Listener Questions #21 featuring Cat Bohannan

6 Nov 2025 · 56 min · 20 chapters

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In short

Listener Questions #21 with Cat Bohannan on (1) what determines human pregnancy length and whether gestation could be shortened, (2) whether humans can lift extreme weight under stress and where “hysterical strength” stories come from, (3) whether viruses can have symbiotic/beneficial effects.

Guests

Cat Bohannon, PhD (completed 2022) at Columbia University; studies evolution of narrative and cognition. Author of Eve, How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution (NYT bestseller; shortlisted for Royal Society Prize, Orwell Prize, Women’s Prize 2023). Lives in the U.S. with partner and two “semi-feral” children.

Key claims + notable examples

  • Gestation length: not just “number of cells,” but developmental readiness plus ecological/metabolic constraints; cites Holly Dunsworth’s “metabolic threshold” idea (birth when continuing gestation becomes too costly). IVF shortens in-body time by fertilizing outside the uterus; NICUs and “bio bags” aim to mimic womb-like liquid environments for very late preemies.
  • Stress strength: adrenaline increases blood sugar/flow and heart rate; brain downregulates pain during fight/flight, enabling extreme feats (example: a man lifting a car corner and later discovering cracked teeth).
  • Pain/memory: childbirth pain isn’t universally forgotten; pain is poorly encoded, and attention/goal focus can reduce later memory; birth trauma can increase tokophobia.
  • Viruses: most viral infection is constant and often immune-cleared; higher-bar inheritance into germline is less certain. Mentions ancient viral influence on mammalian implantation/gene switching and that humans carry significant viral DNA, while also noting herpes viruses are commonly carried.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

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Introducing Kat Bohannon

0:58 to 1:26

Meet Kat Bohannon, a biology expert who will help answer listener questions.

“Aging doesn't stop and neither should you with Vital Proteins Collagen and Protein Shakes.”

Introducing Kat Bohannon

2:06 to 3:21

Meet Kat Bohannon, a biology expert who will help answer listener questions.

“Hey everyone, I've got a new fun physics book out now.”

Exploring Listener Questions

3:21 to 5:26

The hosts discuss a variety of intriguing biology questions from listeners.

“Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe, plus friends.”

Pregnancy Length and Its Determinants

5:26 to 7:30

Discussion on factors determining pregnancy length and implications of shortening gestation.

“I'm so glad folks out there are curious, not just about the physical universe and cosmology and particles, but how all this gunky stuff inside of us works and how we can go on doing its meat machine for so many years.”

Shortening Gestation: Current Research

7:30 to 8:45

Kat explains current research on shortening gestation and related challenges.

“Here with me is my wife with some questions for you, probably more in Kelly's ballpark.”

Comparative Development in Mammals

8:45 to 13:20

The discussion compares human development at birth to other mammals and what that means.

“So you don't think anybody was like, hmm, this has been cozy.”

Needy Babies: Understanding Human Infancy

13:20 to 14:00

An exploration of why human infants are considered needy and dependent at birth.

“Are human babies more developed or less developed than like chimpanzee babies when they're born?”

The Complexity of Mammalian Birth

14:00 to 17:40

Explore the unique challenges and traits of mammalian birth, especially humans.

“Like all mammalian species have a different level of development or readiness, you know, for existence outside that body, which is really interesting.”

Metabolic Load and Gestation

17:40 to 24:40

Discuss the metabolic implications of gestation length and its impact on species.

“I mean, technically, that mother was having to, like, eat and drink and go to the bathroom a lot.”

Social Implications of External Wombs

24:40 to 26:15

Consider how external wombs could change social structures and gender roles.

“A human body would not be able to supply, you know, the resources necessary without dying to create a whole human body in six weeks in a uterus.”
Show all 20 chapters

Social Implications of External Wombs

28:00 to 29:03

Consider how external wombs could change social structures and gender roles.

“Grab the fam, head to a Simon Center, and make it a day for the books.”

Listener Question on Super Strength

29:52 to 30:28

Exploration of whether humans can lift heavy weights in stressful situations.

“All right, and we're back, and we are on to our second question with Kat Bohannon.”

The Science of Acute Stress Response

30:28 to 35:55

Discussion on how acute stress affects muscle use and pain perception.

“If not, where do you think stories like restrictors and super strength moms come from?”

Cultural Perspectives on Pain and Strength

35:55 to 37:08

Analyzing different cultural interpretations of pain during childbirth and strength.

“I'm not remembering the name because I am not an anthropologist, but there is one culture that tends to give birth alone.”

Pain Perception and Memory

37:08 to 42:00

Investigation into how people remember pain and the mechanisms behind it.

“But in moments of great stress, essentially it ignores those and you're willing to do stuff that damages yourself or cracks your teeth, depletes crucial resources to survive the moment.”

Understanding Childbirth Pain and Memory

42:00 to 45:36

Explore the complexities of memory related to childbirth pain and how it differs among individuals.

“First, do people who give birth really forget the pain of childbirth and not just like on Instagram or completely lying about it?”

Understanding Childbirth Pain and Memory

48:03 to 48:32

Explore the complexities of memory related to childbirth pain and how it differs among individuals.

“What if your soda actually did something for you?”

The Role of Viruses in Human Evolution

48:32 to 56:06

Investigate the intriguing relationship between viruses and human biology, including beneficial aspects.

“All right, we are back with our third question.”

Cell Replication and Aging Insights

56:06 to 1:02:00

Learn about the complexities of cell replication, aging, and the fascinating story of mitochondria.

“So that's that immune system failing to tamp down on that virally infected cell going nuts and spreading that around.”

Listener Appreciation and Question Recap

1:02:00 to 1:02:52

Hear a listener express gratitude for addressing their complex questions on the show.

“Well, let's see if we answered Petri's question.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

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2:08Hey everyone, I've got a new fun physics book out now. It's called Do Aliens Speak Physics? And I think it's a lot of fun. But don't take my work for it. Here's what Lake Crouch, famous author and smart guy said. Do Aliens Speak Physics is a charming, thoughtful meditation on the common language of the universe, a book which asks important questions about the fundamental nature, not just of our existence, but of reality itself. So go out and pick up a copy of Do Aliens Speak Physics. I think you'll enjoy it.

2:48This pregnancy thing is just the pits. Is there anything we can do to speed it up a bit? When we're under great stress, can we really lift a car? Or is that an urban legend that's gone a bit too far? Bacteria can be beneficial, as I've come to understand. But what about viruses? Do they ever lend a helping hand? Whatever questions keep you up at night. Are sometimes beyond the intellectual grasp of Daniel and Kelly. So, on today's show, Dr. Capo Hannon joins us to answer questions that stumped, well, Kelly in particular. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe, plus friends. Plus friends!

3:26And note, this friend studies reproduction and sex, and so you should decide ahead of time if that's appropriate for young children. Thanks.

4:05road trip with my friend Kat Bohannon. We were driving through Wales. We did the show together called Moms on Mars, where we talk about how difficult reproduction on Earth is and how it would be even more complicated on Mars. And it's not a great idea to rush into that. And I mentioned that I have this new podcast and I have these amazing listeners who send me a bunch of questions that I don't know the answer to, even though they're about biology. And Kat was like, dude, I'll come on and answer. I was like, sweet. So we decided to do that. Well, it's incredible to me how broad biology is as a field.

4:38I mean, even physics, like in my department, we have people who do particle physics and condensed matter physics and plasma physics. The fields feel totally different. But like we have 16 different biology departments here on campus, you know, like the breadth of stuff from like ecology to microbiology to medical stuff is just really astounding. I don't know why y 'all even call each other biologists. No, it's super different. I was at a university that had immunology, ecology, nematology, botany, and they are all very different. And I'm very flattered that the listeners think that I can handle any biology question.

5:14But I do every once in a while, and by every once in a while, I mean quite often, need to lean on a friend who's an expert. Mm-hmm. And I've thoroughly enjoyed hearing about all these biology questions. I'm so glad folks out there are curious, not just about the physical universe and cosmology and particles, but how all this gunky stuff inside of us works and how we can go on doing its meat machine for so many years. It's amazing to me as well. And of course, I'm interested in biology. I hear about it at home, but it's wonderful to also get to dig into it on the podcast. So send us your questions about physics, about biology, about all the gunky stuff inside of you.

5:51Write to us to questions at danielandkelly.org. We will answer your questions or do a little bit of research or put it here on the podcast to joke about. To joke about and try to answer. Oh, yes, and also answer, yes. Yes, we try to get answers one way or another to nearly every question, although there are a couple that are just way too far out of our wheelhouses and we have to throw up our hands and say, I'm so sorry. But I think that gives us credibility because, you know, Sometimes you don't know the answer and you should say you don't know when you don't know. That's one of the joys of working at the forefront of knowledge is you just get to throw up your hand sometimes and say, nobody knows.

6:24We don't know. It's one of the mysteries. That's right. Or it depends, which is my favorite. Or we have no idea. That's right. There you go. But Kat has an idea. And so Kat will be answering the questions today. So let's go ahead and bring Kat on the show. On today's show, we have my good friend Kat Bohannon, who completed her Ph.D. in 2022 at Columbia University, where she studied the evolution of narrative and cognition. Eve, How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, is her first book. It's a New York Times bestseller and was listed for the Royal Society Prize, the Orwell Prize, and the Women's Prize in 2023.

7:02She lives in the U.S. with her partner and her two semi-feral children, and those are her words, not mine. I'm sure they're lovely. Welcome to the show, Kat. Hey, folks. Thanks for being here and for helping us answer these amazing questions. I'll do it. I can. Questions are great. Yes. Yeah. So we've been getting a lot of questions about the human body. And the first person I think of when I think, how does some part of my body work is, I should ask Kat. And so we're passing these questions to you. Okay. So let's go ahead and listen to our first question. Hello, Extraordinaries. I'm Andrea from Italy.

7:35Big fan of the podcast and your books. Here with me is my wife with some questions for you, probably more in Kelly's ballpark. Hello there, Alessandra here. My question for you is, what determines the length of pregnancies in humans and other species? Is it correct to assume it's a function of the needed number of cells? That said, have there been studies on how to shorten gestation? If so, how would that be technologically achieved? And lastly, what social implications would arise as a consequence of shortened gestation in humans? Do you think it can affect the current birth rate or other aspects of our social structure?

8:15Ooh, so that is a meaty question full of many questions inside that little package of question. Matruska doll. Do you think this is somebody who just went through a pregnancy and wished it was shorter? She was like, oh my gosh, how can I end this sooner? I mean, that's one of those things any OB will tell you that by the time you get to your third trimester, gestating people are ready. They're like, you know what? I'm freaking good. Yeah. Let's do this thing. In fact, the only thing that could probably push any reasonable person over that totally reasonable fear of the process of giving birth is the idea of continuing to be pregnant as an alternative.

8:55You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. So you don't think anybody was like, hmm, this has been cozy. I could use another 40 weeks of this. Well, human beings are a little cray, so I'm never going to say no one. You know what I mean? There are some people, some unicorns who like love the knocked up state and are like, I want more of this. I want more of this. I think most of us, it's a mixed bag. There are bits we like, bits we don't like. It's very complicated. But most of us by that third trimester, if we make it there, are like, yeah, get this thing out of me now. I was done. This is a Ridley Scott scenario.

9:33Get this thing out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So the short answer to have there been studies to shorten gestation is, yeah, and we're already doing it, but not on the development side, on the like, can we do it outside the body side? Right. And that's a slightly easier thing to rig, right? So, for example, literally all IVF, as we currently do it, shortens the process by which a thing that becomes a human later is in the body at the front end because we are fertilizing that egg outside of that pelvis. We are doing it in a different way. We are doing it. Sometimes it's a tube. I think nowadays it's a petri dish and then tube.

10:17It's complicated. Depends on the lab. There's a history of it. There's a lot I don't know. But yeah, basically, so like a blastocyst, a five or six day blastocyst, which is kind of a basketball of cells. So at that stage of development, which isn't yet gestation, gestation technically is when it starts burrowing into your body, into your uterus, right? That's your start of pregnancy. So this is just cells doing crazy stuff, making a hollow basketball. That thing is not in your pelvis until it gets transferred in, right? So that's already shortening what's going on in your body. And the other end gets more complicated, very late stage preemies, basically.

10:55Now there's a lot of development around improving a NICU by creating a more womb-like environment, right? So you can think of the whole NICU as shortening gestation, even though the gestating person probably didn't want to. Thank you. Those are preemies, right? But now we're trying to improve it because, like, the way we do it now is damaging to the lungs. Those lungs are, you know, often not quite ready to breathe air. They're still developing. So we're working on having that be a more fluid environment. There's a thing called a bio bag that can mimic more of that liquid environment. It's not out there.

11:29You're not going to find it in the hospital, but those are labs developing that stuff. But that whole middle bit, which is basically when that placenta attaches on up until very late stage pregnancy, we don't have that yet. We don't have a way to have a mammalian pregnancy like happen without a uterus and without a body that's hosting that uterus, right? So that's like the counterintuitive way of thinking how can we shorten gestation. The way they're really hoping, which is speed up, is a lot crazier and actually unpacks a whole bag of worms that we don't know in biology, which is really interesting.

12:09Like why the hell do fetal cells multiply so rapidly? And then for some reason, once you achieve a certain kind of body organization, certain body plan, some of those tissues start slowing down their replication cycle. And some of them stay fast, you know, like when you're building a body, which, again, is actually not just making cells, but also having them migrate right to different areas in that developing embryonic body. You know, there's just a whole city infrastructure going on in there. Right. And it's going really fast. It's going really, really fast. And then some parts of it slow down.

12:46Like I couldn't build a baby faster than that, for sure. It would take me a lot longer. So this is pretty impressively quick, right? I mean, technically, we could attach a placenta to, like, your abdominal wall, but you probably don't want to do that. You probably, that's not, like, on your bingo card for 2025. I mean, I know there's been a lot that's been surprising this year, you know, like at the NIH, but not, like, knocking you up, Dan. No. No, no, no, no, no. Well, put this in context for us. Like, are humans, do they have a longer gestation period than other great apes, for example? They do.

13:24Are human babies more developed or less developed than like chimpanzee babies when they're born? See, I think that's also a really good way of framing it. Because like when you get born as a mammal is not like this set thing. Like you are so ready for the world or so unready for the world. Like when mice are born, they're pretty fetal. You know, we call them pinkies. You know, they have no hair yet. Their eyes aren't open. Their ears aren't unrolled. Like even to poop, the mother mouse needs to lick along the abdomen to like stimulate, you know, them to pee. And they will actually die of not defecating and peeing if they don't get that stimulation in those early phases of being out.

14:05So is that really developed? Is that really being born? Right. And that's that interesting thing. Like all mammalian species have a different level of development or readiness, you know, for existence outside that body, which is really interesting. And so human bodies, when we're born, a lot of people make a lot of hay out of the fact that we're pretty freaking useless. We can't hold up our heads. Like, we are just barely able to exist compared to, say, a chimpanzee or a gorilla or many other primates, right? But I didn't have to lick Ada's belly so she could poop. So that's pretty great. I'm calling that a win.

14:41Sorry, go ahead. No, no, that is really great. But you trying to make sure she didn't snap her stupid neck was definitely like a thing that other monkey moms don't have to do. Right. So we are a needy baby species. We are like got to do more to keep this thing alive species for sure. And Holly Dunsworth did the most famous research on this. So for a long time, we thought human babies were born because our heads are stupidly large and our vag is really not that large. It's actually not the vag that can, you know, stretch or tear. Don't think about that too hard. But like the actual pelvic inlet, the bone opening, you know, where the babies come out at the bottom is small compared to how big a thing we got to push out.

15:28So we thought that was the obstetric dilemma. We thought that was why we were born when we were born. But Holly Dunsworth did some really great research saying, actually, this is a metabolic threshold. Actually, it's more like how much longer can you gestate this super greedy, metabolically costly fetus before your local resources are not sufficient? In other words, it's actually an ecological concept, right? When are mammals born? It's like how much longer in our case can this body continue to literally bear the load of this resource hole, right? before it's like, oh, no, we got to switch to lactation.

16:10You need to get the hell out of here. This is not cool. Is it calories or is it space? Like, are they pressing on your lungs and your heart or is it both? I did not enjoy how difficult it was to breathe in late-term pregnancy. You know, I wasn't cool with, like, how literally my diaphragm was compressed outward by this new mass growing. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Okay. Nah, not fun. But so, yeah, that's not great. But no, it's actually it's calories in general, just load. Now, metabolic load is going to be a cost that isn't simply how many calories transferred, but also what are the resources you need to continue to exist gestating while bearing this thing that also requires resources.

16:54So that's not simply you transferring resources. It's also how much does it cost for you to carry this thing around? How much does it cost for you to have a heart that's still working, pumping this much blood, etc.? So that's like a whole, it's a complicated suite of stuff. But that's the general idea. We give birth when basically it's too costly to continue doing this thing. You know, and that was Dunsworth's great insight. That it's not about the head size, although head size also sucks. well i remember when my kids were born feeling like wow this baby was better suited inside the womb because you know you didn't have to worry about it crying it was fed automatically you know the whole diaper thing like it just felt like it was so much easier also of course it wasn't inside me there's that it's an important insight yeah really significant bell just went off there yeah Thank you for acknowledging that.

17:48Hello. I heard that. No, for sure. I mean, technically, that mother was having to, like, eat and drink and go to the bathroom a lot. So I wouldn't say it was automatic. It's just that you didn't have to think about feeding it. And you didn't have to think about dealing with its cellular waste, like how often and where is it peeing? You know, my first child had a penis. My son definitely peed, not just on me, but greatly upward. I definitely, my face was peed on, taking care of that thing. Oh, yeah. My daughter did not have that. It was fascinating. I was like, oh, it could be like this. This is better.

18:31So the listener wanted to know if the length of pregnancy is a function of the number of cells. But it feels like what we've said is maybe number of cells matters. But it's also how developed the baby needs to be before it's ready to enter the world, which depends on like the evolutionary history of the animal. Does that sound fair? I think I think that sounds fair. I mean, elephant gestation takes a long time to build a big freaking body like that. That is true. And it's very rare for elephant twins. Almost never. Oh, interesting. Both the metabolic load of that thing and also it's an elephant.

19:05Yeah. And it's in you. So even if you're an elephant, you're growing an elephant. Oh, God. You know, so that's a thing. So, yeah, so that newborn size, just sheer size, is definitely a factor. But, you know, even as adults, our cells are replicating at very different rates. Their cell cycle, like how long do you go through that early cell phase until when does it finish out? The lining of your intestines can finish a cycle in like, I think, 10 hours or something like that. Wow. You know, whereas your liver can take like a year. I'm pretty sure it's the hepatocyte. It can take like a long time.

19:45And then, of course, the most famous case of the longest cells to complete their cycle is our freaking eggs, right? So like, Kelly, when you were inside your mom, well, the tissue and the fetus then that became you. and you are developing those nascent follicles in your little baby ovaries, right? Those things reach a certain stage and then just stop, just hang out, just pause, some of them for as many as 40 years or more, right? Whereas the rest of your cells are definitely not doing that. So actually one of the big mysteries in biology is what is regulating all of that? How does that work? What are the switches?

20:25What are the inhibitions genetically and otherwise? that and what changes that later on? Because actually, that's one of those things in cancer. You get a lot of cells that then say a liver tumor that originates in the liver, right? How do you take a cell that has a really long turnover time and have it start multiplying rapidly, right? What's controlling that? If we can actually figure that out, oh, we can keep a lot more people healthy. Well, say more about that because say we understood what is regulating this. Isn't that downstream of something else which is regulating it? Isn't the whole thing some complex Rube Goldberg machine?

21:02It's not like if we understood, oh, it's this level of hormone, you could just like give somebody more and it would happen faster or take it away to make things slower. Isn't it an enormously complex device that we have almost no hope of being able to like manipulate to our ends? Daniel finds biology frustrating. Yes, it's not just a particle. I was just about to say, You seem to just be describing biology. Ding, ding, ding, ding. These are complex systems interacting complexly. That's what what where is. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's nice. It's nice in physics that you can just like get your foil from Costco and build your experiment.

21:40But we have to have things make babies, okay? You just described all of physics. That's amazing. Wow. Very succinct. Foil from Costco. That's my entire budget. Yes. That sounds nice. Well, unless you're actually trying to build CERN. You know, there are different levels of cost in experiments. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, man. So I think I completely agree with you that there isn't going to be one smoking gun for what regulates all this stuff. And like in oncology, there's definitely a case that some cancers are, what you're describing with the hormones is environmentally triggered cellular pattern changes, right?

22:15Where like if you get your more estrogen and you have a kind of breast cancer that is especially responsive to estrogen, then you want to downregulate that to keep the cancer at bay if you're a survivor, right? There are many kinds like that. That's also true of, you know, prostate and testicular cancer that you want to downregulate certain androgens so that you don't end up with more of that cancer profile, right? So that's manipulating the environment of those cells. And there's a lot of stuff that changes your replication rate that doesn't have to do with that. But, you know, like one of the things that we're starting to think about in aging science is, okay, what does resource availability do to cell replication?

22:57We know, for example, in diabetic patients that they have a higher risk profile for a number of different kinds of cancers. And the thought is, is that many cell types are responding to that higher level of local sugar, basically. You know, that that is changing what the cells are doing, almost as if like in an ecological problem, there's more resources so we can make more babies. You know, we can replicate those cells faster. Right. So really thinking about the body as a bunch of different local environments is surprisingly useful. But again, is that thing where like, can we speed up gestation?

23:33Well, the first thing you think of is like, so are we just going to turn all fetuses into cancer? Just a whole lot of cancer? Because that's probably what you're proposing to try to speed up a basic body plan without knowing what the hell you're doing. I'm guessing that's not what she had in mind, but it's a good way of highlighting. No, she wasn't thinking a lot of cancer. She was just like, make me less pregnant for less time. That's right. It's a good way of highlighting the complexity, I think. But let's say that somehow you could, right? Somehow you figured this out and you could have a baby in six weeks instead of 40 weeks.

24:07What do you think that would do to the social structure and the decisions people are making about having babies? We've heard on the podcast recently about how birth rates are dropping worldwide. Yeah, birth rates are dropping around mostly wealthy or mostly white women. But we could get into that debate another time. Um, actually, our global population continues to grow and it's fine. Okay. So now that I've done that PSA, I'll just quickly say that, like, we're definitely thinking about a matrix scenario now. We're talking about external wombs. A human body would not be able to supply, you know, the resources necessary without dying to create a whole human body in six weeks in a uterus.

24:53Besides just having that uterus grow to sufficient size, remember that normally it's the size of a freaking adult fist and we're now making it a basketball. So that's a thing that takes time. It's also simply, again, that metabolic load. How do you transfer sufficient resources and stay alive? That's the mammalian conundrum, right? Yeah. So, okay, so external womb would be a major thing. And as soon as you have that, then the social implications are absolutely massive. Right. That now there is no individual body that needs to bear, you know, the burdens and the blessings, but mostly burdens of making bodies inside of it.

25:34Right. That actually changes a lot about what it is to be a person with a uterus. That changes a lot about things that we assume are simply part and parcel of being female, which could be both really cool and really weird. All right. So let's go ahead and we're going to share this answer with the listener and see what she had to say. Thank you so much for your answers, Kat. Let me clarify that I'm not currently pregnant or have been pregnant. The reason for my question was rather my interest for social policies and how science can shape them. As a matter of fact, I found especially interesting your insight on how an external uterus would disrupt our traditional understanding of gender roles.

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26:15That is definitely something to think about. I, on the other hand, found very interesting the idea of birth as a metabolic necessity that explains how some newborn animals can instantly run, while others can't even stand. Thank you all, and keep up the good work. Bye-bye.

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29:52All right, and we're back, and we are on to our second question with Kat Bohannon. And so let's go ahead and hear the listener question. Hi, Daniel and Kelly. I was recently with a group of friends playing a superhero RPG, and a question was posed that I'm hoping you can help us out with. Can humans really lift a great deal of weight in times of great stress? I've heard that humans have restrictors on their muscles. Otherwise, they'd hurt themselves with how much they can really do. I've also heard the story of a mother lifting a car off of her trapped children. Are either of these things really true?

30:22Would an ordinary, non-body-built human be able to lift a car a foot or so off the ground if they really needed to? If so, what happens in our bodies to make such a thing possible? If not, where do you think stories like restrictors and super strength moms come from? Thanks in advance. Can we start with just what happens when you have an acute stress experience? So, like, something stresses you out. Let's say not stresses you out enough that you need to try to lift up a car. What does our body do there? And then maybe we can move to, can you lift up a car if you're stressed enough? Well, first, I think one of the things that's really great about these accounts, which have to do with like removing normal limitations on muscular use and things like that, you know, during periods of intense adrenaline, intense stress.

31:05What it's often called in the literature, I looked this up, is hysterical strength, which is amazing. That is hysterical. Which is amazing. That's amazing to me, knowing anything about the history of feminism and the term hysterical. That's amazing to me, just picturing these people just losing their minds. I love all of that. And there are these accounts of people lifting cars off of trapped teenagers and toddlers and things like that. And again, the listener was right to say, we're talking like one wheel. you know if you think in basic physics those other wheels are still on the ground you are you are a temporary jack on one corner there so you're not lifting the whole car you're lifting a certain amount what you're really doing is a deadlift and so you as an untrained person are not doing a deadlift that somehow is better than like the world record keeper of deadlifters right that's not it doesn't matter how much adrenaline you got babe that's not a thing what's interesting about it to me is like okay yeah like kelly says something happens in your body.

32:09You get that adrenaline going. And two things are happening. One, a lot more blood is rushing to your muscles, all of your muscles, really, but especially the ones you're trying to activate. Your heart rate's accelerating and what have you. That's a thing that's happening. And a lot of, you know, in that blood, you're getting a lot of sugar transfer, a lot of energy transfer. So not just local, but also body-wide energy is going to the thing you're trying to do. But what's really interesting about this moment is that you're actually affecting your brain that much more than the local muscles. We used to think that the brain was kind of not really involved in these caps on your strength.

32:46Because remember, when you're using a muscle, you don't want to use all your strength to lift your coffee cup. It may feel like that at 6 a.m., but it's not that at all, right? You don't want to blow out your back for reasons by ridiculously lifting your coffee cup. You're just going to use what you need, right? But if you're trying to lift a car to save a life or save your own life, this thing that happens with people who are trying to escape war areas and you hear stories of soldiers or even mothers with children walking for days with no food or water, going up into the hills, surviving extreme temperatures, you know, that normally we wouldn't really be able to do.

33:26And what's happening there is that your body is willing to damage itself to save its life or willing to damage itself to save another's life. That's what's really up. And that's actually a brain thing. That's a brain thing more than your heart rate thing. And so what your brain is doing, it is ignoring more of those pain signals. And that's a thing. So you literally experience less pain during this period of crisis, right? Because if you're not noticing the pain, that literally means you're experiencing less pain. What is pain? It's a thing happening in your brain, right? So actually, a lot of studies have been done that really during these moments of intense fight or flight, intense stress, your brain is down regulating its response to normal pain response.

34:13And there is an account of a dude who lifted a corner of a car off an adolescent who later found out that his teeth really hurt because while gripping his, you know, clenching his jaw, he managed to crack eight of his teeth. While he was lifting. Right. So talk about a no pain response. Talk about like, I am using the limits of my body to save this person's life. But what I think is really smart about what you said there, Dan, is it's not just, you know, this account of what's the heart doing. It's not just what the brain is doing. It's also how we understand these experiences after the fact, whether we go through them or someone else does.

34:51Because these are the stories we tell. These are the incredible, weird stories that don't line up with our normal experiences of our bodies or other people's bodies or human capability. You know what I mean? Which is situated in our lives, which is culturally situated. You know what I mean? Like, for example, Dan and Kelly's incredible universe exists in a culture of doubt where a lot of times, you know, it isn't that the spirit world is literally imbuing you with extra strength and that's why. Right. You know, and there are cultures now and cultures in the past that do have that model that don't find these moments as extraordinary maybe as we do.

35:36because we don't have as much of an explanatory frame for something that feels hard to understand, understandably hard, because it's rare, right? And some cultures do have that explanatory frame and then don't find such moments as novel. Yeah, I never thought of it that way. Well, yeah. So there's one culture, for example, I'm not remembering the name because I am not an anthropologist, but there is one culture that tends to give birth alone. This is hunter-gatherer community. Very rare in the human species. We do not normally give birth alone, but they like go out in the grass. They go out in the fields and they do that thing.

36:10Now, it's not that they're not prepared. Let's make it clear. Their whole childhood has stories of how to do it. And so they have their own knowledge. And there are people who help in certain cases. You know what I mean? Anyway, but they have a frame where to get through the pain of it, they are calling down strength from the universe effectively. So their experience of contractions is this deeply different thing where they are experiencing the pain as a calling down of strength, which is good for them. No. I did not have that. I just had your basic fear of death. I'd rather have the epidural, really.

36:48I had that too. I had that too, but it actually didn't work as well. But I still am grateful for the portion that did work. So the way to think about this is that your body has certain capabilities and certain limits, which are just physical. Like, there's no way I'm lifting a boulder. Yep. But there's also warning signs your body sends you when you're starting to damage yourself. And those typically limit what you're actually going to do. But in moments of great stress, essentially it ignores those and you're willing to do stuff that damages yourself or cracks your teeth, depletes crucial resources to survive the moment.

37:21Yeah. But that's a subconscious thing, right? It's not like I'm saying, Daniel, I'm going to turn off these pain regulators because I think it's a good idea. It makes it sound like there's some sort of strategizing or some thought process there. But if it's subconscious, there must be some mechanism there. Do we understand how that works at all? Do we understand how pain works in the brain? Oh, kind of. Kind of. We've made great strides. I will say that it's been studied that there are a number of pro athletes of various types who are known to have effectively higher pain tolerances than the average population.

38:00So the most famous pain tolerance thing is shoving your hand in a thing of ice water because we all – you can't think your way out of it. It's your hand lowering temperature. And it's one of the best ways to gauge what is your basic pain tolerance here. What's your nociceptive thing? What do you do? And many of these athletes do indeed have start to feel a lot of pain later and respond to it and feel that urge to take it out later. So part of what may enable some of those extreme athletic things isn't simply training, but also kind of being wired differently. So how do you differentiate between I put my hand in and for some person it starts to hurt immediately and for some people it takes five minutes to hurt.

38:42and it hurts both of us at the same time, but I am just better at handling pain for longer. Like, are those two different things? I think that that's a thing that we all want to do with the idea of pain. We want it to be about the virtue of endurance, you know? We want it to be about, like, you're more badass because you just deal with it, right? But that actually doesn't allow for bodily difference. Actually, there are a lot of bodies that are just sending a more muted or blunted or delayed pain signal. And that's not because they're badass. It's just that it's a different body. Yeah. But then there is a kind of mindfulness training.

39:22There is a thing that a lot of people with chronic pain have to do, which is training your brain to ignore certain pain signals more so that your life becomes more tolerable, which can, in fact, make things slightly less painful. It doesn't truly remove certain kinds of pain, but it can make it more bearable, right? So there are different tiers of awareness of pain. As far as the ice water, though, I mean, there is a moment that everyone, except for those rare people who have that genetic condition where they don't feel pain, need to take their damn hand out. They just can't. They can't bear it anymore.

39:55It's very, very rare to be able to bear it through. This is not a, like, badassery, you know, thing. It's one of those basic tests of pain. Well, my son is an athlete and I've learned just by watching him train and push how much of racing, he's a runner, is mental. Do I think I can go faster? And also, how long am I willing to sustain this feeling of pain? And one of the best examples is he was telling me that after the first person ran a four-minute mile, then like a bunch of other people did it. And it was just sort of this mental barrier. People thought, well, that's just impossible. There's no way I could accomplish it.

40:30But then after somebody did it, they're like, oh, turns out he can do it. I can probably do it too. I'm just going to go do it. Sure. It's incredible how much of athletic performance is just believing you can do it. Did any of them get hurt after that? I'm sure they were all in pain. But there's no amount of believing I can do it that's going to make me run a four minute mile. Same. No, that's right. And that's because, well, we're all sliding towards death. We're not young anymore. There's just that true thing about aging. but also maybe you're slightly less susceptible to peer pressure. Yeah.

41:04Which hopefully is also an aging thing. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, let's go ahead and see if our listener has any follow-up questions. Hi, Daniel and Kelly and Kat. Thank you all for answering my question about humans gaining momentary superpowers or not. It makes way more sense that our brains just tune out the pain rather than us turning into a 1 % version of a very angry green Marvel Comics man. I did sort of have a tangential question sparked by what was said. I've heard that people that can give birth have something that allows them or enables them to forget the pain of childbirth. I know conceptually that there is a lot of pain involved because I will never give birth.

41:41Is it kind of similar to the man that cracked eight of his teeth? Are both brains tuning out the pain or is there a different mechanism at play for people that can give birth versus people that can't? P.S. I've listened to the audiobook for Eve and I absolutely loved it. So thank you, Kat, for writing that. Cheers. Hey, thanks for the follow-up question. And so glad you liked Eve. Okay, so your question has two parts. First, do people who give birth really forget the pain of childbirth and not just like on Instagram or completely lying about it? And two, if they do, is the mechanism similar to that guy who didn't notice he was cracking his teeth when he was lifting the corner of a car or something because of adrenaline?

42:22Okay. So first, it's totally not true that we all forget the pain of giving birth. Though thankfully, we do forget the pain of being born, which doesn't actually sound very fun at all. So I'm down with that. In fact, we forget much of the first five years of our lives. It's called childhood amnesia. We basically all get it. It seems to have to do with childhood brain development. And that's totally why you should stop feeling guilty about that time you yelled at your toddlers in public because they're not going to remember any of this. Most studies show that as long as you're not actually abusing them, a lot of that parenting crap comes out in the wash.

42:58Okay, so forgetting pain. Pain is actually one of those things that doesn't get perfectly encoded in memory. We remember the many side effects of pain, like starting to sweat, like having a hard time moving or breathing fast or whatever. And we can kind of describe pain, like when your doctor says, was it a stabby pain or a grinding dull pain? But your brain doesn't seem to usually encode totally specific impressions of the pain itself in long-term memory. It's like we save the gist of pain. It's not like remembering the face of a loved one. That's a long way of saying we forget a lot of pain all the time.

43:39Do mothers forget the pain of trying to squeeze a bony watermelon out of her vag? She might say she does. She might have been experiencing such total pain delirium, which is a thing, kind of like the guy who cracked his teeth. She's trying to achieve a goal, and her focus on that goal overrides her focus on the pain her body is experiencing to achieve that goal. And attention is a big memory driver, right? So if you're literally not paying attention to the pain in the moment, you're less likely to remember it happening later. But women who experience birth trauma, which is a shocking number of people, are more likely to go on and develop secondary tokophobia.

44:23That's fear of giving birth. For, I don't know, the obvious reasons you tear yourself open to get another body out of your body and it's a little traumatic more so for some people than others. So, like, they're remembering those painful, terrifying features of that experience really, really well. Too well. well enough that therapy becomes useful or even necessary to go on having a fulfilling life, much less try to do such a thing again, right? So I suspect it's a mixed bag of some people who usefully glide over the pain of that moment, usually in part because they value the outcome. Hey, look, I made a baby!

45:01And luckily, they have brains that are able to basically downplay the sense memory of what it took to make said baby, which not all people have. And the ability to do that is by no means a measure of how much they value the resulting baby. It's just that brains are organs. And just like everybody's heart is a bit different, ask any cardiologist, everybody's brain is also a little bit different.

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48:32All right, we are back with our third question. Let's go ahead and listen. If I understand it correctly, there is a hypothesis that the mitochondria in our cells came from one cell enveloping another, which formed a symbiosis that was mutually beneficial to both. This is mind-blowing in and of itself. However, I believe that I have heard something similar about viruses. So my question is this. Have there been any positive or symbiotic benefits resulting from viral infections? Depends how you feel about mammalian pregnancy, actually. On theme for this show. That's right. Because it does seem that, so it's a really weird thing that you can have an embryo implant in your uterine wall.

49:17Actually, we take that for granted, but actually that's very similar to how a cancer metastases attaches to different tissue. Normally, local tissue strongly rejects and calls in the immune system when a cell that shouldn't be there is there. A cell that shouldn't be there might be, doesn't contain all your genetic material like an embryo, or it might be like, what is this liver cell doing in this intestine or vice versa, right? You know, there's a local community kind of thing that says you belong here, you don't. So actually really weird that we're even capable of it. And it does seem that it may be because we got a cold, like ancient little rat-like things got a cold and started attaching interiorly.

49:59And that's part of how that seems to work, where some genes are effectively switched off that permit implantation that seems to be strongly tied to what we think was a viral infection. So cool. Cheers that we did that. I'd still prefer to lay eggs, but there you go. There you go. So I think you're suggesting that viruses can infect you and transfer their DNA into our cells, and we essentially adopt that. And that's part of being human, that a significant fraction of our DNA actually is viral. I don't know what would count as a significant fraction, and I don't know that we really know how much of our DNA was or wasn't sourced from a virus.

50:39Because we're talking really ancient time, which we're looking at basic cell mechanics. It'd be kind of hard to say what was or wasn't originally, you know what I mean? Especially since the listener was thinking about that really ancient case of mitochondria getting in there. So I don't know that we know. I will say, though, that certainly our cells are being infected by viruses all the time. Whether or not they make it into that germline, whether they become a basic part of our body plan, you know, in our eggs or in our sperm is a bigger threshold usually. Like a huge number of your cells, dear listener, are presently infected with viruses, some of which may well be passed on in that local tissue, some of which will be totally annihilated by the immune system.

51:25Right. Like that's just a constant state of being. You're so infected all the time with bacteria and viruses and many other things, depending where you live in the world. Right. But whether or not your kids then are going to change some feature of their body plan because of that legacy is a higher bar. Now, there is interesting stuff because there's another thing. So that's like an inherited thing. So that pregnancy thing is an inherited, maybe we'll call it beneficial legacy in mammals, right? But there is an across-the-lifetime thing that happens when you're infected with viruses that sometimes is beneficial.

52:01So this is a really interesting case. so first of all you are definitely infected with a number of different herpes viruses that's just for sure for sure true there are so many of them and you are definitely carrying so we all got the herp enjoy that that's right yeah we do makes us feel closer to you you know we're so bonded um depends where you got it certainly the one that causes cold sores uh like over 90 percent of the human population has it at this point. So cheers. Yeah. And herpes viruses are tricky because a lot of, I think all of them, but at least a lot of them, if I'm remembering it right, again, not virologists, but what I know, they infect your nerve tissue and your immune system tries not to attack your nerve tissue for all the reasons.

52:47Your nerve cells are a thing that your immune system is like, should I attack this like your brain and or your spine or, and or, You know, probably not unless you have a big autoimmune thing. So it's a good place for a virus to hang out and go dormant, which is what herpes viruses generally do. So there's this one CMV, cytomegalovirus. A lot of people, majority of the population have it. Okay. And when you're old, it seems to be associated with a number of not great things, like people who are, you know, seropositive. Like you can test for it in the blood. You have antibodies to it. You know, you're going to have, you're more likely to have certain kind of heart problems and other things.

53:22But interestingly, when you are young and healthy, like in your late teens and in your 20s, it improves your response to influenza. So if you're infected with CMV, this is a really amazing paper, you are going to have a better response to your flu vaccine. You're going to have a better response to getting infected with the flu more broadly. Weirdly, CMV seems to do it. And it's not like all herpes viruses do it. But like the Epstein-Barr virus, that's another virus, and it doesn't have that effect. So it really seems to be, and we have no idea why, specifically immunomodulating that body while you're young and healthy and, interestingly to a lot of biologists, when you're probably making babies.

54:10Because when you're old, you're kind of probably done with the baby-making thing. And so if it sucks for you in old age, well, oh well. You know, like evolutionarily speaking, right? But it's boosting you. It's boosting you. It's making you survive things like flu better when you're young and healthy. Cytomegalovirus also sucks when you're a baby. Like it can make you really sick if you're a very young infant. So new infections at that age actually do very bad things. It can cause meningitis and blah, blah, blah. Basically, it's just the sweet spot. But like specifically, it's it's OK to have it when you're already mostly adult and or young adult, like right right there.

54:50Sweet spot. But not so much before, not so much later. Too bad you can't just get rid of it. Yeah. Yeah. So we actually get a lot of questions from the listeners. I think we've had three or four different times where we've had this question. Like, why does our immune system get worse when we get older? Like, why is a virus that was maybe good initially bad later on? Like, we've seen so many new things as we get old. Like, we've seen a bunch of viruses, a bunch of bacteria infections. Why doesn't that make our immune system stronger as we get older? Wiser, yeah, with a deeper library. So many things.

55:23So many different metaphors we could layer on this thing. I think probably the short answer is it's just harder to do everything as a body as entropy kicks in, whether that's your immune system or other things, right? Right. So like we shouldn't give a special category to the immune system just because. Right. What do I mean by that, though? So like we know, for example, that when you're younger, you're better at suppressing a latent herpes infection from having an outbreak, you know, and when you get older, you get less good at that. Shingles is a really good example of this. You are far more likely to develop shingles, which is, again, a latent infection that then runs rampant when you're older than when you're younger.

56:06So that's that immune system failing to tamp down on that virally infected cell going nuts and spreading that around. And I think some of it is just cells get worse at replicating themselves as they go further along in their many replicated lifespan. You know when you look in a mirror at one of those fun houses and, like, there's a bunch of mirrors and it makes that infinity mirror effect so you have an infinite number of views? But, like, you start looking not great if you really look back at the, like, far distant, you know? Like, there's image loss. Like, there's info loss is what it really is.

56:45And cells have info loss over time, too, basically. They get less good at correcting for errors the more they've been replicating over a body's lifespan. And as far as we know, the immune system does that too. But to speak to Dan's instinct here, as he already mentioned, it's probably pretty complex. That's actually a pretty simplistic explanation for why aging sucks for all cells throughout the body. And actually, it's probably a lot of different things. That's super fascinating. I've always been curious about this story of mitochondria coming from the outside and then getting sort of incorporated.

57:18You're telling me that's a real story? Well, it's as real as science is able to make it real without a time machine. But yeah, like there is this idea that once upon a time there were cells like the cells have a lot of different organelles in them. Cells are full of stuff. You've probably seen a diagram, right? OK, well, mitochondria are the energy powerhouses of your cell, basically. And they're their own little independent organelle. Interestingly, they have their own DNA, MDNA, your mitochondrial DNA, which is separate from the DNA in the nucleus. So that's your first clue that something's up because not all the organelles in your cell have their own DNA.

57:55You know, it's like, hmm, what's up there? Why do you got your own? Right. So that's part of it. But also it seems generally that once upon a time, either a cell tried to eat another, you know, being in the soup of ancient world and or actually the mitochondria tried to infect, you know, protobacteria like we're not really sure. a cell and then failed to die and or eat the cell it was trying to eat. We don't know which direction. We don't know who was eating who here is the point. But somehow one dude, one cellular dude, ended up inside of the envelope, the cellular envelope, the membrane of another one, and somehow didn't die.

58:38And zombie-like, that became a mutual relationship, right? And over time, it became a basic part of how basically all cells go about their cellular lives, right? So effectively, your mitochondria and your cells are replicating in an interesting way when each cell goes through the process of replicating itself, right? Hence the separate lineages of DNA. Wow. Now, one of the really cool things about this is that also means that this is yet another reason why sperm don't do a lot. So, well, sorry, sorry. You know, that nearly all of your mitochondrial DNA is coming from your mom. That's coming from the egg.

59:26Right. And that's why eggs are so huge. and sperms are like a tiny little like, you know, Twitter feed, a tiny little node of information with a tail, you know, that just somehow has to get there. Because when a sperm, you know, decapitates itself, basically drops off its tail and goes inside the egg, you know, it is then eaten. It's eaten by the egg, basically. And then, you know, hence babies. Yay, the miracle of life. But usually the egg just completely destroys all the mitochondria from that sperm. It's like, nope, nope, nope, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, you out, right? But we now know, because unfortunately, some people have issues with their mitochondria that gives them certain kinds of infertility or developmental problems.

1:00:13There are disorders that can come with mitochondria, basically, that every now and again, sperm mitochondrial information actually do manage to escape the death spree that is going inside of an egg. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because this is an IVF thing, right? The idea is like, well, can you simply get rid of the mitochondria from the sperm or what have you or from the egg and then just replace it and we solve all of our mitochondrial disorders thereby? Wouldn't that be awesome? Yeah. It would be, if only it were a perfect system that it's never the case that the sperm mitochondria actually make their way in.

1:00:50So, again, biology, sloppy. Super sloppy. It's a delicious mess. I don't know if it's delicious. I always find kind of chalky.

1:01:02Go ahead. So when the sperm mitochondria stick around, what is the problem? Is it just that they're interfering with each other or the sperm mitochondria is like deficient in some way? Like, do we know what causes the problem there? I don't think it's the case that sperm mitochondria are just so janky that let's just not. Although I'm amused by that idea that somehow they're just like the worst option. No, I think I think it's actually that they've set up their mitochondrial system in that egg. The they that is the collective which is an egg and it's many organelles, you know, and they just don't want to like throw some new shit in the mix.

1:01:37as it were. So that's the general theory, that basically it's controlling for error to not have that be. And this is part of how you trace the so-called mitochondrial eve. You're actually tracing the mitochondrial inheritance over many generations to say, who is the last being from whence most of our mitochondria come from? Incredible. All right. Well, let's see if we answered Petri's question. Thank you, Kelly and Daniel, for choosing to answer my question on the show. And thank you especially to Dr. Bohanson for your wonderful answer. I realize that this is an incredibly difficult question that goes way back into deep time and ideas of what is beneficial versus not beneficial certainly get muddled quite quickly, but your answer was fascinating and enlightening.

1:02:24I also appreciate that you took the time to address the other question of mitochondrial DNA. that is something that's intriguing for me and I'm sure for many of the other listeners so once again that was a great answer thank you so much

1:02:47Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio we would love to hear from you we really would we want to know what questions you have about this extraordinary universe we want to know your thoughts on recent shows suggestions for future shows if you contact us we will get back to you we really mean it we answer every message email us at questions at danielandkelly.org or you can find us on social media we have accounts on X Instagram, Blue Sky and on all of those platforms you can find us at D and K Universe don't be shy, write to us introducing the all new Mazda CX-5 featuring more connection Hey Google, where's the nearest Pilates class?

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1:04:14Grab the fam, head to a Simon Center, and make it a day for the books. It's a celebration thing. Sign up today at SimonPlus.com. Rewards program terms apply. See SimonPlus.com for details. What if your soda actually did something for you? Introducing Sky Pop Protein Soda. Sky Pop Protein Soda has 10 grams of complete protein, zero sugar, and real delicious soda taste. Sky Pop Protein Soda. Reach for the sky. Get your Sky Pop Protein Soda now at Target or Walmart. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales.

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From the publisher

Daniel and Kelly are joined by Cat Bohannan, who answers questions about whether we can shorten gestation, superhuman feats of strength, and whether viruses are ever good for us.

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