Cat Bohannon (on the female body and evolution)
01:50:46 Share

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. And I'm Monica Padman. And we are coming to you live from New York. Oh!

It is not Saturday night. It is Wednesday morning. Whenever you're listening to this, it is. I think we've been a little bit Easter egging her because it was so interesting what we learned from her. But Kat Bohannon, who is a researcher and a bestselling author. She has a PhD from Columbia in evolution of narrative and cognition. She has a book out, which is very, very interesting, called Eve, How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution. It puts...

Z-woman at the very center of this evolution. It does. It's really fascinating. It is. And seeing how the different sexes...

Have some predictable. Evolved and have some predictable outcomes and have some unpredictable ones. Yeah, yeah. Well, look, women don't get studied. That's like the headline, right? Medicine is like they have not really studied women in all these bizarre examples. Exactly. The crazy one was like how much more powerful Ambien is. Yeah. Like, oopsie. I know. Yeah, so we get into all that. Yeah, so please enjoy Kat Bohannon.

We are supported by Wayfair. We just got a new Wayfair coffee table. We sure did. In a filming space and I love it. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. Listen, right now is the best time to shop for everything you need for holiday hosting. And Wayfair is the place to shop for all things home this holiday season. From extra seating for the whole family to festive cookware, cozy bedding,

and holiday decor galore. Wayfair helps you make your home way more you at a price that works for you. So whether you're looking for bedding sets for your guest room or kitchen brands you love, gift your home with Wayfair this holiday season. Plus, they offer free and easy shipping even on the big stuff.

They'll even help you set it up. Wayfair is your one-stop holiday shop for everything on your to-do list this season. Head to Wayfair.com right now to get your home holiday ready. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfair. Every style, every home.

We are supported by Audible. We know you love audio content. Thanks for listening to the show. But if your ears are craving more audio, Audible is the place to go. I probably, in truth, spend more time on Audible than any other place. Any other app? Yeah, I'm listening every night for an hour before bed.

There's more to imagine when you listen. Whether you're searching for the latest bestsellers and new releases, or you want to catch up on a classic title, you can find it all in the Audible app. And as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. What are you listening to now? Well, I'm just finishing The World's I See Now.

by Fei-Fei Li. It's so good and moving and I love it so much. I'm sad it's ending. Now, listen, new members can try Audible for free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash DAX or text DAX to 500-500. That's audible.com slash DAX or text DAX to 500-500. He's an uptake spreader.

People tell me a lot about their bodies right now. Yeah. So much. So much. What's the weirdest thing someone said? The weirdest thing someone said is probably asking me things about mine. Sure. I actually don't find it weird when people tell me about theirs because that's like an honoring moment. Like I'm going to share a vulnerable thing that I don't tell a lot of people.

I get a lot of older men telling me about their balls right now. Oh my God. I kind of invited that into my life, my fault. Okay, yes. But they tell me about that, and now I know a lot about their testicular reality, and that's cool. But no, it's weird when people ask me things about, like, my labia.

You know? Yeah, that feels... And then I'm like, I could tell you about my labes, but it's like 8 p.m. in a library. I don't know if I need to be there right now. Not the right setting. Well, to get serious, we have a lot of people who write memoirs that come...

come through. And it's one thing to write about an experience in the comfort of your home with great control and release it exactly how you want it. But that's not to say you want to talk about it verbally with strangers. But the person who read it, of course, they're like, oh, yeah, they're cool with this. They let the world know. And it's hard to guess maybe for them that, oh, just because I felt comfortable writing it in my bedroom doesn't mean that I can do it at the airport.

Absolutely. Where do you want to be vulnerable? Where do you actually want to be naked? Yeah, and I think so much of it for me is...

So like we had a very infamous episode where I had acknowledged I had relapsed. The way that came about with just us discussing it felt very manageable. But then to go on a talk show and they bring that up and I'm like, oh, this isn't my safe space where I'm ready to lay it out in a way I would like to lay it out. It can get tricky. I bet your book would invite a lot of interesting. What's the men's general questions about their testicles?

What in the book has made guys bring you their testicle information? Just like in a little, just their little snufflepuffs, just bringing them on. I just have a present for you right now. Hopefully no one's presented them. They're just describing what they're going through. I'm ready. I got a bunch of...

of death threats from the manosphere in June because of something I said on stage in the UK at the Hay Festival that was then reported kind of out of context in The Guardian where men were super convinced that I was asking them to cut off their balls. Oh, okay.

I was not. You should totally keep your furry little friends. Why would you not? They've been through so much with you. Why would you not? You don't need to get rid of them. You don't need to. Yeah. I mean, if you have testicular cancer, but that's you and your doctor, right? That's a privacy moment. It's not my advocacy.

that men should self-castrate. It's more that I was trying to figure out a way, there's this thing about buy-in. Female bodies are radically understudied in just about every space where you could do that research in biology or in medicine. And female bodies are also radically undercared for in so many settings. And so how do you get people without female bodies to give a damn about that?

Because actually, if you're only modeling the male body, that means that you are getting an incomplete picture of how this thing even works, because that's only half of our species. And one of the main ways to point that out is longevity. Females live longer on average than males. And one of the most reliable ways to make male mammals live longer in many species is to castrate them. And is that because it reduces their incident rate of like...

violence or conflict with other males? I think that's such a smart question. You would think it's a behavioral thing, right? You would think it's about risk-taking. Whether it's in the wild or in the lab, you actually get this effect quite often. It actually reduces many cancer rates. It is tied to telomere length. There are a lot of different measures of aging. Basically, you're aging faster because you got the NADs. And no one totally knows why, but if we better study sex differences...

That's how we're going to figure out why. There's something relative to compare it to. Yeah. And we know that historically certain kinds of human eunuchs may have lived longer because of similar medical reasons. It may also be because of lifestyle. We don't know. Any man lives long enough, he'll die of prostate cancer. That's a stated thing. It's just subtly or rapidly growing.

And when you have prostate cancer, the first order of business is to go on a testosterone blocker to reduce the spread of it and growth of it. So right out of the gates of you just look, well, just minimally prostate cancer is hugely impacted by testosterone. And that is a really high percentage killer of men. Over 80% of American men who live to the age of 80 will be diagnosed at some point in their lives with prostate cancer. Wow.

That is a ticking time bomb a few inches up your butt. It's true. I was a spokesperson for the Prostate Cancer Foundation for quite a while, urging men to get that digital examination. Well, I have to say, your book interests me greatly because I majored in anthropology. I love...

about the evolution of our species. And I got to admit that even until today, I don't think I thought, well, how do we define a mammal? There's like four imperative characteristics. They have to have fur. They have to have viviparity, live birth. They have to have

mammary glands to feed and then they have to be warm-blooded. Well, two of those things are just innately female. The live birth in the mammary glands, that's the defining characteristic of that sex. Massively so. It's right there in the description of a mammal. Kind of a chick thing, so to speak. Yeah. And so your book, Eve, is very much like, let's look at evolution from

Through the lens of females, that evolution is starting with females and continuing with females. And it's not the study of man per se. It was all right there for me to have an aha moment. It's weird when you're like, why weren't we talking about the females? Why are they just like over the hill, just pounding some tubers? Sorry, you look busy, guys. I'll just build the future of our species in my pelvis. Like, no.

It's weird that we left them out. Absolutely. And so there's a bunch of tributaries that lead into this river we've inherited. One of them would be who was writing these books. There is a lot of dong in the history of science communication. I agree. In the history of everything. Well, somebody made that body that has...

the dong. But yes, right. People are generally locked into their own perspective and they view the world through their own eyes. So yeah, there's that. But then there's this interesting medical history of why we don't study women. And I would love for you to

Shine a light on just how dramatic that is. I think that would shock a lot of people. Yeah. So things are getting better. It's not enough. We can't rest on our laurels. We've had some wins in this space. So that's my little pin right at the start. Just about any scientific study you guys have ever heard of is probably done exclusively on male bodies. Some new paper on diabetes, some new paper on an Alzheimer's drug, some new paper on this, that, or the other. For once, it is not...

actually because of sexism. We're used to the answer being, ah, sexism. Yeah, I've heard of that. Like you're not worth studying. Exactly. That you are less important, so therefore your body isn't a thing that we're concerned about. In this case, it's actually good science run amok because every mammal has an estrous cycle. Very species to species, we call this a menstrual cycle. So your hormones go up and down in this semi-predictable cascade.

And that is a thing for scientists who aren't trying to study the uterus or ovaries because nearly every tissue in your body has sex hormone receptors. And we only kind of store to barely know what they're doing on your bones or on your muscles because we haven't been studying sex differences, right? So if you want to be a good scientist, you want a nice, clean, we call it elegant body.

So then you want to control for your confounds. The easiest way to control for the confound of estrus is to not study bodies that have it. And if we could even be more lay about it, like their dream subject in a study is someone whose baseline is virtually unmoving. We introduce a new controlled variable and then we see what happens.

And if this person we're studying doesn't have a very consistent baseline or it varies greatly throughout the month, that is why they would not want to study that subject. That's absolutely true. And you're largely describing what we do when we're talking about doing studies on humans, on bodies like you and me. I'm also talking about rats, man. I'm talking about basic understandings of just bodies that are mammalian and how they work.

because we do a lot of basic science in rodents and in rodents, we're only studying males unless we want to know something about a uterus. Was there also the added fear of having females in a trial? They thought they were taking on some liability about either future reproductive health or perhaps they would be pregnant or was those also concerns or no?

In humans. So that's the thalidomide story. There was this time in the middle of the last century where we screwed up a lot of babies by giving women in a clinical trial a certain drug. We didn't anticipate that. And so it was actually a big win in the US FDA where a woman said, hey, let's make a rule and not include women of reproductive age so that we don't screw up potential babies. Seems like a great idea. But reproductive age is like 11 or so.

sliding down these days, right? Until like last I checked, it depends on your menopause somewhere. Yeah. So that's most of our damn lives, which means that it was against the rules for decades. Also having anyone sub 11 years old in a study has got its own ethical dilemma. It does. It does. There are many things with pediatric studies, which is part of why we barely understand adolescent development. There are many complicating factors, but the simple fact is

It was just dicks all the way down. It was just boy town for a very long time in medical research. In the 90s, we noticed, oh crap, that's a bad idea. Okay, so change it. But loopholes and all the drugs kept coming through the pipeline, still mostly studying males. Then the NIH caught on. They're like, oh, we got to fix the rat problem too. Okay, so now they started to try to fix the rat problem. But there are still enough loopholes to drive huge trucks through, which are most of the medications on the market today.

And part of it actually is that it's very hard to enroll human women in phase one clinical trials. So that's that moment where you actually start trying to test out a drug. You're not in rats anymore. You're in a human body. Okay. And you try and see what are the side effects? What's up? Just enrolling enough women is presently a problem. What's causing that discrepancy? They're not reaching out or women are not participating. I think it's,

Both. I think there's a lack of trust among women who might want to participate. There might even be an interesting risk taker variable here too. Well. I got a well from both of you. Well, yeah. Well, my well is new as in the last couple hours because I was at the cardiologist this morning. You okay? Yeah, I'm fine. Everything's fine. But I am probably going to go on a statin.

And she was like, you'll be fine. But also, if you are going to get pregnant, we'll come off of it for a little bit before, for about a month. As soon as I hear that, and I have no current plans to get pregnant, but I was like, well, then maybe I should wait to start because what if I randomly decide to want to get pregnant the next week and then there won't be enough time? You know, your brain does start running with you and a lot of it is for protection for your reproductive organs and such. Also, there was a huge...

diagram on the wall of how heart attacks show up in women. And it's very specific. It's not everything we've been told about how heart attacks show up. In the book, yeah, Kat says women die of heart attack more frequently, yet they show the signs of them less frequently or have less of them. The thing about heart disease that's so interesting is that we did have that really male model for a long time, which is that crushing pain on the chest. Tingle down the arm.

and these like classic, typically male symptoms. And we're finally getting campaigns out to be like, actually, do you feel like you have indigestion? Right. Which definitely doesn't trigger our slightly more likely to have anxiety disorders at all, which women also get more because it's like, is it heartburn or am I dying? Right? So it's complicated, but it is starting to save lives. Just take your body seriously. The results of this asymmetrical testing women versus men,

Kind of pops up in culture. I remember watching a 60-minute segment on women had been prescribed Ambien.

At the same dose men were for years and years and years, and women were having all these adverse effects to it, getting up and eating, driving a car, and people were like, what's going on? Come to find out when they studied it, it's almost twice as effective in females. Women are 40% more likely to be diagnosed with sleep disorders. We still don't entirely know why. I'm going to take a drug like Ambien to try and get some sleep.

But then we find out when the car crash data comes filtering back in that female patients are getting in car crashes on their damn morning commutes more than male patients who'd taken it the night before because the drug is being metabolized differently in our bodies. It's exiting our bodies in different ways. It's effects on the tissues. And we're only just figuring it out because of what? Car crashes?

data? Right, right, right. Yeah, so the FDA finally... Wait till that comes in and we'll make a decision. Yeah, just look, we're just gonna... So this is a while back. They said, okay, Ambien, you should take half the dose if you've got ovaries. But at that point, it had been on the market for 21 years. Oh my God. So... Yeah, a little...

I feel like we can do better. I feel like we shouldn't wait that long. What are some other real kind of jaw-dropping ones? Obviously, this one shocked me from your book, that opiates. In fact, my weird stereotype would have almost guessed the opposite. Yeah, another thing that we learned after things had been on the market for a while, it turns out that we metabolize them a little bit differently.

And it's not so much a body mass thing. I mean, you're an absurdly tall person. Thank you so much. Right? Your body just kept doing that with the femurs, you know? It's fine. So it's not just that you're bigger and so, you know, a distribution across mass thing. It's actually a liver thing. There are thousands of different genes that are differently expressed in our hepatocytes, our liver cells, if they have a Y chromosome or do not. We still don't entirely know what they're all doing, but we do know that drugs that are metabolized through here then have...

a slightly different profile in your average female body. That feeling that you're having, that emperor's new clothes feeling, like you thought you were looking at bodies and it turns out this whole other thing happening in the body, that's basically every researcher right now studying the biology of sex differences. It's like the Wild West out there, which also means we don't entirely know which one's going to pan out in the end. But the opioid drugs thing, so these are common classes of painkillers, right? It's something you get a prescription for. Or get from your car washer, yeah. Well... Ah, dark joke! Too soon!

Remember the relapse you referenced? Yeah, we laugh about it because laughing is how we survive. That's right. You must. That's what we do. In my crew, anyway. You must. Tammy hasn't had teeth in a while, but yes. So the thing is, is that female patients tend to need a little bit more of it to have the same subjective level of pain.

And you know you're supposed to take them every certain number of hours, every four, every six or something like that. And that's how quickly your body's clearing it. Female patients tend to stop feeling that pain relief a little sooner. And so they're then more likely to be like, maybe I should take a little sooner because this shit hurts. Or maybe I should just take a little more. You start cutting them, hopefully not snorting them, but you know, you start going against what the prescription is.

in part because the prescription was written as if you weren't female. So then that's a unique path to addiction, right? Because you're front-loading, you're norming a certain level of that drug in your body and you're upping it, you're upping it, you're upping it and like your body becomes dependent on it. Yeah, well you were forced to take it into your own hands because the

dosage and schedule was wrong. And now once you've broken protocol, now you're on your own. You've kind of passed one of the roadblocks. And in fact, when you're in recovery and you have a crazy injury, your sponsor will go like, yeah, you're allowed to take those as prescribed.

That's the huge asterisk, right? So if you've already broke as prescribed, then kind of the sky's the limit. You're managing it yourself. And we're not great at that, especially when you're altered. Absolutely. I think it's a trust thing. And that's a big thing right now with women patients and their docs.

If you're already in a situation where you don't feel heard, you feel like you're told female pain doesn't matter. That happens for a lot of people with these sorts of bodies. Are you in a relationship of trust with your doc? Do you think this person is looking out for your best interest? Do you think this person's really seeing you, hearing you, tending to you the way you deserve? And if you don't have that already, then it's that much easier to cross that threshold. And this is where I would be very supportive of introducing sexism, which is, I think, my

male doctors are not taking them seriously because this stereotype that you're more sensitive or you're being overly sensitive or you're being... I don't get that. Where did it come from? I don't know, but I think that's what's going on, right? I do too. Where did sexism come from?

I'm from? Because that is totes what you're asking right now. We have 18 hours? No, but I mean the very specific wimpiness of girls and women. I can propose from my own anecdotal life and experience how I could be led down that path, which is the dynamic in our relationship. As you just said,

Women do over index with anxiety. My wife is expressing way more concerns in the day than I am. And almost my role in our union is me going like, yeah, probably let's wait. You know, there's this dynamic that exists. And then I go to work and I'm carrying all the baggage of what my role is in my house. And yeah, and then I'm discounting people's truth. But I think that's maybe a kernel of where it's coming from. I think it's true everywhere.

that one in marriages we tend to hyper emphasize roles we can play up things in the dynamic of a twosome two i think it's true that while women and girls are more diagnosed with anxiety that isn't the full picture of how and why that's happening because diagnosis is its own thing versus what's actually going down there's a long history in psychiatry of over diagnosing women with anxiety

Kind of actually the whole history of the field. Hysteria. Yeah, exactly. That doesn't mean that we are not. Actually, I think there is a deep biological root around anxiety. Yes, you have to be worried about a child all the time. Well, exactly. It's also just the story we tell ourselves about gender mess, right? Because remember that female clinicians...

also tend to disbelieve female patients about their pain, also tend to rate it differently in their own heads, quite unconsciously, according to a slightly different scale, like, oh, well, if a chick's saying this hurts, what does that mean? I'm happy to point to the pretty well-worn stereotype, and we have tons of data on it, of men. Men are exactly

ignoring their symptoms. They don't want to go to the doctor. It's a sign of weakness and vulnerability. Like I'm happy to take on what our dumb thing is. So yes, if you're coming from a position of hide it, hide it, hide it, you're just inherently saying less of the things out loud. And someone's not carrying that gender baggage.

is expressing it more. Accurately, I would say. Any humans trying to correct for these two enormous variables, the patterns are much different and they're predictable. So I'm happy to point to the male stupidity in it, which is like, we're going to hide everything and be quiet about it. So if a man says he's hurt, we're generally inclined to think, oh, he must really be fucking hurt because they don't say that.

We have a lot of work to do, we collectively in the U.S., around men and boys' vulnerabilities, having them be heard in the fullness of their being, both in and out of the clinic, absolutely. That's the full thrust of this podcast. It's me going, I was molested. I'm an addict. I'm afraid. I'm a dude. I ride motorcycles. I ride wheelies. I've been in fights.

I'm scared. This is what this is. It's like raise your hand and say you're scared and don't act out in a way compensating for that that's going to destroy you and everyone you love around you. One of the reasons I keep coming back

to the body. I am a researcher, I've done scientific research, I have done humanistic research, and I am an artist. I've always been both. And on each side, I always keep coming back to the body because I'm really interested in intimacy. And one of the first things that happens both physiologically and psychologically in a moral act is empathy for the feelings of others.

And a huge amount of empathy then is simply imagining the bodies of others. We become more moral when we imagine the bodies of others and all of their pain and suffering and joys. Which has a physiological component. Well, I think the brain is embodied, so it's always embodied. But speaking of brain, you wanted to talk about anesthesia. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Women come out of it quicker. Yeah, so I know it's nightmare fuel, but...

Yeah, it is true. That you are more likely to wake up on a surgical table. You're more likely to emerge, as it's called, from anesthesia if you've got ovaries, if you've got a female body with the same amount of balance of medication controlled for your body size. So any anesthesiologist will tell you it's as much an art as a science. Sometimes I think this is how they're covering for themselves, but a lot of doctors say that. Yeah, I don't like hearing that it's an art.

Anesthesia? No, thank you. I'm a soft artist. I just don't want them up in my hoo-ha. Same. Exactly. Yeah. But I mean, their whole job is to bring you right close to death, but not over it. Barely. It's true. They're like the edgelords of medicine. But the thing is, is that when you emerge from anesthesia, your body is returning to consciousness, returning to sensation. It shouldn't be the case that just because you're female...

That's a thing. So there was this really cool study on rats, actually just, I know I always come back to the rats. We do terrible things to rats, but there's this cool study on rats. It turns out that even if you remove the gonads and you control the amount of estrogen and testosterone, that's one of the ways you can do it, doing it through the veins, in other words. The male brain is more oriented towards sleepiness. The female brain, which is to say, is more oriented towards wakefulness. It simply emerges sooner in a deep, deep brain-based state

So the stereotype is true. The men are more prone to the sleepy sleepies from like rats forward. And it's a testosterone thing. And of course, because they aren't having to listen to a baby cry. They don't have the incentive to.

to be tending to that cry. The notion that the provider of the food, the milk, has to sleep at a little shallower of a depth so that they can respond to that is very intuitive.

Although in highly social mammalian species, they're all listening for the kids. And we are a super social mammalian species. I mean, we're social primates for God's sake. We're about as social as it gets. So that means that it also behooves you. It also benefits you to respond to alertness. This plays into, and we'll get to it, into perception. It gets into why men do better on a night shift than women. Like there's a lot of different things happening.

That from the anthropological lens, of course, we had different roles in the hunting and gathering society. So boys took shift watching. Distribution of hunting roles, distribution of protecting a group against harm. We've tried out a lot of different models as a species and still are. I think it is true that unfortunately,

Or fortunately, it is more costly when a female dies. That is true because this is where the babies are made if you're going to make a baby. Yeah, if you have a population of primates and there's one male and 99 females, they're going to make it. If there's one female and 99 males, they're not going to make it. They're innately more valuable. Yes, in part because the way we make babies is so goddamn hard, especially as our species. Oh, man.

This is not a great sitch. It's amazing it works at all. And so if that's the case, then you especially have to be thinking about our evolutionary path as something that's rewarding things that keep the females alive. Well, let's start at the beginning. Let's start 200 million years ago. Mouse. At least the first milk production. Morgie is a little mouse-like, weasel-like little animal.

And this is the first to create milk for its young. Yeah, she's an adorable little weasel bitch and she's the real Madonna. She's where milk comes from, basically. She's a genus. She was really successful. We found her everywhere, her fossils. So what's amazing about her is this is the moment where we start taking control of her.

early mammalian development in ways that we hadn't before. And so tell us the benefits of milk production. There's a huge cost. Yeah. So it must have some pretty unique benefits that were ultimately rewarded over the next 200 million years. One of the main things it controls is your water.

because every land animal is really thirsty from the moment it's born, where we evolved in oceans, never really got over it. This is a very water-based way of being alive. Water is also a place where a lot of pathogens happen, a lot of bacteria, a lot of things that can totally kill you when you have a young immune system. So if you can control, if you can filter,

The water in early life through your own body, which is what making milk does. Yeah. Well, that's huge. That's a major upgrade. And you say in the book, yeah, us adults are 65% water, but the baby's 75% water. Part of that is just how big your organs are and how much fat you've got on you. It's a really big deal to be able to control the water. And it gives you an opportunity, too, to start manipulating that early immune system.

Helping it learn the world, helping it fight the bad guys in the world. That's what milk really does. Yeah, you get colostrum at the beginning and you're really passing on all your antibodies to your baby. Which you start in the womb. You start through the placenta. That's that early maternal transfer. That's why if you get a flu shot when you're pregnant, your kid is weirdly protected in those early months of life because it's receiving a kind of embodied learning of what's dangerous in the world and how to fight it, basically, before you're born.

But also throughout milk, but especially in colostrum, you're getting a lot of immune boosting material. That's like a straight up hot shot to get your immune system up and going. And the whole system's adaptive, right? The mother is receiving information from the baby, adjusting the type of milk it's getting. Yeah, mostly because physics. If

You are a newborn and you can latch. You are basically forming a docking seal around the nipple. My kid was very bad at this. Did more chewing than sucking. Sure. So you're docking on and what you're doing is you are creating a vacuum by...

sucking in your cheeks, right? And then you're rolling that tongue back and forth under the nipple. And what it does is it moves the vacuum back and forth inside that enclosed space of your mouth. Just like a tide you would see on the shore. If you're having a wave function, if you're pulling milk in from the breast, it's going to come in over the top. You're going to swallow it down your throat. But with every wave, there's an undertow as you move that vacuum. So your spit is getting sucked back up into the mom's boob through the nipple and

where it then distributes through her ductal work and is read like some kind of weird-ass ancient code by all kinds of sensors and immune system agents. And we don't even entirely know how that shit works, but we do know it changes the milk to suit. Right. If the kid is sick, the milk changes.

does change is true for rat as human. You know, again, it's kind of intuitive because it's something that has entered your body and now your body is going to make what it needs to deal with that, which it's now making, which is now being passed. You can see how it's very symbiotic and circular. Milk is a co-produced biological product.

It's like the only thing like that in the entire animal world. It's really incredible. And there are a few different moments throughout evolution that are real head scratchers, like the first mutation that results in this thing functioning. And that's just a big leap. And then I think second, which comes in the book, of course, and this is more like 67 million years ago, we have been laying eggs. Any vertebrate on planet Earth for a very long time has been laying eggs and

And all of a sudden there's this creature that decides to get rid of the egg and use the inside of their body as an egg. Really hard to imagine the mutations that led to that, but... Don't assume a smoking gun. This is a complex system. And of course, the failure rate means the failure of your species. So there's going to be a lot of small, weird stepwise functions. Just an accident. Most of the time that failed. And then this one weirdly worked, except it now sucks for us, but it's fine. Yeah.

It's one of those things where now we turned the inside of what used to be our shell gland, the surface of the uterus inside, is making stuff. And now it makes the basal plate of the placenta. But we decided to have that be the burrow. That's where the kid's going to develop through a certain stage of life.

which is a very bad idea. But we're doing it, and it has some advantages. And what are the advantages? Well, one of the really interesting advantages is temperature control. So we're not the only type of body that has live birth. Certain sharks have that too. Totally convergent. Didn't come from the same moment. They do it differently, but they do it. And...

We have noticed that certain kinds of sharks, when they are pregnant, the live birthing sharks, will swim in slightly warmer waters. So if you are already regulating the temperature of your insides, you can regulate the temperature of a growing body better than a clutch of eggs. And then it dramatically...

improves our mobility in that we don't have to tend to eggs. Yeah. We don't have to sit half the day on eggs. We're free to grow a child, an embryo, and explore and find new food sources and do anything we would want to do. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

We are supported by BetterHelp. Spooky season has officially begun and we love it. It's happening. Already planning the hayride. You are. Adding a hamburger truck to the mix this year. Oh my gosh, excited.

Gotta every year get bigger and better. Oh, I really gotta plan my costume. Get on it. Okay. Halloween lets us have fun with what scares us. But what about those fears that don't involve zombies and ghosts? Therapy is a great tool for facing your fears and finding ways to overcome them. Because sometimes the scariest thing is not facing our fears in the first place and holding ourselves back. I had therapy last week and she's just so good. She really put something into perspective in a way that I was...

Really unable. I would have never been able to see it that way on my own. No, never. If you're thinking of starting therapy, try BetterHelp. It's all online so you can have a therapy session from the comfort of your home at a time that's convenient for you. It's quick and easy to get started. And if your therapist isn't the right match for you, you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Overcome your fears with BetterHelp.

Visit BetterHelp.com slash DAX today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash DAX. If you love iPhone, you'll love Apple Card. It comes with the privacy and security you expect from Apple. Plus, you earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase, which can automatically earn interest when you open a high-yield savings account through Apple Card.

Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app. Subject to credit approval, savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Apple Card and savings by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City branch. Member FDIC terms and more at applecard.com.

This Halloween, ghoul all out with Instacart. Whether you're hunting for the perfect costume, eyeing that giant bag of candy, or casting spells with eerie decor, we've got it all in one place. Download the Instacart app and get delivery in as fast

There are a lot of mammals that still kind of make their living eating the eggs of other animals. Because mom's away and it's time to get in that there nest. If you don't have to leave your eggs in a nest...

Well, that's useful. Unfortunately, it is also incredibly metabolically taxing on your body because it's not just your uterus that's pregnant. It's your whole damn body. It is so metabolically taxing to have a human pregnancy that it's almost hard to compare it. Like some papers compare it to ultramarathons. They're just reaching for metaphors. Some papers compare it to just starving for months. They don't entirely know how to make you understand how much it costs to be pregnant in a body, except that

it is well we could probably minimally look at it calorically and i'm sure there's a known percentage of how much more energy you're needing to consume just to maintain homeostasis every organ system you've got is involved if you're knocked up also i remember when my wife was breastfeeding there was

some number we learned that you're burning calories wise just to produce milk. It was in the thousands. It was like an enormous amount of calories you're burning just to create the milk. We get real thirsty and real hungry. That's a thing that just happens. So this is a huge development. Again, it's fully female driven. This is the female of the species that's going to carry the baby. I found the most fascinating part. Now, perception. Let's walk through some of

the differences in perception. And some of them are intuitive. Some of them are like, oh, wow, that's wild. That's a really abstract solution. You're perceiving the world through your five senses. And so these vary greatly because there are different responsibilities on each other's plate. So we could start maybe with hearing. I think this is fascinating. The reason you have a face is

is that you have a mouth and that's just continued from the oceans forward. You are oriented towards food. So you hang your primary sensors on this thing we call a head. So you've got your mouth, your nose, your eyes, your ears, and there we are. Seems straightforward, but then you remember that this is this thing you're using to sense your environment. The weird thing about ears is that primate hearing changed dramatically

ancestral primate hearing. When our mammalian ancestors moved into the trees, most primates still up there, then our hearing had to change. We needed to be able to hear one another through this weird new environment and we couldn't bounce sound off the ground. And there's leaves and shit in between us. We could be far away. So we needed to be able to produce and hear lower pitches.

than most other mammals, but the females needed to retain those higher pitches because our babies make very high pitched sounds. And it's absolutely true that human women still have a little of that legacy of retaining those higher pitches over our lifespan.

It's twofold, right? You have a larger aptitude to start with, and then your decline isn't as dramatic. Yeah. Now, remember, this doesn't mean just because you are a female person that it is your destiny to have babies. We're talking about evolutionary influences. The reason you can hear the way you do is for many reasons in communicating with people.

However, it is true that female hearing is especially attuned to a range of pitches that tends to be associated with human baby's cries. Most people who are biologically male around age 25 or so will start cutting off the top

range of the pitches that they can hear. It's not like you need a hearing aid when you're 30, but it's just that predictable slope of that high end of human hearing, you start losing it. It's just like an aging thing. In the comedic punchline headline, yes, your husband can't hear you. No, I was literally, I was just about to say that. Like, oh, I think this is proving something I've been thinking for a long time when I'll talk with all these men in a room and they aren't responding. And I have thought, can they not hear me?

hear me? They legit cannot hear you. It doesn't explain why they don't care. Sure, that's a different... That's just sexism and we've talked about how that's real. I guess they can't care if they haven't heard it in the first place. It's so interesting. So by middle age, most male people have difficulty hearing the highest range of pitches. That is crazy. Now, your voice is not that high. Yeah, thank you. Let's make it clear. You have a lusty low voice. Thank you. You get shamed every once in a while. So...

The sexiest of voices, obviously. That's why What's-Her-Name deepened her voice. Elizabeth? Yes. Elizabeth Psychopath? Yes. She deepened her voice, and now I kind of get it. Among many reasons she may have deepened her voice. It's one of the weird things she did. We don't know what happened between her and the mirror and her ears. Complicated, complicated things, which were a bit self-involved. And so...

that can affect how well they understand certain sounds that tend to distinguish words from one another that have those high-pitched features. So like your voice is kind of thinner, tinnier, a little more muddy to the average middle-aged male voice.

Ear is weird. I did not expect to find that out. Tell me about smell. How have women's smell evolved? Olfaction. Smelling and tasting. So taste as if you ever had a cold, you know that your nose is doing so much more. Female folk are better at smelling and tasting things than male folk on average. So we're better at detection, that faint whiff. We're better at knowing if someone's farted sooner. What?

That's a diffusion in the room kind of thing. Think of those odorants, those molecules they're distributing into the room. We're more likely of pulling out a unique scent. We're more likely to be able to name it. So that's a connection to a memory thing. And we're also a little bit better at discernment.

Is that a grapefruit or an orange I'm tasting? On average, these are population-based things. But on average, if you have a body that is vulnerable, God forbid you're pregnant or blessing that you're pregnant, however you feel about it at the moment. But I mean in terms of whether or not you're going to eat a toxin. It's going to be that much more costly if you eat the bitter almond. That's a thing. So aversion to bitterness would be useful if you're female. Useful if you're anybody. But superfluous.

but certainly as an avoidance thing. And then sight, I didn't know this until reading your book. Women generally don't have colorblindness. Really? The most common type of colorblindness. Oh, the red? The red-green thing. It's an X-linked trait, so it's a mutation on your X chromosome. If you've only got one, you don't have a balance with the other mutation, and so you're more likely to get it. My husband asks me all the time for the red blanket. It is brown.

It has never not been brown. It will continue to be brown for all of time until the world burns down. But no, he can't tell the difference because he can't see red the way that I do because he's got a Y chromosome.

Right. And that's just where that gene's passed along on, having maybe no benefit or cost associated with it. A really interesting thing is that in a mixed-sex group, it may be beneficial to have some people with this colorblindness and some people who don't. So if you are foraging for nutritious extra green leaves or berries or whatever the hell, I don't know,

whatever monkey you are and whatever you eat. And it's dawn, so it's a little bit dim. Those who are red, green, colorblind in that group are going to be slightly better at foraging in those light conditions accurately, getting the ripe stuff, versus full light of day when those who have color vision are slightly better at it, if I'm remembering that right. There's a fact check moment.

I'll send you the paper. But yeah, so what's cool about that is now we have not just like a cost story, but we actually have an advantage story for sociality. That having diverse bodies. Group level evolution. Benefits the whole group. So he can't tell that that is definitely a brown blanket, but. But you may need him at 6 a.m. If I were ever foraging for berries at like 5 a.m. in some kind of forest canopy, yeah, definitely.

He could be really useful. I'm better at climbing than he is, but yes. So that's so like during the day you can and then during the night he can't, right? Well, crepuscular, really gross word, but if I'm remembering right, that is dawn and dusk. So when the light dims. Okay. The sorts of primates that we are, are diurnal. We're awake during the day and then sleep at night. That's our deal. But there are lots of us who forage right at the edges of that daylight.

Certainly they all wake up at sunrise and they're hungry. Exactly. And some of them can't see so good, but weirdly it helps them in that moment. Interesting. Yeah. Do any of these perception issues create this night shift phenomena? So this is something you point out in the book. There's some predictable outcomes if women are working night shift versus men.

And what happens? It's hard on any human body to do a night shift, but it does seem to be the case that female bodies are screwed a little bit more by night shift, especially in our reproductive health. People who work the night shift are just that much more likely to have issues with fertility if they've got ovaries. Now, it's true for anyone. Guys on the night shift are struggling to their sperm or swimming in ways that are not as good. There are different measures, but basically, ungood to work night shift, there's our blanket statement. But if you're female and want to

the things that's interesting is again it might be weirdly a liver story so all of those thousands of different genes that are differently expressed many of them are known to be associated with the circadian cycle so your whole body is tied to how you sense day and night but what

weirdly, there's like a lot going on in the liver and also in your ovaries. And then we also create our sex hormone at different points in the sleep cycle. But especially females have this estradiol. Our main estrogen is circadian. It has a different peak and trough. Men are more likely to grab their production falling asleep later.

It's not going to take as big of a toll on them. That's exactly right. It's less hard for you to adjust. Is this why there's new studies that women need more sleep than men? I think there's new studies because we're finally studying women. Yay, we like that very much. But there's totally new studies because we wanted to find out why women were 40% more likely to be diagnosed. We also wanted to know whether or not we could help all these poor women on their

women on the night shift, like nurses at hospitals who are keeping you alive, who are more likely to be women. That's also sexism, but also that's a thing. So let's fix it. Yeah, exactly. Here we are. Legs. Yes. That's an interesting chapter title. Why would we explore legs when we're looking at Eve? Musculoskeletal system. So the idea that we are the upright ape, that we walk on two legs. Say bipedal. It's fun. Bipedal. So fun. I love the word bipedal.

Because it's like penis adjacent as a word or what is it? Again, anthromajor. Yeah. It's our defining thing. Yeah. Like bipedal. It's a big deal. Yeah. I like quadrupedal is a fun word too. Yeah, actually. I agree. Locomotion is a fun word. Yeah. Yeah. The idea that the brain evolved primarily to orient the body and move it through space. So locomotion is huge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So bipedalism. Yeah. A lot of the story of why we started to walk upright had to do with these stereotypes of male behavior, had to do with hunting, had to do with running stuff down. Yeah.

But actually what it really has to do with is endurance. It's actually hard to keep doing this on two legs, this walking across the room on two legs over and over and over. That's expensive. It's difficult. It's bad for your back. But it does turn out that female bodies are slightly more geared, even on the basic cellular level in our musculoskeletal system, towards endurance.

So if bipedalism is an endurance story, like being able to do it, I mean, well, then quickly it's a female story. It's a very inefficient mode of locomotion. The explanation I was taught was as we were venturing out from the trees into the savanna, heat became a very big issue for us. And we reduce our surface area greatly by being erect. Instead of your big back getting full sun, you're getting partial. And then, yeah. And then even that explains male pattern baldness to some extent. Sometimes.

People have, absolutely. - Does this lead into the fat? You talk about fat a great deal in the book.

Let's start by that women have more body fat. Right. So one basic principle, we are among the fattest mammals on earth when we are born. We are born as fat as a damn baby seal. We are just chunky. That's why we come out all cute with the rolls. So cute. I know you want to pinch the rolls and that's that cute aggression. Give me that chubby baby. But the thing about those chubby babies is why the hell are they so fat though? You know? Right. So women's asses. So this is gluteo femoral fat. You can call it the good stuff. Yeah.

I like mine. I like mine. I like it on others. I'm a bisexual person. So yeah, this stuff right here. So your butt and your upper thighs and your hips, you've got it too. It's just we've got more of it, right? It's very distinctive sex typical distribution. So it turns out that it seems to specially store certain kinds of

lipids. Those are long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, LCPOFAs, but think fish oil, think omega-3. We're bad at making it from diet. We're bad at making it from component parts. Our bodies can build some stuff, but we're bad at building these long chains. We get it mostly from what we eat and then we store it up. So we mostly store it here in our asses and it does turn out to be

be especially useful for building baby brains and baby retinas. We need a lot of this ass fat to make baby brains. And in fact, one of the best predictors for when you might get your first period is when you have sufficiently stored up enough of this ass fat. Hip to waist ratio. That's a thing.

At Great Predictor, I read this and I was like, ding, ding, ding. That explains. And as we heard from more gymnasts, the explanation for the lack of the menstrual cycle is a fat issue. Oh, that's interesting. But personally, I got my period very early and I'm

I still don't have a lot of ass fat. Unfortunately, I want more. But again, all these things are like grand indexes. Yeah, no, I know. Individuals are definitely going to violate these. I think we should all be kinder to our bodies, especially when we look in the mirror. What we got is what we got. All right. And it's just barely keeping everything alive as it is. Do we need to criticize this ass for not assing enough? Like, surely. Yeah. No.

We don't entirely know how obesity works, what is causal and what is a confound, you know, like correlation, in other words, with a lot of the health measures. We know puberty starting earlier. We don't actually know why. It's probably a bunch of different stuff. However, anthropology major, it is absolutely true that every well-studied hunter-gatherer group starts their periods later. You get your first ovulation, your menarche, your first menstrual cycle, age 16 to 18 or so in all of those groups.

but your bones are still growing. It's not like they look like a 13 year old at 16, right? It's not a delayed development thing. The rest of your body's growing and only then do you start ovulating. What's weird about us is that we flipped puberty on its head. Now we start menarche before the rest of our bones are done growing. And ironically, inversely related to when we start procreating in general. Right. So we were procreating way later, but way earlier. And now we're starting our menstrual cycle earlier and then having babies later. Well, actually,

I think it's a pretty good indicator that child marriage is very much a modern thing in the history of our species, not ancestral. Because if you're not even ovulating until way later and your risk of complications and death are way higher if you haven't fully gone through puberty before you have your first pregnancy, well, then that means it's crazy risky from an evolutionary standpoint to have a culture that would try to knock you up before it's done cooking. So what's interesting to me about it is then these weird cultural innovations are

which I'm not fond of, where girls are getting their periods young and marrying young and having babies sooner than their bodies are ready for is not actually going to be the norm in our species history. That would have been experiments that rarely worked out because it would have produced so many dead girls. So actually, it's really interesting and troubling that we have our periods as early as we do. Well, then maybe eventually it'll...

Go back to being a little bit later, because I think you're right. The trend, I mean, the trend in the last like 10 years, like new. Women are having their first child later than they were in the 70s, dramatically so. Yeah, wealthier women in the global north are definitely having their babies later, which is probably fine. Does breast fat do anything for the child?

Breast fat seems to make the child less likely to suffocate while hoovering milk from your chest wall. Mostly that, as far as we know. It may have deeply complex hormonal roles and do other kinds of stuff because there's a factory in here making the milk if you're a lactating person. We assume it's all involved somehow. But the actual like swingy feature, they are probably just...

making it so that our flat faces don't have their nostrils blocked when we suckle. Ergonomics. Exactly. It's an ergonomic system that some people find them attractive is like a later useful add-on. Tell us...

about menopause. This is one we've been meaning to, and we might even have one scheduled. We do, but not for a couple months, actually. Monica read on all fours or just all fours. All fours, yeah. Are you aware of that book? Did you read it? Of course. Okay. Did you love it? Of course. She's hilarious. She's so funny. And I found it very poignant. Yeah. So menopause is very much being brought up a ton right now because of Monica's recent reading of that book. Because of me. Yeah.

It wasn't front of mind for me. I'm thinking about my future and my ovaries. Well, no, actually it is front of mind for me too because I live with someone who that's on their mind. But I'm 37. I keep saying that I'm in perimenopause. And then during the appointment today, she was like, you're not. She like kind of said something about my cycle. She's like, you're still having periods. And I was like, yes, yes.

Tons of them. I am. Don't worry. It's fine. I'm not stressed out, but I'm so stressed out. But it is unique in humans that we live for so long yet the females are not fertile for half of that time. Yeah, it's very interesting. Tell us about that and what are the, again, cost benefits of that? Why are we this way? I think one of the really smart things you're pointing out is that the menopause story is a longevity story.

It's about living long enough past your ovaries still pumping out eggs. The whole story of menopause is you're not dead yet, ladies. Congratulations. You just kept doing that. And what I found really interesting about the menopause thing when I was digging into the chapter is there's this hypothesis that's been around for a long time called the grandmother hypothesis, which is that somehow humanity...

evolved to stop having babies because then the grandmothers would have more free time to help take care of grandbabies. Slash reduced competition for resources and mates with their daughters. My mom and I are not dating the same guys, but I guess that could be a thing. But that's the central idea. But the main problem with the idea is that it doesn't seem to be the case that our ovaries evolved to shut down early.

What seems to be the case is that our entire body, including in male bodies, evolved to live longer than before. And the ovaries never got the message. They're still running the old monkey plan. They're like the midbrain of the body. Yeah. So that means that menopause is what they would call a revealed trait.

We started living longer. We're still figuring out how. The rest of your body is aging more slowly, but the ovaries are like, cool. So we're doing the thing, then we stop. And they stop around the same time, around age 50, as is commonly true. They senesce, they age faster.

as is true in many other primate species. It's just that we kept living past 50 and that's the freaky thing. That's the thing we're trying to figure out. Your body's many things. And what are the stages of it? What's happening biochemically? So somewhere deep in your body, if you've got ovaries, just like a few inches up from your crotch, you got your ovaries and they're going through their monthly cycle.

But they slowly start to have fewer and fewer follicles. We're born with all the egg follicles we'll ever have. That's something that grew in the womb. Technically, the follicle that became you was in your grandmother's body. That's just how that works. It's so crazy. Which is freaky. Yeah. But there we go. Then you're starting to run out of follicles because you're losing so many every month in this process called atresia. Not just one or two, but just like so many just cycling through. So then you start running out of eggs.

So then your hormones start to shift. And the first thing you might experience is that you might actually start getting your period more often. That's

That's unexpected. I know. It might just be that without that regular signal from the ovaries about like the egg's getting ready, we're getting that follicle ready. Well, the uterus starts dysregulating a little bit and starts maybe cycling through the cycle more quickly. So a lot of people will get their periods more often, might get it a little heavier. Our hormones start to have fluctuations in ways that we're not used to. You're changing your cycle pattern of how much estradiol you're getting when, how much testosterone, because we have that too, is pulsing out when, how much of...

Your progesterone, all of your things are being affected by this. And it's a balance thing. It's a cycle thing. And it's turbulent there for a while. It's totally turbulent for a long time for a lot of people. And it is affecting the rest of your body too. Some people more intensely than others. And that can last for like a decade.

or like two years. For the longer pattern, it tends to be less intense symptomatically. What's that mean, a long? Slowly, slowly, slowly, your ovaries are changing. Slowly, slowly, slowly, your follicles are running out. Slowly, your pattern of hormones is changing and your body is adapting to that shift.

As opposed to like hitting you like a truck. Right. What are hot flashes? Like what purpose do they serve? I think they serve to suck. Maladaptive. Why we can't sleep. I don't think that there's a situation where a hot flash is adaptive trait that gets selected for. Well, again, you've passed the point you would pass on your genes. So that couldn't be rewarded anyways. Any condition that comes post reproduction can't really impact reproduction.

The viability of that. We agree on that. Unless you have a socially interdependent species. Because if you have a socially interdependent species like us, people who live among one another, people who depend on one another, well then postmenopausal people are integrated into that society and are vital for that society. So actually if they are suffering and if they don't do as well, it totally impacts society.

You're going to be less good at caring for others, less good at your many, many roles if you suffer. So once we start living longer, it's beneficial to the group to have elderly folk for a variety of reasons. I think it's probably more to do with remembering the rare ways you need to survive when a flood happens or a lion jumps out of the grass than like caring for your babies necessarily. But the childcare is cool. Or even just going like, let's sleep on this. Yeah.

Yeah. Wisdom, literally wisdom. Let's take two days before we plan our response to this. Yeah. So I think there are many ways in which older people are integrated in our societies and have value. But you're totally right in terms of that raw genetic reproduction thing. The many ills of old age don't impact quite as much as like when you're taken out in your 20s. I'd love to just touch on love really quick. That's a good one. Yeah, that's a good one to... Yeah. Well, we'll see.

Uh-oh, it's bad. Love is bad. Love is lovely. Maybe addictive. Love is lovely. Love is maybe addictive. Love is lovely. I love love. Let's love love. Tell me how love manifests in the two sexes. Well, it's definitely not men are from Mars and women are from Venus. We all love complexly and weirdly and messily.

Sully and all of the ways that we love other people, some of which has to do with sex and some of which frankly does not. When I was writing the book, which is about 200 million years of evolution, I would still get questions from kind of everyone about our mating patterns, our sex life, how we go about loving one another. Like everyone really wanted to know what the hell I could say about that.

And in part, it's because this idea of what is natural to us, which is to say what was most common for us over deep time, must be what we should then do, which is definitely a bad idea. We've done all kinds of things that are terrible for us, but that's still why they wanted to know. And for me, as someone who, you know, was doing research at Columbia, was in this authoritative space, the story I kept hearing about mating patterns in humanity was about prostitution.

Oh, do tell. This idea that there was an ancient ape who was our ancestor and she traded rare food. She traded meat.

for sex. Like you bring me the good food and I'll give you a, and that would give a genetic leg up. And that somehow this is the root of all monogamy. The idea of the breadwinner, the idea of someone bringing home the literal ancient bacon. Nice. I had something that's really fascinating about that tank is if you just look at bonobos, they do a lot of sex meat exchange and they're the most promiscuous of all of the great apes. So

You would only need to look at bonobos and go like, well, that's got some flaws in it. Not such a secret. I think the idea that we are ancestrally monogamous is, I don't know how often that happened. It was probably more recent. But people want to know, are we more like King Solomon and his many wives, one dude, a bunch of females, which to a primatologist, that's a gorilla. Are we more like the chimps or bonobos, just fucking everything in sight? Enormous balls.

Yes, when we're back to balls. Or are we like wolves where it's mom and dad and the group because the alpha male is actually just the dad of almost everyone. And that's why they're organized that way. And so I was like, OK, we can dig into it, but we should look at the body.

Because we're a really culturally diverse species. We have many different ways of behaving, but we do know what bodies look like when they behave one way or another in other primates. We're definitely not a lot like gorillas. There's not a lot of Kong in us, right? Because the dudes would be huge. And the sexual dimorphism would be more exaggerated.

Exactly. And every harem type species where you have predictive sexual exclusivity, if you have that leg up, then you don't have to get much of a leg up. A super interesting thing about hominin evolution is that actually over time, if you line up the fossils, you're actually watching the dude shrink and the females even out. You're actually seeing a kind of evolution towards more sameness, a move away from a lot of body dimorphism, which is interesting because that can indeed be tied to mating patterns.

You're also losing your show fangs. Well, we also have much more ways to achieve status than originally. Precisely true. So it used to be if I can walk in and beat the shit out of all 20 males present, I'm probably going to have access. And as we became more organized and different things resulted in status, then that enormous body type wasn't as advantageous and as costly.

Absolutely. And it's so costly to build a huge body. I assume you have to be fed so much just to live through your day, right? I eat a lot of protein. Well, just any large body person does. Yes, of course. It's just a lot to run that thing, man. It's expensive. Totally true. But you also got rid of those show fangs, those big teeth that we flash at one another when we're male to like compete and your balls are mid-sized. You don't have to make them.

that well not yours particularly but like very envious of the chimp over there this is why men are talking to you about their balls we figured it out they come up they come out depends on your shorts absolutely so there's that general story that the males are reducing their competition with one another for the females and you also have a really boring penis you don't have a lot of whiz bang they're not curly cues you lost those penile spikes which also means it takes longer for you to have an orgasm sorry about that the chimps have them you guys don't I'm delighted about that

They actually look like little polka dots. Spikes is such an alarming word. Yeah. Like cats have them. Cats have actual. There's just so much wrong with cats. Yeah. Right. But in the humans in general, there's this huge story where males are competing with each other less according to our body traits and also probably weren't all that rapey.

historically because we don't actually have a lot of physiological signs of sexual coercion being the norm in our species. We have really boring, straightforward vag plans, really boring, straightforward penises, nothing like a duck having that trapdoor vagina. Now I'm jealous. Did you happen to, in all of your research, come across this fascinating phenomenon among orangutans, which is they do get raped and they can select whose sperm makes them pregnant. They're not sure how.

But they have somehow selection within them and they generally won't reproduce with the male that raped them. Yeah, I know. Orangutans are so weird among primates. The women are up in the trees, they're on the ground. They're so territorial. They're so much more solitary than other big apes tend to be. There's just like a lot that's weird about orangs. But also the raping though. Many apologies to your listeners who have experienced this. We're talking casually about rape because...

Because in the animal world outside of humanity, sexual coercion is super common. And it actually does matter when we think about human sexual coercion to be able to say, is this a thing that we were doing earlier?

so frequently ancestrally? Is this a big part of our story as a species? And we don't have the physical traits that show that. Is it a vestigial adaptation we're trying to mitigate? Is this a behavioral snafu or is this in the plan? And actually, it does not seem to be very much in the plan. As a mating strategy for humans. No.

Oh, exactly. And the opposite story has been told. Oh, this is a way for males who have lower status to achieve a pregnancy. These are things that are told in lecture halls at Columbia. But we don't have the physiological evidence. We're not like an orang female that is less likely to be pregnant when she is not choosing her partner and is being forced. Actually, the stats bear out that it's the exact same likelihood. Whether or not you're choosing your partner, whether or not you're saying yes, which is to say this isn't the norm at all. Right.

And then love. What did you land on when asked to help everyone? I landed on the idea that actually we have been on a long ancestral march towards sex equality from millions of years, actually. Not just even in our species, but from hominins forward, that's a big hominin story. We are more evenly distributing social power and physical power across the sexes. So that's actually a big core of what we are, which I find powerful.

I was ready for it to not be that story, but the fossils bear out. That seems to be the most convincing thing. I also found that there are lots of different ways to go about loving one another in many different cultures. It does not seem to be the case that one way of loving people and making and raising babies is the obviously most successful way. Right. Even the anthropologists of the 50s, when they still had access to all kinds of still existing hunting, gathering populations,

populations. Every version you can imagine was happening and mostly context dependent, environmentally driven, not hardware. What we're known for is being flexible in our behavior. Yeah, you can be in a way your diet can be 100 percent wow blubber.

And you can have no cardiovascular condition. That's interesting. Yeah. That's high flexibility. Yeah, these bodies can do so many different things. Now, I don't recommend living off whale blubber if you don't have a profound cultural reason to be doing so. Yeah, 15,000 years of doing it. Yeah, there's not that much whale blubber to go around. Many reasons.

We have lots of different ways of going about being human. And that was as true in our past as it is now. This is fascinating. Yeah, it is. What questions do you have for me from the book that I haven't gotten to? You did a lot. Yeah, I feel like this has been really fascinating. Let me glance at my notes. I'm going to pat myself on my back. I did a lot without holding my notes, which... You know, sometimes...

Dax and I fight. We have dust. Period. But no, we debate a lot. And that's part of the fun here is we have the leash to be able to do that. But sometimes I push back to him about these differences between the genders, basically. And it is good to be reminded, honestly, on the positive end of what these female bodies do. The

the differences, why they should be looked at sort of independently, especially in the medical field. And that right now it feels sort of scary to say that. It can feel it's like everyone's one thing and we can't say anything other than that. So it's good to have you here and for us to talk about this. I mean, gender's a mess, right? It is. It's just wholly different gender than sex. Yeah.

We haven't outgrown our sexual biology. We haven't transcended it quite yet. But the gender aspect is a social construct that's up to lots of debate and roles. We've observed every kind of thing and every kind of existing population that we've studied. It's all there. Couldn't say one's right or wrong. If anything, as a species, diversity is absolutely our strength. When you're looking at a monoculture anywhere in any species, that is a more fragile, frail, brittle species.

that's going to be more vulnerable to challenges than a more diverse population. Any biologist will be like, yep, I'll sign on to that for the most part. Monocultures are vulnerable. That's true behaviorally. That's true culturally. That's true us in this room. I mean, gender's a mess. I'm wearing red lipstick today because I was feeling femmy. Some days I'm like, fuck off. I'm not feeling femmy. I do know I'm not genderqueer. Part of the way I know that is that

I don't have really strong feelings about my gender identity. Like I'm kind of neutral. It's never felt intuitively like a challenge or a weirdness or a wrongness that my body is the way it is or that my gender is the way it is. And that's probably one of the best clues for it. People that I know that are genderqueer tend to have really strong feelings about it. Tends not to be a neutral thing. Tends to be a powerful feeling for them. And they're probably the best authority on what it feels like to be them. Agreed. Agreed.

Agreed. Well, this is a kick-ass book. It's very dense with a lot of science, but it's laid out in a very approachable and digestible layperson vernacular. So my hat's off to you. Very few people can juggle both things at the same time. It makes sense. You were first a creative writing major, so...

That holds. So I want everyone to check out Eve, How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution. Awesome book. Great meeting you. Thanks so much for coming in. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Credit Karma is your evolved financial assistant, making managing your finances simpler and more tailored to you. Join us at creditkarma.com to start your personalized financial journey today and continue to grow with our innovations. Credit Karma. Evolve your finances.

Are you struggling to close deals? Cold outreach is wasting the time of both the buyer and seller at every stage, especially when sellers are using shallow and outdated data. Your organization can overcome these challenges with technology that translates comprehensive, high-quality buyer data into real-time insights.

These deeper insights empower sales reps and teams to adopt the habits of top performers, which leads to better outcomes, like more pipeline, higher win rates, and larger deals. We call this deep sales.

And we've built the first deep sales platform with the next generation of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Right now, you can try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a 60-day free trial at linkedin.com slash trial. That's linkedin.com slash trial for a 60-day free trial. Let LinkedIn Sales Navigator help you sell like a superstar today. Just go to linkedin.com slash trial and get started.

Bombas makes the most comfortable socks, underwear, and t-shirts. Warning, Bombas are so absurdly comfortable you may throw out all your other clothes. Sorry, do we legally have to say that? No, this is just how I talk and I really love my Bombas. They do feel that good. And they do good too. One item purchased equals one item donated. To feel good and do good, go to bombas.com slash wondry and use code wondry for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash wondry and use code wondry at checkout.

Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at. I want to have a high level of sophistication in this one. Oh, really? Okay. I wish I got the memo. Okay.

- Okay, well this is fun. This is our first video on the road, us doing all of the stuff ourselves. - Yeah, normally if we are out of town, we just do Zoom fact checks and it's really easy. - Could be easier, but we're both in New York. - We are. - Yes. - We sure are. - And we've already had Emily Burger twice.

We've been twice. 72 hours. And we set, so the first one we had was in the West Village. Yes. And we.

And this is a twisty and turvy story, really. Because our very first Emily Burger was in Clinton Hill at Brooklyn. Yes. And at that time, the Manhattan one made a different version of the burger. That's right. The Lay Big Mac, I believe. Two patties. Delicious. No French onion soup on top. And it was good. Very good. Now, in Manhattan, they have the French onion soup all over it. Yeah.

And we went night number one. And we picked that location just because it was closest and we had to wake up early. And it was the second best one we've ever had after the first one. It might have even been as good as the first one. No, nothing. It was so. No. Nope. I'm not going to let you say that. I couldn't believe. It's so funny to know you know it's so good, but then even when you're eating it, you're like, no, it's even better than the memory is even capable of remembering. It's so good.

And then, so then we had to have it again. We had to have it again. After a very, very long day of press, we went, we're like, we got to go to Clinton Hill. We got to go to Brooklyn OB, Original Burger. We took Adam, who's never had it. And we took Emma. Yes. So fun to introduce people to it. Oh, I know. But it's pressure. It's like when you're watching people open doors.

the present you gave them. Or putting headphones on their head and going, this is my favorite song. And then you stare at them while they look. People shouldn't do that. I bet there's a word for it in another language. Yeah, probably. I bet there's a word for that. I bet the Germans have a word for that. It was so good the first night. I almost knew, well, there's no hitting that. So I had appropriate expectations. But we went back and

And there was a discrepancy in the amount of French onion soup people had on their burgers. There was variation. It was variable. You got, you felt you got screwed. Mine was on the drier side. Yours was fucking drenched. Mine was amazing. Yours was drenched.

Adams was a mess. He was sometimes taking bites and there was a waterfall of onions falling out the backside. Oh, the dream. When we went to the one in the West Village, there was a table there of people who had come from Japan just for the Berg. And when we say they came from Japan, like there were three people, only one spoke a bit of English. Yes. Their Japanese read about it, we found out, and flew all the way there to eat it. Yeah.

Then she asked for a picture with us because I was, of course, when the burger arrived, I needed to know, was this their first one? Yeah, you jumped in on their conversation. You told them. Yes.

It's so exciting, the notion that they were about to. And then come to find out they had flown across the world to have it. And it lived up to everything they had dreamt of. But then the woman took the one, one of the two who didn't speak a lick of English did ask for a photo with you and I. And then I was very confused about what was going on. That led to a conversation where you told me that's standard business. People do get photos with strangers. And I'm like, I'm so confused.

If they want a photo with us, do they listen to the podcast in Japan? No, they didn't. Of course not. They don't speak English. They just enjoyed our little interaction and wanted a picture. They wanted to remember the nice Americans that sat next to them. Yes. That's a very positive takeaway. They did not know the podcast.

Yeah, probably didn't, but it was very weird to ask to be in a photo with them. I'm just going to glance at the camera. Now I'm Ricky Glassman where I'm neurotic that it's not working. Oh no, it's fucking working like a mother. Should I look now at this one? Just sure. See if some red. There you are. Everything's good? Yeah.

Yeah, okay, great. Five minutes in. Okay. So anyways, delicious. And guess what? I can't promise you I won't go back. You might go back. For a third. It's so good. Wow. I know you want to go eat everything that's out there. I do. Ethically. I know. We are different in this way.

It's the addict in me. It's like if I know one thing gives me this feeling, I'm just going to keep doing it. It's too risky to see if another thing will give me that same high of perfection. But I guess I have confidence that the places I'm going, they're all going to give that high, but just a little different. And then that's the best.

You're an optimist. Best case. Yeah, I'm glass half full. Yes. Okay, so this is like our fifth or sixth video. Yeah. Fact check, whatever. It's like new. Right. And I was walking here from my hotel and I realized, oops, I am not wearing any makeup. Oh, well, the lighting in here is terrible. Great. So it's very blown out behind you. So I think it's going to be very forgiving. But I knew this was going to happen.

Like the first few, I was wearing like, I was wearing full makeup. I was wearing concealer. Okay. I don't usually wear concealer. Okay. But I was doing it for the cam. Yeah, for the cam. But I knew, I was like, you know, how long can this really last? You're not going to find out, but the comments are just flooded with,

With people saying how pretty you are. It's like the most resounding feedback is how pretty you are. Well, I think that's the concealer. I don't know if it's the concealer. I think your aura comes out. And I think that's what people are attracted to. What is your being and can I see it?

Even people were like, oh, sometimes I don't think Monica talks enough, but then I'm watching and there's a lot of things happening physically where she's like, she's visually quite involved, even if you're not hearing her. Like some people were like, this explains a lot, seeing this. Yeah, you did send me a screen grab and the person said- I curated a couple that I thought were safe enough to send you. Why? Because they were mean ones? No, they were all nice. They're 100% nice. Okay. Yeah. Well, yeah, someone said, Monica's doing a lot of face acting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I like that phrase. Yeah.

Face acting. Although when you're on set, if someone says that, you're in trouble. Yeah, it sounds bad. It's like facials. Like cheerleaders who do facials. Yeah, Tony Donald, just a bit. But they're right because after seven years of editing our show, I have learned it's not good for me audio-wise to say –

Yeah, or like do little chimes, but I also need our guests to know that... You're following along. Yeah, and that I'm involved in participating and hearing them and listening, active listening. Active listening, that's the catchphrase. So instead of vocal affirmation, I have to do face acting. A lot of nodding. Yeah. What if I did facials? Eyebrow raises. And like, I was like...

Oh, if you did like a clinic, you could buy your five DVD set to learn how to face act. Is that what you're saying? No, because in cheerleading, they call them facials. Oh, okay. That's what they're called. I know. It's a little rough. It's not. It's a regular word. You just, some people made it gross. Okay. And it is like big smiles and like- Dallas Cowboy. Some people do this.

Oh, Winx. Oh, what was yours? When I first started, so there was one girl on my squad. She had the best facials. Like, she was so good at them. Yeah. And I copied her. Okay. And then after tryouts, they told us to tone down the facials. They did? Yeah. That's enough facials. They were a little much. Okay. So then I just went with, like, big smiles mainly. Okay. Which was?

I guess you can't hear it. No, I can't really. Yeah, I can't. You got to be in the air. That's right. Yeah. If I threw you in the air right now, would you be able to harken back? Probably. Muscle memory? There was. We did a little photo shoot here. We did. Uh-huh. First day in town. Yes. We did a photo shoot. And you showed off your big muscles. You held me straight out.

in one of the pictures. In a very specific way. The way a parent holds a baby out who's pooped their pants and they don't want to change the diaper and they're handing it to the other parent. That was kind of the vibe I was going for. Oh, that was your backstory? Yeah, yeah. It was just like, that was, I was holding you out in a very specific way. Like, uh-oh, she made a mess. Somebody take...

duty. Who has the dipes? Yeah. And I kind of, when I was up in the air like that, I went into cheerleader mode. It felt like it. Yeah. I think I grabbed you around the rib cage and then you got very stiff. That's what you're supposed to do. You have to get very tight. Tight. Okay. Yeah. That's one like if you're starting to get loose, like it's like, stay tight, stay tight, stay tight. Facial, facial. Not too much. Too many facials. Less facial. Speaking of duty. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you're really telling on yourself. You're like, no makeup. I just fucking blasted. No, I didn't say it like that. Okay. What were you going to say? But I did. Okay. All right. What were you going to say? A couple of fact checks ago, next month or last week or last year, probably, yeah, in December 14th, they, Dax and Monica, talk about.

about a dream I had with Hillary Clinton. Yes, where there was a little bit of duty in a bathtub she had used. Yes, and I couldn't get it out. Yep. And you said maybe you have anxiety about the trip and having to poop. Yeah, poop in hotels. Maybe in front, like near you. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, huh, no, I don't think it's that. Right. Yeah.

So you obviously did a spell. Well, first of all, you walked to this hotel from your hotel. Yeah, it was about a 22-minute walk. And those kind of walks, you find out sometimes like, oh, wow. I think Jack Black was sharing about it very openly. That's right. About being on his wogs, getting his steps, and having to step into the Vista movie theater. Buy a ticket, take a dump, watch five minutes, fail. That's right. So you, obviously, on the way here, you're like, okay.

I got, I'm going to have to go. I knew, I've known for like two hours. Oh, wow. That much of a heads up. Yes. But so-

You know, I maxed out as I do and I was staying at one hotel and I moved to another hotel this morning. You did the same. Yes. And because of the new hotel, my room wasn't ready yet. Yeah. So I just dropped my stuff off. And you would have at that moment probably evacuated. I would have. That's right. Okay. But I was like, eh, it's fine. I can hold it. I've been holding it. It's fine. Yeah, I'll just wait. And then on the walk, it was like, I don't think it's fine. Like, I think I got to go. Yeah. Yeah.

And I was going to go in the lobby, but you insisted. You already felt surveilled. Yeah. Because they didn't ask if you were doing my hair when you...

When you rang up. I did. I went to, yeah, I went to the- I said that was flattering though. It is flattering. Yeah, yeah. I told him it was flattering. Hair girls are always hot. Yeah, and they're cool. And hair boys are always cute. Yeah. Yeah. I went and I said, hi, I'm Monica Padman. I'm going to room, I say the room number. Yeah. And they said, who are you here to see? Wait, what'd they say? Who are you here to see? Oh, to see. Right, right. And I said- Did you whisper it? Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

And then they said, okay. And then they called you. Yes. And checked, confirmed my identity. And I said, is my hairstylist here? That's how I answered the phone. I need a haircut so bad. And then he said, he hung up. Haircut? Oh, wait, now I'm going to fucking blow a hole. No, no, no. I got confirmation. I got confirmation. But, okay, continue. Okay. Because now I'm hearing it phrased that way.

I'm actually thinking, oh, he knows you and he thinks you got a haircut. Yes. Which you just got a haircut. I know. Okay. And he might be that good. Continue. I went through a lot, all of this as well. You did. Because he said haircut. And at first I had, at first I had no idea what he was talking about. That felt like a heretic thing. Curve ball. And it was a left curve ball. And then he, I said, what? And he said, haircut. What?

And I was like, uh, and at that point I did think I did just get a haircut. Maybe he listens to the show and he knows about my haircut. Did I talk about my haircut? So all this is happening. And I'm like, I think I'm, I'm like, I'm face acting. Okay. But not necessarily what you want to be face acting. Yes. And he goes, oh, I just like to guess. And then I was like, oh, about what I'm doing here. And he said, he said, yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so scratch my- Like a confirmation that it wasn't that he knew me and I had to say, oh no, we do a podcast together. Okay, good. Did you say a popular podcast?

Yeah. And I told him about our deal. Okay. Great. Great. So he's all completely up to speed. So maybe we gained ourself an arm cherry. I hope so. I'll hit him hard on my way out. And I did say that's so, that's very flattering. Hairdressers are very cool. You did? Mm-hmm. I did say that. You guys, you had like a 20 minute conversation. There was a walk to the elevator. You almost pooped your pants during that long dialogue? You were feeling pangs? I was feeling pressure. Yeah. Okay. He,

But long story short, you came up here and in quick order, you bombed the bathroom. I went to the bathroom. Yeah. I'm going on what you've said. I have no idea what happened. I just know you said, do not go in there. Yes, and you're not allowed to go in for the rest of the day. That's off limits. In eight hours, you can go in there. Yeah. So, I don't know. I think you put a curse on me. Okay. And you planned this somehow.

I inceptioned you. And then because it all came true. Right. And actually normally, I don't know if the odor was different or if I'm just so hyper aware because I know you're around. That's right. There's no way for me to know. Yeah. You can't know what you don't know. But to my knowledge, that was not regular. Okay. Uniquely normal.

And so I did. And then you asked if you could go pee. Yeah. Well, I had to. I should have thought of that before you went. Yeah, we should have thought this through. I didn't really map it all out. I was kind of distracted with setting up the cameras. You covered your face with a shirt. Yep. My Italian dinner jacket. Your guinea teeth. I had worn a bunch. Right, so it was worn. It was pungent as well.

yeah at any rate um what i'm dying to know is so last night uh i left that dinner when it concluded because i had to go to the view this morning this morning yes and then you and emma went out we went to her wine bar not the one that was recommended yeah yeah but that's not hers because she had never been right no no she had been she can't talk as hers a dog you you're having

a hard time following. Okay. I think because. Too many talk shows in one day? Yeah. Okay. You've been up to a lot. I have. Emma has a wine bar here in Brooklyn. Uh-huh. And. Oh, she brought it up. Adam said, oh my God, I've just heard of this twice. Yes. And one was from a super cute boy. That's right. That Adam and I had met earlier in the day at someone else's podcast. Yeah.

Was he there? Well, the hard thing is I wasn't there. So I don't know what the person looked like. But I think I would have known based on your description. I was going to say we basically as if you were a police sketch artist described his complexion, the tone of his hair. Yes. Short, stubble, dark. Very, very cute. Yeah. Very cute. I didn't. I said like if Marky Mark and I'm talking Marky Mark, not Mark Wahlberg. Right. Pure sensation or whatever it was.

feel it feel it Calvin Klein well yeah but feel it feel it good vibrations that hit song yeah um if he had a dark he had dark hair and a dark beard yeah more Olive dark complexion but that very boyish vibe right is that the boyiest boy to ever exist such a boy vibe yeah yes biggest boy vibes well

Which is not to be confused as best boy award. No, please don't confuse that. I mean, Justin Timberlake in Sink Days is also very boy vibes. He is. He is. Very boy vibes. But also veering into pretty boy. Right. Marky Mark was like a boy. He's like playing with Tonka trucks. Oh. Oh.

You know, has some shit streaks in his underwear. In his Calvin Klein's. He's always in a hurry. Yeah, he doesn't. He's got to get back out and play. He doesn't take as much time as he should. Anyhow, that's a sidebar. That's alleged. That's alleged. That's alleged. So you went to the wine bar. Yeah.

He wasn't there. He wasn't there. No, but it was very cute. Was the super hot guy you had seen earlier in the day that you regretted not going up to him and telling him he was hot there? No, but I have kept my eyes peeled for him. That would have been incredible. I know. That would have been such a me cute and it would have been a sign. Yeah.

Because now you could go up to him and go, oh my God, I walked by you earlier today and I really regretted not telling you. You're so attractive. It's offensive. Is that the line reading? Okay, so let's just tell people. So I was walking down the street and there was a man there. Normally...

And I just talked about this on Synced. So if you listen to Synced, you probably already heard this. So sorry for the repeat. But I normally am in such a zone when I'm walking. I am not paying attention to others. I am not someone who's like on the prowl. You're trying to stay upright. Like you're concentrating on your walk. I'm in my own head. Like I'm doing my own thing. I'm thinking about fashion. Ruminating. Yeah. Yeah. I'm closed for business a little bit when I'm walking.

Right. Which has been, I've been trying to change that. And I'm not going to bring up old stuff, but you're kind of closed for business a lot. Not just walking. Okay. Go on. No, that's it. I've already told you that. Well, no, I think you need to go on. Well, like, even if you're not walking, you're at an elevator bank.

You're not like. Oh, sure. That's what I'm saying. I move around the world closed for business. Exactly. Yes, that's right. That's all we agree on that. That's great. Okay. When we did Monica and Jess, actually, so that was so long ago. Yeah. We had somebody on, I forget, who was talking about this and talking about, I think it might have been Harry. Okay. Talking about signs and that like, I just need to turn on basically my like. Vacancy sign. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

So I think I did that for like a week and then I stopped. And so I haven't done it since. Okay. But I was walking down the street and there was this guy and I was like kind of. He snapped you out of your clothes. He did. Wow. It was so strong that I like couldn't help but notice how attractive this guy is. And he wasn't like, what do you picture? What do you think I saw? Yeah.

Yeah, that's a great question. Well, first, I just have to say self-servingly, that's the kind of attractiveness I'm always coveting. Where like you stop somebody, like whatever they're thinking about, you smack them in the face with your hotness. And that happened. This guy pistol whipped you. He did. With his hotness.

His essence. His essence. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I want to know what you think. Well, I just, we're in New York. I have a whole stereotype about New York. New York's generally, for me, it's like the stereotype is more Italian, more dark, less blondes out here than LA. So, I mean, the smart part of my brain is like, well, let's go back to high school. That's really where it's all starting. So this dude looked like a quarterback or something. Richard McCarty type. Yeah. Yeah.

But then I'm having to match that up with the Italian-ness I have. So an Italian quarterback. Okay. Okay. He was blonde. Okay. He was tall, kind of like lean. Like he had like a...

tennis player body. Wonderful. Also, the US Open's going on. I know. Maybe, just maybe he was a tennis player. Maybe, just maybe. He looked young. Okay. Which is also was kind of surprising for me because I, that's not normally my type. Right. I mean, I don't know how young. I mean, in my wildest dreams. Ew. Yes, of course. In my wildest dreams, he was like

Okay. But maybe 29? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. He could have been in his 20s. Okay. Totally fair game for you, but continue. And he was just very attractive. He was just posted up, like, letting people take a look? Well, he was, like, kind of on his phone. He was obviously waiting for someone. Yeah. Probably his wife or girlfriend. Or boyfriend, yeah.

Probably another blonde person. And I think he saw whoever he was meeting. Like he was like looking up and he like kind of smiled out. Oh God, was it great? Yeah. Yeah. Like when Brad Pitt smiles watching her cross the road in the car in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Or it's just like a...

No, this is ICU smile. I got it. It's a different smile. I wanted it to be that smile. You wanted it to be coy, but it wasn't really coy. It was ICU. Yeah. Hey. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's like. He's doing his facial. Yeah. Yeah. But he had a perfect amount of facial. It wasn't too much. Right. Anyway, I kind of started to smile and then I felt self-conscious. So then I kept walking and I got to my restaurant and I was standing. I had to wait in line for a second. While I was waiting in line, I thought, why? Why?

I wish I had just said, hey –

Hey, you're, I'm sure you get this all the time, but you're, you're just so attractive. Yeah. Great. Have a great day. Yeah. That's great. So that delivery is fantastic. That's going to work. But, oh, I know. I didn't have any goal. Right. You just want them to know, like, I love looking at you. Yeah. And I would do that longer tonight over wine or spare ribs. However, I got to look at you. Or spaghetti or a burger. You want a blind team? I'll watch. Were you having any Alana Glazer flashbacks of when she was saying she was posted up in the park and

And she saw her now husband walk by. And then, because I, when you paint that picture, I'm like, that's right. That's how New York works. You can kind of just hang in the park and walk guys with somebody, play a little cutesy-wootsy, and then pop over to a wine bar.

Like, do you feel like it's easier here? I feel like it's easier here. Everyone's just moving about. I don't think anyone's going anywhere in a hurry. Everyone's just kind of fucking strolling around. Okay. I don't know if it's easier when you live here. I don't know. I mean, when you're on vacation, everything feels... A little heightened. Yes. And it does feel like no one has anywhere to go. But also... Because you've got nowhere to go. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the reality is...

I probably want to be with someone who does have somewhere to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But just not on that day. You want to catch them on their one-off day. Okay, so who was at the wine bar? Was it fun? Yeah, it was fun. It was so cute. I mean, we didn't talk to anyone. You didn't? Any hot guys? Didn't see any. You didn't? Mm-mm. Okay.

But it was cute. And apparently there's a serial killer in Brooklyn. Oh. So he could have been there. Oh, my God. Could have just missed him. I wonder if he's a handsome one. I wonder. I wonder. Apparently there's been body parts found. Serial killer, ding, ding, ding. We talked about serial killers the whole ride to Brooklyn yesterday. Yeah, we did. Yes, we did. Specifically who in our friendship circle would be most likely to be one. Yeah.

No real consensus, but some overlap. Okay, and then I think something that would be fun to hear about is that you're going to a fashion show, which I think is really as good as it gets for you. Yeah, it's really exciting. I'm very, very excited. It's for Susan Alexandra. She's an incredible jewelry maker, but also like bag.

Okay. Really fun, beaded. Very cool. She's very cool. Right. And she's doing a collab with Rachel Antonoff. What time is that? I need to look. Yeah. It's today? No, it's tomorrow. Oh, phew. Oh, my God. I would not. I would be panicked. Oh, my God. You haven't looked and it's today? When are you planning on looking? That's so unlike me. Okay. Okay. Okay. That's safer. And...

Yeah, I'm really excited. So I get to go. I'm going with Elle magazine. Oh, my gosh. And then you're writing an article. I am. Oh. I almost threw up there. On camera. I'm in that zone where for three days I've been doing interviews nonstop. Yeah. And blah.

blasting some caffeine oh sure and on hyperdrive yeah and then belching occasionally you know have you ever belched on camera yeah like on camera on one of those shows or have you ever farted not on the show but i meant to bring this up because when i was watching without a paddle and maybe i hope you saw i don't know when you were in the shower or not i saw it when i climbed the rope up to the tree house yes and you had you had told this story on armchair anonymous once that you've

- Farted. - Quite loudly. 'Cause I was exerting all my strength to climb this really tall rope. - Yeah. - And it was dead quiet. - Yes. - And it was just a loud fart at everyone's ear level 'cause my butt was in the air. And then I got to the top and I said my lines and then I yelled cut and then I said,

Gang, I did fart. I want everyone to know I know I did. And there was a humongous laugh, the kind that tells you, yes, 100% of the people there all present heard that fart. Look, I did watch that part and I knew it was like, oh, this is when that happened. You remembered? Yeah. Oh, good. Yeah. It's so funny what happens when you're not, like when you look back in time, because I had so much empathy for you. Right. First movie. Yeah.

And you looked so little and to know you farted in front of everyone, like really kind of broke my heart actually. Sure. And I, someone had to volunteer to climb the rope. You know, they wanted one guy to go up the rope and you know, and of course. I imagine you being like very eager. Exactly. Yeah. I'm like, again, back to the thing, like, I don't know about the acting, but I think I can, I'll take, I'll take this job. Climb a rope. Does that acting? Climb a rope and fart.

Yeah. So I did. That's the most obvious fart I think I've had, other than when I farted on Liz. That was so like, oh, we got to talk about this immediately. Well, sure. But that one was, that was like on your property. That feels a little different. Sure. Home court advantage. Yeah. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home.

♪♪♪

Okay, this is going to sound weird. I obviously have, I have empathy for you now, but it's different when you look back at your friend. I'm less sympathetic now. No, that's not true. That's not true. It's just when you're around someone all the time, like you're in a mode, like you're just in a mode with someone. But when you see them like.

As a baby or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like so sweet. And it felt like my child, I was like watching my child on screen. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, and my child farted. Yep, in front of everybody. There's a moon shape. The crew was in a moon shape. Everyone had a perfect equidistance from the sound. Yeah. Everyone got a good hear of it. But I could see where I'm less compassionate now, just in general. You're less compassionate? That makes sense. That's not the right word.

Like it would be harder to have compassion for me now. No, not for me. But back then, like, you know I didn't know what I was doing. I was in over my head. But if I knew you then, it would be the same. It's just looking back. Okay. It's just the age thing. I bet in 10 years, if I watch this video, I'll be like, oh, my child is. Set up some cameras in this hotel room. Yeah.

Yeah. Tried to do the best he could. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. So you have to write that. Yes, I have to write it. And you have to write it really quickly. I do. So they have a series called Front Row Virgins. And someone goes to their first fashion show. Right. And then writes an article on it for Elle. Is everyone in the front row a virgin? No, just you. No, it's just the person writing the article for Elle. Yeah. I mean, I'll ask. Okay.

Yeah. Maybe there's multiple people on their first time. Yeah. It's exciting. You want to put those people up front because they're not over it yet. Do you think I'll do facials? Yeah, you must. Yeah. Face acting. Yeah. You got to. Luckily, you've been practicing. Are you going to wear concealer to that? Definitely. Okay. Full hair makeup? We'll just move on from that. I have not planned. I haven't planned well. All right. Well, this is for Kat.

Oh, okay. We learned a lot of interesting stuff. Was there one huge takeaway that you've been repeating? I mean, I love the part about men can't hear high pitches as they age because that tracks. It tracks. It's really funny. Yeah.

I mean, I feel like I don't even like having that out there because now they'll just be like, yeah, yeah. Oh, it's just my, it's just my genes. Well, and I'm going to be honest. I think it's both things. I think it's, I think it's nature and nurture. I do think.

Yeah, I think it's a mix. Do you think you file these noises you hear nonstop into the background? Everyone does. And then add on top of it an actual, there's a range cut off. Yeah. But more and more and more, you're with me. More and more and more. In fact, when we were doing our photo shoot, I wanted this to be one of my photos because this is me half the time in public. I cut my hand behind my ear to increase my ability to hear. Right.

Right. Very often. Don't you notice? I did that last night at dinner 12 times. Oh, my God. I felt like everyone was whispering. Why is everyone whispering? Oh, that's probably why you didn't understand the thing about Emma and the wine bar. Yes. It was probably a Hertz register that I can't hear. Wow. No. Well, that's funny that you bring that up because there's somebody else in my life who's a little older who I've noticed recently. I'm like, what's going on? Like, why can't you hear anything? And the man. Yeah. Chaz?

Yes. I think we're the only two old men in your life. I do think he's getting like, but he also has some hearing stuff already. He's had for years. Sure, sure. But I do feel that it's increasing. And to hear that about you, I mean, yeah. Well, it's not getting better. That's a certainty. Yeah. Yeah. Mine's getting worse. My eyes are getting worse. Yeah. I wonder if there's any benefit to it. Like-

There's all these changes that seem to happen to everyone. You get a little calmer, right? You care a little less about what people are going to say, all these things. But then you also wonder like, is it just because everything's getting dimmed around you? So you're not even reacting as strongly because it's like the info is coming in a little muted and dulled down.

It's crazy. What if I just start whispering and see if you can start? I'm testing. Well, I can read lips, though. Oh, yeah, because you were deaf. Yeah, that's right. Okay, so do men ignore symptoms? Do men not go to the doctor, basically? Right. I mean, Adam was just telling me.

Sweet Adam. He's had one checkup in the last six years. That's bad. I don't ever talk to a woman who's had one checkup in the last six years. No, yeah, that's bad. That is bad. Yes, men are less likely than women to seek medical help, and there are many reasons why.

Traditional masculinity. Some men avoid the doctor due to traditional views of masculinity, such as the idea that, quote, taking it like a man means not acknowledging pain. Yeah. This is the AI overview, I will say. Okay. And AI is male, so it's going to be skewed. Yeah. Fear of bad news.

Sure. Men may avoid the doctor because they're afraid of hearing bad news. And again, it's compounding. So you haven't been in so long. Yep. And now you're like, I know now when I go. Some things definitely weren't going to be wrong. Yes. I've been ignoring this. Yeah. Okay. Stigma of being weak. Men may avoid the doctor because they don't want to be seen as weak or emotional. Men may not see a doctor because it's not on their radar.

I don't know why that would be. Well, the only thing I could imagine happening, I'll be delicate about this, but my male friends are never talking about what doctor they have. Right. Or some doctor appointment they went to or a new great facialist or a new great anything. So I guess in that way, like you're not even hearing about it either. Yeah.

Yeah, I guess so. Whereas like when Kristen finds a doctor she loves, A, she probably found out about it from a friend because they were talking about it. In fact, I know the doctor she just started seeing is from two different friends. Oh, okay. And they were talking about it. Although that is different with hormones. Well, yeah. Yeah. And also like pap smears and stuff. Like women do, there is a reason to have to go to the doctor. You need to go to the shop a little more often. We do have to. Get your oil changed, yeah. And especially people, women who have children. Yeah, yeah. So I guess that's part of it. Yeah.

Okay. Don't talk about health. Men may be more likely to talk about current events, sports, or their job than their health. That's what you just said, basically. Did you write that? What if you found out I was AI today? No. I have no... Wait, what? Why is that so preposterous? Why is it preposterous that I'm artificial intelligence? After you said that, you made such a human face. Oh, I did. Okay.

My face betrays me. Me too. Yeah. We have both said that we are so, we're like least likely to be AI, me and you. Yeah. We're not AI. We're not AI. Unless AI is so good that they've done the job of like putting in human beings

and complexity. Okay. And doubt and insecurity. Yeah, that's what I mean. Like that's very human. You can't have an insecure AI. But then if they really wanted to be human, like they would. Yeah. They seem to have figured out to make mistakes though. Right. That's interesting. Okay. This one I think is correct. Think they are healthier than they are.

Okay, sure. They feel fine. Men may think they're healthier than they are. That's the same sentence. So arrogance. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. I knew we'd find a pejorative at some point. Yeah. But anyways, men, go to the doctor. Yeah. This was, I was already on that campaign for years, urging men to go get their prostate looked at. That one in particular, you got to go get it looked at because every male gets it, virtually. Yeah. By the way, it's like going to an OB. It's our pap smear. Yeah. Well, smear. I mean. Uh-oh.

I feel like I don't know what it is. It's a schmear. No, don't call it that. It's a schmear. Speaking of, I think the outfit I'm going to wear might be a sweater with a bagel on it. With a what on it? Bagel. Oh, a bagel. Yeah, with schmear. Oh, fun. A New York bagel. Ding, ding, ding. New York. Okay, the number of calories burned to produce milk. Okay. Yeah.

And this is just to produce. Yeah, this is a boatload, I think. Okay, it says each ounce of breast milk takes about 20 calories to make. Each ounce. Each ounce. So if you pump 20 ounces of breast milk daily, you burn 400 calories from producing breast milk. Yeah. It's pretty crazy. Yeah. I wonder how much is diluted. Like, I wonder if 40 ounces or 20 ounces of breast milk also is exactly 400 calories. Yeah.

Oh, I see. I doubt it. Probably not because that would be 100% efficiency. But I do wonder how much, like, calories are burnt to make calories. Yeah. What that ratio is. Yeah, that's a good question. Okay, which animals... Okay, what's the question? Which animals lay eggs? I think the only mammals that lay eggs... Okay.

Are the duck-billed platypus. And they're called like matrinals or something. They have an interesting little sub. Lay eggs and live birth. Okay. This is from National Geographic. Okay. Reptiles. About 15 to 20% of the 9,000 known species of snakes and lizards are live bearers. Oh. Common garter snakes. Oh, I always thought it was gardener. What is it? Garter? Garter?

Oh, I thought it was gardener's snake too. But this is National Geographic. They would know. They know. Common gardener's snakes, for example, birth live young while pythons lay eggs and guard them. Live birth is also rare in fish, accounting for about 2% of known species, including guppies and sharks. I was going to say sharks, I feel like. She mentioned sharks.

In some sharks that bear live pups, the mother produces egglets that are not fertilized and the babies are feeding on them while in the ovary. Ooh, cannibal. Yikes. Cannibal lector. The sand tiger shark or ragged tooth shark, a live birthing species. So sorry, it just occurred to me, did they name him Hannibal lector because he was a cannibal lector? I mean, I think so. It's supposed to make you think of cannibal. I've been.

I never even thought of that. You didn't? Because there's a famous Hannibal from history. Oh, Hannibal. And I thought it was a reference to that Hannibal, which he was mean, as I recall. Maybe. From my history. For a second. But now cannibal lector sounds. I mean, I always thought that was it. Yeah. But it also feels on the nose and cheesy. Yep. So maybe it's your thing.

Okay. As for the mammals, only two types lay eggs, the duck-billed platypus and the echidna. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. E-C-H-I-D-N-A. And their neutrinos, what are they called? Does it say? Okay. After a three-week pregnancy, the short-beaked echidna

Echidna of Australia makes a nursery burrow where she lays her egg directly into her pouch, incubating it for 10 days until it hatches into a baby. The female then feeds the baby with milk for another five to six weeks before she leaves the burrow to forage. So she's like a marsupial. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. Live bearing is common in some amphibians, but more unusual in others. Live birth. Anyway.

That's kind of cool. I prefer live birth. If I was an animal, I wouldn't want to be handcuffed and tethered to my nest. I have too much wanderlust. I need to get up and move around. I know, but also you have not, and neither have I, but you have not been pregnant. No. And I don't think we know the toll. If they would prefer to lay an egg three months into the process. Yes.

And not have, I mean, it's a lot on the human body. Yeah, I suppose it's woman to woman. I certainly know lots of women who wouldn't trade that experience. Me too, yeah. It was a wide range of people I know who love being pregnant and who hated being pregnant. Yeah. She said edgelords of medicine, and I didn't know what an edgelord was. I don't either. Okay, an edgelord is someone typically on the internet who tries to impress or shock by posting exaggerated opinions or statements.

So most of the internet. Yeah. There's a lot of edgelords out there. Edgelords unite. But I didn't know about that.

A person who affects a provocative or extreme persona, especially online, typically used of a man. Edgelords act like contrarians in the hope that everyone will admire them as rebels. Ah. Interesting. That seems like a trap I could fall into. Try not to. Yeah. I'm off of Twitter, so. Yeah. Doesn't really, I don't know what my outlet would be. I guess the comments of people's posts. Yeah. And I guess here. Yeah. This pretty big platform. Yeah.

I think that's pretty much it. I mean, I watched Chim Crazy and we could talk about it for 14 hours, but maybe we wait until next episode or maybe in two episodes because we'll have watched more. Yes. And that will be an episode where we first learned about Chim Crazy. So then we can talk about that on the fact. Okay, great. And then if you're in the audience, if you're an arm cherry, maybe this is a heads up to...

binge it so you can be part of the conversation. We ruined the whole show for Adam yesterday. We went basically scene by scene. We went scene by scene because every single scene is worth talking about. I know. Every single scene is worth repeating. Yep. And we told him the whole thing. Yes. Hopefully he just doesn't remember any of it when he's watching it. I think it'll still deliver. Trigger because it's hard to watch. It's not an uplifting doc. No.

No. No. And there are a lot of feelings. And you're not, I'm not sure who you're rooting for a lot of the time. I don't know that there is, well, you're rooting for the Chips. For some people's perspective.

They'll be very much on a certain side. Of course. And then there'll be other people, by the way, who are on her side. Well, I think protecting the chimps is probably the way to think about it, but that is gray. Yeah. How does, you know, exactly how and in what manner and how much grandstanding is it?

accompanying that, you know, I don't know. Yeah. That's where it gets a little. Oh, it's why it is wild. Please watch that and join us for a little chimp crazy. I do wonder if this gentleman, what's his name? Something goad. G O O D E. I think is the director. Uh,

Oh. Because he did Tiger King. Tiger King, yeah. I wonder, will we get one on everything? Will there be like elephant person? I would love that. Well, that's misleading because of Elephant Man. But you know what I'm saying. On every kind of animal. Like, are there crazies collecting every kind of weird- Well, it seems like there are. Yeah. Yeah, it certainly pulls in a type. Yeah. Elephants do seem-

Like that would be very difficult. To own. Yeah. And keeping your home. Yeah. Yes. Although chimps, I mean. I would rather roll the dice with an elephant. If I had to live with one. Me too. That grew into adulthood. They're more docile. Yes. Now, although those, the teenage elephants are terrible. They are? Yes. This is, they get kicked out.

Of the group. Rumspringa? Yes. They get kicked out for quite a while once they're teenagers. They're not to be. Because of hormones? Yes, because they're like turning wild and they get booted and then they come back when they're calm. Oh my God. And they just kind of roam. Look, whatever. No one should have animals. This is so crazy at all. Domesticated dogs, domesticated smugglers.

cats, which are tigers. Like we've decided that that's fine. It's all bad. I'm on the record. Oh my God. Oh my God. You're telling every pet owner that they're bad. Yeah. I don't think you are. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, but, but wild exotic animals. Yes. Yes. I agree. Um, I think we do have to acknowledge the, the co-evolution of the dog and the human, which is very well substantiated in science. Yeah. But I,

But they are wolves. So it's nuts, and then also it's kind of cute. Like, we're like, yeah, we want to live with these animals in our house. It's not my desire, but there's also something kind of, what's the fairy tale? Sleeping Beauty. Yes, and like sort of Alice in Wonderland. Actually, that's weird that you brought that up. I thought that the other day I was walking down the street at home, and I was like, oh, my God, life is so weird. We're just like walking amongst animals.

Little things that are flying. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Creatures. Like we are walking amongst creatures. It's really. They're everywhere. It's really bizarre. I got a picture this morning of a hawk sitting in my pool. Wow. Yes. Your dad? Wanted to go for a swim. Oh. Yeah. That's cute. I guess he was pecking at the water and walking around on the ledge. Yeah.

I had aimed to become friends with a crow, but it's leaning more likely that I'll befriend this hawk, I guess. Okay, but nope, nope. Now you're turning. Now I'm there. Yeah, you're turning. What if I have a hawk on my shoulder going forward that I...

I coaxed from the backyard into the studio. Absolutely. With a line of chicken meat. And you know what will happen? It will eat me. And then you'll be like, oh no. That's what happens. That's how it, you know what they'll, I'll say like all animal, that's how they say they love you. By biting your nose and clawing your face. As it's like literally eating. I mean, the show, there's some really traumatic events that you like are privy to with these chimps and chickens.

Yeah, I think I said it. I don't think there's anything worse than a chimp attack. It's about as bad as it can be. Because they don't have a knockout punch like a tiger or a lion. They eat your face. They eat you alive, yeah. Okay. Animals are bad. Well, this was fun. Yeah, this was fun. I like this. Live from New York. Live from New York. It's Armchair Expert. It's Saturday. It's Thursday night. Yeah. All right. I love you. All right, love you. Bye.

Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her. And she wasn't the only target. Because buried in the depths of the internet is the Kill List, a cache of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses, and specific instructions for people's murders.

This podcast is the true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those whose lives were in danger. And it turns out, convincing a total stranger someone wants them dead is not easy. Follow Kill List on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C True Crime shows like Morbid early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+. Check out Exhibit C in the Wondery app for all your true crime listening.