speaker-0: We published a paper. CNN came out with a story before the press release ever went out, and then within a couple hours there was such an uproar, it was taken down, and CNN apologized. Immediately, I was getting a lot of hate mails. The university had to set up a specific email account for people to complain. So I was sort of checked out that I couldn't even take care of my kids at the time.

speaker-1: Welcome to the XX Lab, where we explore the science and stories that matter to you. Dr. Christina Duranti, welcome to the XX Lab.

speaker-0: Thank you. Good to be here.

speaker-1: So I want to start by starting from the beginning. And you actually spent almost a decade as an entertainment publicist in New York and LA before you became an evolutionary psychologist and then ultimately an evolutionary psychologist who works in marketing. ⁓ and I want to know like what is it that made you take that leap?

speaker-0: Well, I was always interested in human behavior because as a publicist I was never really great at persuading people. It was a culmination of that interest and the fact that I took a job in New York City working for Planet Hollywood as the publicity manager for Planet Hollywood back in the late nineties. And I couldn't wait to get started. But like six months after I had moved to New York, I was laid off. I had a little bit of a severance ⁓ from you know, being laid off. And so I started taking night classes at NYU in psychology because I knew that I was interested in human behavior. I guess just, you know, we're all interested in like ourselves. It's like, why are my relationships not working? Why am I not interested in the job I'm doing? What am I interested in? You know, all these big questions. So that I started taking the psychology classes and not finding a job. So I was running out of money very, very fast. And so fast that, you know, I was taking psychology classes and buying self help books and, you know, really, you know, struggling to figure out what I was gonna do next. And I didn't want to ⁓ leave New York City. I don't know why I didn't, like looking back now, it was just one of those times where I was completely disconnected from any rational decision making. So what happened was is that I got evicted because I wasn't paying my rent because I eventually did run out of money and I had to move back with my mom. So no more taking, you know, NYU classes. I was spending money I didn't have and that sh that rope had run out for me. And so I was forced to move back home with my mom in Wisconsin and leave New York City. And that like kind of fell deeper into a sort of rut, I guess. ⁓ I went from being a publicist, you know, going to premieres and, you know, exclusive parties to working at a concrete manufacturing company in Waukesha, Wisconsin, as a secretary for concrete salesmen just to have some money because I was in so far in debt. But at the same time I continued the psychology classes there that I I thought, ⁓ I'm gonna get into clinical psychology. So I was taking psychology classes at home, you know, trying to build a life back up for myself from I had totally bottomed out. and working in a battered women's shelter in Waukesha, because I thought I wanted to do clinical psychology. I guess because that was really all I knew. I didn't know about evolutionary psychology. I didn't even know really that you could be a an experimental psychologist and conduct research in a lab and be paid to do that without like sitting down and and being like a therapist. I thought that's what it meant. And it wasn't until I took one of the classes that I was taking at night was called The Evolution of Human Nature. And that book I mean, that class was all about evolutionary psychology. And that's when we first started reading, you know, the foundational texts in evolutionary psychology and thinking about, you know, adaptive reasoning and how environments shape, you know, bodies and behavior. And that fascinated me. That was really sort of the I had like a paradigm shift. Like, ⁓ this is this is what I've been looking for. These are the answers that I've been looking for.

speaker-1: Yeah, I had a very similar similar experience. And for those of you who don't have a familiarity with evolutionary psychology, it's just this understanding that a lot of the predispositions that we've inherited, we have inherited because they helped our ancestors ⁓ survive and reproduce. And what that means is I can really understand a lot about human motivational systems and the human brain and behavior by understanding our tendencies and proclivities as a species in terms of the fact that A lot of them we have because they served one of those functions. Right. They helped us survive, they helped us ⁓ mate, ⁓ helped us care for children, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so ⁓ sounds like you had the same moment I did where it's like when you begin to start thinking about human behavior that way, it's hard to like unsee it. Yeah. Like it's like it's everywhere that you look, you're like, ⁓ I bet that that's why I do that dumb shit that I do when I'm on dates. is because my ancestors who would have made that same dumb move that I just made probably would have gotten them pregnant. Yeah. Right. And they probably would have passed that tendency down to down to offspring. and I inherited that tendency. ⁓ and so that for you happened at you the University of Wisconsin at Waukesha.

speaker-0: Yeah, so so yes, this was basically it was an evolutionary biology class. And so I was like, ⁓ my God, these are the answers. Like, why doesn't everybody need these answers of the real reason behind it? Like it just I could reach to the all many of the theories of selection in to solve a problem that I had observed, like in my life or in somebody else's life. And understanding the source of that problem gives you somewhere to stand to be able to help, you know, help, I I don't want to say fix the problem, but just to understand what you might have to do to find a workaround for why you're feeling the way you're feeling. It just, it really sort of was a a light bulb moment for me. And I was like, there's no way because no other area of psychology really talks about the source of why, you know, we behave the way we do and make certain decisions under certain you know, contextual conditions or whatever. You know, none of it was talking about like none of my other classes and, you know, working at the battered women's shelter, that was triage trauma. And so that was a little different. It wasn't like illuminating my understanding of human behavior. You know, I had no idea why for years all of the self help tools weren't helping me. Like why couldn't I meditate? Why couldn't I, why is this you know, journaling not helping me. Why isn't well my brain was under a five alarm fire from all the stress from my entire life. And so I needed, you know, I I they needed to help my brain get sort of like get the f workaround that it needed to be able to gain traction with the self-help tools. And that workaround comes from, you know, the the evolutionary, you know, reasons why we're built the way we're built. And when we experience things like you know, that we experience in the modern world, even starting with the way that we're parented, you know, the brain kind of, you know, gets this idea that there's a lot of uncertainty and we don't know if tomorrow will come. And so here's how we're going to be making decisions to ensure that we survive long enough to reproduce. You know? And I was like, ⁓ okay. You know, this this really is a wellspring of, you know, really concrete understanding about behavior. And so Yeah, then it was like off to the races. So from there, you know, there was really like the big career for an evolutionary psychologist is academia. So that's kind of how from the UW Waukesha classes, I ⁓ then applied to the mas a master's program in psychology at the University of Chicago. Did that first, and then that's when I ⁓ went to the PhD program at UT Austin, where I met you.

speaker-1: Yeah, so Christina and I met first at the University of Texas in Austin, probably back in two thousand two.

speaker-0: Two ⁓ th four.

speaker-1: Two thousand four. And I was in a PhD program there at the time. And she ⁓ joined the PhD program and went and was working in the research lab across the hallway from where I was doing my research studies ⁓ as a graduate student. And one of the first studies that you did, I remember that there was always women walking through the hallway carrying little brown paper sacks. ⁓ that I later learned can ⁓ contained ovulation predictor kits, right, which test whether or not women are releasing glutenizing hormone and are about to ovulate. And so can you tell us a little bit about that research study and about ⁓ what ultimately led you to ask the question about how do women's hormones influence the way that women dress?

speaker-0: Yeah. So I, you know, I didn't think I would become a hormone researcher when I entered graduate school. But when I was at the University of Chicago, I was working in a lab that did ⁓ a lot of hormone work with primate ⁓ non-human primates and humans too, but all all males. So, you know, looking at testosterone effects on ⁓ behavior. And so when I got to UT Austin I was interested in looking at how hormones impact women's behavior. It just was sort of a natural like, well, what about women? And so, you know, at the University of Chicago, it was, well, we don't look at women, ⁓ it's very complicated, you know, because they have, you know, hormonal fluctuations across the cycle. And you can't, like, at at the University of Chicago. We hired like attractive women to flirt with men and you can make testosterone increase just by putting an attractive woman in front of a man, but you can't put an attractive man in front of a woman and see her estrogen do something different or progesterone. It's very locked in, ⁓ you know, for very specific reason. Our cycles ⁓ need to be a precise way for reproduction to occur for for women. But for men, it just needs to increase that motivation, like Get the candy, you know. And so if you put a candy in front, you know, then the motivation's gonna kick in. And so I was just told, well, we don't, you know, women are too complicated. But then when I got to UT Austin, my advisor, Dr. Norm Lee, wanted to do an ovulation study. And Dr. Marty Hazleton at who was at UCLA, she's still at UCLA, she had started an ovulation lab. ⁓ there and so it wasn't like ⁓ it women are too complicated. Obviously there were labs that were looking at ⁓ women's hormones and their impact on behavior. And so it was my advisor who really wanted to start an ovulation lab within his lab. And so like I was his first graduate student. So I got there in our first meeting he's like we're gonna start an ovulation lab and I'm like okay you know I'm just like green and you know eager to please So I was like, all right, let's get to work. And so I actually ⁓ I did work with Marty Hazleton. She helped me, you know, with everything, all the materials, learning how to, you know, build a scheduling program. ⁓ on, you know, we had to basically set up a doctor's office, you know, ⁓ nine to five labs staffed by fifteen research assistants. Women were coming in all throughout the day, you know, completing hormone tests. And, you know, it was it was a lot of, you know, blood, sweat, and tears to get it up and running. And then, you know, once it was, ⁓ then I just like I just collected as much data as I possibly could, asking as many questions as I possibly could. And it was it was, you know, in hindsight, like thank goodness, because I left there with just like such valuable data that really helped propel my career. Because I had a number of papers that, you know, came out looking at questions about how women's behavior changes, you know, adaptively across the cycle.

speaker-1: So so really quick, I just wanna ⁓ I just wanna just pause really quick and s and and have you explained to listeners like why is it that we would expect that women's behavior would be changing ⁓ in across the menstrual cycle and particularly right near ovulation when an egg is being released.

speaker-0: So women experience, you know, two changes in hormones that happen like really close to each other because, you know, when women are ovulating, estrogen surges right before women ovulate. And then immediately after that happens, the body has to prepare for pregnancy. So another hormone comes in comes in, our pregnancy hormone, progesterone, which w we think really operates as a break for estrogen, which is why we see these within ⁓ within the same woman a change in her decision making, you know, from what kind of partner she's interested in to what kind of dress she wants to wear to, you know, how she wants to invest her money. I mean, it really didn't matter what we put in front of them. You know, these are two different fundamental motivations driven by two different hormones. So for with estrogen, it's mating. With progesterone, it's, you know, more family and pregnancy and, you know, safety and protection. And the other one is more of a risk taking hormone. That's estrogen. That's like You know, their women's mating home.

speaker-1: So when women so when women are are near ovulation, so right around that time that ⁓ sex can lead to conception and estrogen is higher, right? You're you're saying that it's it's during this time that women are more risk taking and want more sensation and ⁓ and are looking for ⁓ yeah, mating opportunities. And I remember you telling me about one item, because we were talking about some ⁓ different research related topics and We were talking about some of your research that you've done looking at fertility status across the cycle and how it influences behavior. And I remember you telling me, and I still r I still remember it was when you told me this. This was just like how interesting it was to me. I like pulling weeds in my rose garden at the at the house I was living at the time. And you were telling me that one of the items that always pops out as like screaming off the page when women are near high fertility is their agreement to the item. I like the way cold water feels on my body when I jump into a pool. and just essentially just this idea that when women are at high like near high fertility and when estrogen is high in the cycle, that they just like to feel. Yeah. Like they just like sensations.

speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That was a yeah, that was the sensation seeking scale. So so if you think about it like, you know, I guess with progesterone, maybe the bar is a little bit lower for for what you can tolerate in terms of s sense our sense sensory, you know, the way we move through the world in terms of our senses. But I think the bar gets lift you know, it's like we need more. We need Like we're not gonna just do like the tilt a whirl, the little we need the roller coaster, we need the, you know, death spiral, we need the, you know, the thrill. Like we just like thrill seeking more so at ovulation, which and it is kind of a parallel to, you know, how male sex hormones work. I mean, it's the same and you know, women men are the same way. When testosterone is high, they're more risk seeking.

speaker-1: And so like when you were because you it did have you and Marty ⁓ had like some of the first research labs that were really designed to understand women cycling sex hormones. And so tell me how this works, just ⁓ to give our listeners a little inside peek of the research lab. Like what what does this look like? So how do you schedule women to come into the research lab and to look under the hood and see what's happening hormonally? Like what is it that you actually end up doing to try to get at women at the right time in the menstrual cycle.

speaker-0: Well, we recruit women. We have to take them through a whole phone interview of questions about just to make sure that their cycles are regular. Then, you know, we asked them questions about their last cycle. And we had this scheduling program that my ex husband, who was who who did forecast modeling for, you know, ⁓ Fortune 500 corporations, built a forecast model for ovulatory cycles that ended up being really precise. There was no apps back in that time. You know, a lot of women were tracking their cycles. So we would have to give them benchmarks. Like, maybe you got your period, maybe with this was there a football game? Like what were you doing? And then we would predict their next ovulatory ⁓ phase. And depending on where they were, if they were closer to starting their next period, we would have them come in and complete like a low fertility testing session. And then we would predict when they were going to ovulate and we'd have them start coming into the lab baby like five to seven da days before that would occur. We were predicting that it would occur. And then they had to come in every single day and do a hormone test until we got that surge and lutinizing hormone. And then we would within the next day, 24 hours, like schedule their second session.

speaker-1: And it's one of your first big papers was a paper investigating the effects of ovulation status or fertility status on women's choice of dress. And can you tell us about that study and what you found?

speaker-0: When I got to UT Austin, Norma n Norm Lee and I were talking about a study that had come out in two thousand and four. So this is two thousand and four. I'm starting at in my graduate program. And another paper comes out. I I I believe it was published in Evolution and Human Behavior, but I'm not sure. But it was by ⁓ I I think it was his name his first name is Carl Grammer, but it was like the discothec study where he actually went in and I I think I got he got salivary assays of estro estrogen of like clubgoers. And then did this correlation where he found that the higher the estrogen, the skimpier the outfit. So the more revealing the outfit was of people who were at a club. And

speaker-1: And I can drop this, I'll I'll drop this ⁓ study in the show notes so people can check it.

speaker-0: ⁓ yeah, okay. So it was just like we had more sheer stuff. I think he might have looked at sheer clothing. So then it was like but it was kind of like just a j like a like it was really the first study that ever looked at anything like this. And so that's where we got the idea, like, okay, we're g we called it it's in fact we called our study the disco study because it was patterned after that German disco st you know, that the the revealing stuff at the German disco with the high estrogen women. And

speaker-1: funny 'cause ⁓ no, I was just gonna say that the ⁓ they're looking at sheer clothing and you're like, it's two thousand four, like nobody's wearing sheer clothing anymore. Like like like we're gonna we're gonna modernize this a little

speaker-0: We're gonna modernize it a little better. Yeah. So what we did was we created like a paper doll, which you know, I we my advisor normally drew the paper doll in like ⁓ I some illustrator program like that we were using back in the day. And it was just like this really voluptuous woman. So it wasn't like a paper doll like we had as kids where you just like sort of slap on clothes. It looked like a, you know, in a a woman's body. And we gave them so 'cause we were thinking like, how are we gonna measure it? Well, one way we can measure it is just take a picture of what women are wearing to the lab, you know, going to classes. And that's what we did. But we also wanted to to get ⁓ their outfit that they would choose to wear if they were gonna go to a party that night. ⁓ and there's gonna be a lot of single attractive people to start thinking about what you're gonna wear. And we gave them this paper doll, this figure of a woman. And a canister of colored pencils, and we asked them to draw the outfit that they would want to wear to the party. And so we got women to do this when they were near ovulation, estrogens high, and when they were in a lower fertility phase of the cycle, not when they were you know starting another cycle, so they weren't on their period. It was that, you know, the luteal phase where pr progesterone was higher. And so what we found was that so we We had outside raters look at all of these like drawn outfits and rate them for how sexy and how revealing they thought the outfit was. And then we just also measured in square millimeters the amount of exposed skin on these dolls that you know they drew their outfit on. And then we found sure enough that when women were ovulating, they were drawing sexier ⁓ outfits that were rated as sexy, outfits that were rated as more revealing. At ovulation compared to when they were at a lower fertility point in the cycle. And they were also showing more ⁓ you know skin in square millimeters.

speaker-1: So And so and so and and and they were wearing these clothes to the lab too. Just like to class.

speaker-0: Yeah, just a class. Now, so you know, also keep in context it's not I did mention like the other study was done at a a nightclub. So obviously women most women weren't wearing like really like little black dresses to class. So this would be a change where you might see the woman in the same pair of jeans, but there's more cleavage, for example, at the ovulatory picture than there is at the ⁓ luteal phase picture, you know, the lower

speaker-1: You know what I just

speaker-0: I remember when we got on like a zoom before and we're like, we were supposed to be ovulating because we moved better. But no.

speaker-1: V-neck. Yeah, and it's so funny because I I was just ⁓ we Christine and I off camera were just talking about cycles and I was saying, Yeah, I'm about five days out of my cyc Yeah, that's about right. Estrogens starting to creep in and I'm wearing a V neck. So ⁓ yeah, that's that's embarrassing.

speaker-0: Or it would be like so it'd be like this on so so because I always got questions of well, I ovulate, but I would never wear that mini skirt that you're showing me. And I said, Yeah, so this is within this the range of what each woman would normally wear because this is the same woman changing over, you know, a short period of time. And so we can detect these small changes. There's a lot of statistical power there because it's you yourself changing across time. So like I would always say, like, so if you're somebody who wears a turtleneck every day, then maybe it's like this when you're ovulating and then when you're not, it's like this, you know, but that would still pick up as a statistically significant difference.

speaker-1: Right. And it's a real difference. Right. And I think that it Yeah, and you later found in some other research ⁓ that women also, when you gave them a shopping paradigm, that at high fertility, someone's estrogen is high, in addition to the fact that women will wear more revealing for them clothing, right? And ⁓ and and draw these sexier drawings for what they would wear to a party, that if you put women in a shopping

speaker-0: Real, yeah. ⁓

speaker-1: like online shopping type of a context that the women are also selecting sexier clothes. Is this why we all have that like dress that's in our closet that we bought that we're like, I would never wear that. Like why did I buy that? Do you think that ⁓ do you think that do you think that we should be buyer beware when we're when we're going shopping with high estrogen? Stay away from the the risque dress.

speaker-0: Yeah. So yeah, maybe, you know, I always think that these you know, it's always good to have more knowledge about yourself and, you know, your preferences and how they change and, you know, and but yeah, I mean I have a s bunch of stuff like that too. In fact, me you know, my husband the other week he was cleaning out a drawer and he's like, What's this? And it was like some sexy dress and he's like, You never wear this and and you you've never worn this for me and I'm just like, ⁓ I don't know what I was thinking when I was buying that, you know. ⁓ but yeah, I think, you know, just being aware of, you know, how estrogen operates in terms of impacting decision making versus progesterone, you know, it can, you know, just to understand where you're at, you know, I mean, you know this better than anybody. I mean, that's what your books are all about. Really helping women understand what's going on with their body and why they might be feeling a certain way. Because I think for a long time, you know, part of that was ⁓ women, they're all over the place. And they're making this decision one minute and this decision the other minute. And it's like, well, wait a minute. We have two huge hormones that are biggies in terms of in terms of how they impact behavior rising at in at surge levels, one right after the other. You know, and that's part of our biology that we have to deal with. And it was not talked about forever. It's barely talked about now even. And I think we need to be knowledgeable of like, okay, this is happening and this is how I need to take care of myself when this is happening. And I think part of that knowledge is understanding, okay, you know, I might be motivated. Like there's some great things that come from ovulation. Your sexual desire increases, like all like good things, like you're more active, you can do more at the gym, you know, all that kind of stuff. ⁓ but you know, the other stuff like, you know, ⁓ sensation seeking and you know, you just have to know that this is gonna also be part of the package and maybe wait a few days and see if you still want the thing, you know, that you were gonna buy. Like if it's there's a cost to it.

speaker-1: Right. Yeah, I think I think that ⁓ i it is so important to understand how our hormones kinda nudge us, you know, into the different s like versions of ourselves, right? Where there's like the version of ourself that's optimized for sex and then there's a version of ourselves that's optimized for ⁓ implantation and pregnancy, and understand that that does come with shifts, motivational shifts, right? And that it might make you feel sexier and more energetic ⁓ when ⁓ estrogen is high and then less energetic and more hungry. ⁓ when progesterone is high. And I I think that the more information that we have about this, the better we can understand ourselves. And I just can't imagine a world where that's bad. Yeah. You know, I I think that understanding ourselves is like the key to ⁓ the key to everything. I want to talk to you about speaking of hormones, this was a fun study. So ⁓ I want to talk to you about some research that you did, and this was ⁓ during your time at the University of Minnesota. And you did a study where you were looking at, and I think that the study actually started at Texas. ⁓ and then you completed it at Minnesota. But it was, it was what you call your dad CAD study. And the reason I love the dad CAD study is because it really tapped into something that I think so many women have ⁓ experienced in their own lives, either themselves or their friends, where ⁓ they find a man that they're really physically attracted to. And ⁓ the and and this person has absolutely no qualities that suggest that they would be a good partner, right? Like like like they are actively saying, like, I'm not looking for a relationship, you know, I ⁓ you know, I'm I I I need to work on me right now. I think that's the line that everybody's using right now. and nonetheless, ⁓ the women are like, ⁓ you know, he'll he'll change, right? Like, ⁓ they it's like their brain tells themselves a story that will give get them to continue to be in ⁓ to be in that relationship with that person because they're so attracted to them. And ⁓ and so you did this study about dads and cads and essentially found that when women are at high fertility in the cycle. So again when estrogen is high and women are sort of primed for attraction and sex and sex can lead to conception, that this leads women ⁓ to to have that veil of ignorance, right? Where they're telling their brain is telling them the story. So can you tell us a little bit about what you found in the dad cad study?

speaker-0: Yeah. So it started out. I just had the hypothesis that when women were near ovulation, they were gonna let these CAD guys get kind of were you know, off the hook. Like they were like, Hey, I I thought they'd actually I didn't think they'd delude themselves about how great of a partner they would be long term. I thought they would say, I will make a trade-off here and I will accept you as a sexual partner. knowing that you're probably not gonna stick around.

speaker-1: Right. Right. So this is the sexy guy, right? Like this.

speaker-0: Yeah. And so as part of that, like I thought so it's like if you are a guy and you are a nine or a ten on attractiveness, then you don't have to be a nine or a ten on, you know, doing dishes and mowing the lawn and all that kind of stuff. Like you might get off the hook for like being messy or something like that. So I the very first study I ran, I had women, you know, looking at dating profiles Of a guy who was kind of like, you know, the cat, like very good looking, charismatic. And then I asked him a bunch of questions about, you know, their you know, what they would expect from this guy. And so part of those questions, ⁓ being a graduate student, I was like, whatever, I'll ask this about, you know, what they would require from them in terms like how they much they they thought this guy would help them out like around the house and do all that stuff and I thought that they would select them as partners and then let them get off the hook for the household chores and stuff like that. And so but I did

speaker-1: So so so you were expecting that women would look at these sexy guys and say, ⁓ like, ⁓ yeah, he's not helping with the dishes and ⁓ so essentially giving him a pass. Yeah, he's so cute. So I don't mind that he doesn't but that's not what you found. So what did you find?

speaker-0: Hey, look how cute he is. What I found so I did not find that. What I found was is that women liked these men and they wanted to start ⁓ relationships with them. They wanted to date them. But so what I found was that they had increased perceptions of how good these guys were gonna be around the house and how good of a long-term partner that they were gonna be for them. And so they weren't when they were like thinking about this in terms of so this is like just projection like fantasy, like not fantasy, but forecasting how good this guy will be as a potential partner for you. It was all elevated when women were ovulating compared to when they were not ovulating. So basically they had, they were diluting themselves near ovulation and coming to see these guys as better potential fut future partners than they were actually likely to be. So it's like they, you know, they had this sort of rose-colored glasses that came on at ovulation specifically for these kind of guys. And so they, you know, they they just we called it when we wrote the paper up, we called it a delusion. And I remember when we went through the peer review process, the reviewers didn't like us saying that women were deluding themselves about these guys. Cause we were basic, but but so we had to like reword it and finesse it a little bit. It's like, well we had You know, we're just coming to see them as a little bit, you know, you know, in a in a in a rosier colored light than maybe they should have been seen because we, you know, in the further studies we were actually able to where we had women actually interacting with these kind of guys, then we were able to get more in depth into what was actually going on and actually show that, you know even women who are ovulating, if they're observing this guy talking to another woman, they can see right through that guy. If it's it's for another woman and say he's not good for that woman. But when they're thinking about them with that guy, it's like for me he'll be I think he'll be doing the dishes and I think he'll be a good dad. And I think he'll be a long great long term partner.

speaker-1: I mean, I think that we've all been in that situation. I mean on both sides because like we we see our our friends, right, where they're with this person who's like Mr. No Good, you know, he's like Mr. Bad Idea. And you can see it perfectly clear clearly when you're outside of the picture, right? Where you're like that guy is not gonna change. You know, he's ⁓ like he's he's no good. He's not gonna be a good partner, he's never gonna be a good partner. And ⁓ and you try to say that to your friends and they're like, ⁓ no, but you know, he'll i you know, it's it's different. You should see him with me. Right. Or they'll say, I know, but inside, again, there's this ⁓ almost like this shroud of of ignorance that that w our brains are doing, you know. pot potentially on purpose, right? Because when we delude ourselves, if ⁓ to use that word that the reviewers hate it so much, but if we if our brain plays a trick on us, ⁓ and gets us to believe that this person is actually going to be a a good, high quality partner, then that might increase the probability that we form a relationship with them and then we, you know, get the good genes or the get the good genes for the offspring, even if ⁓ It means that we end up with a kind of a deadbeat. Yeah.

speaker-0: Yeah, I mean it's just it's sexual receptivity, but then you have to do some cognitive gymnastics to tell the part of your brain that's like the break, like, wait, what are we doing? ⁓ no. It's like your limbic system saying, ⁓ no, he's gonna be great. Just don't help you doing the dishes. Don't worry, don't worry, calm down. You know, it's like that extra push that like you know, you you you need to feel okay with it.

speaker-1: Yeah, he's gonna be fine. He'll be good. He'll be Yeah, I I yeah, I I love I love that study for ⁓ so many reasons. ⁓ including it helped explain my twenties. my twenties made so much more sense. ⁓ but I also I've always been really taken by research on how d like d our our brain is so strategic, you know, in the way that that we create reality for ourselves and like the story that our brain tells ourselves. ⁓ one of my favorite ⁓ stories I ⁓ That I like to talk about is I have a friend here in ⁓ Dallas. And she every time like it's near ovulation, she her brain and she does not want to have children. So she is somebody who's childless by choice. But every time that she's getting close to ovulation because she's she's cycling naturally, she starts to think like a baby would be fun. Like if she's getting into a sexual context, like her brain will start to tell herself stories about like Have unprotected sex. Like it will be awesome. Like you don't want to wear a condom right now. Like you like b having a baby would be amazing. And then as soon as they're done having sex, you know, she's like, I am so glad I did not listen to my brain. ⁓ that's because it was like, Isn't that funny? It's just like it's just like this this ⁓ this these stories that our that our unconscious mind will try to tell our conscious brain ⁓ to get it to do things that ultimately will lead to gene transmission. ⁓ you know, I think that it's worthwhile to know about these things. ⁓ if if only and and ever this happens everybody, folks. This isn't like a a women's brains tell themselves stories thing and men's do not, because I can like post nut clarity is all about men's brains telling them stories until they have sex with someone and then they're like, No, actually she's a troll. Right. Yeah. ⁓ so

speaker-0: Brands do this all the time, you know, even when we talk about like business, workplace, leadership, like they are like, let's try it. Let's give it a try. And then, you know, if it fails, they get, you know, it's like they're they're more okay with, you know, just swinging for the fences. And so when we're ovulating, we're swinging for the fences. And you know, men do the same thing.

speaker-1: Right, exactly. So it's like women do not have a monopoly on ⁓ on strategic storytelling on the part of their unconscious mind. ⁓ this is something that we see with both ⁓ men and women. And ⁓ because of course your research career has focused on on women so much, you know, of course we talk about it mostly from that perspective. So I want to now ⁓ talk about your ovulation and political preferences paper. And I want to talk about this because I think it's really important. And this is something that ⁓ readers of This Is Your Brain on Birth Control ⁓ are familiar with because I t I tell the story there when I talk about the politicization of women's sex hormones and how ⁓ it has been very difficult for researchers who study women's hormones, especially when we're talking about women's hormones ⁓ influencing behavior. ⁓ how one of the challenges that has confronted researchers ⁓ like you has been the fact that people get really the on you know on edge about talking about women's hormones on one hand and then behavior in the other. And so ⁓ I want you to just first walk us through the ovulation and ⁓ and political preferences paper and then talk a little bit about what happened after.

speaker-0: Okay. So that paper really came about because, like I had mentioned before, I was running a lot of different studies looking at, you know, changes in women's behavior across the ovulatory cycle. And as part of that, I was asking questions related to religiosity, like how religious you are, how often you go to church. ⁓ t from that all the way to social political issues, like how they feel about abortion and legal at the time, you know, legalizing ⁓ marijuana, which at that when we were running the studies wasn't really legal anywhere, ⁓ just to see how they were feeling about it. And I noticed that, well, you know, I I did kind of feel like, hey, when women are ovulating, like if they're getting this surge of sex hormone, maybe it's hard to think about God. You know, n you know, y knowing what we know about like how the what we need to tell ourselves to feel okay with two conflicting feelings, which would be sexual desire and ⁓ you know, ⁓ a strong belief in God and faith and all that kind of stuff. They didn't they kind of clash a little bit. And so what I was finding was that when women were near ovulation, they were getting a little bit less religious. So this is within the same woman. So we're not talking about huge swings where it's like, I am a devout Catholic, now I'm an atheist atheist. Like that's not what we were seeing. You know, these are very small shifts on a scale. Like, you know, when you report pencil and paper. ⁓ and so then I got to thinking like, okay, this might be something and I got kind of excited about it. And when I had collected some further data, it looked like relationship status was going was moderating it, such that single women, particularly when they were ovulating, were becoming less religious and ⁓ you know, more liberal in terms of their socially political attitudes about abortion and same-sex marriage and legalizing marijuana and they all kind of you know your social political attitudes kind of cluster together like you know they kind of hang together. So we're not talking about fiscal stuff like economics, like that wasn't shifting, but you know, you think about being having like a you know increase in sexual desire. And then when you're thinking about you know, restricting marriage and and you know, going to church, you're like, well, you know, I don't know, maybe not this week. You know, it was kind of like that. And so single women were getting ⁓ less religious and and more politically social, politically liberal. And then women who were married and in and in serious committed relationships were doing the opposite. And they were getting they were having ⁓ feeling more religious and more moving more towards ⁓ social political conservatism. So they were feeling like, you know, they weren't as supportive of abortion or you know, legalizing drugs or same sex marriage. And and so that's kind of what the paper was showing. And we didn't have all the answers as to well, why are married women doing this? And why are single women doing that? And I, you know, A lot of it comes down to we want our behavior and attitudes to be as tightly aligned as possible. So if you are a married woman and maybe you're feeling a little bit more a sexual desire, you maybe it feels better to remind yourself that what's good is the faith in God and you know and and and being

speaker-1: Monogamy and

speaker-0: Not being loose and, you know, restrict restricting that part of yourself because that you're living that life. Whereas single women are weren't. ⁓ and so they're feeling the sexual desire and they're able to act on it. And so if you're gonna act on it and your behavior is gonna be, you know, let's see who we can, you know, hooking up or whatever, 'cause these were young young ish women. I mean they were naturally cycling, so they're gonna be on the other side. And so th that's kind of what we thought was going on. And you know, that they were, you know, it was this it's that cognitive dissonance that we feel. So that's just like an uneasy feeling when our behavior is one way and our attitudes are the other. So we wanna try to have those meet as tightly and be as aligned as possible. And so we do this cognitive motivational reasoning in our head that makes it feel more aligned with one another. What we're doing behavior wise is now aligned with what my attitudes are. Right.

speaker-1: So, like you're a single woman, you are at high fertility, estrogen is surging, you're mating motive you know, you're sort of primed for attraction and sex, and these women are just sort of like tapping the brakes a little bit on their beliefs about, you know, maybe ⁓ you know, they're like you should wait to have sex until you're married or whatever it is. They're kinda tapping them, kind of like ignoring those beliefs that they might have a little bit because it's would be inconsistent with what they want to do, right? Which is would potentially go out and meet partners and flirt and do other things. Right. Right. Whereas with with women who are in relationships, then that this is going to tap the brakes on any sort of interest that they might have. Like if they s notice the really sexy male man, right? That they're going to just sort of try to reinforce their existing relationship by tapping the brakes on that sort of sexual interest. So essentially hormones sort of amping the volume up on different types of impulses and and women Trying to sort of silence beliefs that are counter to the type of behavioral path that they are might be on, given their relationship status. Is that what I'm understanding?

speaker-0: I think that's a great summary of exactly what we were seeing.

speaker-1: Right, and and so and so you find this really interesting set of results that ⁓ to you and to me doesn't seem controversial because we study hormones and we study women and we study brains and we study people and we understand that ⁓ there's a biological component to every single thing that we do. Right. So even if it's something random, like ⁓ if I started juggling and singing Justin Bieber songs, ⁓ that would be the result of different types of ⁓ synaptic pathways firing in my brain, different neurotransmitters. ⁓ there'd be a hormonal piece involved. I mean it's like it's all the gears and sprockets, right? And so understanding the ro the role that hormones play in terms of nudging our behavior this way and that way ⁓ to me never feels controversial because it's like, well, like of course, you know, of course they're involved. ⁓ in just like the same way that if you're like, ⁓ you know, neurotransmitter X, you know, like like serotonin this or You know, dopamine that I'd be like, Yeah, of course, you know, we're gonna see that this is involved because what is the alternative? You know, it's like we know that these processes influence the brain. And ⁓ and so so you like to me that didn't sound controversial. It sounded actually really theoretically really interesting. I think you felt the same way, right? And so then what happened next?

speaker-0: So we published a paper in psychological science, which is the premier journal in psychology. And this was early on in my career. So I was a junior faculty member and not tenured, very excited that this was coming out because this was, you know, when we publish in leading journals, this is a big deal for how we're evaluated for promotion. So I was excited. And ⁓ I wanted to use sometimes when you have a big ⁓ paper coming out, your university will do a press release on this paper to, you know, drum up excitement for it. And ⁓ also the university gets some publicity from it. And so that's what my university was doing. The University of Texas, San Antonio is where I was a assistant professor. And so my the media office was preparing a press release on this finding and They asked me if I wanted to give an exclusive story to one leading media outlet. And I said, yeah, that would be great. You know, I was so excited to talk about this because still in my mind it was like, this is so cool. Because what I didn't talk about that the paper included was that this was I think the paper actually was published in 2013, but the study was conducted. During the 2012 presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. And so when I say religiosity is moving around and social political attitudes are moving around near ovulation, moderated by relationship status, I thought, well, maybe the one downstream, you know, decision that might be affected would be who women want as their presidential candidate. And so we asked that too. So in my mind, I was and so we found that. We found that. single women who were ovulating had were sort of nudged a little bit toward the direction of Barack Obama and married women who were ovulating were nudged a little bit toward the direction of Mitt Romney, who's the Republican candidate, ⁓ running against Barack Obama. And so I was like, wow, this is gonna be I was just thinking like this is gonna be huge and I'm so proud of myself and couldn't wait for the study to come out. And I chose CNN as the media outlet that I was going to give the early story to where they would get to run the story for 24 hours before the press release went out. And so CNN came out with a story before the press release ever went out. And the story I forget what the title was, but it was like women's hormones change the way they vote or something like this. And it and CNN at the time had a an election ticker tape, like a little box that had all the election coverage. And it it It that's where it was first posted. And so it was super noticeable. And it had that, you know, women's hormones change their votes, something like that. And it went live and I was like, yay! And then within a couple hours, it there was such an uproar that it was taken down and the and CNN apologized for putting content on their website that didn't meet their editorial standards or something like this, they said.

speaker-1: So what was this backlash? What was this uproar?

speaker-0: Well, it was the fact that there was an article out saying that women's hormones influence their votes. At least that was the title and that's what it was insinuating. You know, so on the surface of it, when you say women vote with their hormones I I know all realize all of this in hindsight now. When you say women vote with their hormones, there are st negative stereotypes attached to that. And so that was perceived as dangerous to have that. headline out there, especially in an election cycle.

speaker-1: Right. And I mean in that headline is I mean, I think we can both agree it's not a good headline. Right. Yeah. Right. So it's and it's and it's not true. Right. Right. I mean, 'cause it's not like like, ⁓ you know, your hormones are like are like the only thing that are influencing your behavior and that and that and that women are therefore fickle and unpredictable and and and we sh they shouldn't be allowed to vote and ⁓ and and the readership of ⁓ CNN seemed to believe otherwise. And I think in in part the headline, I mean, it was not doing you any favor.

speaker-0: No, this was something that I didn't realize was going to be like a it was really good fodder for like a a a sensationalized headline that, you know, there's no way it was gonna have nuance where it's like, ⁓ wait a minute, like these weren't like very big swings. You know, it was, you know, again when you know you're these are small changes. These aren't like one day I'm, you know a Catholic, very religious, and the next day I'm an atheist and voting for Obama. You know, that's not what we were seeing. Very small shifts. But that doesn't get communicated. And n and anything that was ever published related to men's hormones and their political preferences, it was like that literature didn't exist. Like it was just like women whose hormones would be doing this, you know, because women are all over the map. And that was ⁓ you know, was seen as dangerous to because it was feeding into stereotypes about women and, you know, a lot of folks thought it was dangerous because, you know, I was getting immediately I was getting a lot of hate mail saying if women lose the vote, it's your fault. Wow. You know, and I was just like I was not prepared. I wish I you know, in hindsight, like I was like, ⁓ c yeah, we should have seen it. But I was You know, a junior faculty member, I was just excited about my research.

speaker-1: Right. And as a junior as a junior faculty member, for people who aren't listening, this is like before you have tenure and your contract gets renewed every year. And ⁓ and so you can lose your job. It's like it's very easy to lose your job ⁓ and to go through something where you have major media outlets pulling coverage on your research, and then you're getting ⁓ you're getting terrible phone calls and emails. I was actually with you. ⁓ during part of the time when you were getting some of this backlash and ⁓ and then wasn't there and I think that there was like a special session that had to be held by the like the some higher ups at the university with ⁓ with ⁓ your department chairs to just like talk about what was happening. Yeah. And I'm sure that felt very unnerving. Yeah.

speaker-0: I didn't know what was going on until the dust settled. Thank goodness that the chair of my department was not only supportive of me, but he was taking these meetings on my behalf in without my knowing because I was pretty devastated because I was visual like I was seeing all of these emails. They were coming directly to me and part and some to my university, so much so that I the university had to set up a specific email account for people to complain about my study. And, you know, so I was sort of checked out. I was in this like sort of state of like didn't really realize like what like I I was a robot. I was like just so dissociated that I couldn't even take care of my kids at the time. So later I found out that my chair of my department was taking these meetings because there were ⁓ people on the, you know, Board of Regents for the University of Texas system that were upset that the University of Texas was employing a researcher who would study these things. And so that's kind of like also constraint on a a r academic, you know, I also, you know, trying to control what they what kind of questions they ask. But you know, all of this at the time, I was just like, it's not worth it. And the the variety is not worth it. Like it wasn't worth the publishing of it for the backlash. You know, for me, psychologically, it was the darkest time in my life. ⁓ because I just it was so voluminous. Like it was so many people who didn't like me that I heard about. And to for my brain, I couldn't handle it. Like I w it's hard for us to anybody to handle the amount of criticism and rejection and just people who are in their own different moods that we think they don't like us or whatever. But you know, f and I'm highly sensitive to that to begin f to begin with. So for me to h be hearing it everywhere. I I didn't know how to walk through life. You know, I just took it very personally, like, how dare I ask this question. Like I believed it. How dare I ask this question? How dare how what kind of a researcher am I? I'm setting women's clock back a hundred years, you know, for the vote or something, and other women hate me. And, you know, the the support that I was being given w were were was ⁓ ironically, through like conservative like media, like Rush Limbaugh was one of my biggest defenders at the time. You know, that's a hard

speaker-1: Day that's a hard day when you have rushed limbs.

speaker-0: As your supporter. Yeah. But yeah, it was hard. So yes. So there was a there was a huge amount of blowback. Some of it was hidden from me, thank God. But ⁓ a lot of it I saw. And I yeah, I think that moment I was like, They're gosh, there's just so much negative stereotypes tied up in women's women's hormones, and I didn't have the stomach for it.

speaker-1: For those of you, you know, who don't have ⁓ which I'm guessing is most of you who are listening, don't have a background ⁓ in, you know, sort of ⁓ the politics of research science, ⁓ the research surrounding ovulation, what changes in women's sex hormones, cycling sex hormones in women, ⁓ and their downstream impacts on ⁓ behavior. as soon as a paper is published saying that women's sex hormones are related, you know, changes in sex hormones are related to this, about nine to twelve months later you'll have a paper that's published that says no they don't. It really feels like it's almost been a modern day witch hunt ⁓ in in with ⁓ researchers going after some of the work that you've done, some of the work that Marty's done, some of the work that Steve Gangis has done. and and this is some of the seminal early research. I mean, a lot of you who are listening are probably aware of, you know, these books that have been written by people like, you know, Elisa Vitti, where it's like in the flow and it's talking about cycles and how they change and how they influence behavior. A lot of this early work started with these group of researchers that ⁓ that that we're talking about here who have been sort of unduly criticized. So what what do you think this means for science?

speaker-0: Well, I I don't know. I hope I I I do think that there are you know, ne there are so many you know, including your books and the book you just mentioned, like this is a topic that women are discussing, you know, we kind of are more aware, thanks to your book, about, you know, giving women a birth control pill and making sure they don't, you know, ⁓ their hormones are, you know, not cycling. You know, and how dangerous that can be potentially depending on the person. And I think there's just like more conversation now surrounding women and their hormones and you know why we have the cycling hormones that we do. What's the you know, what's the reason we have those? How can we take care of ourselves? You know, knowing that we have, you know, two very big hormones that do two very different things that, you know, increase within the time span of a week from each other. I mean, these are big things. I think that there's more of a conversation now. So I am hopeful that, you know, younger scholars are feel more comfortable. And I already know that because I get contacted a lot by, ⁓ I have this idea and I want to look at this in an ovulatory study. And then I say, ⁓ I'm not doing ovulatory studies. And there's there's two parts to that. One part is that I'm not doing it anymore because I'm a good little gun chai. The other part is that I'm in a business school and it's not really set up to have a lab like we did at the University of Texas Austin. where it is a lab that's set up for physiological measures and having women, you come in and do hormone tests and, you know, we don't have that kind of separate space at a business school. So it's a little hard to run. I'd have to, you know, there are ways to do it. So it's not like it's ⁓ prohibitive. I would just have to, you know, get collaborators in the psychology department. And so, you know, but you know, talk about the research being, you know, creating an upper in psychology. In the business world, it's even more foreign. So it I was always sort of like the odd researcher out. So there wasn't a lot of incentive for me to keep going with the hormones. ⁓ you know, and I had done a lot, you know, I've published a lot. So I thought, you know, okay, somebody else can take the rein. And, you know, I think there are a lot of other, you know, scholars that are interested in this. So I'm hopeful that it will Continue and certainly in the medical field, I feel like maybe this is gaining more traction that we're looking at studies on how certain drugs are imp impacting women differently than men. And, you know, like kind of I think this is like your like banner on your website. It's like you are not a small man. You women are not small men. You can't like run a study on men and see how their bodies react and then make a blanket statement about how. X is affecting Y. What a you know, we need to look at populations of women also.

speaker-1: Yeah, Dave ⁓ David Buss and I actually just submitted a paper that we wrote together. So David Buss was my ⁓ my ⁓ graduate school mentor, and he's kind of a luminary in the field of evolutionary psychology. And we just wrote a paper called Why Ignoring Biological Sex Differences is bad for everyone, but especially women. And it talks about that issue of ⁓ you know, that even though there's political reasons that people want to ⁓ ignore and try to downplay the fact that there's sex differences in psychological states and biological states, et cetera, et cetera. ⁓ but ignoring them is like the furthest thing that we can do from helping being helpful to women. You know, it's it's it's it's it's it's dangerous for us. And we've seen this with drugs, as you've noted, ⁓ because certainly women metabolize drugs differently than men do. And ⁓ and we see this in law. So he talks ⁓ in that paper about the reasonable person standard. And how ⁓ if you assume the reasonable person standard for something like ⁓ sexual harassment, and the reasonable person standard is would a reasonable person consider this behavior to be harassing? ⁓ it turns out that the answer to that depends on whether you're talking to a reasonable man or a reasonable woman. Because reasonable women see a lot more behaviors as being potentially dangerous and harassing than men do. And so if a woman is ⁓ charging somebody with sexual harassment and the peer and the juror the jurors are primarily male, that can skew the result against her favor, right? And and unless we acknowledge that sex matters in, you know, in in law, in medicine, in, you know, psychology and psychotherapy, ⁓ in the study of things like Alzheimer's disease. I mean, it's like unless we like really wrap our arms around the fact that sex matters, it's ⁓ ultimately the people who lose the most are

speaker-0: So going back to like something you said, like so like biological sex has been politicized, you know, and so like why why can't we talk about it and I I you know, obviously I kinda know why, you know, I talked about the negative stereotypes about women, you know, not having the vote because, you know, women are sort of lesser than men. And like I think that, you know, because like the the sort of And and and this is sort of like a like an armchair like philosophical question, but you know, how can we why is it that we can't talk about how men and women are different? We're two different genders, you know, we don't have exactly this there's some things that are the same. We regulate temperature the same, we digest, you know, but they're there's it's like how can we like it's like for the for the the

speaker-1: But even that doubles right.

speaker-0: The health care of women, we need to be able to talk about this without fear of being shh, you know, silenced because God forbid there are differences between men and women. And I understand why, but it's like I don't know what the answer is to try to thread that needle like in a way that is palatable for everybody to hear.

speaker-1: Right, right. And so w we tried to do that and I tried I certainly try to do it in ⁓ in both of my books. I t I talk about that because I think it is an important needle to try to thread. Because I I do think that in and it's understandable that there's a fear that if you say sex matters, that then it becomes that, ⁓ well sex is the only thing that matters and ⁓ gender doesn't matter and that gender and sex are must be the same and if they're not, then ⁓ there's something wrong with you and and and that's just not true. Right. If if you're saying biological sex matters, ⁓ it's just simply a statement about the way that your biology was put together ⁓ has an impact on everything ranging from your responses to psychotherapy to thermoregulation, the way that your body thermoregulates, to the way that your body opson opsonizes bacteria. ⁓ we just learned that in some ⁓ immunological literature that we were reading for a study we're doing. ⁓ it changed it influences the way that you see behaviors as harassing or not harassing. ⁓ and so it it's just a statement about how you're put together. And that doesn't mean that it's your destiny. And it doesn't mean that it that the way that you feel or experience yourself necessarily ⁓ needs to match your biological sex. ⁓ it's just a statement about two different things. And like one of the things that I talk about ⁓ frequently when I'm I'm discussing this particular issue is, you know, if you are a ⁓ a transgendered man. So you're a biological female who's transitioned ⁓ into being a man, you're still at a greater risk for Alzheimer's disease. And you need to know that. And your doctor needs to know that. Right. That's important information to have. And so, and the fact that you're at a greater risk for Alzheimer's disease and that that's something that your doctor should be keeping an eye on, ⁓ does not mean that that needs to be prescriptive for how you experience the world and you don't need to wear a dress and you don't need to have female genitalia and you don't need to, you know, you don't need any of that stuff. ⁓ it's just simply a statement about how you're put together ⁓ that is useful for helping to essentially ⁓ allow the world to be better be able to better ⁓ care for you. Yeah ⁓ and and and look out for you. And so ⁓ I I I get frustrated sometimes too. It's like on the one hand, I do understand the history and and certainly, you know, even with the the thing that happened with CNN, their headline ⁓ was was not way to go. But like, you know, I'm I'm like you though, because I'm I come from a science background, like I I was naive. I wouldn't have even thought about that headline being problematic because it just is so much, you know, I'm so used to have seen having seen research papers on men's hormones influencing social dominance, orientation and, you know, political motivation and and all of that and just recognizing that hormones are just part of the machinery and ⁓ without thinking about the history. And and and I think that that bad history, it yeah, it means we've got a lot of work to do. I know.

speaker-0: I know, because I didn't want to contribute to that. I mean, the last thing I want to do is close doors for women or or make give reinforce arguments against ⁓ having them having more opportunity in the world. You know, that's the last thing I wanted to do. So I was like, okay, well, you know, I want to be helpful, not hurtful with my research. And so that's kind of what threw me into a different direction. But I do think that we need this knowledge to be able to better care for ourselves as women. And this is not mean that we can't go out and do anything and everything that we want to do, but we do need to be aware of how the, you know, the underlying biology that works within us women operates so that we can care for ourselves and not just pretend like this doesn't, you know, do anything important. You know, and and and so and I really do think that your listeners understand this, you know, because we as women have how many times have we sat in doctors' offices saying, but I am getting this thing where 'cause I had the thing where I would get this brain fog where I'd be like talking in public and then I'd zone out, remember? And like I was like, I think it's my hormones, like I think it's menopause. No. No.

speaker-1: Yeah, I think yeah, I think that ⁓ was I on hormones before you were on hormones?

speaker-0: I've been on it f f for over a decade.

speaker-1: Right. Yeah, that's right. You've been you've been you're on it longer than me. Cause yeah, I re I remember ⁓ yeah, I remember you telling me about that. Because I had I had brain fog too before I started estrogen.

speaker-0: Yeah. Which helps. Yeah. And for me it was the testosterone, you know, because I I had always, even though I went through menopause early, I had always had pretty robust testosterone. And but then that dropped. And I didn't really realize it did until I started having blood work done. And I was like, ⁓ okay, maybe, you know, if we boost that a little bit, and it has helped tremendously. But like I remember sitting in my gynecologist's office saying, I'm getting this. I think it has to do with some hormones and You know, I asked her for a little more estrogen and she's Well, are you getting hot flashes? And I said, No. Are you having trouble sleeping? I guess not really. Well then no, we don't need to change, you know, the the So, you know, we we just I feel like we've all had situations where we're not listened to and certainly not thought that, you know, hormones do anything. ⁓ that reminds me of the we used to share a doctor in Dallas when we were having babies. And I remember the doctor was like, So what do you Do, you know, Sarah does this. What do you do? And I go, ⁓ I I look at hormones, women's hormones, and how they impact behavior. And he was like, Women's hormones impact behavior? Like you talk about PMS? It's like, no, like decisions, like what they want to buy. He's like, That wouldn't happen. And I'm like, it does, you know. And I he was just, you know, my my that was my

speaker-1: Yeah, and I think that the for s yeah, and and for so long, I think that that's like how everyone has been. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's like so many people, even in obstetric in obstetrics and gynecology, are just think that hormones influence the body from the neck down. And ⁓ yeah, that's ⁓ that's so funny. I I I remember you telling me that story, where, ⁓ hormones influence behavior. That's the that's crazy.

speaker-0: Those are crazy things, I think.

speaker-1: What a crazy thing. You know, it's funny because ⁓ I I was having a conversation with a a researcher ⁓ who's at the University of Utah and she was doing a study looking at ⁓ body composition across the cycle. So actually putting ⁓ women in DEXA scanners and ⁓ and then also a BOD pod ⁓ or no a metabolic cart. So essentially looking at ⁓ resting metabolic rate in women and and how body composition and resting metabolic rate changes across the cycle. And one of the most robust findings in ⁓ in physiology that's actually looked at women's hormones is that resting metabolic rate increases between seven to eleven percent in the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, ⁓ because your body's just churning and burning with your high core body temperature. And ⁓ anyway, it was it was what was really interesting ⁓ when talking to her about the research, ⁓ was that you know, most of the women have that. pattern, but some women will go through, go through a luteal phase and not have a change in body composition or ⁓ resting metabolic rate, which I thought was really interesting. And so she's ⁓ she's gonna be looking at the actual hormone levels and seeing because her hypothesis and and mine just listening to it is that you know it's possible that these women aren't that had an had a fail to ovulate cycle. ⁓ and and so they're not it's not a true luteal phase where they're not releasing progesterone. ⁓ but you know, one of the things that I have always you know, one but but but I I think that's probably part of it. But another thing is that you get so much variability in people's responses to hormones was was the other takeaway. ⁓ and you know, when when we talk about some of these ⁓ research studies that have been found including your work where you find that, you know, women it women want to dress sexier and they, you know, and there's been others work where they find that women sound sexier and smell sexier and ⁓ and they're they want more sex and, you know, they're attracted to this type of partner. And ⁓ you know, there's a lot of variability in this and and the way that we respond to our hormones is is variable. And I think that ⁓ one thing I just want to note ⁓ as re as people and listeners are are considering this episode and considering ⁓ the way that hormones influence ⁓ behavior is that there's no one size fits all answer. And, you know, and I think a lot of the messiness in the research literature is really a reflection of one, the fact that you get a lot of failure to ovulate cycles. And I think that sometimes when people are looking at hormones and not testing hormones, ⁓ that you're getting these bad cycles. Cause we we find it when we're collecting data that when we're looking at women only who have regular cycles and, you know, ⁓ and are healthy and, you know, young and fertile and et cetera, et cetera, like and we're testing for ovulation, we'll get failure to ovulate in about 30% of the sample pretty regularly. and and which which again, you know, if you're listening to this and you're somebody who's concerned about ⁓ your cycle ⁓ stress is a ⁓ and lack of social support and you know lack of calories, ⁓ all of these things can contribute to cycles individual cycles where we fail to ovulate. ⁓ but I also think that there's, you know, still a lot that we don't know about individual sensitivities to hormonal shifts that I think is really interesting. And I'm I'm hoping that, you know, the future batch of researchers moving forward helps us better understand that. Because I do think that for some women, the the types of changes that we get are more robust than others. And certainly they're going to be more robust cycle to cycle too. Like if you have a really strong cycle with a lot of hormone production, like I think that that's going you're gonna see more of those changes than you do if it's a weak cycle with lower hormone release. Yeah. I mean, don't you think

speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There's so much variance. There all through all the years that I was doing ovulatory cycle work and measuring women's hormones. I mean, there was you know, and I was doing them on myself too. So I would see myself, you know, go through different, you know, cycles that felt different than others. And certainly we saw this in the women too, where they wouldn't necessarily ovulate. You know, we had a lot of women who that for which that didn't happen. ⁓ there is a lot of variability and it's really interesting that you say that because there are women who just don't sense a change and then there are you know, in their feelings and behavior, and then there are some women who are so tuned in

speaker-1: So since you have sort of shifted out of studying ⁓ women's sex hormones, which ⁓ to the detriment of the field but certainly understandable, ⁓ do you like your you you've studied a variety of different ⁓ different aspects of both consumer behavior and then also just like ⁓ in in continuing with sort of an eye on women, a lot of your research has continued to sort of focus a lot on on things that are important to women. ⁓ I I wanna I wanna talk a little bit about an issue or one of the topics of your research that I think is really interesting. And it's it's it's the topic of serendipity. ⁓ yeah. Right. And I wanna talk about that because ⁓ it's something that I think all of us ⁓ have had this experience and and would love to learn a little bit more about. But I want you to tell us what is serendipity and like why is it that people enjoy things. When they happen serendipitously more than they do when it's planned. So cer like what what is serendipitous?

speaker-0: So, you know, serendipity lot not a lot of people know what it is. In fact, we had an uphill battle when we decided to study serendipity because there was no real, you know, definition of what the ingredients were that would create it. And so it's basically just an unexpected discovery, something that you weren't expecting to find and you do find it. But ⁓ and you know, there was a a a movie called Serendipity that came out in two thousand and one that starred Kate Beckensdale and John Cusack. And so they meet unexpectedly at a department store over, like, you know, gloves, you know, the like meet cute where it's like, I want the scarf, and you're like pull you know, okay. So they meet each other, you know, are attracted to one another, and they decide to carry that conversation over to Sharon Ice Cream together at the ice cream shop, Sharon Serendipity in New York. They have a great conversation, ⁓ but they're both involved with other people, so they They just say goodbye there. But then both forget a personal item at the ice cream shop. And so they both come back to the ice cream shop to retrieve that personal item and they see each other again. And it's just the attraction is immediate and it's intense. And that's that's like that's like a a meat cute on steroid. It's like that's what serendipity is. It's just something that you weren't expecting. And so part of that is surprise, but a Bigger part of that, I think, ⁓ than surprise is actually that it was chance. Like the brain looks for a reason why something happened, like our brain wants to solve a mystery. Like, why did why did I s you both of us come back to the ice cream shop? Why is this tray of cookies here? Like if we can't find a reason through all the research that I found which I just love, the brain comes up with a reason just to close the book on that investigation. And that reason is it must be fate. It's a destiny. You know, and with that is a little bit of magic. And so it's that plus what's absent when you, you know, run into something, you know, randomly, whether it's a song, a movie, a piece of chocolate, a pen, a person, is that you think that, you know, this was somehow faded because I don't know how I came to have seen this person. And what is also absent that it when you're choosing something is opportunity costs. So you don't judge whatever you're have in front of you against all the other options you could have. So this we find serendipity to be very protective against, like for example, if you meet a partner serendipitously, we find that it protects against that drop in satisfaction. That you get when you, you know, when we ran studies where we had people looking at ⁓ profiles on a like a dating app and choosing a partner versus when they just meet someone unexpectedly, even though it's like the same person that we set it up for them to meet, they have this enhanced like perception of how much like would they just say, I like this guy. I don't know, there's liking increases and the we asked him a question like Do you think you'd fall in love with this person? And that was even increasing if they met the person serendipitously. And then we kept showing them the picture of the person, which is how you like test for satiation. Like, I just don't want to have a bite of this cracker anymore. I'm done. Like I'm satisfied with this cracker. ⁓ serendipity buffered against that. So they just remained equally satisfied. They just liked seeing that person's picture again if they met him serendipitously. And we think that it's just like that magic where you just aren't seeing the opportunity cost. And when I say opportunity cost, I just mean like when you're making a choice, like we do almost in every situation in life, whether it's a partner, a movie we're gonna watch, or a restaurant we're gonna go to, once we make the choice, we're less satisfied with it because what rises to the fore of our brain is all of the other options that could we could have could we have chosen better. And serendipity takes that away. And not only that, it doesn't feel like we're giving up control over choice. It's just something surprising that happened. And we don't know why it happened. So the brain just says, okay, maybe it's chance. There's like a little bit of magic pixie dust with it. And I just found that so fascinating. Like in my own life, that's kind of how I came about the research idea was just noticing how.

speaker-1: I

speaker-0: I liked songs that came across my old Four Taurus radio more than when I played them for my music library.

speaker-1: No, I have the same I have the exact same reaction. I was actually just gonna just gonna ask if that was the same thing. 'Cause I I have the same thing. Like if if I hear something that pops on the radio, I like I'm so much more into it than if it's on a playlist that I curated. 'Cause then it just feels like, well, I knew that that was

speaker-0: Probability of that happening was pretty high because I'm it in there.

speaker-1: She Yeah, can it get us in trouble? And and I'm asking this because so I was in a relationship that I let last way too long based on two based on two pieces of serendipity. So one is this is a person that I was in a relationship with who share who just so happened to have some know somebody in common that I knew who lives in New York City, right? Which is like a a very random thing that that we both know this person in common. I was like, Yeah, I've got this friend in New York. ⁓ and I said her name and he said, ⁓ and then said her middle name. And I was like, How do you know her? And it turns out that she was dating his roommate because he lived in New York City for a while when he was ⁓ early career. And anyway, so there was that. And so I thought, ⁓ my gosh, there's just there's something there. And then we used the same soap. Like like there's this like brand of like non toxic soap that you get at Whole Foods. And it's a little niche. ⁓ and I use it all over the house for hand soap and and ⁓ and and so does he. And so when I saw that, again, it was like the serendipitous thing, ⁓ where I'm like, this is clearly faded, right? Whole food soap. And and that we knew this one person in common in New York. And and and I that it it was not a good relationship for me. ⁓ and I stayed in it way too long. Because of these serendipitously I feel like occurring things where ⁓ where he knew this other person that I did and and this and so can can having this ⁓ be toxic can can it lead us into a bad into a bad way? Is serendipity always good?

speaker-0: Yeah, well, I don't know. That's an interesting question. So I don't know. I n like if you just told me that story, I would there so we like people who are similar to us. So all of these cues, even down to like when your birthday is, if it's the same, if your name sounds like the other person, you know, your you your liking for them increases kind of linearly the more similarities you have. But but also hidden in that, you're right, is serendipity. It's like, what are the chances? This guy uses the same soap. What are the chances? That this person knows somebody, the same person in New York. So I think that maybe the two were operating together. Maybe. I don't know how you met this person, but yeah, I think, you know, that certainly it it can put the rose-colored glasses on potentially, you know, because that's kind of what we were seeing a little bit of. Like I guess if we want to look at it, if this person isn't right for you, it might take a little bit longer to actually see reality. because of the magic of serendipity, that we're not judging, but then we can look at the flip side. It's like, well, we're being harsh to the choices we actually, you know, we're we're judging them more harshly what we actually choose than we probably should, because we're living in this world of oversaturated abundance where there's always something better to be had. And so I think that that does more negative damage to our everyday life of feeling dissatisfied with just things in gener life in general because we're so our brain wants to retain the control. There's so much choices out there. There's so many things we could be doing that we just see what we don't have instead of what we do have. But yeah, I think that it can I think that it could potentially lead you to stay in a relationship too long.

speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. We'll we'll talk off camera more about ⁓ more about that one. so ⁓ I I wanna like quickly talk about a topic that's becoming ⁓ a more center in your research world, ⁓ particularly in light of the fact that you have a new book that's gonna be coming out in about a year, which I'm gonna have you back on to talk about that. ⁓ but it's about this idea of evolutionary mismatch, right? And this idea that we have inherited this brain. That allowed our ancestors to be able to successfully survive and reproduce, right, in environments that aren't always the same as the environments that we live in now. Right. And in a lot of ways, I think our environments have gotten a lot easier, right? So we have ⁓ dishwashers and we have cars and we have a lot of these conveniences that evolutionarily, like our ancestors did not have. ⁓ and but they've also created a cultural landscape that's a lot different than the ones that our ancestors lived in, right? The world essentially, in short, is different now than what it is throughout most of our evolutionary history. And so our brain isn't always well adapted or well equipped to manage like our current environment. And, you know, one of the things I always think about ⁓ as a woman in particular is that. You know, life is a lot easier than it was for my great great grandmother even. And certainly for my distant female ancestors, right? Because I do have a dishwasher and I I've got a job, right? I'm able to work outside the home. And so I I don't have like a limited potential in the way that ⁓ women used to. And and and I think that I'm not alone in feeling like sometimes it feels like still something's missing, right? I think that women are anxious. and overburdened and overstressed and and sometimes ⁓ have a difficult time forming social connection ⁓ and and just feel overwhelmed. Yeah. And ⁓ and is that do you think that is the result of evolutionary mismatch and like and and are we not is is trying to do everything all at once essentially at odds with our biology in some way that makes it Unpleasant. Yeah. Like w like

speaker-0: I mean, I think every I think all of the deficits to mental and physical health have to do with evolutionary mismatch. So certainly, you know, for men and women, but certainly for women, you know, we feel a lot of responsibility over many things in life for how well we take care of the house, for how well we take care of our kids, for how well we are at scheduling everything that everybody needs in the family, how well we are at do at our job. You know, we we feel that pressure to sort of hit it out of the park across all of these different aspects of life. And that is crippling. It's it it's too high of a bar that nobody who is a human being can expect to reach. So we just as women have too much expectations for ourselves, ⁓ and our boll biology just can't meet those expectations.

speaker-1: Is that is that because of like social media? Is it because we're like seeing everybody's highlight reel? Like that we have these expectations?

speaker-0: That c that doesn't help, you know, and it's everywhere now. And we're, you know, think about how, you know, the brain is designed, you know, so whether you're a hundred years old or a hundred minutes old, you have a brain that is designed for an environment that has been gone for three hundred thousand years. And we have not caught up. And not only that, but we've gotten a lot stranger in terms of our ⁓ what our environment looks like now, even in the past twenty Years it's accelerated, it's expanded that gap between what your brain expects to see every morning and what it actually sees. So it so in one sense, you know, yes, we've created this modern world, but ⁓ as innovation just speeds ahead, it has surpassed our brain's ability to shape shift and be able to adapt to those changes. So it has essentially outpaced our adaptive range of how we can get a sense of you know a new strategy or feeling good even living in our modern world. So our brain gets sort of stuck in the social cognition part of you know our thinking and it takes away from our ability to focus because we're so we're seeing so many things out there about what other people are doing. We're, you know, ⁓ in and part of that does have to do with social media, right? So it's like we're connected with so many people, and many of us live in densely populated areas that we are doing things where we've never been more separate but together. So it's like where once where your brain wants to see some collaboration and cooperation just for a sense that we have some sort of belonging, like we matter in some way so that we can like de stress. We're not even getting an opportunity to ever really see that because we're not even, you know, f like how it was in the nineteen fifties, where at least there was some semblance of community. Like we don't really have that anymore. We're just like in our houses, in our little apartments, doing our own little thing. And we but we see all these people, you know, and we know that we're amongst people, but we don't really get a sense that that if we fell off the face of the earth anybody would really care. You know, so there's that we're lacking that and it's you know, that is part of what feeds for many, many people the, you know, the the the chronic stress that leads to, you know, the deficits to mental and physical health. And it sort of manifests differently for everybody, but it's but it's a there. Our world is so different. We're competing more than we're cooperating. And that's not what the brain is used to to find a sense that we belong. We don't have that.

speaker-1: Yeah, and I think that ⁓ you know, one one of the things that ⁓ people always talk about with evolutionary mismatch is just is is with like our diets, right? 'Cause that one's really easy to see, right? Where you have ultra processed foods and then you have we've evolved or inherited this ⁓ preference for sweet and fatty foods, and then you plop that into an environment where we're no longer living ⁓ you know, from hunting and gathering and and and eating food from the land and ⁓ and instead we have all this ultra processed food. And when you have a s brain and that is wired to have a reward response in response to things that are sweet and fatty, it can get you into trouble, right? Where you end up in this, ⁓ in this situation where everything is is is not necessarily good for you and you end up over consuming calories and then you end up overweight and your body becomes sick. And so you're saying that like psychologically. that there's also a lot happening in our environment. So almost like like we can look at it like an ultra processed environment, right? Where you have a lack of real experiences, right? Where there's ⁓ and and and you're seeing things on screens and and essentially that you that your brain, just like our gut, ⁓ isn't like really and and the rest of our body isn't designed to thrive off of ultra processed foods, the psychologically we also might maybe not be thriving based on our current environment, because essentially it's all of these changes have created ⁓ un unnecessary

speaker-0: Stress. Right. Yeah. I guess the important piece of that is understanding what your brain is designed for, and that is for living within a small group where you have knowledge of everybody that's living in your group and you all share a very same you have a similar goal, you know, you help each other, you collaborate to survive. You know, that's what we were doing for millions of years of human history. And now we're not doing that anymore. I mean, we our world looks nothing like what our the world that our brain is designed for, you know, much like your the the food example, you know, we have bodies or we are we have brains that are now seeing, you know, instead of the collaboration where we have it it's not like so like three hundred thousand years ago, or not even that long ago, like twelve thousand years ago, we weren't like, ⁓ I don't belong and ⁓ was my what's my purpose? Like that was built into life. Like we didn't go looking for it. So we're not designed to find it. You know, and that's what self-help tells us to do. And we have we wonder why we can't do it. Like why am I not finding my purpose? Like everybody else has a purpose. I don't have a purpose. Because that's not something we ever really needed to find, because that really was built into the fabric of life. Now, fast forward us to our modern digital age, and it's sort of a weird mixture of seeing people around everywhere. Where you have a brain that registers everybody you see as somebody who might be important, trying to figure out if this person is important, but we never really get to know anybody that well. So there's so much uncertainty in our social world that our brain just gets stressed out by it. And this starts, I'm not talking about like when you ⁓ are a teenager or when you're in your 40s, like this starts from birth. You know, we just are the brain is like born into a world that cannot support it. Because we don't have a tight-knit community where we are we are doing collaborative child rearing, even from like a day one of your life. And so this mismatch, you know, it was just sort of fascinating to me when I was writing the book because it starts from literally the day you're born, where your butt your psych your brain is butting up against these the things in our modern environment that aren't giving it what it needs. And In that light, it made a lot of the psychological deficits that we see that are increasing today on orders of magnitude make so much more sense. It's like, no self-help tool is going to survive contact with a stressed brain that has been that way from day one when it learned that the world might be threatening, because we just didn't have the support that the brain needs from early on, even in childhood.

speaker-1: So what is like what can we do as like adults? So obviously we can't like rewind the clock and go back to our childhood. But like what what can we do to try to ⁓ bridge the gap and sort of bring back some of the types of environments or like bring back aspects of environments that our brains are optimized for without having to like give up deodorant or like start or start eating like a caveman. Like I don't wanna I don't wanna

speaker-0: ⁓ No, we don't want to go back to like caveman days or st what is like Stone Age days. Stone Age. I want to keep my, you know, ⁓ modern amenities and I wanna keep living in, you know, the mo we have to all keep living in the modern world. We're not all gonna move to communes and, you know, do all that kind of stuff. But, you know, like I said, like knowledge of this stuff gives you someplace to stand. Okay. I understand that I have a brain that wants ⁓ to understand that they belong because that we belong. ⁓ because once I have that, my brain gets a sense of safety. Because being ostracized or, you know, not included was a death sentence across human history. You needed we needed each other. So for somebody to say, ⁓ I don't want that, you know, I don't like your proposal. I'm, you know, wondering if somebody's in a bad mood because they don't say hello to you, like your brain is on constant high alert because it just doesn't have that sense. So okay, I need to give that my brain a sense of belonging and sort of put you know, blinders on to help me not see these other people that don't really matter in my life, their opinion doesn't affect me as much. So, you know, we really need to be conscious of of of evaluating the people, like doing a social network audit, you know, that's part of what I you know kind of include in the book and like really figuring out like who's who's ⁓ you know, ⁓ good material for what like a mini tribe. I call a mini tribe in my microcommunity. And then just having those people, ⁓ who, you know, if they qualify and have like some qualifiers, you know, like they those are the people who from where I get my belonging. And so when, you know, my paper gets rejected, that's not you know, I understand that my brain might try to register that as a a a big problem because I'm hearing somebody who's alive you know, tell me that I'm rejected. And like I said, on some level your brain is categorizing even somebody who you don't even know as potentially important to your life because if, you know, over the course of our evolutionary history, if someone walked into your living space or came through in some way, that person was important. It was either somebody who was in your group or an enemy. Either way you had to pay attention to them. And so now we're paying attention to a bunch of people who don't matter.

speaker-1: Yeah, I I remember ⁓ there's been so many times when one of my children would get upset about something that's happening on social media or something and I'm like, just don't log in. And like none of that's real. Yeah. Like it's not real. And if you don't log in, it's not your reality. And and ⁓ and I remember I I had a conversation with ⁓ Gabby Reese, the former pro volleyball player. ⁓ and she's married to ⁓ surfer Laird Hamilton and he's like n he's like notoriously off the grid. Like he like he doesn't, you know, pay attention to ⁓ what's happening on social media or anything. And there's a little bit of a firestorm after a comment that he made, and it was like blowing up the internet and ⁓ and Gabby went out into the garage and he was just kind of like sanding a surfboard and you know, just ha and she's like, D doesn't this bother you? Like like like there's people saying these things and he's like Who are these people? Do these do I see them at the coffee shop? Do do are the are they neighbors? Are they my family members? And she's like, No, it's just these pe and he's like, I they're those aren't real. That's not real. Yeah. And and then just like went back to Sandy gets her forward. And ⁓ and I think that that's a really I think there's a really good lesson in there for all of us. And that is it yeah, it really is easy to ⁓ have your reality distorted by the bigness. of the i the internet world.

speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely.

speaker-1: What about buying a plant? Like if I buy a plant, like I always I always feel like I'm looking for like really simple, you know, strategies that I can do to try to make my brain feel more at peace. And ⁓ and I do like being outside and I get green exercise most of most days I go for a walk in addition to whatever else it is that I might do. ⁓ and I really think that that does a good job of of setting my ⁓ brain in the right space ⁓ and making it feel happy and ⁓ and regulated. ⁓ are there other just like simple things people can do? Is just like is it or is it the usual usual suspect, like get a good night's sleep? you know

speaker-0: Talk about any of that in the book because that that's the stuff that's hard to do until your brain kind of is able to you're able to sort of give it the workaround it needs to see through the modern world with sort of like the old world lens or the yesterday's brain lens, you know, that really is what will help all of those it'll give the self help stuff that we hear all the time more power, like being in nature and you know, all that kind of stuff that is good for us, like meditating if you can or br breath work or or gratitude journals, all of that. I think at least it was the case for me, which is why I wanted to write the book. Like then all of the self-help tools were able to work once I was able to sort of help my brain see, you know, s understand what I was going through and and able to sort of like do the little things that sort of help me my brain get back on track. But Like that kind of sounds like well, what one of the things that ⁓ is really sort of ground zero is just creating that, you know, safe sick safe haven, secure base that we most of us didn't get in childhood for ourselves within our home. And that sounds a lot like it could be wherever your safe space is that you create for yourself in your home with the things that bring you the most comfort. And that because then the reason that's sort of step one is because that when you're in your safe space, you can regulate your emotions. You can learn a lot more about how you react to certain things. You can tune in more to your body, like you can learn how your hormones might be affecting how you feel, because you just can get more tuned in to yourself when you feel safe. And that happens from the things that bring you comfort. And that's different for everybody. But it could be like being in nature. So it might be your outside space for you. For me, it's like my weighted blanket and my bedroom is my safe haven, like that's always like clean and has every all my comforts and my hot beverages and stuff like that. but yeah, no, I just I just basically the book really talks about like giving ⁓ information on here's how the brain was designed to handle these kind of situations and here's what it's encountering today. Now that we know that this is the gap, let's try to think about ways that, you know, we can minimize that and stay living in our modern world and not go live in the middle of, you know, with the the the Schwar village and the Amazon or whatever.

speaker-1: So so listeners, I've gotta tell you this quick story and then and then I know I'm gonna let ⁓ Christina like Christina yeah, the Schwar Village. So Christina and I met ⁓ when we were both graduate students, as I noted at at the University of Texas, and ⁓ we went to a research conference together and ⁓ and we shared a hotel room at this research conference. It was in Philadelphia, and I think it was two thousand five. ⁓ I'm pretty sure or like two yeah, I think it was two thousand five. And ⁓ and we shared a hotel room and and we were like just like shooting shooting the shit at night and ⁓ and we're talking about how we landed in in evolutionary psychology as a as a research field. And ⁓ and I was talking about how I majored in anthropology as an undergraduate and and Christina, I knew that she was gonna be my friend for life when she told me that ⁓ she thought about maybe doing anthropology, but then realized that she'd have to do field work, ⁓ which is where these anthropologists like go in these, you know, these remote villages and like live in a hut. And ⁓ and she said and and I I knew I'd have to do field work and I know that there's not a four seasons Schwar village and

speaker-0: So you and I would do field work.

speaker-1: Yeah, I know. It's like I know, I I knew exact ⁓ that just made me laugh because ⁓ I it was like yes, I wouldn't I can I cannot do field work also because for the exact same reasons. Like I have not ⁓ I'm not a person who does Right. I don't rough it. I don't rough it

speaker-0: But we have colleagues that do. So like when we do go to these conferences, we see like a portion of the talks are b are are about you know people who live in, you know, traditional, you know, almost exactly as how our hunter gatherer ancestors did in these remote villages and ⁓ in the middle of you know nowhere in Africa and in in South America. And so we're hearing them give talks and we're just like, yeah, I think we were yeah. That is if we lived

speaker-1: The only way we

speaker-0: If we could stay at the fourth thing.

speaker-1: Yeah, poor seasons Schwar Village Schwar Village Kalahari. ⁓ yeah, it it's like such ⁓ it's ⁓ that research is so great and I'm so glad other people are

speaker-0: Yeah. ⁓ my gosh. And I really came in handy for the b I mean, like I like immerse myself in that literature. Like I can't believe how how these researchers operate. Like it's fascinating. They're basically running the same studies we do in our labs and universities around the the the world it with these indigenous people who don't speak English and they don't, you know, they don't have certain systems or words for things, but yet they can, you know. find ways to translate these surveys and I just think it's so fascinating and thank goodness for that.

speaker-1: Yes, exactly. Thank goodness for that and their their incredible research. And then also that we're not the ones who have to do it. Because I can't imagine that Schwar Village scenario is just not one not one for me. I'm I'm too high maintenance for that. Yeah. so I I I want to close by just asking you ⁓ a little bit ⁓ tell me when your book is going to be out so that way listeners can ⁓ find out when they're gonna be able to go and download it and what is it called.

speaker-0: Okay, yeah. So my book is called Simple Yesterday's Brain, Today's World and the Forgotten Science of Living Well. And it's coming out March tenth of twenty twenty seven. So we we have a little bit of time, but I can't wait.

speaker-1: Awesome. Yeah, and I'll have you back on to talk about ⁓ talk about the book once ⁓ once we get a little bit closer in. But ⁓ in the meantime, where can ⁓ listeners find you online or on social platforms?

speaker-0: So I am on Instagram at at Christina underscore Durante and that I'm I'm really only active there. I'm also on LinkedIn. and then they can just Google me.

speaker-1: Okay, great. And you have a website?

speaker-0: ⁓ yeah, Christina Duranti dot com.

speaker-1: Alright, excellent. All right, well thank you, Christina, for joining us on the XX Lab and thank you to all of you for listening. Thank you. And that's it for today's episode of the XX Lab. If you want more, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're enjoying the show, a rating or review helps other people find it. See you next episode.