into their next song
if I got that.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Right, smart ass booty.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Seriously, though, I also understand that women have stronger senses
of smell, taste, hearing. What's the science behind that.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
For most of the senses? Weirdly female mammals, but humans too,
you know, seem to be better at most of them,
like by a lot of measures, Like we are better
at smell for most of our life. So you're not crazy.
You do smell that one smell in that room that
(24:06):
the dude you're with cannot smell at all, And it's
probably a sex based difference. You are probably slightly better
at detecting these faint scents and figuring out what they are.
We don't entirely know why, we know that it's true
also our hearing. This got to me on kind of
like a personal level. So it does turn out to
(24:27):
be true that most male folk start losing the upper
ranges of their hearing starting around age twenty five or so.
We just we're not sure what's driving it, but we
do know that he's cutting off the top end of
his hearing starting about his mid twenties, which means by
the time he arrives at middle age, most male people
(24:50):
are actually having trouble hearing most female voices. That's because
our voices are higher pitched.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Oh my god, this is why my dad can't ever
hear my mom when she tells him to do something.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Yeah, And so that you know, that kind of got
to me. It's sort of like, so here we are
in all of these boardrooms and these spaces of power,
and dudes can't hear us like come on, like you know,
so they need hearing a sooner than we do, and
it would be good for everyone if they started using them.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
I have a question for you that my mom and
I have been chatting about. She is postmenopause now okay,
and has shared with me so many of the symptoms
that she was dealing with during menopause. And we learn
from a doctor who came on the show that in
(25:42):
the past women weren't really supposed to live this long
like they we weren't living past menopause.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
So one is that true? And two, how has.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Menopause aided in the evolution of our species or has it?
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Yeah? So I think these are really good questions. I
hate this word supposed to know that phrase r because yeah,
because we keep looking to our evolutionary past for guidance
for how to understand how we're supposed to be. The
natural world does all kinds of things I would not
recommend for humans. It's absolutely true that for most of
(26:23):
human history, old people were probably like unicorns, like maybe
you saw someone with gray hair once, because most of
us were dying well before forty Only recently actually if
we greatly improved that. So we don't even know when menopause,
as a phenomenon of which depends on living past fifty,
would have kicked in in human history. We don't assume
(26:45):
that there was a lot of it for most of
human history, but we know that there is now and
it's absolutely about not dying. Congratulations ladies, if you're in menopause,
if you've passed menopause, all it means is you're not dead,
So good job not being dead. You're totally alive. That's
actually all menopause means, and it is weird that we
(27:06):
do it, like most mammals do not live a full
third of their potential lives after having stopped making eggs
and having babies. The reason that menopause is awesome for
our species is because it means that we have enough
(27:27):
women living past age fifty to form societies of the elderly,
and they are incredibly important for our human society's well being.
That's why menopause is awesome.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
So, Kat, your book is called Eve How the female
body drove two hundred million years of human evolution? What
do we have to look forward to in the next
I don't know two hundred million years. What's next for
us in terms of human evolution and the female body.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
I hope that we get better at individualizing medicine for
all of the different ways that our bodies are diverse,
so that we can, I don't know, reduce suffering, because
that's the only goal worth having actually anywhere at all,
that's the major goal. That's what we're doing here. I
hope that that includes better studies into how female bodies
(28:15):
work and when it does and doesn't matter that bodies
are female in terms of how you treat different disorders
and different kinds of pain. I hope that we stop
neglecting women who are getting older as if the problems
and side effects that come with menopause didn't matter just
(28:35):
because everyone goes through it. Actually they do matter. Actually,
we can make this better. We just need more research
to do it. I think at some point we will
develop an artificial womb, and however you feel about that,
I think it's going to be freaking amazing. Right now,
the only way to have children is to have somebody
(28:59):
gestate that child wild, right, and it is always a risk.
There is no such thing as pregnancy without risk. There
is always risk, and there is always some degree of suffering.
Imagine if there were a fully functional, totally non harmful
way of doing that that didn't require anybody to suffer.
(29:21):
How does that change the choices we make? What kind
of freedom does that allow future people with the uterus
to have? Man I actually think it's going to take
a few hundred years. But if we can do that,
then that changes how we understand what people with these
bodies should be obliged to do.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
What an interesting answer. Thank you so much, Thank you
so much for your time.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Yeah, thank you for your time.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Kap Ohannan is a writer who researches the evolution of
narrative and cognition. The YA edition of her book Eve,
How the Female Body Shaped two hundred million Years of
Evolution is out February twenty fifth.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, we're chatting with superstar
Array about her new movie One of Them Days. Join
the conversation using hashtag the bright Side and connect with
us on social media at Hello Sunshine on Instagram and
at the bright Side Pod on TikTok oh, and feel
free to tag us at simone Voice and at Danielle Robe.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Listen and follow the bright side on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
See you tomorrow, folks, keep looking on the bright side.
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Simone Boyce
Danielle Robay
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