A piano, a hot dress, a hot husband, and lights on a tree. Check and mate. Happy holidays, kids!

Pediatricians: literally not in it for the money. Ask any med student, y’all… The grossest thing in the anti-vaxx movement is accusing infants’ doctors of being industry shills. Like b*tch they coulda gone into dermatology.

2025 as a women: hearing mothers in the Maldives officially, the whole country, stopped transmitting HIV, syphilis, and Hep B to their babies as the ocean slowly rises to consume the land they stand on.

I do prefer actionable info, I admit. A bit utilitarian that way. Like “the universe is inside of a black hole” or “your uterus has a minor dent in it” are fun but also nothing-burgers.

May the world treat you the way you treat trans kids.

Covid vaccination before or during pregnancy was associated with lower risks of hospitalisation, ICU admission, and preterm birth among those infected with SARS-CoV-2 in Canada.

Important thread—American politics is turning into literal bloodsport now. We’re (re-)entering our Shameless era.

Only one thing can save journalism: We must convince 50 Cent he has beef with Bari Weiss.

“No one is safe” (read: rich white folk assume their own safety from gun violence, which is why an Ivy shooting is shocking.) (Revise: rich white men. All of the people who know we’re not fully counted as “someone” already knew we’re not safe here.)

Robin, we got you. And same. So much same.

That is patently false: not only do immigrants score better than native-born Americans in tests, the mere presence of immigrants improve test scores for all students, when factoring in white flight sesp.northwestern.edu/news-events/...

Join us on Monday, December 8, 2025 at 8am PST/11am EST as Dr. Rebecca Thurston, PhD, FAMBR, FSBSM Professor in the Department of Psychiatry @University of Pittsburgh presents “Menopause, Its Symptoms, and Implications for Women’s Heart and Brain Health.” Register at tinyurl.com/bowerswbhi-s...

Research week for Book 2! Visiting UC Santa Barbara: @emilyjacobs.bsky.social studying female brains across the lifespan, @mgurven.bsky.social and @amyboddy.bsky.social thinking carefully about how culture intersects with female bodily change… gonna be amazing

"There were few people better placed to know why notions of race-based differences in intelligence have no scientific foundation; to sustain his beliefs in the face of that demanded not just ignorance but active denial." @philipcball.bsky.social in @thelancet.com

Yesterday was World AIDS Day. Today is Giving Tuesday. If you’re able, do what you can do make the world suck less for people with HIV and support the labs working to make PrEP even better and finally make a working vaccine. www.amfar.org/ways-to-supp...

Lotta people ask me for tips on how to talk about complicated ideas to the Public. First, there’s no such thing as the Public. Second, just talk the way you would at drinks at the conference. Peers you like and respect who are in different fields but so what. And they’re hot.

“Despite sex effects in individual organizational measures, we did not sex-stratify this data due to sample size considerations.” 🤦‍♀️ TBD. Also please determine reproductive effects in female data by age, known for restructuring? Cheers! #studywomen www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🏺 Two things have become clear in researching #Matriarcha: 1) direct evidence of how dangerous birth is – skeletons with stuck at-term babies inside them – goes back many millennia 2) humans/hominins have likely been obligate social birthers for about as long as they've been obligate tool users

Small holiday reminder: they hate our laughter. Laugh as much as your body can tolerate. Do it ‘til it hurts. Then do it more.

“Orbán learned before anyone else that controlling the universities that train a country’s elite is the best way to gain eventual control of its political system” www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/can-ac...

Happy Veterans Day to all who’ve served. If you have some in your fam, call ‘em and say the same. Even if they don’t vote the same way. Just do it.

Daniel and Kelly are joined by the amazing Dr. @catbohannon.bsky.social, who answers questions about whether we can shorten gestation, superhuman feats of strength, and whether viruses are ever good for us. www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...

Remembering Dawkins wrote that VS Ramachandran was “a latterday Marco Polo, journeying the Silk Road of science to strange and exotic Cathays of the mind." About a world-famous South Asian scientist. That was the best thing he could think to say. About Ramachandran. That.

Casey Means is a wellness influencer & unqualified opportunist who will face the Senate on Thursday. She should be called out on her conflicts, pseudoscience, & extremism, along with her weird scammer brother. She should not be confirmed. rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/a-means-to...

Keep Jamaica in your thoughts today, people.

The Trump administration is also refusing to use the SNAP contingency reserves, set aside for this exact purpose.

Yup yup! I wrote a bit on this Eve, page 382. See also footnotes on 399 and 402-403 for implications for human gendered power coalitions.

Could have been half the length, I admit, but a lot of good work in this review. “A grin without a cat” indeed. What a fall for Krauss and the skeptics movement in general, a sick end.

This from Iris Murdoch, via Elif Shafak: “ Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing.”

When I was Turkey in 2013, they didn’t report the protests on state tv. So every night, families banged pots & pans outside their windows. Every night, a clanging siren. This is how we knew. Bari can’t kill what’s true.

Solidarity!! Last week, Indiana University fired the director of student media & halted print on the Indiana Daily Student newspaper. Yesterday, Purdue’s student paper printed the banned edition & drove two hours to deliver it. Incredible www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/news/l...

Woah maybe add gorillas to the maybe-menopause list?!

Season 3 of Women’s Health Interrupted is here! 🎙️ Ep 1: Dr. Cat Bohannon on how science sidelined female bodies Ep 2: Rachel Bartholomew on how femtech innovation turns research into reality Now streaming on Spotify & Apple Podcasts 👇 https://ow.ly/b8PJ50XbIoG #WomensHealthInterrupted #Femtech

"a narrow focus on gross fertility measures provides a potentially misleading picture of demographic change. Our analysis of 236 countries from 1950-2023 reveals that when mortality is incorporated through net reproduction measures, our understanding of global fertility changes dramatically"

Sometimes I think about the whale mothers who were slaughtered for their blubber and baleen and how bits of their bodies were used to make corsets that squeezed the lungs of human moms wheezing in lamplight

Interesting! Today in media, our authoritarian slide has been rebranded T’s “revenge agenda” and then people were asked how they felt about it, like that’s a normal poll-taking thing to ask in a normal “let’s take the pulse on the street” scenario.

In better news…

The sadism is exhausting. Still, we *can* win this back, people! But let’s not pretend the moral injuries of this moment will go away anytime soon.

Dense read but important, so I’ll translate a quick teaser for my non-academic followers: moms matter, and it matters who they are and where they live! So to better help kids everywhere, meet moms where they’re at when you give them advice.

Things I love about my job: reducing suffering. Also answering that email about the evolution of orgasms. Rats & a #4 camelhair paintbrush, iykyk

That’s @edyong209.bsky.social saying it the right way, as always.

October! A turkey sammich costs $25, a whole lotta kids and grammas are gonna get really sick this flu season without vaccines, and they’re trying to get good people to leave the military willingly because they might get in the way of the crazy racist crusaders… cool. Also, pumpkin spice lattes.

The Army and Navy veterans in my family would beg to differ, Pete, but *everyone* in the DoD hates you anyway so… I guess why not act like a coked out Finance Bro in front of the entire nation’s top brass?

The Justice Department is people. Congress is people. The Armed Forces, people. Our country’s noblest institutions are *people.* So yes, it matters when one or a dozen break the law. It matters when one or a thousand stand up. All of this is made of people making choices.

Hegseth to Geneva Conventions: drop dead

Punching up with the best, Queens, I feel you…

Point of order: all human births are “natural.” Medical interventions in fertility are a fundamental part of the deep history of our species. Stop mom-shaming women who want and need medicine for being, um, human. Cheers!

Standing up for science is one way to push back against political attacks on the university sector 👇 Experts in biology and anthropology have put together this statement to counter misinformation about race. Please consider signing and sharing