Cat Bohannon
@catbohannon.bsky.social
Researcher, scholar, writer, freak. 🏳️🌈 EVE book out now. This ain’t samizdat but twitter ain’t either. www.catbohannon.com
Pinned
Cat Bohannon
@catbohannon.bsky.social
· Sep 29
Point of order: all human births are “natural.” Medical interventions in fertility are a fundamental part of the deep history of our species. Stop mom-shaming women who want and need medicine for being, um, human. Cheers!
Yesterday was World AIDS Day. Today is Giving Tuesday. If you’re able, do what you can do make the world suck less for people with HIV and support the labs working to make PrEP even better and finally make a working vaccine. www.amfar.org/ways-to-supp...
Ways to Support
Your gift to amfAR today will enable us to fund more brilliant scientists who are leading the way in cure-focused research.
www.amfar.org
December 2, 2025 at 6:31 PM
Yesterday was World AIDS Day. Today is Giving Tuesday. If you’re able, do what you can do make the world suck less for people with HIV and support the labs working to make PrEP even better and finally make a working vaccine. www.amfar.org/ways-to-supp...
Lotta people ask me for tips on how to talk about complicated ideas to the Public. First, there’s no such thing as the Public. Second, just talk the way you would at drinks at the conference. Peers you like and respect who are in different fields but so what. And they’re hot.
November 29, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Lotta people ask me for tips on how to talk about complicated ideas to the Public. First, there’s no such thing as the Public. Second, just talk the way you would at drinks at the conference. Peers you like and respect who are in different fields but so what. And they’re hot.
“Despite sex effects in individual organizational measures, we did not sex-stratify this data due to sample size considerations.”
🤦♀️ TBD. Also please determine reproductive effects in female data by age, known for restructuring? Cheers! #studywomen
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🤦♀️ TBD. Also please determine reproductive effects in female data by age, known for restructuring? Cheers! #studywomen
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Topological turning points across the human lifespan - Nature Communications
Researchers discovered five phases of brain rewiring across the lifespan. The eras of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, early aging, and late aging each have characteristic rewiring of structural con...
www.nature.com
November 27, 2025 at 9:44 PM
“Despite sex effects in individual organizational measures, we did not sex-stratify this data due to sample size considerations.”
🤦♀️ TBD. Also please determine reproductive effects in female data by age, known for restructuring? Cheers! #studywomen
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🤦♀️ TBD. Also please determine reproductive effects in female data by age, known for restructuring? Cheers! #studywomen
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Cat Bohannon
🏺 Two things have become clear in researching #Matriarcha:
1) direct evidence of how dangerous birth is – skeletons with stuck at-term babies inside them – goes back many millennia
2) humans/hominins have likely been obligate social birthers for about as long as they've been obligate tool users
1) direct evidence of how dangerous birth is – skeletons with stuck at-term babies inside them – goes back many millennia
2) humans/hominins have likely been obligate social birthers for about as long as they've been obligate tool users
Point of order: all human births are “natural.” Medical interventions in fertility are a fundamental part of the deep history of our species. Stop mom-shaming women who want and need medicine for being, um, human. Cheers!
November 27, 2025 at 6:06 PM
🏺 Two things have become clear in researching #Matriarcha:
1) direct evidence of how dangerous birth is – skeletons with stuck at-term babies inside them – goes back many millennia
2) humans/hominins have likely been obligate social birthers for about as long as they've been obligate tool users
1) direct evidence of how dangerous birth is – skeletons with stuck at-term babies inside them – goes back many millennia
2) humans/hominins have likely been obligate social birthers for about as long as they've been obligate tool users
Small holiday reminder: they hate our laughter. Laugh as much as your body can tolerate. Do it ‘til it hurts. Then do it more.
November 26, 2025 at 10:45 PM
Small holiday reminder: they hate our laughter. Laugh as much as your body can tolerate. Do it ‘til it hurts. Then do it more.
Reposted by Cat Bohannon
Reposted by Cat Bohannon
“Orbán learned before anyone else that controlling the universities that train a country’s elite is the best way to gain eventual control of its political system”
www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/can-ac...
www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/can-ac...
Can academic freedom survive in the new age of hard power?
While submitting to authority comes naturally to Asian universities, their Western counterparts have traditionally resisted coercion. But Donald Trump’s compact could change the game with the illusion...
www.timeshighereducation.com
November 22, 2025 at 2:54 PM
“Orbán learned before anyone else that controlling the universities that train a country’s elite is the best way to gain eventual control of its political system”
www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/can-ac...
www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/can-ac...
Happy Veterans Day to all who’ve served. If you have some in your fam, call ‘em and say the same. Even if they don’t vote the same way. Just do it.
November 11, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Happy Veterans Day to all who’ve served. If you have some in your fam, call ‘em and say the same. Even if they don’t vote the same way. Just do it.
Reposted by Cat Bohannon
Daniel and Kelly are joined by the amazing Dr. @catbohannon.bsky.social, who answers questions about whether we can shorten gestation, superhuman feats of strength, and whether viruses are ever good for us.
www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...
www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...
November 6, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Daniel and Kelly are joined by the amazing Dr. @catbohannon.bsky.social, who answers questions about whether we can shorten gestation, superhuman feats of strength, and whether viruses are ever good for us.
www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...
www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...
Remembering Dawkins wrote that VS Ramachandran was “a latterday Marco Polo, journeying the Silk Road of science to strange and exotic Cathays of the mind." About a world-famous South Asian scientist. That was the best thing he could think to say. About Ramachandran. That.
November 3, 2025 at 9:21 PM
Remembering Dawkins wrote that VS Ramachandran was “a latterday Marco Polo, journeying the Silk Road of science to strange and exotic Cathays of the mind." About a world-famous South Asian scientist. That was the best thing he could think to say. About Ramachandran. That.
Reposted by Cat Bohannon
Casey Means is a wellness influencer & unqualified opportunist who will face the Senate on Thursday. She should be called out on her conflicts, pseudoscience, & extremism, along with her weird scammer brother.
She should not be confirmed.
rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/a-means-to...
She should not be confirmed.
rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/a-means-to...
A Means to an End for Public Health
The Surgeon General might kill you with snake oil, but at least your mitochondria will be optimized
rasmussenretorts.substack.com
October 28, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Casey Means is a wellness influencer & unqualified opportunist who will face the Senate on Thursday. She should be called out on her conflicts, pseudoscience, & extremism, along with her weird scammer brother.
She should not be confirmed.
rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/a-means-to...
She should not be confirmed.
rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/a-means-to...
Keep Jamaica in your thoughts today, people.
October 28, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Keep Jamaica in your thoughts today, people.
Reposted by Cat Bohannon
The Trump administration is also refusing to use the SNAP contingency reserves, set aside for this exact purpose.
42 million Americans will stop receiving SNAP on Nov. 1, according to a new message from the USDA.
October 27, 2025 at 4:45 PM
The Trump administration is also refusing to use the SNAP contingency reserves, set aside for this exact purpose.
Yup yup! I wrote a bit on this Eve, page 382. See also footnotes on 399 and 402-403 for implications for human gendered power coalitions.
This is interesting (if a bit gruesome) on power dynamics in bonobos: "eighty-five percent of violent coalitions are led by females seeking to keep males in check"
October 23, 2025 at 9:46 PM
Yup yup! I wrote a bit on this Eve, page 382. See also footnotes on 399 and 402-403 for implications for human gendered power coalitions.
Could have been half the length, I admit, but a lot of good work in this review. “A grin without a cat” indeed. What a fall for Krauss and the skeptics movement in general, a sick end.
This is really quite the review. So very worth a read. www.liberalcurrents.com/wars-on-scie...
Wars on Science, Real and Otherwise
"The War on Science," ed. Lawrence Krauss, documents an imaginary war on science from the left in order to justify an entirely real war on science from the right.
www.liberalcurrents.com
October 23, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Could have been half the length, I admit, but a lot of good work in this review. “A grin without a cat” indeed. What a fall for Krauss and the skeptics movement in general, a sick end.
This from Iris Murdoch, via Elif Shafak:
“ Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing.”
“ Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing.”
October 19, 2025 at 6:43 PM
This from Iris Murdoch, via Elif Shafak:
“ Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing.”
“ Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing.”
When I was Turkey in 2013, they didn’t report the protests on state tv. So every night, families banged pots & pans outside their windows. Every night, a clanging siren. This is how we knew. Bari can’t kill what’s true.
October 19, 2025 at 1:05 AM
When I was Turkey in 2013, they didn’t report the protests on state tv. So every night, families banged pots & pans outside their windows. Every night, a clanging siren. This is how we knew. Bari can’t kill what’s true.
Reposted by Cat Bohannon
Solidarity!! Last week, Indiana University fired the director of student media & halted print on the Indiana Daily Student newspaper. Yesterday, Purdue’s student paper printed the banned edition & drove two hours to deliver it. Incredible www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/news/l...
Purdue student journalists deliver special 'solidarity' newspaper to IU Bloomington campus
The special edition blasted across town features columns from IDS and Exponent editors, alongside QR codes to support both student papers.
www.heraldtimesonline.com
October 18, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Solidarity!! Last week, Indiana University fired the director of student media & halted print on the Indiana Daily Student newspaper. Yesterday, Purdue’s student paper printed the banned edition & drove two hours to deliver it. Incredible www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/news/l...
Woah maybe add gorillas to the maybe-menopause list?!
Post-reproductive lifespan in wild mountain gorillas: "Almost one third of females in our study population (7/25) were “postreproductive” according to a commonly used criterion & lived more than a decade past their age of last reproduction, representing at least a fourth of their adult lifespan"
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
www.pnas.org
October 15, 2025 at 9:54 PM
Woah maybe add gorillas to the maybe-menopause list?!
Reposted by Cat Bohannon
Season 3 of Women’s Health Interrupted is here! 🎙️
Ep 1: Dr. Cat Bohannon on how science sidelined female bodies
Ep 2: Rachel Bartholomew on how femtech innovation turns research into reality
Now streaming on Spotify & Apple Podcasts 👇
https://ow.ly/b8PJ50XbIoG
#WomensHealthInterrupted #Femtech
Ep 1: Dr. Cat Bohannon on how science sidelined female bodies
Ep 2: Rachel Bartholomew on how femtech innovation turns research into reality
Now streaming on Spotify & Apple Podcasts 👇
https://ow.ly/b8PJ50XbIoG
#WomensHealthInterrupted #Femtech
October 15, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Season 3 of Women’s Health Interrupted is here! 🎙️
Ep 1: Dr. Cat Bohannon on how science sidelined female bodies
Ep 2: Rachel Bartholomew on how femtech innovation turns research into reality
Now streaming on Spotify & Apple Podcasts 👇
https://ow.ly/b8PJ50XbIoG
#WomensHealthInterrupted #Femtech
Ep 1: Dr. Cat Bohannon on how science sidelined female bodies
Ep 2: Rachel Bartholomew on how femtech innovation turns research into reality
Now streaming on Spotify & Apple Podcasts 👇
https://ow.ly/b8PJ50XbIoG
#WomensHealthInterrupted #Femtech
Reposted by Cat Bohannon
"a narrow focus on gross fertility measures provides a potentially misleading picture of demographic change. Our analysis of 236 countries from 1950-2023 reveals that when mortality is incorporated through net reproduction measures, our understanding of global fertility changes dramatically"
The role of mortality in fertility transition studies - N-IUSSP
Vegard Skirbekk and Thomas Spoorenberg* advocate the combined use of fertility and mortality information, or net reproduction, when discussing fertility levels and trends, both in developing and in de...
www.niussp.org
October 14, 2025 at 9:17 PM
"a narrow focus on gross fertility measures provides a potentially misleading picture of demographic change. Our analysis of 236 countries from 1950-2023 reveals that when mortality is incorporated through net reproduction measures, our understanding of global fertility changes dramatically"
Sometimes I think about the whale mothers who were slaughtered for their blubber and baleen and how bits of their bodies were used to make corsets that squeezed the lungs of human moms wheezing in lamplight
October 12, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Sometimes I think about the whale mothers who were slaughtered for their blubber and baleen and how bits of their bodies were used to make corsets that squeezed the lungs of human moms wheezing in lamplight
Interesting! Today in media, our authoritarian slide has been rebranded T’s “revenge agenda” and then people were asked how they felt about it, like that’s a normal poll-taking thing to ask in a normal “let’s take the pulse on the street” scenario.
October 9, 2025 at 11:58 PM
Interesting! Today in media, our authoritarian slide has been rebranded T’s “revenge agenda” and then people were asked how they felt about it, like that’s a normal poll-taking thing to ask in a normal “let’s take the pulse on the street” scenario.
In better news…
In many parts of rural Africa, babies bop around on mom's back during the daytime, where they're exposed to malaria. Treating those baby wraps with permethrin cuts that risk drastically.
"It was a level of effect that was beyond even our wildest expectations."
www.npr.org/sections/goa...
"It was a level of effect that was beyond even our wildest expectations."
www.npr.org/sections/goa...
Babies take a lesson from soldiers in the war against malaria
Inspired by a military strategy to ward off disease-carrying mosquitoes, researchers see if the technique will help cut malaria infections in little ones.
www.npr.org
October 7, 2025 at 1:37 PM
In better news…
The sadism is exhausting. Still, we *can* win this back, people! But let’s not pretend the moral injuries of this moment will go away anytime soon.
The US is now four months away from losing its measles elimination status.
1544 confirmed cases reported by the CDC.
1544 confirmed cases reported by the CDC.
Where is measles spreading? Here's what to know.
The country is four months away from possibly losing its measles elimination status.
www.nbcnews.com
October 4, 2025 at 5:34 PM
The sadism is exhausting. Still, we *can* win this back, people! But let’s not pretend the moral injuries of this moment will go away anytime soon.