Latest / The XX Lab / The Science of Being a Woman | #1
Transcript
- Sarah: The idea of being able to do anything. It's gotten twisted in our minds to create this expectation that we're actually supposed to do everything. All of us have limited schedules, we have limited financial budgets, and a lot of us just want to be able to figure out how to have a good day, living the most fulfilled, meaningful version of your own life that you possibly can. Welcome to the XX Lab, where we explore the science and stories that matter to you. Welcome to the XX Lab. I'm Dr. Sarah Hill and this is our inaugural episode. I am so excited to spend this time with you, and I wanna start in this episode just really explaining to you what I'm hoping to do here and why you should bother listening. Because the fact is there's like eight million different podcasts that are out there, and you know, there's a lot of noise. And so like Why should you listen to this one compared to ⁓ something else that's out there? I think that it's going to be unlike anything else that's out there currently. A lot of the podcasts that exist in the world, and there's some really wonderful science podcasts, and there's some really wonderful, you know, sort of life living in the moment types of podcasts. There's a lot of wellness podcasts, a lot of hormone podcasts, health podcasts, optimization podcasts. You can find a podcast on just about anything that you want to. This is going to be a place where we bring science and stories that matter to you as a woman in a way that I don't think is currently being done. And that's simply to say that, you know, I have spent the last 25 plus years of my life doing research that helps understand women, right? I've I've really been interested in what it is that makes women tick. psychologically. ⁓ and and I've looked at this through the lens of hormones, which if you're joining me today, you've probably been familiar with some of my work. My first book, This Is Your Brain on Birth Control, was about the effects of hormonal birth control on the way that women think, feel, and experience the world. ⁓ my second book, The Period Brain, is about the way that women's cycling hormones influence the way that they think, feel, and experience the world. But my research actually goes a lot deeper than this. I've I've studied the effects of women's developmental history on the way that ⁓ women experience the world. I've studied mate attraction. I've studied friendship between women. I've studied the impacts of inflammatory processes in the body and the way that those influence the way that we think, feel, and experience the world. I've actually published more than 100 research papers. ⁓ with my research team, looking at a ton of different issues that are really aimed at helping understand women as a whole person. And what I've learned in my research career is not only about the different pieces that make us who we are, so the way that our developmental circumstances influence how who we are, right? How our evolutionary past and and the different challenges that our ancestors had to Solve to be able to successfully survive and reproduce and how that's influenced the shape of the types of decisions that we make and the shapes of our motivational structures. I've studied, you know, hormones and inflammation and all of these different things. And from all of these things, I've really developed an understanding of the complexity of what it means to be a human female. Right. And I want to present to you some of the cool. Cool science that has really helped shape my own understanding of myself, shape my understanding of my relationships with other people, and then also just shape the way that I live my life in ways that have helped make my life better. And so part of what we're gonna be doing during our time together is I'm gonna be sharing with you the science that has really turned my life upside down in the most beautiful, positive way by really providing me with a new understanding of of who I am, what my motivations are. And then what I can do to live a meaningful life. The other thing that we're gonna do is going to be a little bit of a pivot from regular s you know science podcast. And that is we're also gonna be talking about stories, right? Because one of the things that I've learned in my life through all of the things that I've gone through is that science is really helpful in terms of helping us understand who we are, why we're motivated by the things that we're motivated by, how our relationships work. Who we're attracted to, why we're attracted to them. But it's there's limits to what science can tell us about our lives and and how to live well that I think can be filled in by listening to stories. Right. And and so, you know, the this podcast is going to be not only about providing you with science that's gonna help inform the way that you can live your best life and help you make sense of yourself. But it's also gonna be providing you s women's stories. So talking with people who have lived experience that can also serve to inspire you and help shape the way that you live your life. So that way you are again like living the most fulfilled, meaningful version of your own life that you possibly can. And so what I wanna be doing with this podcast is we're gonna be talking to scientists, we're gonna be talking to other women, and we're gonna be learning from all of them. the keys that we need in order to live a meaningful, fulfilled life. And you know, the fact is a lot of us need some inspiration and guidance because when you look at the statistics on how women are doing right now, it's not great, right? We're being diagnosed with things like depression and anxiety at rates that are twice that of men. We're also experiencing things like workplace burnout at rates that are significantly higher than men. We're experiencing caregiver burnout at rates that are significantly higher than men. We're just really struggling right now. And I think that it's because for so many of us, the idea of of being able to do anything, right, which is so wonderful. You know, we do live in this time where women are just really kicking ass when you look at the rates of graduation from high school and from college and from graduate schools. Women are doing really well and performing really well because they have so many more opportunities than what they used to. But I think that so many of us have taken this, right? Taken the view of of being able to do anything that we want, and somehow it's gotten twisted in our minds to create this expectation that we're actually supposed to do everything. Right. So instead of being s opportunity and possibility. It feels like an obligation and a burden and that we're supposed to be doing everything all at once. And that can be really difficult for any of us to navigate. And so what I'm hopeful is that when you tune in each week to these episodes where we're gonna be talking with scientists, we're gonna be talking to physicians, so people who work in the medical space, we're gonna be talking to clinicians who work in the psychological space, we're gonna be talking to other women. Who have stories of experiences that are gonna help inspire you and guide you is gonna be that you're gonna be able to walk away with each episode learning something new about yourself. And then also learning something new that you can take to live a healthier, happier, more balanced life. Right. So this isn't going to be the type of thing where I'm gonna be teaching you life hacks to try to optimize this, that, and the other thing, and telling you that you need to be sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. And that you need to be s you know getting red light therapy and cold plunge therapy and all of this. This is going to be where we talk with scientists who study real women and we talk with real women who are living real lives and really recognize the fact that all of us have limited schedules, we have limited financial budgets, and a lot of us just want to be able to figure out how to have a good day, right? Like I I don't know about you, but the idea of trying to you know, maximize my strength training protocol is great and all. And I'm I'm glad that that information is out there, but it doesn't land with me all the time because really it's like most days I'm just trying to make it to the end of the day, feeling like I did a good job. I showed up well at my at my job, right? In in my research lab or in the public facing work that I do, educating women about their brains and about their hormones. That I'm showing up for my family because in addition to being a scientist with two books and more than a hundred research publications under my belt, ⁓ I'm also a partner, right? So I am a wife, I am a mother, I am a daughter, I am a friend, and so I'm trying to navigate all of these complex relationships, show up for everybody in my life at the same time as being able to take care of myself and then be able to connect with people like you. So that way you can have some of these same advantages that I've had through a life of science studying women and having the opportunity to connect with other women who've helped inspire me. And so I've created the XX Lab to host these conversations, right? To have conversations with scientists who can teach you something new about yourself, have conversations with other women who've walked the same path that so many of you are probably walking down. And be able to learn from them and be able to take that information to help shape your own life in a way that helps create more meaning, more connection, and more self-understanding. And so during our time together, we're gonna have some solo episodes where I just talk with you about some of the science that I've done in my own research laboratory, or we're gonna be sitting down with other scientists and talking about some of the interesting things that I've been able to learn from them. Over the course of my intellectual journey. We're also going to be talking with people that I've met from whom I've learned so many important lessons that I continue to take with me each day. And I'm hopeful that this is going to give you the same light in your life that it's given me in my career. Before we sort of pivot and you can listen to the next full episode. I also just want to tell you a little bit about me in case you haven't had any familiarity with me, or like why in the world do you have audacity to be hosting this podcast? Like, who do you think you are? Well, I have a PhD in what's known as evolutionary psychology, which I earned at the University of Texas working with Dr. David Buss, who is one of the sort of founding fathers of the discipline of evolutionary psychology. And if you've read one of my books, you probably have at least a little bit of loose familiarity with this field. And the reason that I studied this is because as far as I was concerned, it was the only thing that I learned that actually helped me understand myself in a way that felt true. I spent my college career trying to understand motivational states and trying to understand myself and trying to understand why I did the things that I did and why I felt the way that I felt. And to this end, I took classes in psychology and I took classes in anthropology and sociology and philosophy. And I was just trying to understand who I am and why I am the way that I am. And throughout all of these classes, I really didn't feel like I was getting answers that truly resonated with me. Like I didn't think that I was the way that I was just because of, you know, the patriarchy and that the patriarchy had sort of reigned down with its sets sets of expectations for women and that I'd somehow, you know, passively absorbed all of these expectations and that that was what was responsible for creating, you know, the experiences of being the person that I am. I didn't really believe that it was all the result of the way that my parents raised me. I just I'd like nothing was really resonating with me until my senior year in college. I took a class on anthropology and Evolutionary psychology. And it was during this class that I first learned about being able to apply the principles of evolution by natural selection to understand the nature of human nature. And according to this perspective, we can understand a lot of things about ourselves on the types of predispositions that we would have inherited from our ancestors in the past. And the idea is just this: you know, humans have been around for a really long time as a species. And we have inherited qualities or tendencies, psychological and behavioral tendencies that helped our ancestors be able to successfully survive and then be able to pass down copies of their genes. And that means that a lot of the tendencies that we have are things that we would have inherited because they helped our ancestors survive and reproduce. ⁓ and for whatever reason, this really was like a light bulb moment for me where it was like everything. that I thought that I didn't understand about myself and everything that I thought that was a thing about myself that was just like a character flaw or something that, you know, again was this this tendency that that was bestowed upon me by brainwashing from the patriarchy. It was like all of it started to make sense. You know, it made sense, for example, that every time that I would have what I thought was going to be just a casual relationship with a man. That I would end up catching feelings for them, right? And I thought that this was just a result of, you know, the fact that I had been taught by the patriarchy that it wasn't okay for women to be having short-term casual relationships. But instead, this was the fact that I had inherited a brain from my successful female ancestors that was cautious with sexual for sexual behavior. Because throughout evolutionary history, women who were not cautious about who they were having as sexual partners, they wouldn't have done very well, right? They would have ended up with a bunch of untimely pregnancies with a potentially uninvesting partner. And those children wouldn't have done very well, right? So they wouldn't have passed that tendency to just be casual about sex on to as many ancestors, right? Or as many descendants as an ancestor who was cautious about sex, right? And and and was not casual about that. And it was like understanding that these tendencies that I have as a human, ⁓ as a human female, are not just the results of you know being a passive receptacle of cultural, you know, traditions, but instead that I've inherited the collective wisdom, millions of years of human evolutionary history. It was just like a light went off, right? I finally understood things about myself that wouldn't have made sense otherwise. You know, I was a good feminist and I am a good feminist. I grew up, my mom was had a owned her own business, right? She was on the city council. She's been in a lot of leadership positions. So I have a really capable mother. She owned a business, she was on city council, she's had a lot of leadership positions, and she also raised five kids. She did all of this, and it didn't even seem like she was breaking a sweat, right? And ⁓ and so I've I've been raised with nothing but you know, exemplars of of women really having it all and doing it all and and with a smile on their face. And yet, nonetheless, you know, I would still experience things like like catching feels for somebody I'm having a casual relationship with and wondering what's wrong with me and why is it that my brain does things this way? Right? Why is it that I catch feelings when I'm supposed to be this liberated Sex in the City era woman. And so I'm so excited to be able to take, you know, this 25 year research career and also all the conversations I've had with so many inspiring women and be able to share them all with you and give you science and stories that are gonna help you ⁓ live your best, most inspired life. And so I am so glad you're here with me at the XX Lab. And I'm so excited about what we're going to be building here. So tune in each week to check out the latest episodes. And be sure to comment and subscribe if you have things to say or if you want to make sure that you don't miss the next episode. And that's it for today's episode of the XX Lab. If you want more, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're enjoying the show, a rating or review helps other people find it. See you next episode.