Instant Genius - The science behind PMS, and how to beat it

Episode Date: August 10, 2025

The luteal phase of the menstrual cycle has a really bad reputation. It’s known for premenstrual syndrome, or PMS, when many menstruating people experience low mood, bloating, food cravings and sluggishness before their period arrives. In stark contrast, we think of earlier phases in the cycle as times when we feel energetic, motivated and self-confident. In this episode, we speak to Dr Sarah Hill, an evolutionary psychologist whose research focuses on women, relationships and health, and the author of This is Your Brain on Birth Control and her upcoming title, The Period Brain. She tells us what happens to the body and brain during the luteal phase, why so many of us experience unpleasant symptoms, and some little things we can do to feel our best. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Hattie Wormoth, a trends editor at BBC Science Focus. The Luteal phase of the menstrual cycle has a really bad reputation. It's known for pre-menstrual syndrome, or PMS, when many menstruating people experience low mood, bloating, food cravings and sluggishness before their period arrives. In stark contrast, we think of earlier phases in the cycle as times when we feel energetic, motivated and self-confident. In this episode, we speak to Dr. Sarah Hill, an evolutionary psychologist whose research focuses

on women, relationships and health, and the author of This Is Your Brain on Birth Control, and her upcoming title, The Period, Brain. She tells us what happens to the body and brain during the Luteal phase, why so many of us experience unpleasant symptoms, and some little things we can do to feel our best. Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for inviting me on. It's so exciting to have you here talking about the Luteal phase of a menstrual cycle. And before we get into all of that, I wanted to start off by asking you, how did you get into this topic?

Why are you so interested in the menstrual cycle and specifically the Luteal phase? Well, I really got interested in this cycle phase because nobody knows anything about it except that we feel terrible. And as somebody who has a background in evolutionary biology, there's been a lot of focus on the first half of the cycle and everything that goes on when estrogen is rising, and the body preparing for sex leading to conception. And so there's been all of this research on this and sort of the evolutionary functions of, you know,

the increases in sexual desire and so forth that women experienced during this time. But then there's like nothing in there about the ludial phase. Like it's just like totally not ever talked about. And many women feel terrible. And evolutionarily, that just doesn't make any sense. And so I got really interested in why is it that around the globe, like 85% of women, you know, they're about report feeling less energetic, less happy during

this part of the cycle. It's like, why is it that so many women experience what we tend to think of as PMS? Like, what is it? And is it actually a reflection of something that our body's trying to do on purpose? And so I really got interested in trying to understand what the function is of these shifts that we experienced during, you know, that phase in the cycle, the last two weeks of the cycle. and then also whether or not we're not experiencing them in a way that's worse than what it needs to be just because it has been ignored and women haven't really been given guidance on what their body and like what their emotional needs are, what their sexual needs are, like just the lack of education around what our bodies need during this time might this be leading us to feel worse than is necessary.

So let's take a step back then. What is the lutea your face? Because I think a lot of people listen to this probably won't know. Right. No. Yeah, great question. Always good to start off with that. So when we think about the menstrual cycle, we can really divide it roughly into two halves, right? And the division is based on whether something is preparing for ovulation. So the first half of the menstrual cycle, which starts on the day you get your period, that's actually the first day of your cycle, until the day you ovulate, which generally happens around day 14. So usually for most women, it's roughly two weeks after they start their periods, they'll ovulate. During that period of the cycle, we call this the follicular phase. And during this phase, the primary female sex hormone

being released is estrogen. And the body is essentially, you know, as the body's maturing egg follicles and getting ready for ovulation, it's sort of gearing the body up to do everything that's necessary in order to conceive. Right. So it's all about sex and attraction, right, that first half the cycle. And there's been a lot of talk about this, both in the scientific literature, but then also on like TikTok videos, right, where women talk about estrogen and, you know, feeling energetic and alive. After ovulation, the follicle that the egg left during ovulation actually becomes a temporary endocrine structure that lasts for about two weeks if a woman doesn't become pregnant. And this endocrine structure releases women's second primary sex hormone,

which is progesterone. And this gets released for about 12 to 14 days. So again, it's about, it's roughly two weeks long. And this is the dominant sex hormone during the last two weeks of the menstrual cycle. And this is what is called the ludial phase. It's that last two weeks of the menstrual cycle when the sex hormone progesterone is the dominant sex hormone. Amazing. So that's what's kind of happening to our bodies in the luteal phase. What is going on in our brains? You know, really great question. And this is something that, you know, there's been almost no attention given to, Right, because again, there's been all this research like, oh, estrogen, energy, and attraction, and sex, luteal phase, PMS. You know, it's like, that's all we ever hear. And it's like, well, what, like, what actually, like, what actually is our brain and our body trying to do?

And it's preparing for the possibility of pregnancy. And this is a totally different set of activities than what goes on in the first half of the cycle when you're preparing for the possibility of sex leading to conception. Instead, during the luteal phase, when your body is preparing for pregnancy, there's a lot of, physical shifts that ultimately lead to psychological shifts. And just, you know, to give you an example of one of these psychological shifts that we can talk about are the emotional changes that can happen to women in the last two weeks of the cycle. And, you know, one of the things that women oftentimes report experiencing during this time is greater what we can call sort of social and emotional sensitivity, where they tend to see danger where danger doesn't actually necessarily. exist from the behaviors of other people, particularly close others, like a romantic partner or

close friends. And so this is the tendency for women to tend to see danger in the fact that, oh, no, their partner is late coming home from work, right? And that might not always bother them. But then during this specific phase of the cycle, women report having more. So for example, there's some research showing greater sort of what we might consider like relationship jealousy, right, where they have attachment anxiety, where they're feeling anxious about their partner's commitment to them during this time. But essentially what's going on is, you know, during this time of extreme vulnerability in the female body, right? Progesterone is being released at times when pregnancy is preparing to occur. And it also is released in high levels during pregnancy itself.

And so in a lot of ways, we can think about progesterone as being this sort of like pregnancy, you know, promoting hormone. And whenever women are, are in a state of heightened vulnerability, such as we are during the ludial phase and during pregnancy, what happens is that the brain is super smart at being able to adjust how much data it needs that says that there might be a problem before it sounds the alarm bells. And so for a woman in a non-pregnant or non-ludial phase state, right, you might need, and I'm just going to make up an arbitrary unit here, but let's say that you need seven units of information that suggests that there's a problem before your brain starts freaking out and saying,

wait a minute, there might be a problem. Like, pay attention. Like, what's going on? During the ludial phase, it shifts that down, right? So you only need, like, four units of danger signals before your brain starts sounding the alarm bells. And the brain does this. It sort of turns a volume up and down on what the threshold needs to be to signal danger. Because, of course, this is very protective, right? This is why a chihuahua barks a lot more than, you know, a Great Dane. Because the Great Dane doesn't, you know, it doesn't need as much, it's not as vulnerable, right? It doesn't need to try to scare off the predator. It doesn't need to freak out to the same extent that the really vulnerable smaller animal does. And the same thing is true for the female brain. It's like during the part in the cycle when

we are more vulnerable, that changes what our threshold is before we start to become easily alarmed and relative to where it is in other parts in the cycle. And I think that knowing this, is like incredibly useful. So that explains perhaps part of why we might be feeling a little bit gloomy or more sensitive. But are there any other kind of reasons why many of us feel so gloomy, emotional, irritable, or moody in the Luteal phase? Right. Well, another one of these reasons is that our metabolic needs increased during this time. So even though it doesn't sound like this would take a lot of energy, building an endometrial layer and preparing the body for pregnancy and flipping all the switches that the body has to flip in order to allow for a pregnancy

to implant and then be able to be successful ends up being actually incredibly energetically costly. And because of this, our brain, again, experiences a lot of psychological changes to help conserve energy. And one of these things is that it actually dampens the reward value of rewarding things, right? And so for, you know, most of us, like the idea of like, oh, like, you know, look at that If you're somebody who's single, like look at that attractive potential partner. Like, hmm, I wonder what that person is up to. Or like, oh, like, I wonder what's going on with my friends. Like, I should go out and, you know, expend all this energy.

Or, ooh, like, that sounds like really exciting to go cliff diving. Like, I'm going to go and do that. And so, like, the world feels like it's full of possibility. And all these possibilities feel really exciting. And when things feel exciting, it draws us to them. Right. And during the ludial phase, when our body is trying to tamp down, because we do need more energy during this time. Our basal metabolic rate actually increases because of how

hard our body has to work. It also goes into energy conservation mode. And what this means is that our brain will play a trick on us where it makes rewarding things actually seem less rewarding. And this sort of like tamping down on how much, how exciting the world seems to us is something that feels a little gloomy, right? It's not as bright and shiny and exciting. When things aren't exciting. I mean, that's like actually one of the symptoms when it goes on for long periods of time of depression is, is Anhedonia, where things just don't seem like they're going to be as pleasurable. And, you know, the female brain experiences this. And again, this is happening on purpose. And I think that if we know this information, it can be really helpful to allow us to just sort of

marinate in that space and not feel like it's going to last forever. Because I think that sometimes when you're having one of those gloomy days, the thing that makes it most difficult to get out of is not recognizing that it's temporary. And this is temporary. And, you know, similarly, you also get a decrease in just sort of like a sexual desire that goes on during this time, which again can be part of this kind of gloomy feeling where, again, things just seem less exciting and less pleasurable. And sex is one of those things where it just for most women seems less pleasurable during that time. And this also can sort of lead to that general, you know, kind of global feeling of just, you know, low-key malaise that many women can experience during

the ludial phase. Makes a lot of sense. And I want to go back to what you said about the basal metabolic rate, because I think a lot of people might not know what that means or kind of why it might happen during the luteal phase. Can you explain that to me? Yeah. So your basal metabolic, rate is just your resting metabolism. So how much energy does your body need in order to do the just, you know, regular things that bodies do? So keep your heart beating and keep your lungs going and your immune system going and cell turnover going at the rate. And so this is like the amount of energy that our body needs independent of any exercise that we do, right? So any sort of movement where we're going to increase our metabolism even more. So metabolism is just kind of shorthand for how much

energy our body is using. And as it turns out, and this is again, one of these things that women are never told about, is that your metabolic rate, so the rate that your body consumes energy increases by about roughly 11% during the ludial phase. And, you know, when you're not told that, what happens a lot of times is that women are hungry, right? They're hungry and they're tired and they're cranky and they have food cravings. Some of the, like, quote unquote, symptoms that women have that we tend to think of as PMS are nothing more than our body reacting to the fact that is not being given what it needs. Because one of the symptoms or the experiences that women very frequently report during the ludial phase is being overly tired. And a little bit of

that is common just because of changes that go on in the brain that we can talk about that do tend to make women a little bit sleepier. But part of it is that we're not eating enough, right? And having food cravings, all of those things are avoidable. if we actually give our bodies what they need. And until now, women haven't really, you know, it's the role that our hormones play has been really kind of trivialized societally. Like we tend to not take that very seriously and think that, you know, our body is, somebody has this really great quote and I'm going to butcher it,

but it's something to the effect of our body is just this mechanism that takes our head to meetings. I think that there's a tendency for people to perceive their bodies. that way and that that's part of the story that we have for underestimating and sort of underappreciating the role that hormonal changes that we experience across the cycle can shift what the needs of the body are. Super interesting. And I think as well as you're saying this, I'm thinking like how much of this narrative is just because there has been so little research on the luteal phase, but also people in the luteal phase of their menstrual cycle. What do you think about that? Well, no, I think

that's totally right. So one thing that really shocked me, when I I first started getting into the world of neuroscience, I came to that field from evolutionary biology. And in the world of evolutionary biology, it's like we really profoundly appreciate biological sex as a variable, just simply because, you know, males and females each play a different role in reproduction. And because of that, it has led to the evolution of different types of qualities and so on and so forth. And so sex differentiation and sort of understanding that female bodies and male bodies might do things differently, and that the biological pieces that make males and females different and including but not limited to our different sex hormones was also something that I was

just like very deeply conscious of. And then when I moved into the world of neuroscience and started looking at the way that female subjects, so this includes in animal research, so in non-human animal research, and then also in many human studies, the way that biological sex is dealt with. Well, to start with, there's this long history of these researchers only studying men, right, and male mice, and then applying all of these things that they've learned from in research conducted on men and males to women, which of course doesn't work. And so then researchers were like, well, we need to include women in research. And so what they did is they included women in research, but because they wanted to minimize the differences between males and

females in research, they only include women in research during the first week of their menstrual cycle when hormone levels are relatively low. And they're doing this to study women when they're most like men. So that way it minimizes the need to test for sex differences. And that's the whole reason you should include women in research in the first place, is actually to understand women. But instead, it was just like they included women because it was like somebody told them they had to include women, right? And then they decided, well, if we're going to do that, then we need to make sure that they're most like men so that way they don't mess up all the results for everybody. And so the way that the menstrual cycle is dealt with in most biomedical research is by only

including women in research during the first couple of days in the menstrual cycle when hormone levels are low, right? And estrogen is the primary sex hormone. And women are not included in research during the second half of the menstrual cycle or during the ludial phase. Right. And this means that most biomedical research that exists in the world has never been tested on a woman who has as a primary sex hormone progesterone. And this might not sound like that big of a deal, but it really is because progesterone is neuromodulatory, meaning that it affects the activities of neurotransmission in our brain, right, meaning that it affects what our brain does. So it could affect mood and that sort of thing. It flips switches in our immune system, right, meaning that it could

even have an impact on the way that we respond to vaccines because, again, you know, in the luteal phase is flipping a bunch of switches in the immune system doesn't, it means that the way that we respond during the last two weeks of the cycle might not be the same as the way that we respond during the first two weeks in the cycle. It also flips switches in our metabolism, as we talked about, and this can have an impact on the way that we metabolize drugs and the way that our body uses drugs. And nobody is considering this in research. You know, our sex forms, hormones are being treated in the biomedical sciences as something that needs to be controlled for instead of studied. Right. So they're just trying to minimize the impact of women's unique

sex hormones on outcomes to try to figure out how something works without even spending a minute considering that that means that we don't know how it works in women because women are almost never at a point when hormones are low, right? The time in which we're studied in the cycle is very unusual, right? It makes up about, you know, 10% of our experience. And so that means that, you know, 90% of our experience isn't being accounted for in biomedical research. And, you know, so another sort of big takeaway from the book is that it's really important that women, you know, as we're trying to understand symptoms that we have a chronic disease. So I talk, for example, in the book about the way that women can experience symptoms of everything ranging from asthma to ADHD.

can shift across the cycle. And the way that women respond to drugs potentially can shift across the cycle. And women's sexual desire shifts across the cycle. And our emotional responses and our responses to exercise and our nutritional needs shift across the cycle. And we're not told about any of this. You know, the effects of our hormones have been, you know, totally minimized and trivialized. And how might this kind of research disparity affect the way that people with menstrual cycles actually experience the Luteal phase versus the follicular or population phases?

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, when we look at research, most women, this, you know, it's during the early phase of the menstrual cycle. So during the follicular phase and when estrogen is the dominant hormone, this is when women are included in research. And this is what most of the recommendations that we've been given about what we need for our bodies, they've mostly been derived from that phase in the cycle. And so it's like really about understanding that, oh, during the second two weeks of the cycle, the way that I experienced the world is going to be a little bit different. Like we talked about some of the differences in the reward possibility that seems from, you know, like how rewarding the environment seems, how anxiety provoking social situations can seem, right? It changes our metabolic needs. It changes how much energy we need. It changes how much

how much energy is expended. It changes how much rest we need because our body is working really hard during this time. It also changes our recovery needs. So we need to recover longer. So if you're working out, for example, in particular, you need to take a little bit of a longer recovery because your body takes longer to recover during this time. Our heart rate variability tends to be lower, which means that we're less able to cope with stress. And again, this is because our body is working really hard. And so our heart rate goes up, which means that our amplitude for heart rate variability changes and decreases, which makes us less resilient to stress. I mean, it's just a, it's a different time for us. And it's a time when sex is about partnership and connection and not so much

about fulfilling this like physical need due to attraction. It's more about relationship building. And when we're not told any of these things, it can really create this experience where, you know, one, we're doing things that are counterproductive to our bodies and making us feel terrible, but then also where we're lacking the appreciation for all the brilliant things that our body is trying to do. And instead, we see them as pathology because we've all been taught that, oh, well, this is what it means to be a human, right? And our understanding of what it means to be a human is based on research that was either conducted on men or conducted on men and women in the early phase of the menstrual cycle when estrogen is the dominant hormone.

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Like things like seed cycling, for example, where people eat like different seeds in order to support different hormones or different times of the month. There's been a lot of people saying that kind of thing is a little bit adjacent to nonsense, I will say. What's your opinion? What are the kind of things that we can do that's like, science backed to try and make the most of each phase of the cycle. Right, right.

Yeah. And there is a lot of nonsense out there. And there's also a lot of stuff that's just absolutely unrealistic, right? Like this idea that, you know, you should have your boss schedule all of their meetings around your vehicle. You know, it's like, well, you know, when you're in the ovulatory phase, you're really energetic and that's a really good time to do presentations. And it's like, I don't know who has control over when they do presentations, but I know I don't.

And most women I know don't. And so that's like totally, that's just not realistic. But when we look at little changes that women can make as a hormone shift, there are real things that we can do that science does support can make a difference. And so just to give you an example of this, I mean, this is something that we recently did a study in conjunction with 28 wellness, which is a cycle tracking and sort of syncing type of an app where they make recommendations for women on nutrition and exercise based on where they are in the cycle. and their app, and I sit on the advisory board of this company, so I'm just going to be very transparent about that. There's research that shows that, for example, women are better able to put on muscle mass when they're working out in the first two weeks of the cycle relative to what they're

able to put on during the last two weeks of the cycle. And the reason for this is that estrogen, it sort of flips a bunch of switches in the body that allow muscle to grow. So when you think about what estrogen does, you can think about it as in, you know, the sort of technical term. for this is that it's anabolic, right? It means it makes tissues grow, right? It makes muscles grow, makes cells proliferate. And there's been research showing that when women heavy load resistance training, like weightlifting during the first half of the cycle, they get better returns

than they do when they heavy load resistance training and weight lifting during the last two weeks in the cycle. And, you know, estrogen is, again, it's anabolic. It like, you know, it helps to promote muscle growth. Progesterone, on the other hand, is actually catabolic. And that means that it likes to make cells break down. It likes to break things down. And so it's not necessarily I'm going to be the best time for you to be doing heavy resistance training. And on top of that, your recovery tends to be lower during the second half of the cycle because your resting metabolic rate is up. Right. So your metabolism is already going crazy. You're not able to build as much muscle mass. And a lot of women feel more tired because one of the sort of breakdown,

properties of progesterone. So when progesterone is being broken down in the body, it releases this really nice neurosteroid called allopregnanolone. And that big mouthful stimulates gabber receptors in our brain, which is very calming and relaxing to the body and to the brain. And part of that calming and relaxing is that we feel kind of tired. And so what 28 suggested with their cycle tracking app with these cycle adjusted exercise routines and that sort of thing is, is, you know, promoting the idea of doing more of the resistance training in the early parts of the cycle, doing more restorative work during the second half of the cycle. But we did a retrospective study just looking at users and non-users of the app.

And everybody in our sample was regular exercisers. But our group of non-users is exercising in a one-size-fits-all sort of way, right, where they do the same sets of routines every week, week, week, week, week, week. And then we had our group that was using the app and adjusting their exercise routines based on the cycle. And what we found is that the women who were using the cycle-based recommendations who were doing the resistance training in the early phases and more restorative work in the second half, they were not only did they report having better fitness gains than the control group, but they also felt better about their bodies. They just felt happier in their

bodies. They felt more comfortable in their bodies. And I think that for a lot of women, that's, like, so important because so many women do have that feeling of their, you know, their body as the enemy. And I know for myself, you know, it took me years to, and I've known about this research with strength training forever. And I'm very much into fitness. So I'm a regular gym goer. And it took me years to finally try to employ that in my own life because I was so afraid that I would get weaker. and I was like, oh, you know, this was what it says in the research, but I don't know. And I finally decided to do a mini experiment on myself. And I gave myself three months to, you know, prioritize my strength training in the first half of the cycle.

And then just, you know, doing restorative work. So walking, yoga, you know, like light resistance training with bands. If I just like really felt like I needed to do something to build strength. And what I found was in the period of the three months is that I actually got stronger, which honestly was shocking to me. because I've been lifting weights for probably 15 years, and I've more or less been stuck within, you know, plus or minus five pounds on my upper body and plus or minus 20 pounds in my lower body, and I was able to actually jump up an additional five pounds, which doesn't sound like a lot,

but it was a lot for me. And there's a lot of science to support that. And in the new book, in the period brain, I talk about the science, you know, and essentially, like, what are the mechanisms by which the body is better able to translate exercise, for example, into strength gains during the first half of the cycle compared to the second half of the cycle. And, you know, so I say exercise, definitely eating more, you know, listening to your body and not like grabbing a handful of Oreos because, you know, like that's going to make you feel terrible.

But instead, just, you know, if your body is hungry and you want, you know, a larger piece of chicken, eat it because your body really does need more energy during this time. And it feels so challenging for women to feel like, so you're talking about. telling me that I need to eat more and move less during this time. Right? It's like this total like counterintuitive. But yes, it's like you will feel better. Your body will thank you.

You'll have so much more energy for the next follicular phase of the cycle when you have, you know, the ability to really put on muscle mass and that sort of thing. And so I think that that's one area where making those adjustments really can make a big, big difference. What about our social calendars? Because I know you said that like obviously we can't control what we do. work and there's a limit to which we can necessarily control like when we you know we might not want to spend two weeks without seeing anybody that sounds a bit lonely but i have heard from like wellness people

that it's a really good idea to kind of front load our social interaction on the first half of the months where we might feel a bit more like a social butterfly and less on the second half of the month i don't know whether there's any science behind that whatsoever right so you know i have not seen any science on that, but I will tell you this. There is research, and this is fascinating, because they've even done research on non-human primates. So looking at baboons and female baboons, like during the early phase of the cycle, will, like, sit and they'll groom each other and they'll hang out with the other females and like, and they're whatever, they're like kind to each other. You know, they like will sit and interact. And during their version of the ludial phase, they sit up in a tree by

themselves. I know. It's so, no, I just love it. I just love it. I was like, well, there you go. Like, that explains it. Inspirational. Yeah, it's totally inspirational. And, you know, it's like, I don't think that we all need to go sit up in a tree by ourselves during the second half of the cycle. But I will say that I've found that I run out a gas more quickly during the ludial phase, especially social gas, where like, I feel like I'm, you know, I get tapped out a little bit more easily. And just being aware of that, I think. is really helpful. And so to the extent that it is possible, just being aware of that and just being a little bit kinder and gentler to yourself during that time. And then trying to, to the extent that it's possible, make little adjustments that are doable to your calendar and to your lifestyle that are

going to help to support you in each phase of the cycle. And I'll say that, you know, for those of us who don't have control, like let's say that you're in sales, right? Like, you have to schmooze all the time. You know, there's just like nothing that you can do about it or you're like a, you know, somebody like you're recording podcast and you just like have to interact with people and you can't go hide in the tree. It's just like really taking extra care to recover because we do need more recovery and having that recovery. And this can even just be a 10 minute meditation. It can be a 10 minute gratitude journaling. It can be 10 minutes just laying by yourself and letting the environment and everything kind of soak into your brain and marinate before you have to go and socialize again. but just taking these little steps really can make a big difference in being able to manage our way through.

I've heard it said sometimes that with things like kind of menstrual cycle science and Luteal phase, like PMS, conversations around like cycle thinking, that thinking about how women are like drastically different at different points in the cycle can be flipped around and turned into misogyny of like, oh, we're so different during this time of the month. Like women go crazy. It's like that kind of, oh, she's just crazy. That kind of narrative. I was wondering about how kind of ideas about our bodies changing at different times of the month can actually be empowering rather than kind of fuel for misogyny. Right. And it absolutely should be fuel for positive feelings about ourselves instead of misogyny. Because the fact is, our bodies do shift across the cycle. and ignoring it does not do us any favors.

Right. We know this by the fact that 85% of women report that they don't feel very well during the second half of the cycle, which to me is testament to the fact that ignoring this is not helpful. I mean, the other half, you know, the other piece of this is that, yes, we experience cyclical changes, but they're predictable and there's nothing wrong with them. You know, the whole idea that we feel self-conscious about it at all just goes to show you how deeply ingrained the idea that what's male is normal has been driven into all of our brains. Because the fact of the matter is, this is what's normal for us.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was Dr. Sarah Hill. To discover more about the Luteal phase, check out her latest book, The Period Brain, due to be published on the 25th of September. If you liked what you just heard, then please consider subscribing to Instant Genius wherever you like to listen to podcasts. If you'd like to watch our presenters and guests speaking in person, then you can also check out our YouTube channel at Science Focus. The current issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out now.

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