ArchiveFM

Radiolab

This is Your Brain on Hormones

We don’t have hormones, hormones have us.
Duration
42m
Broadcast on
19 Jun 2026
Audio Format
other

After reading something that said her menstrual cycle changes her brain each month, Senior Correspondent Molly Webster goes on a reporting mission to see if that’s true, and, if so, how.

This journey into sex hormones and the brain involves females and males, and exacting self-experimentation. It gets into PTSD, and ends with a new twist on self-care (hint: it’s biological). And, it starts to reveal a sneaky truth: that each one of us is at the mercy of a crashing sea of chemicals inside of us – those things we call hormones.

Special thanks to Emily Jacobs, Laura Pritschet, Pavel Shapturenka, and Dr. Catherine Woolley.

EPISODE CREDITS:
Hosted by - Molly Webster
Reported by - Molly Webster
Produced by - Mona Madgavkar
with help from - Molly Webster
Fact-checking by - Diane A. Kelly

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Articles - 
**The experiments we feature in this episode are called: 28andMe, 28andOC, and 28andHe, all of which took place at Emily Jacobs lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara.** 

  • The 28 Project (https://zpr.io/CSx6MnwZjRvp), background from the Jacobs lab

For more on how much variability there is between female and male animals, check out this “groundbreaking” study, referenced by Emily Jacobs in our episode

Dr. Catherine Woolley has revolutionized the field of neuroscience and sex hormones, here’s more about her work …


Data sets -

Audio - 
In the episode, we mention Dr. Russ Poldrack and the Midnight Scan Club, as inspo for self-experimentation

Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].


Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

WNYC Studios is supported by WISE. WISE, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world. With a WISE account, you can send, spend, and receive in up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Be smart, get WISE. Download the WISE app today. Terms and conditions apply. WNYC Studios is supported by Odo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odo at ODOO.com. That's ODOO.com. RIDIOLEB is supported by AT&T. We all love to connect via video calls or texts. Right now, at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with iPhone Tradon. Any condition. It has the ultimate pro camera system and big leap in battery life so you can turn this deal into a long lasting connection. Learn how you can trade in your iPhone for the new iPhone 18 Pro requires trade-in of iPhone 14 or higher excluding iPhone 16E and eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply subject to change. Visit an AT&T store for details. "Wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC." One of the reasons that I come to you is maybe 10 or 15 years ago, I read a popular science book I'm not even going to say the title because I think that it was somewhat controversial afterwards. I remember this fact and I think since I read it, I have wondered if it was true and I've also told everybody this fact. This is my live fact check which is
I read that as you go through your menstrual cycle, the size or shape or makeup of your brain changes. And I remember reading that and thinking, "Wait, my brain actually physically is changing? Is that true?"
Okay, there's so much to unpack here. Hey, I'm Molly Webster, this is Radio Lab and today I can go real far back. We're going hard on a question that I have been thinking about for years. Totally. It's funny, as I've been thinking about this topic, everyone's like, "Honestly, you should just talk to Emily." Oh, Emily is a neuroscientist and neuroendocrinologist to be precise and she is on one of the teams that has been struggling to understand how hormones affect the brain. Because we had these like these glimpses, these little flickers of what it could be doing. But to watch the full pom cinematic view of how this is unfolding, that was a breakthrough. Very recently, Emily's lab came up with an experiment to so precise, so daring. It allowed them to pin down what hormones can do to our brains. And here's the thing, even though the story starts with menstrual cycles, it very quickly gets to the fact that women, men, whoever, we are all at the mercy of a crashing, swelling wash of chemicals inside of us. The chemicals we call hormones. So when we say a hormone, maybe we just define our terms. When we say a hormone, that's a chemical messenger. It's a chemical that is released from an endocrine gland like testes or ovaries. You have adrenal glands sitting on top of your kidneys. You have a thyroid gland. Then once they start producing hormones, those hormones use your circulatory system, your blood supply is their superhighway. They hit almost every cell in the body. And when you think about like, why do we even have hormones? Why is that a thing?
Just to make it complicated. Why do we have hormones? Because if you're a multicellular organism, if you have more than two cells, those cells need to know how to communicate with one another so that everything's working together and in sync. And nature has figured out a really clever way to do that. And there's several ways, but hormones are one way. It just seems like a sloppy way to communicate. I'm going to wash you in a liquid. A synaptic connection where there's a fiber, a cable, and it's sending information from A to B feels like clean and directed and efficient. So why would we choose this bathing method?

Transcription truncated.

We don’t have hormones, hormones have us.