Instant Genius - What contraception is doing to our bodies – and what we’ll use in future

Episode Date: April 20, 2025

Millions of people around the globe pop a daily pill or live with pieces of metal or plastic inside their bodies, all to avoid getting pregnant. But while we know our contraception works, many of us don’t know much else about it.   In this episode, we speak to Kate Muir, a woman’s health expert, documentary maker, journalist and author, whose book about hormonal contraception – Everything You Need to Know About the Pill (but were too afraid to ask) – inspired this conversation.   She tells us about what the different forms of contraception contain, how they work, how they might be affecting our minds and bodies – and what the future of baby-prevention might look like, for everyone involved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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delivering digital precision with analog warmth, so you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name. Hello, welcome to the Instant Genius podcast, a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. Every Monday and Friday, you'll hear world-leading scientists and experts talking about the most fascinating topics in science today. I'm Hattie Wilmoth, a trends editor at BBC Science Focus. Millions of people around the globe, pop a daily pill or live with pieces of metal or plastic inside their bodies all to avoid getting pregnant. But while we know our constantly, contraception works, many of us don't know much else about it. In this episode, we speak to Kate Muir,

a woman's health expert, documentary maker, journalist and author, whose book about hormonal contraception, everything you need to know about the pill but were too afraid to ask, inspired this conversation. She tells us about what the different forms of contraception contain, how they work, how they might be affecting our minds and bodies, and what the future of baby prevention might look like for everyone involved. Welcome to the podcast, Kate. Thank you so much for being here. Do you want to start off by telling us a little bit about who you are, what you do and why you know so much about contraception? Well, I'm a women's health campaigner and I was a journalist in The Times actually. And then I had a terrible menopause myself and I investigated the menopause. And the investigations went so deep.

I wrote a book and I made two documentaries about it. So once I had done that, I was a lot. So once I'd done I started investigating the pill because my daughter was on the pill and struggling with it. And we realized that so many of the hormonal truths we'd learned around menopause and the questions we'd asked applied to the pill and the hormones in the pill and in other forms of hormonal contraception. So it really became a kind of big, powerful investigation. And I asked questions of people all around the world. and there are fantastic scientists out there who came back to me. So lots of it is kind of really fresh and cutting edge and not what I expected.

What did you expect then? Just to be a kind of dead field that hasn't changed much since the 60s? Well, that is exactly right. It was a dead field that had not changed much since the 60s. And basically the ingredients in the pill were pretty much unchanged except in quantity. And they were synthetic hormones. and I was really interested in the possibilities of non-synthetic hormones, which are the better hormones we have in HRT, the body identical hormones in hormone replacement therapy.

And I thought, what are we doing giving these pretty grim hormones quite often to younger women? They're great for some people, but some people react really badly. And I felt that that truth had not been told. Let's start off very broadly then. In terms of the contraceptive options that are. available to people trying not to get pregnant. What's out there? What's the lay of the land? Well, again, hasn't changed much for a while. I mean, literally, my daughter and I were on the same pill, microgynin or regivodon, and that was your bulk standard pill you get from the NHS, and it has

leaven or gestural, which is a synthetic progestion in it, and ethanol estradiol. Those are big words, and gosh, we should know them because that's what we're putting in our bodies every day for 10 or 20 years, but we don't know them. And we just use the hormone words, you know, we don't quite understand. But anyway, so you've got the different kinds of pill. We've got the progestin-only pill. And we've got the combined contraceptive pill, which contains a progestin and an estrogen. And then you've got the hormonal coil and the copper coil, which do slightly different things. and then you've got the injection and the implant and the vaginal ring and the good old condom.

And that's about it. And then you said that, you know, we should know these words, we should know what these hormones are. What are these hormones? Well, it's very interesting. They're synthetic hormones. And the one I mentioned there, the bog standard one that I was on. So they are synthetic hormones. And the things like leaven or gestural is extracted from a sort of testosterone-type base.

And so it has more of a testosterone-like effect on women. More androgenic could give you quite a lot of spots, but it suits some women. And then there's other ones with different progestions in them, like Drospirinone, which is in the pill Yasmin. And that is more estrogenic, possibly gives you larger breasts, possibly gives you better skin, more risk of clots. So every single progestin is different, but no one has explained that. to us as women. And no one has really properly explained it to doctors. And you go into the doctor

and say, this pill doesn't suit me. I've got low mood. I've got bleeding. They say, try the next one. Oh, maybe the next one. How is it going to go for three months? And really, we are guinea pigs in our own lives. And I want to change that. So you've said that these are different types of progestin. But what is progestin? Well, it's mimicking progesterone, our natural hormone. But what it's doing in our bodies as a contraceptive is that is thickening the mucus on our cervix. So when the little sperm comes along, it bashes its head and it's not really getting through. So that sort of blockage mimics a certain part in our cycle. But of course, you have that all month long if you're on the progestion only pill. And often you don't get periods or you just get a little bit of spotting

because, you know, that has shut down. And then it's slightly different. So if you go on to the combined pill, it does change the mucus, but the mixture of the two, the synthetic progestin and the synthetic estrogen, they prevent ovulation too. So you're not getting that monthly cycle in the same way. So it is slightly different. They do different things, but basically they are blocking the army of sperm. And what about long-acting reversible contraception? Because we've talked a lot about pills, but these are things that we have to remember to take every day. What about the things that we stick in our bodies that stay with us? Well, all these words are terrible, aren't they long-acting reversible contraception or larks? And nobody actually kind of knows what that

means, but it basically means the two kinds of coil, which are the copper coil, which is non-hormonal. And again, when the sperm comes up to the copper in the coil, it's toxic to the sperm. So that's good, but they can cause quite heavy bleeding. And then there's the hormonal coil, which again will container progestin, often that same progestin I mentioned. And then you've got the implant, which, you know, lasts a few months. And then the final thing is the injection. There are a number of injections. One is called the Depo-Provira injection, which is not great in terms of mood and weight gain and also seems to lower libido. So of all the choices, that's really not my favorite having researched it. So many long words and there are so many options but often it just

seems to be you have some combination of progestin maybe with estrogen and you either take it every day or you stick it somewhere in your body. There's like the ones where they affect your whole body and then the ones where they just directly stick them like locally into your cervix and why do some women choose that because it seems quite invasive doesn't it? It does, but it does work differently, and different people react to the same hormones orally and, you know, in their cervix. But yes, we are giving people the same synthetic hormones that we are not giving them a choice. And what we do know is, for instance, you would think, oh, you know, I've got a coil, it's in my womb, it's not going to affect my brain. And in fact, for quite a lot of us, it does.

and one of the professors I love that I talk to for my book who's called Professor Jay Ashri called Karni, and she's a really radical thinker on contraceptive in Australia and a psychiatrist. And she just says, there is not a steel plate at your neck stopping hormones getting into your brain. Hormones are not just in your ovaries. You must remember that every time you change contraception. So that is really worth knowing.

And when you've got a coil, apart from the copper coil, obviously, which does no hormones, that can really have an effect on mental health. And one of the things I found out in the book, which I suppose is good news for women, is that there's three or four kinds of coil, but there's a big one called the Myrina. And there are too much smaller ones called the J-DES and the Kylina in Britain. And they have a lower dose of hormones, and they're also a smaller size. So they're easier to fit. but also they show that women who use the smaller coils have less chance of getting depression

or anxiety after starting that coil. So the smaller coils seem to have less effect on mental health. And that's an option for those of us who get a big reaction to a pill or to synthetic hormones. It's not perfect, but it's mildly better. So why does hormonal contraception seem to affect our mental health? Well, there are hormone receptors in every part of our bodies and throughout every part of our brain, from our memory to our frontal cortex, to our emotions. They are all sitting there with little estrogen, progesterone and testosterone receptors. You know, and estrogen and serotonin, our happy hormone, are incredibly interconnected. And if you've got low estrogen, you've got low serotonin, and you kind of

flatline. And we know that. almost from menopause, because when estrogen leaves the body in menopause almost forever, we see women's mood fall and their anxiety go up. So hormones are doing all sorts of things, and progesterone in its good form, in its natural form, it's a very calming hormone, and it helps you sleep, whereas the progestins don't do exactly the same thing. And as far as they know, some of the progestin seem to be hopping onto the wrong receptors. So the progestin's, or maybe hopping onto your testosterone receptors or your estrogen receptors.

But anyway, they're causing a bit of chaos in your brain that a natural version of the hormone would not. And the way I've come to think of it, actually, after writing the book was like they're ultra-processed food. It works. It's a lasagna, but it's doing other stuff that you wouldn't get in your homemade vegetable lasagna. And I think that's what's happening in our brains

in a kind of simple way. And, you know, I've looked at these studies in America of scans of women's brains on and off contraception. And you do see some areas changing, for instance, you know, if you're on a very androgenic pill, like the ones I was talking about, the sort of testosterone extractive pills, you might be better at spatial work or being an architect or a mathematician or something like that. I mean, the difference is teeny, teeny, teeny in, you know, the mental changes. But think of that going into a teenager's brain as their brain is going and forming and changing. You know, it's rewiring throughout your teenage years. What if it's rewiring while you're on a pill with a strong, you know,

androgenic progestin? What will that make you sexually, intellectually? I mean, no one has tracked that. But we give these hormones to kids in school and 64% of the people who go on the pill go on it at school. That was in a big survey we did of 4,000 women in the UK. And, you know, I'm all going on the pill at 17, you know, my daughter at 15. You know, what did we know? I think we knew absolutely nothing except it was called the pill. And there are lots of stories in your book about these women that went on these pills as teenagers and came off much later and then had horrible effects to their mental health or decided they didn't like their partners, things like that. You said that estrogen and the serotonin receptors are kind of related. But if we're giving people extra hormones, why wouldn't giving them extra estrogen or

giving them extra progestin make them happier? Why is it a damaging effect? Is there very much research? Not really. But I think what we think is happening is obviously the synthetic hormones tend to shut off your natural hormones. So you're stopping pumping your natural estrogen because there's something else there and your body's saying it's okay, there's something else there. And obviously the synthetic hormones don't react so well with your various receptors like serotonin and dopamine and all these things in your brain. So I think that's what it is. It's the processed food thing again. Why don't we just give women and people with female reproductive

systems natural hormones, progesterone, estrogen, like natural versions, body identical hormones. That's interesting and it could be to do partly with Big Pharma making a lot of money out of synthetic products, but we do have a change in the pill now and we'll maybe talk about that in the future sort of part of this conversation, but we do have some pills. with body identical estrogen in them. And they seem to react slightly differently in the body. And we're looking at research. As for body identical progesterone,

I don't think what we have at the moment works well enough in preventing pregnancy. And I interviewed a scientist about it and he said, the science isn't properly done yet on using progesterone. So I don't think that's coming through in the next year or two. but the body identical estrogen is and that is a step up for quite a lot of women. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere in a crowd,

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What other side effects might happen that people might not expect? Well, I mean, we did this survey when I did a Channel 4 documentary of 4,000 women and 16 non-binary people and they were aged between about, I think, 16 and 49 and 77. percent of them said they'd had side effects on hormonal contraception. And I was quite surprised by that, because that's not what you read in the textbooks, which I have. And we asked them, so what were your specific problems? And 36% said depression, anxiety, low mood, mental health questions, which are just sometimes written down as mood swings, which sort of seems to mean nothing, but means a lot if you're at the other end of the mood swing. And then a big one, 37%,

said they had weight gain on the pill or on hormonal contraception, which was really big. And also, we know people's bodies are growing at that time, maybe when they're in their late teens, you know, they are changing. But still, you know, a third of women were telling us, this is affecting my weight. And then we found really interestingly, 21% said affected their libido. And we know why that is, because the progestions, as I said, go in your brain. And they also tie up your sex hormone binding globulin. And what that means is you've got free testosterone going around your body, getting you going, making you feel sort of excited and you've got lots of libido, and that lowers that sex hormone binding globular, and basically puts handcuffs on your testosterone

and lowers it a bit. So a fifth of women were saying, I'm on the pill, hoping to have sex, guess what, makes me feel less sexy. You know, we want to get over that. We want to get over that. and the low mood. And also just going back to the mental health, because one of the things, when you go to your doctor and they go, oh, change your pill, it's probably just a pill, the next one will be better, et cetera. But actually, the studies in Britain are very, very limited on the pill and mental health and hormonal contraception. And they always say, we should have randomized controlled trials where you put one person on the pill and the other person not on the pill. But that's really quite difficult in the contraceptive field because someone's going to get

pregnant. Nobody really wants to go on these trials. The people who want to are much older, they're more mature. You don't get teenagers and it's teenagers and young women that were interested in how it's affecting their brains and their moods. So it's a mess to create a randomized control trial, which is, you know, your scientific gold standard. But what we have got is fantastic observational data from the Scandinavian countries where guess what, they keep proper databases of women's health. And what you got out of Denmark in 2016 was a huge study of over a million women. That study in Denmark showed that women who'd gone on the progestin-only pill were 34% more likely to be prescribed an antidepressant in a year afterwards.

and those on the combined pill, 23% more likely to get an antidepressant. Those on the hormonal coil, 40%. Now, who knows if those figures are quite big and, you know, they're observational, so you don't know what the other factors are. But they're quite clear factors. It's not asking a woman what she feels about her mood. She's gone into her doctor and said, I feel really bad, I'm making an effort, get me an antidepressant.

So we're looking at a quite severe reaction to, the pill, not just feeling a bit crap. And they have paid a lot of attention to that. There's a group of Swedish scientists that have also looked at sisters and those on the pill and those not on the pill, which is quite interesting because they're the same genetic material. And again, higher levels of depression and mood swings for those on the pill. So, you know, women are hearing that. They're hearing bad versions of that. They don't know that also the pill is fantastic sometimes for mood for some people. And, you know, it's going on TikTok, it's going on Instagram, and it's changing the landscape of who is on what's contraception, I think. Yeah, it's all quite nasty. And in your book,

there are even stories of people suffering strokes because of the clot risk associated with combined pills. So none of that is fun. But then the origins of the pill started out pretty grim, too, didn't they? Can you tell me a bit about that? We think we're being treated badly around the pill now, but when they did the original research on it, they were shockingly unethical. And the first people they tested the pill on, and these are two American scientists called Dr. John Rock and Dr. Gregory Pinkers, they tested it on inmates in a mental asylum in Massachusetts. And they didn't get permission from the inmates, but they did from their relatives. And they said it would calm them down. and they gave them very large doses of the early pill,

which were about 10 times the dose we had, but they worked out that their cycles were stopping. And then they tested the pill on women in Puerto Rico. And it was 259 women in the final trial they did. Three of them died. Three of them have died for our contraception. And they died because the pill was in such high doses. They didn't really explain to them what they were giving them

exactly because nobody knew. And 25% of people pulled out of that trial because of headaches and dizziness, which are obviously one of the things you see in the precursors to people getting clots and strokes. So they were giving people this incredibly dangerous drug, but guess what, they didn't get pregnant. And that was all that mattered. And that's what was sort of rubber stamped through in the science. So we have to thank the women of Puerto Rico, who were treated incredibly badly and the women in the mental asylum for, you know, giving us this as, you know, our future. One thing that you mentioned in your book was that increasing numbers of people are turning to things like fertility tracking apps to try to avoid getting pregnant. How do these work? Well,

I like the idea of them and so do many, many women. So on your fertility tracking app, Basically, you're going to enter your cycle. You're going to take your temperature every day, and it's your basal body temperature. So it's the temperature you have when you wake up in the morning. You haven't got out of bed. You haven't run around. So it should be the same every day. And then just as you ovulate, your temperature goes up just a tiny bit, but it goes up and then it will stay up until you get pregnant or you have your period. But, you know, so you're lower, slightly lower at the beginning in the month and then it goes up. And then they give you a lovely kind of, you know, picture of your cycle with red and green days. And you've probably got six days in the middle that are red around

your ovulation. And they work out better every month where your ovulation will be. It does improve after a few months. And they say, you must wear a condom or abstain on these six days. But, and I interviewed lots of people who had had accidents on these apps. And And we know that they are 93% effective. That's what one of them says from research on their website, which means they are 7% ineffective, which is quite a lot of risk to take, isn't it? It's okay if you're thinking, oh, maybe I have a baby this year or next year, and you want to relax into it and get your cycle going.

But, you know, if you're, you know, at university, this is probably not the thing for you, if you're trying to finish your degree and you don't want to end up having to go and get an abortion pill or whatever. So there is a big risk with these. But on the other hand, you learn about yourself, you learn about your cycle, just as you do with the period tracking apps as well. And I think that's really good. But the problems are with that basal body temperature, what if you've got a short cycle? What is the 19 day cycle and then a 38 day cycle? And you can't predict that. What if you've had flu? What if you've got a hangover? What if you're taking some kind of drug? These all affect your temperature. And so, you know, and some people have lower temperatures than others, you know. So it's very

risky. It's very liberating in a sense to understand your body. Why do you think things like fertility tracking apps are so popular? You've already said that they can help people understand a bit more about their bodies. But why are so many women turning to them when they're not that reliable? Well, I think there's two things happening. There's one that they're absolutely viral. And we're seeing them on TikTok and, you know, they advertise themselves really well online. It is very convincing. It's very reassuring. And also, lots of their information is very good around your cycle and, you know, contraception. It really is quite useful. And I think women have also realized talking to other women in groups online, wherever it is, that, you know, their mental

health symptom on the pill, their problem on the coil. has been experienced by thousands and thousands and thousands of other women. They're in a conversation together, and they suddenly realize, it's not me, it's what I'm putting in my body. And then there is that thing that people are going, well, we want to have green sex, and we want to live with our menstrual cycles, and we want to have that creative peak, you know, in the middle of the month, because it's not just a sexual peak when you feel all, you know, all horny in the middle of the month. It's a creative peak as well. And that's maybe when you write your symphony, you know, paint your picture, you know, whatever it is.

And at the beginning of the months, just after our periods, we also tend to be more accurate and kind of better at doing kind of well-organized tasks. So the idea that you can harness all that stuff and know when it's happening is very encouraging for, I think, for a lot of women. So there's all that balance against, of course, the risk of getting pregnant. And certainly in the UK, you know, there is the possibility of the morning. after pill and 80% more or more of abortions are now from a pill. So that has changed and fear of that has changed, not in America, but here we have a different attitude to the kind of morning after system. So I think that can combine with these fertility apps to be a possibility until anything better turns up. And you mentioned green sex. I just want to make sure that we address what is that?

What's green sex? Well, just means not putting any synthetic hormones in your body. I suppose green sex does include condoms because, you know, that's not interfering with anything. So, but that's what they call it. And I mean, throughout Europe, throughout Britain, you look at the number of people using the pill, for instance, and in the last 10 years, it's halved. And, you know, the cycle industry is definitely kind of mopping up some of that. We've talked so much about women. Where are the men? Where are the male contraceptives? Why don't they have so many options? Well, I mean, efforts have not really been made until recently, have they? And first, big farmer, making money out of female contraceptives, saying there's 20 different

kinds or 40 different kinds, and they just change the progestin a bit or put it in another form. But it's basically the same ingredients, so they don't have to do hefty new research. And, you know, new research costs billions. Nobody's going to spend it on men when women are already doing the work. So that is very clear. So there's a very feminist, sexist argument going on there. And then when they did test a hormonal injection on men, which worked very well in terms of preventing their fertility, it wasn't too bad. But again, they had slight mood swings and slight libido changes. And men are judged by a different set of standards than women in this research, because they don't have a risk. They are not going to get pregnant. So what happens to them is there's a little bit of a side effect. That counts against their perfect health, whereas for us it counts against a risk of pregnancy. So the standards are completely different. And I don't think anyone cared

enough and no one invested the money. So a lot of the trials are being done in academia and privately. They are not necessarily being picked up by big farmer. And the ones that have been done for years and years, some of them are very good. There's one called the N-E-S-S-T trial, which is a shoulder gel. And I interviewed the people who were running the trial in Edinburgh, and they've been doing it for over a decade getting this through. And it's got to the stage where they're testing it on real people around the world. I talked to a family in Manchester who were using it very, very successfully.

And what that does, it's a very good progestin, better than the progestions we get. And it's called Nesteroon. And that's in the gel combined with testosterone, body identical testosterone. So quite a quality product being rubbed on the shoulder. And basically, it takes about three months. So you've got to really commit. And then your sperm count goes from whatever it is 40 million to almost none. And when the sperm count is very low and they've tested it, then basically you can go ahead and have

sex any time you like. And I interviewed this couple in Manchester for the book and they had a great time and they loved the idea that the responsibility had been transferred to the man and he was going to the medical appointments and that she no longer had to use a coil, which she had problems with and she did problems with the synthetics in the pill. And so suddenly she was free to be herself with her own menstrual cycle happily, and he was doing the work and felt great. He felt absolutely fine, and it looks very, very good. Apart from, you've got to be grown up, you've got to be a couple, you know, you've got to agree this, you've got to, you know, use condoms for three months before it kicks in, and it doesn't work for absolutely everybody. So it requires a test to make sure

your sperm count is really low. On the other hand, if you're together for 10 years with your partner, What a great option, you know, it's a better option. But I think it will be another good few years before it comes through. You think you can put the COVID vaccine through very fast. Why can't you move this forward, you know? What about the other options? Because you mentioned so many in your book, and it got me thinking, like, to what extent might we be on the verge of a new contraceptive era with men shouldering, well, in the case of the gel, quite literally, shouldering more of the responsibility for avoiding pregnancy? Well, there are two other good new options, and one is something called Plan A, as opposed to, I think, plan B, which is a morning after pill in America.

Anyway, Plan A is injecting temporary vasectomy gel into your Vass deference, your tube where the sperm goes through. And basically, it's sort of like superglue for men. So you inject it in, it forms a little blockage like a sort of sieve that stops the sperm getting through, but other liquid can get through. And then two years later, when you decide, oh, I want to have a baby, you have another injection, and it's basically sort of bicarbonate of soda. And it melts away that little blockage of the temporary gel. And, you know, a couple of days later, you're back to normal and you are fertile again. So that's a really good option because lots of men don't want to have a septomy for life, you know.

And, you know, you can do it temporarily. Again, you have to have confidence in your partner. we have to trust men more around this, I think, which will be a big thing, but I like the idea of doing that. I mean, this is good. And the other thing that's been talked about in the papers just recently is something named, they have really bad names. It's the Y-C-T-529, at which they've been testing in mice, but basically it knocks out one of the kind of receptors that works with sperm, it knocks out a retinal that works with sperm, and it's non-hormonal. So basically, your sperm is just lying there, you know, useless. And, you know, nothing else is affected in your body,

and there were no side effects. So, you know, that would be amazing, you know, it would be amazing for women. But, I mean, that said, lots of women still want to be on the pill. They want to avoid those heavy periods. Say they've got polycystic ovarian syndrome. It can help with you know, steadying their hormones. So there are reasons why we want these hormones, but not all of us do. And I know you said with the gel, you don't anticipate that coming on the market very soon. What about these other things, the temporary vasectomy, the thing with a horrible name? What do you think is going to happen with those? The gel could move very quickly because it's not you taking a drug. It's basically a device. It's like a clamp, but it's not. You know what I mean? But

it's just blocking something. So that will possibly go through the FDA regulation in America or Australia, the regulation there faster than something else would. So it could pop up in a year or two. And it's being used right now in men in Australia. So we shall see what happens with them. Okay. And what do you think the future of contraception looks like for women? Well, again, one of the hopeful things, and I talk about this a lot, because so many people talk me about their mental health problems and contraception is, again, what I said about the body identical estrogens in the pills. And there are three pills available in Britain that now have it, and they're available on the NHS, but they're quite difficult to get because they're much

more expensive than the ordinary bog standard pills. So they're about eight quid a month, as opposed to £1.50 or whatever. Anyway, they're three, and they're called Zoeli, Clara, and Dravellis. And each of them has the natural estrogen in them. And there's been a really interesting study in Australia by that woman I mentioned before, Professor Gashri Kolkani, who took a bunch of women who had very serious PMDD. So in the last two weeks before their period, they had incredibly low mood, and some had suicidal ideation. And she took those women, and they gave them Zoelli, which has got this natural estrogen in it and progestin for a few months. and about 75% found their mood had steadied and they managed better in those two weeks of PMDD

just before their period. So that's really interesting in terms of that pill might be very useful. And things like the one, Dravelis, which has got Drospirin known in it, and quite a feminizing progestin, that is good for people, for instance, who've got polycystic ovarian syndrome, and they have higher levels of testosterone. So you're bringing in a natural pill with a good, you know, it's a good combo. You know, I'm not prescribing.

I'm not a doctor. But I've talked to women that this has worked for. And this is what we should be going in and advocating for and asking for. And we should have this information. You know, we need to be taught at in schools, you know. Why do we dissect frogs? What on earth are we, why are we not explaining how the pill works to young girls? and how it can, you know, affect their health in all sorts of ways.

And so that's the pills, but there's a cervical gel, which I think might be really, really interesting. So five minutes before you have sex, looks like hair gel, stick it on your cervix, sperm repelled. And I don't know how well that's going to work, but I've certainly seen videos of it in the test tube and all the sperm are bouncing back off the walls. So who knows how good it may be inaction,

and they're going to test that. And then there's also a vaginal ring that's giving out something very unpleasant, I think, for sperm, and it's monthly, you put it in, and it's non-hormonal, and the sperm going, no way, am I going there? So those are options, and, you know, bring them on. Bring them on faster, because we deserve better, and I think we've been really neglected for approximately 60 years, you know?

Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought to you by the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was Kate Muir. If you'd like to find out more about contraception, you can read her book, everything you need to know about the pill, but we're too afraid to ask. You can also pre-order her latest book, called How to Have a Magnificent Midlife Crisis. 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.

Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or download it on your app store of choice. You can also find us on Apple News or online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analogue warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist focal, name creates high-end audio systems combining innovation with craftsmanship so you can listen to music just as the artist intended. Discover more at name audio.com.

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