Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, here's Chuck this week on a Saturday with
Speaker 1: a pretty relevant topic these days. Who knew that it
Speaker 1: would be relevant again? And this is from June nineteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, How the Pill changed the world. I think
Speaker 1: you know what pill we're talking about. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Speaker 2: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's the ghost of Jerry
Speaker 2: Roland in the empty chair. Thanks again about this, Thanks
Speaker 2: again to Ramsey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks Ramsey.
Speaker 2: How do I feel about this? I feel great? The
Speaker 2: pill is it has everything? This might be I just
Speaker 2: love this episode already.
Speaker 1: I do too, But I kind of like when we
Speaker 1: did the female puberty episode. I just feel nervous. This
Speaker 1: can be fine explaining female reproduction. I just I don't know.
Speaker 2: Hey, man, we're just we're just explaining stuff.
Speaker 1: I know, I know.
Speaker 2: It's not like we're We're just we're just explaining stuff.
Speaker 1: Just be cool, all right. So let's talk the pill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the opposite of having kids.
Speaker 1: The pharmaceutical so famous that it's called the pill.
Speaker 2: It is there. I read this New Yorker article about
Speaker 2: a book on the birth of the pill, and now
Speaker 2: I'm talking about it, so everything comes full circle. And
Speaker 2: they were saying, like, there's like, you don't call anything
Speaker 2: else the pill, Like viagra is not the pill. Antibiotics
Speaker 2: isn't the pill. You don't call it the vacuum or
Speaker 2: the meat grinder, right, Like, there's there's really nothing like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: nothing compares to it. And it's it's for good reason.
Speaker 2: I mean, the pill is monumentally huge as far as
Speaker 2: pharmaceuticals and medicine goes. I mean on the scale of
Speaker 2: antibiotics easily.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it's the very first medication that was
Speaker 1: designed for a non therapeutic purpose too. Yes, very interesting.
Speaker 2: And so it's really difficult to over to overstate how
Speaker 2: much of an impact the pill had when they released
Speaker 2: it in I think nineteen sixties, when.
Speaker 1: It came history first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's right, let's do that. So let me set
Speaker 2: the stage for you.
Speaker 1: Please, Oh, you're bringing a catch out.
Speaker 2: Back in back in the day. I'm going to do
Speaker 2: my Charles Nelson Riley one man Show impression. Back in
Speaker 2: the day, if you were a woman and you didn't
Speaker 2: want to get pregnant, you had to coordinate with your
Speaker 2: husband that he wear a condom, okay, sure, or boyfriend, Well,
Speaker 2: that's like a whole other kettle of fish at this time. Yeah, supposedly,
Speaker 2: and socially that went on all the time. There's plenty
Speaker 2: of premarital sex, but socially speaking, only single men were
Speaker 2: allowed to have premarital sex, which is like, who are
Speaker 2: they having premarital sex with? Then, right, if they're the
Speaker 2: only ones allowed to have premarital sex, considering, considering everyone
Speaker 2: refused to officially recognize homosexuality even existed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know where you get.
Speaker 2: Okay, So there's a lot of double standards, a lot
Speaker 2: of repression going on. But if you were if you
Speaker 2: were a woman and you wanted to have sex, so
Speaker 2: whether it was with the guy you were having sex
Speaker 2: with or your husband, you you basically had to say
Speaker 2: you got to wear a condom. And if you said no,
Speaker 2: well you were sol one way or another, either you
Speaker 2: weren't having sex or you're going to have sex without
Speaker 2: a condom. And if that happened, there was a really
Speaker 2: good chance that you were going to end up getting
Speaker 2: pregnant just from having sex.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the ball was entirely in the man's court, and
Speaker 1: women did not have much say in the matter.
Speaker 2: No, they didn't. There were a couple of things on
Speaker 2: the market. So before the Industrial Revolution, there were like
Speaker 2: folk remedies where you could use herbs and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Basically I think they're called herbal douches where you're just
Speaker 2: like squeezing stuff in there and like hoping for the best.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And then by the depression there's something there's a whole
Speaker 2: line of stuff called gynecological aids or feminine hygiene, I
Speaker 2: think is what it's called. And some of them worked,
Speaker 2: some of them kind of worked, some of them didn't work.
Speaker 2: Some of them worked but would kill you or give
Speaker 2: you chemical burns. There was a lot of problems, so
Speaker 2: you didn't have a lot of options, right. And then
Speaker 2: along with the fact that you actually didn't have that
Speaker 2: many options socially, in nineteen fifty, thirty States and the
Speaker 2: federal government said you can't have anything that can used
Speaker 2: as a contraceptive and you can't even learn about it
Speaker 2: from your doctor from school. Yeah, thirty states in the
Speaker 2: federal government. This is nineteen fifty. Ten years later, the
Speaker 2: pill comes out, and a couple of years after that,
Speaker 2: five million American women are using it as a contraception,
Speaker 2: and now it was in their hands. They had the
Speaker 2: ability to decide for themselves whether sex late to pregnancy
Speaker 2: or not.
Speaker 1: Well, and sort of even then, because not all states
Speaker 1: allowed it and not all doctors would give it out,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't like, oh, the FDA said it's good
Speaker 1: to go, so we can all get it. It was
Speaker 1: still a fight. Yeah, for years and years of decades,
Speaker 1: it really was. So I guess we should start with
Speaker 1: a woman named Margaret Sanger. She is a very controversial figure,
Speaker 1: founder of Planned parenthood. She's a nurse, and she wrote
Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve about a magic pill that could prevent conception.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a theoretical hypothetical pill.
Speaker 1: Right, And she's controversial for many reasons, not the leastes
Speaker 1: which is her she was anti abortion. Kind of when
Speaker 1: she was most famous, she was anti abortion and kind
Speaker 1: of went all in on the pill and was like,
Speaker 1: this is the way to do it, is to prevent
Speaker 1: the pregnancy once you're pregnant.
Speaker 2: Sorry, wow, gotcha.
Speaker 1: And then you know there's the whole eugenics thing. We
Speaker 1: should do a podcast on her, probably at some point
Speaker 1: we should, because that's a rabbit hole right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, but she was the early champion of it.
Speaker 2: She was she coined the term birth control, and I
Speaker 2: think nineteen twelve as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so in nineteen fourteen she started a newsletter called
Speaker 1: The Woman Rebel. That's where birth control was first typed
Speaker 1: out and distributed the words like you said. And then
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties some breakthroughs happen in science where
Speaker 1: they were able to identify a progesterone an estrogen and
Speaker 1: realized kind of how it all worked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so at first they were looking at this stuff
Speaker 2: as our fertility drugs, and then they noticed that it
Speaker 2: actually could suppress fertility. And as they were I think
Speaker 2: this is in the forties when they were really starting
Speaker 2: in earnest or is it the twenties.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean they were synthesizing it from animals, and
Speaker 1: it was in early nineteen forty one.
Speaker 2: I don't think they were even synthesizing. I think they
Speaker 2: were extracting it. And then that's what you got in
Speaker 2: your pill, was animal hormones.
Speaker 1: Well, it says synthesize for animals, so maybe it was
Speaker 1: a process, gotcha. But eventually in nineteen forty one, doctor Marker,
Speaker 1: doctor Russell Marker, I just said it. Like James Bond.
Speaker 1: For some reason, he discovered how to synthesize the synthetic
Speaker 1: form of progesterone, which is called progestin, and that really
Speaker 1: this is from wild yams, believe it or not. So
Speaker 1: he did that and that changed everything. It did.
Speaker 2: It made it cheaper, it made it easier to obtain.
Speaker 1: You could research all of a sudden, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: But you still couldn't really research, right because there were
Speaker 2: laws on even doing research on birth control. So the
Speaker 2: people who were doing this, it started out as Margaret Sanger.
Speaker 2: She hooked up with a doctor named Pinkus and Gregory Pinkis,
Speaker 2: who was a biologist, and he was interested in coming
Speaker 2: up with birth control as well. Mary McCormick was there
Speaker 2: for Saint Mary Catherine Catherine McCormick.
Speaker 1: Of the McCormick I guesses.
Speaker 2: Okay, So she lent a tremendous amount of her wealth
Speaker 2: to this research. And then a guy named John Rock
Speaker 2: who was a doctor who was also working on a
Speaker 2: birth control pill. They all joined forces in the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties and started working on this really hard. But they
Speaker 2: had a lot of roadblocks up against them, and they
Speaker 2: cut a lot of corn and getting this thing out
Speaker 2: into market.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like going to Puerto Rico too, because they had
Speaker 1: to for trials.
Speaker 2: Right, and so this is not like Puerto Rico was like,
Speaker 2: we don't want this, but you're forcing it on us. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Puerto Rico had the exact opposite attitudes toward birth control
Speaker 2: that the United States did at the time. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: it was a good place to do it. They just
Speaker 2: didn't inform anybody what was going on with this, that
Speaker 2: this was a clinical trial. They just gave them some
Speaker 2: pills and said, do you take these, it'll keep you
Speaker 2: from getting pregnant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which they kind of came about by accident. Some
Speaker 1: of the pills were contaminated with estrogen, and they used
Speaker 1: that in scare quotes, I guess, just because what they
Speaker 1: really mean is mixed by accident, and that reduced a
Speaker 1: lot of the side effects, because that was one of
Speaker 1: the big problems at first and continued to be for
Speaker 1: a while, and eventually they landed on a drug company
Speaker 1: called Cyril. There were two competing ones, and the other
Speaker 1: one was Syntex and Cyril. So you pronounce it cerrel cerrel.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm going with s E A R L E. Cyril,
Speaker 2: I want to hear you say zerol.
Speaker 1: They finally came up with they thought was the right formulation,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen sixty two, Syntex came out with their
Speaker 1: version and then pretty soon it was being marketed and
Speaker 1: distributed after FDA approval in nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 2: So yeah, So Cyril was the one who hooked up
Speaker 2: with Sangler and Rock. Yeah, and they were the ones
Speaker 2: who provided the pills for the clinical trial in Puerto Rico.
Speaker 2: There was also a clinical trial in at a women's
Speaker 2: mental asylum in Massachusetts, and the patients there didn't have
Speaker 2: any informed consent. And when they released this formula, first
Speaker 2: it was for guid ecological disorders things like ovari insists.
Speaker 2: They knew it could be used to treat that, and
Speaker 2: Cyril at the time was like it. They had no
Speaker 2: expectations for this whatsoever. Yeah, and then within a year
Speaker 2: there were half a million women in America who were
Speaker 2: suddenly using this for gynecological problems, and Cyrel figured out, well, no,
Speaker 2: they're actually using it for contraception. And so when they
Speaker 2: went and saw it FDA approval and got it, that
Speaker 2: was when the floodgates opened, like there was now a
Speaker 2: pill on the market that could prevent contraception that was
Speaker 2: the woman's to take, and all of a sudden there
Speaker 2: was the first year there was one point two million
Speaker 2: American women on the pill, and Cyril at first thought,
Speaker 2: they're not going to want this. Women aren't going to
Speaker 2: want to take a pill every day to keep from
Speaker 2: getting pregnant. But they couldn't even finish the name pregnant
Speaker 2: for like the pills were being grabbed from their hands. Yes,
Speaker 2: you know, it was a huge deal.
Speaker 1: It was. And then these pills were not very safe.
Speaker 1: That's the upshot of this. The estrogen. There was way
Speaker 1: too much estrogen. It was dangerous, it was causing cancer.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen sixty nine very famous book came out
Speaker 1: called The Doctor's Case Against the Pill, written by a
Speaker 1: medical journalist named Barbara Seaman, and she got together with
Speaker 1: a bunch of doctors and researchers and women and made
Speaker 1: a case against the pill that it wasn't safe. There
Speaker 1: was a senator named Gaylord Nelson who read the book,
Speaker 1: took on birth control in Senate hearings, and in January
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy in the Senate chamber. There was this testimony
Speaker 1: about the pill going on, of course run only by men,
Speaker 1: all the witnesses with only men testifying providing witness testimony.
Speaker 1: But there was a woman there named Alice Wolfson and
Speaker 1: her group, the DC Women's Liberation Group. They were sitting
Speaker 1: there just getting more and more steamed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in these hearings at this time, these series were
Speaker 2: kind of under the radar right until Alice Wolfson, Like
Speaker 2: the bluide.
Speaker 1: Span wasn't a thing yet, So they were just getting
Speaker 1: more and more steamed watching all these men get up
Speaker 1: there and talking about women's reproductive health.
Speaker 2: And but not only that, they were also these people
Speaker 2: were talking about how how dangerous the side effects were
Speaker 2: with the pill, sure hypertension, blood clots, heart attacks, high
Speaker 2: blood pressure, stroke, all of these things. And these the
Speaker 2: women in the DC Women's lib Movement and including Alice Wilson,
Speaker 2: were like, We've never heard this before in our lives.
Speaker 2: How did our doctors not tell us this?
Speaker 1: Well, that was the backstory, is that that none of
Speaker 1: the doctors were sharing this information because they were getting
Speaker 1: and it's you know, I think there's always been a
Speaker 1: problem not across the board, but with doctors and pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: companies right, pushing certain drugs over others.
Speaker 2: But even but at the time it was way worse
Speaker 2: it is now, like there was an disclosure. Yeah, there was.
Speaker 2: There was a mentality among doctors, male doctors who who
Speaker 2: believed that if you a woman was better off not
Speaker 2: knowing you didn't want to get her all upset giving
Speaker 2: her all the information didn't have side effects listed, right,
Speaker 2: and if you did tell her, you ran the risks.
Speaker 2: Since women were so suggestible, she might develop a stroke
Speaker 2: just by thinking about it so much, so it was
Speaker 2: better off just not telling her about it. Yet that
Speaker 2: was the entire medical establishment at the time, and so
Speaker 2: the pill went from this feminist icon in the sixties
Speaker 2: to buy nineteen seventy, becoming an icon for white male patriarchy.
Speaker 2: Medical patriarchy and how patients informed consent was a paramount
Speaker 2: issue now and it just took on this other.
Speaker 1: Role well, and informed consent was literally born. That day.
Speaker 1: At that hearing, they finally heard an expert say estrogen
Speaker 1: is to cancer, what fertilizer is deweed? And Alice Wolfson
Speaker 1: stood up and started screaming. She was screaming, why are
Speaker 1: you using women as guinea pigs. Why are you letting
Speaker 1: drug companies murderers for profit and convenience? And it got
Speaker 1: a lot of media attention, and really the aftermath of
Speaker 1: those hearings is when this consumer health movement started and
Speaker 1: they started in formed consent, they started having to list
Speaker 1: side effects on bottles, and you know, it wasn't an
Speaker 1: overnight thing, but it really changed the pharmaceutical industry forever.
Speaker 2: Right, So the pill managed to accept this I guess iconography, right,
Speaker 2: It became a symbol for this other thing, but still
Speaker 2: managed to keep on keeping on. Like I think, so
Speaker 2: eighty seven percent of women between eighteen and forty nine
Speaker 2: in the US followed those hearings. Once Alice Wolfson and
Speaker 2: the DC Women's Lib Movement made it a national thing,
Speaker 2: and I think eighteen percent of them stopped taking the
Speaker 2: pill as a result. But the pill didn't fall out
Speaker 2: of popularity. It stood in as the as the icon
Speaker 2: for informed consent, and then just after that was established,
Speaker 2: it just went back to being the pill. I think
Speaker 2: that's amazing. It is because it was this huge thing
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty for one thing, huge thing in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy for another thing, and now it's it's it's part
Speaker 2: of the cultural zeitgeist forever.
Speaker 1: Should we take a break, Yes, all right, we're going
Speaker 1: to take a break. We're all excited about history, and
Speaker 1: now we're going to get into science. Hey, let's talk
Speaker 1: minstrel cycles. All right, let's man, because that's all that's
Speaker 1: going on here is the pill manipulates the menstrual cycle
Speaker 1: by tricking the body with synthetic hormones.
Speaker 2: Yes, it tricks the body into thinking it's already released
Speaker 2: an egg.
Speaker 1: It's pretty brilliant, it is.
Speaker 2: It is, But it's also kind of low fi if
Speaker 2: you think about it.
Speaker 1: It is very low it's neat.
Speaker 2: So we should kind of give you an idea of
Speaker 2: what the menstrual cycle is. Right, it's twenty eight days generally, Yes,
Speaker 2: that's the rule of thumb. But yes, it's certainly different
Speaker 2: for everyone, right, And I think it's also down to
Speaker 2: like hours and stuff like that too. It's not just days.
Speaker 2: It's a human construct, you know. But have you stopped
Speaker 2: and ever thought about like how interesting it is that
Speaker 2: the cycle of the moon is like twenty eight days
Speaker 2: as well. Yeah, I think it's fascinating.
Speaker 1: I know, I didn't say what fascinating. I never stopped it.
Speaker 2: I just just in researching this, I was like, that's
Speaker 2: the cycle of the moon as well. Oh that's interesting.
Speaker 2: So anyway, over the say roughly twenty eight day period,
Speaker 2: the whole thing starts with the petuitary gland getting a
Speaker 2: little froggy and saying, hey, I'm going to release some
Speaker 2: follicle stimulating hormone at that sh and that stuff floods
Speaker 2: the body and it makes its way down to the
Speaker 2: ovaries and it stimulates follicles, hence the name.
Speaker 1: That's right. It makes these follicles and the ovaries grow,
Speaker 1: and it just sets off a big series of events. Basically,
Speaker 1: estrogen is triggers that peituitary gland again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the follicles then in turn release estrogen.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And so the petutary gland is busy because
Speaker 1: then it secretes what's called ganatotropin releasing hormone g little
Speaker 1: N big R, big H.
Speaker 2: One of the better abbreviations ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it looks sort of like guns n'.
Speaker 2: Roses a little bit. Yeah, Oh, that.
Speaker 1: GnRH, and that triggers a rise in lutinizing hormone l H.
Speaker 2: Right, and so hormone goes back down to the ovarian
Speaker 2: follicles and it it gets one of the follicles. So
Speaker 2: if you have a bunch of ovarian follicles growing, one
Speaker 2: of them is going to clearly it's the lead horse, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's going to develop into an egg. And as the
Speaker 2: lutinizing hormone stimulates it to develop into an egg, the
Speaker 2: egg pops off. The rest of the other follicles wither
Speaker 2: and die, and then the egg travels down the fallopian
Speaker 2: tube where it may or may not be fertilized.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is called the ovulation. And while this is
Speaker 1: going on, in the background, the uterine lining the endometrium
Speaker 1: is thickening up right, it's getting ready for business.
Speaker 2: And the reason that is is because the estrogen and
Speaker 2: the lutinizing hormone are causing that to happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're just rising and rising.
Speaker 2: So the mucus in the vagina I'm saying, like even
Speaker 2: more than usual right now. But the mucus in the
Speaker 2: in the vagina also does it thicken? Yeah, So it
Speaker 2: thickens is that after the egg has been fertilized, because
Speaker 2: I think it would make it, it would become okay,
Speaker 2: So it d thickens. The uterine lining thickens. I think
Speaker 2: the vaginal mucus makes it makes it easier for sperm
Speaker 2: to make its way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, correct, Okay, sorry about that.
Speaker 2: So that's so, if all that goes according to the
Speaker 2: genetic plan, then those sperm are going to make their
Speaker 2: way to an egg. The egg is going to become fertilized,
Speaker 2: it's going to come down the Filippian tube attached to
Speaker 2: the uterus, and it's going to start to grow into
Speaker 2: a child.
Speaker 1: Correct.
Speaker 2: It might also not happen either. The woman involved might
Speaker 2: not have sex, so there might be no sperm. The
Speaker 2: sperm might not make it. There might be some sort
Speaker 2: of barrier method being made.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or being used. A dude may have bad sperm.
Speaker 2: Sure. Regardless of how this happens. If the egg is
Speaker 2: not fertilized, the egg eventually weather's up itself and dissolves
Speaker 2: and that thickened endometrium is shed.
Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, the uterine lining is shed.
Speaker 2: Yes, So when that haves like kind of iron rich
Speaker 2: blood tissue, right, Okay, that is menstruation, that's menstruation. So
Speaker 2: when you think of but that's your period, Yeah, the
Speaker 2: whole thing's menstruation. Well yeah, Okay, it's like a twenty
Speaker 2: eight day cycle is menstruation because I always think of like, yeah,
Speaker 2: the period's menstruation, right, No, that's actually the end of menstruation, right,
Speaker 2: and then the whole cycle begins again. Right after that time,
Speaker 2: the pituitary glands like, oh, all right, I'll release some
Speaker 2: follicle stimulating hormone. The whole thing begins again. The pill
Speaker 2: interrupts this by making the body think it's already released
Speaker 2: an egg. Like when the egg comes off of the
Speaker 2: follicle and makes its way down out of the Philippian tube.
Speaker 2: The ovum makes his way down the Philippian tube, that's
Speaker 2: when the estrogen and the progesterone levels are high. Okay,
Speaker 2: So the pill introduces progesterone and estrogen levels and keeps
Speaker 2: them high at all times, and therefore the body stops
Speaker 2: releasing eggs because it thinks it's already released an egg.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just hijacks that whole process right. Synthetically, Yep.
Speaker 1: The woman's body is amazing. It is when you think
Speaker 1: about all that's going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our body is not doing anything even remotely like that.
Speaker 2: It's making like farts.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought when I was researching this, I
Speaker 1: was like, man, I've never felt less important. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like the insides of my body are just I got
Speaker 1: some lungs doing some things. I got a heart, and
Speaker 1: then like, I guess I'm still making sperm. I don't
Speaker 1: even know.
Speaker 2: I've got like a wheezy old donkey running the show
Speaker 2: in there kind of dirty.
Speaker 1: Oh goodness. So the endometrium still builds up in the
Speaker 1: uterus and is released, but it's known as a withdrawal period.
Speaker 1: So this is if you're on the pill. But that's
Speaker 1: why your period while on the pill is going to
Speaker 1: be generally lighter and shorter.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so technically this the pill mimics the structure
Speaker 2: called the corpus luteum, yes, which is the thing that
Speaker 2: releases progesterone and estrogen once an egg is released. So
Speaker 2: the bodies like, oh, the corpus luteum's got it going on.
Speaker 2: I don't need to release another egg. I also am
Speaker 2: not going to have a period because during this time
Speaker 2: after the pill, those hormone levels start to become like
Speaker 2: a normal baseline in the woman's body. There's no endometrium
Speaker 2: that builds up, and therefore there's no endometrium to shed.
Speaker 1: Right, and I don't think we mentioned this yet. Progestin,
Speaker 1: which is the synthetic progesterone, it's going to make that
Speaker 1: vaginal mucus thicker, so you're right earlier. It is thinner
Speaker 1: to make this sperm, make it excess the eggs easy.
Speaker 1: It will thicken it up that mucus to make it
Speaker 1: harder for the sperm. So it's and I think it's
Speaker 1: just sort of like a one two punch to make
Speaker 1: it even harder to get pregnant, although you can still
Speaker 1: get pregnant, usually due to misuse of the pill, because
Speaker 1: what you do is you take the pill at the
Speaker 1: same time every day. It's all very synchronous and depends
Speaker 1: on that timing, and if you don't time it out right,
Speaker 1: your chances are getting pregnant are a little bit more.
Speaker 1: But apparently if you're taking it exactly right at the
Speaker 1: same time, then your failure rate is going to be
Speaker 1: point three percent, So it's still technically possible.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is point three percent possible.
Speaker 1: Which offers up the question like why, Like when they
Speaker 1: were developing the pill, they had it completely in their
Speaker 1: control as to what they wanted to do with the
Speaker 1: menstrual cycle, and they decided and I never knew this
Speaker 1: very interesting. They decided to keep it on that twenty
Speaker 1: eight day cycle because for a lot of reasons, they
Speaker 1: thought the Rock thought the Catholic Church, because he was
Speaker 1: a Catholic, they might be more willing to approve it
Speaker 1: if it seemed more natural.
Speaker 2: I guess right. He was way off there.
Speaker 1: They thought, way off. He thought that women would be
Speaker 1: more apt to take it if it didn't seem like
Speaker 1: it was disrupting things too much. Yeah, like, it's still
Speaker 1: in my regular cycle, right.
Speaker 2: Because you do have that withdrawal period. It's not an
Speaker 2: actual real period, but it does come at that at
Speaker 2: the end of that the pill cycle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they could have gotten rid of the period altogether.
Speaker 2: Right, And a lot of people are like, well, go
Speaker 2: do that. And there are pills on the market that
Speaker 2: we'll talk about that do take away women's period. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's others that put them at different like spaces of
Speaker 2: them out like like four times a year or something
Speaker 2: like that. And people started looking into this and they're like, well,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, like should shouldn't women be having periods?
Speaker 2: And the answer is not necessarily right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's controversial, like you're not.
Speaker 2: If you're not ovulating, you technically don't have to have
Speaker 2: a period. And this Molly Edmunds wrote this really interesting pill,
Speaker 2: that old Molly article. Yeah, like is a period necessary?
Speaker 2: I think is what it's called.
Speaker 1: And because women today have many more periods than our ancestors.
Speaker 2: Right, something on the order of like four hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty periods over the average woman's lifetime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, about three times as many as our ancestors. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So like back in like hunter gatherer, pre pre agricultural
Speaker 2: women had about one hundred and sixty or something, right,
Speaker 2: And that was because they had more kids, they breastfed longer,
Speaker 2: they didn't live as long. Yeah, And so some people
Speaker 2: make the point like, well, women are having more more
Speaker 2: periods than ever before, and the body wasn't meant for this.
Speaker 2: It's actually kind of rough on the body to have
Speaker 2: a period. Like when the ovum pops off of the
Speaker 2: fallopian tube, it leaves a scar on the ovary. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that scar has to be repaired, and to repair
Speaker 2: the cells in the ovary have to divide, and as
Speaker 2: long as they divide correctly, that damage will be repaired.
Speaker 2: If they divide incorrectly. That damage can turn into ovarian cancer,
Speaker 2: so that's a problem with it. There's also scarring with
Speaker 2: the shedding of the endometrium, like actually having your period
Speaker 2: itself can leave scarring the same deal, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think does an iron deficiency come into play.
Speaker 2: So that's actually a benefit of having a period. You
Speaker 2: get rid of excess iron, which can lead to cardiovascular disease.
Speaker 1: Well, and there are a couple of weeks during the
Speaker 1: menstrual cycle where women have a lot a significant reduction
Speaker 1: in blood pressure. So during the years you know, their
Speaker 1: reproductive years, at least they are at I guess a
Speaker 1: slightly lower risk of stroke and heart attacked.
Speaker 2: I think like ten percent lower.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's not bad, no, not at all.
Speaker 2: So there's pros and there's cons to having a period.
Speaker 2: The thing is, this is what Molly ultimately points out,
Speaker 2: is we actually don't know if a period is necessary.
Speaker 2: Like the pill is still relatively new, and I think
Speaker 2: she quoted a doctor in their Doctor Susan roth Coo,
Speaker 2: I think or Roco And she called the pill that
Speaker 2: does away with periods entirely the greatest unregulated medical experiment
Speaker 2: of all time. Yeah, and she makes a chilling point,
Speaker 2: like we don't really know what the side effects are yet,
Speaker 2: because all of this is too new, especially the pill
Speaker 2: that does away with the period altogether.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and they haven't done there are no long
Speaker 1: term studies of menstrual suppression from oral contraceptives. At least,
Speaker 1: they don't know about what that means for a woman.
Speaker 1: They don't know because most of this testing is done
Speaker 1: for women over eighteen, so they don't know what it
Speaker 1: meant for women under eighteen right at all, because they're
Speaker 1: just not involved in the research, even though they do
Speaker 1: have research that shows about two thirds of women would
Speaker 1: get rid of their period if they could do so safely.
Speaker 1: Because I mean, we haven't even mentioned PMS or PPMD,
Speaker 1: which is just isn't that like a really really severe
Speaker 1: yeah form of PMS?
Speaker 2: Yes, it's like much worse. Yeah yeah, But whereas like
Speaker 2: PMS is is not a picnic to begin with, this
Speaker 2: is this is like go to the hospital bad?
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah, it can be at least yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting to think about.
Speaker 2: It also treats ovarian sists. There's other uses for birth
Speaker 2: control pills too. Yeah, you want to take another break
Speaker 2: and get back to it, I think. So Okay, okay, Chuck,
Speaker 2: where are we? Oh we were talking.
Speaker 1: About I'm over here hanging but on this cliff by
Speaker 1: my fingernails.
Speaker 2: I think you're doing great. Isn't they doing great? Everybody?
Speaker 1: Yes? No?
Speaker 2: So remember, so there are side effects both positive and
Speaker 2: negative to taking the pill. There's some very common negative
Speaker 2: side effects like nausea is a big one, weight gain
Speaker 2: spotting which is called breakthrough menstruation, which is where you
Speaker 2: have bleeding during the actual pill cycle, not the prescribed
Speaker 2: period cycle of the pill.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I don't think we mentioned yet either that
Speaker 1: in the pill prescription, in that monthly dose there are
Speaker 1: seven not always, but the way they designed it was
Speaker 1: there are seven placebo pills, right, that are in there
Speaker 1: because you only take the pill for twenty one days
Speaker 1: a month. But they put those extra seven pills in
Speaker 1: there to keep women on that. I guess the thinking was,
Speaker 1: if they're used to taking this pill every day, they
Speaker 1: need to.
Speaker 2: Keep doing it, right, it is a habit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if they don't for seven days, they might forget
Speaker 1: on the eighth day, and that's bad news.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's the most common way to do it,
Speaker 2: and those that's a very easy type of pill to take,
Speaker 2: right because all of them are the same level of hormone,
Speaker 2: and the seven inert ones are usually a different color
Speaker 2: and they come at the end of the month. It's
Speaker 2: supposed to be easy. There's actually a recall right now
Speaker 2: of Tatula. Did you see that? No Tatula has made
Speaker 2: it by Alergan I think, And they recalled a lot
Speaker 2: of their pills because they put the inert ones at
Speaker 2: the beginning of the cycle accidentally, just bad packaging.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: And if you look, you can clearly see that the
Speaker 2: first like seven or different color, but where they're supposed
Speaker 2: to be at the end, at the beginning, and that
Speaker 2: is bad news if you're taking that pill. So if
Speaker 2: you have Tatula, go check it right now and go
Speaker 2: get some more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think I interrupted you. On the side
Speaker 1: effects nausea, headaches, breast soreness, acne, depression, moodiness, weight gain,
Speaker 1: decreased libido, and sometimes these can be like if if
Speaker 1: you start out on the pill can be worse. A
Speaker 1: few cycles in it might get better, and if it doesn't,
Speaker 1: you can There are different pills out.
Speaker 2: There, there are, there's so the the when those pills
Speaker 2: originally came out that first formula I think it was called.
Speaker 1: Like a novid that was the first one on the market, first.
Speaker 2: One by Cyril Cerel, and they had ten milligrams of
Speaker 2: progesterone or progestin and zero point one five milligrams of estrogen,
Speaker 2: and that is like a nuclear bomb pill. Women had
Speaker 2: the side effects from it, like all these side effects,
Speaker 2: like each of them a mac truck, and they were
Speaker 2: still willing to go through it to have control of
Speaker 2: their body as far as pregnancy went. But they very
Speaker 2: quickly figured out through further research, you can do the same.
Speaker 2: And the reason they selected that is like they knew
Speaker 2: that there was not going to be any ovulation with
Speaker 2: ten milligrams of progesterone, and so they figured out that
Speaker 2: you could formulate with a much lower amount of both
Speaker 2: progestin and estrogen and still get the job done. And
Speaker 2: they still do that today. I think the estrogen gets
Speaker 2: down into the micrograms and you can get like two
Speaker 2: point five milligrams of progesterone in some forms of the pill.
Speaker 2: And then if so, if the pill is mistreating you,
Speaker 2: what you're saying is there are options, right, Well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are three main types of oral did I
Speaker 1: say kypes? I think I did?
Speaker 2: You also said zero?
Speaker 1: There are three main types of the oral contraceptive pills
Speaker 1: now combination pills, progestin only, and extended release, which are
Speaker 1: the newest ones out there. The combination pill is the
Speaker 1: most common pill that you will get. The Mini pill
Speaker 1: is the progestin only and for some women that's better.
Speaker 1: Like if you're breastfeeding and you can't have the estrogen
Speaker 1: because it's going to affect your milk, you will probably
Speaker 1: be on the mini pill and the mini piel peel.
Speaker 1: It works in a couple of different ways. It makes
Speaker 1: the endometrium too thin to accept that egg and it
Speaker 1: won't allow it to attach. And again with the vaginal mucus,
Speaker 1: it makes it too thick to allow the sperm to
Speaker 1: reach the egg. But it is a little less effective,
Speaker 1: but still effective, but a little less than the combination.
Speaker 2: Pill because it's almost like a different they're different mechanisms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like it's twenty eight active pills for the mini pill.
Speaker 2: Right, But rather than tricking the body into thinking it's
Speaker 2: released an egg, this is just making it hard to
Speaker 2: get pregnant, yes, right, exactly. It's almost like a different
Speaker 2: kind of pill, and then there's what's the.
Speaker 1: Other kind, well, the combination pill the most common. There's
Speaker 1: a few subtypes of that pill as well.
Speaker 2: Right, So there's monophasic, which is what I was talking about,
Speaker 2: where you've got twenty one pills and all of them
Speaker 2: are the same dose of progestin and estrogen. And then
Speaker 2: you've got the seven inert pills. And some women say
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna have a period this month, and then
Speaker 2: you just rather than taking those seven inert pills, you
Speaker 2: just move on to the next month's twenty one pills.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I believe with the monophasic, if you miss
Speaker 1: a day, you can double up the next day.
Speaker 2: Because it's the same amount of pills or the same
Speaker 2: level of hormones. Right, So yeah, and that's far and
Speaker 2: away the most common. There's bi phasic, which has two
Speaker 2: different levels of hormones, and then triphasic has three different levels.
Speaker 2: And the point of by phasic and triphasic is it
Speaker 2: they're designed to give you the absolute minimum amount of
Speaker 2: synthetic hormones that your body requires to keep from ovulating. Yes,
Speaker 2: because the point is is the lower the amount of
Speaker 2: hormones you have in there probably the better off you are,
Speaker 2: whether it's cancer risk, moodiness, who knows, you're you're just
Speaker 2: better off with the least amount that does the trick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the kind of progestin in each of these
Speaker 1: is going to vary. But the type of synthetic estrogen
Speaker 1: is the same, right, It's called ethanyl estradiol eric estrata estradiol.
Speaker 1: That's it ethanyl estradiole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the progestin is the thing that differs sometimes right, correct.
Speaker 2: And depending if like you're on a pill that uses
Speaker 2: woing type of progestine, you can say, oh, I want
Speaker 2: to try a different type of progestine. Then they'll say
Speaker 2: here you go.
Speaker 1: And then the extended cycle, which we talked about, this
Speaker 1: is the newest, the newest one on the market, and
Speaker 1: I believe isn't this the one that is can reduce
Speaker 1: your period to like a few four times a year.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's there's a couple of different there's seasonal
Speaker 2: and season eke and they're called that because that four
Speaker 2: time a year period you'll just be like, op, it's
Speaker 2: fall up, it's summer, right, not in that order, but
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. And then there's libral and
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's other ones on the market too. We
Speaker 2: don't mean to buzz market or anything like that. So
Speaker 2: there's there's there's one that's like three hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: five days, and then there's others that are eighty four days,
Speaker 2: so that you have for either no periods at all
Speaker 2: or four periods a year. Right, So there you go.
Speaker 2: So there's a couple of other things I want to
Speaker 2: hit on the pill is it's so much larger than
Speaker 2: just birth control. Sure, I mean, just the fact that
Speaker 2: it's birth control is an enormous thing. Like, like you said,
Speaker 2: John Rock thought he was going to be able to
Speaker 2: convince the Catholic Church that that this is okay thing.
Speaker 2: That was not the case. In the late sixties, the
Speaker 2: Black power movement really zeroed in on the pill, especially
Speaker 2: the men of the Black Power movement, and said like
Speaker 2: this is this is tantamount to black genocide. And they
Speaker 2: definitely had like a case like there were plenty of
Speaker 2: cases of black women who went into hospitals and gave
Speaker 2: birth and then came out unknowingly sterilized, like the doctor
Speaker 2: had just taken it upon himself to sterilize her after
Speaker 2: delivering her baby. So they're like they had this, they
Speaker 2: had this evidence to back this up, and it was
Speaker 2: never shown. Like, yes, there was a conspiracy to to
Speaker 2: wipe out black power in America through the pill, but
Speaker 2: you like, there were plenty of black women at the
Speaker 2: time who said, like, yeah, I can get birth control
Speaker 2: pills easier than anything that you know down on the
Speaker 2: corner clinic or something like that. And even even with
Speaker 2: the early trials from John Rock and Gregory Pinkus, Like
Speaker 2: one of the things that they zeroed in on Puerto
Speaker 2: Rico for was because they thought that if they could
Speaker 2: show that backwards Puerto Ricans of color could could learn
Speaker 2: how to take the pill regularly, it would demonstrate that
Speaker 2: women in the inner cities could, or women in developing
Speaker 2: countries could. So there was definitely like a mentality toward
Speaker 2: the white establishment being on board with the idea of
Speaker 2: at least providing the tools for other for minorities to
Speaker 2: control their rate of birth. That was just pure and simple.
Speaker 2: That was a thought of it. Yeah, it was, and
Speaker 2: it's had a tremendous amount of benefits too, But there
Speaker 2: were some there was some darkness in the place that
Speaker 2: it originally came from. As well.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and of course anti abortion groups think that
Speaker 1: the pill still to this day is an abortion causing
Speaker 1: agent what they call in.
Speaker 2: Do you know how to pronounce that a border fashion?
Speaker 1: A border fashion? I think so, yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1: Which you know, that's that's long been their argument.
Speaker 2: Well, they their argument is that it makes the the
Speaker 2: uterus hostile to a fertilized egg, like prolonged use would
Speaker 2: prevent a fertilized egg that would otherwise attach from attaching.
Speaker 2: And so that's for all intents and purposes, abortion in
Speaker 2: their position, right, And yeah, that is I don't think
Speaker 2: that one's settled by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 1: So you got anything else, I got nothing else.
Speaker 2: As I predicted belief, this is a good one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it was good.
Speaker 2: I think it was great.
Speaker 1: I hope we did all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we're not like patronizing. We've never been patronizing. No,
Speaker 2: that might be like white dudes, but we're very much
Speaker 2: aware that we're white dudes. And let me leave you
Speaker 2: with this, white dude. If you're a white dude, whether
Speaker 2: it's in America or the West or anywhere, your one
Speaker 2: job is to have some perspective. That's your first and
Speaker 2: foremost job. Take yourself out of your own shoes once
Speaker 2: in a while, look around, put yourself in other people's shoes.
Speaker 2: Your eyes will open widely in agog.
Speaker 1: Some say walk a mile.
Speaker 2: Sure, why not get a little weight off right.
Speaker 1: At least go check the mail.
Speaker 2: If you want to know more about the pill, just
Speaker 2: type in the pill. It'll bring up some cool stuff
Speaker 2: on how stuff Works dot com. And there's also a
Speaker 2: really great American Experience site on PBS that had a.
Speaker 1: Bat Man that was good. Yeah, so good.
Speaker 2: And since I said American Experience and Chuck said, so good,
Speaker 2: it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's not no listener mail today because we've
Speaker 1: had some milestones here lately, and as we sit here
Speaker 1: today in real time, we as a company are celebrating
Speaker 1: the ten year anniversary of Stuff You Should Know again again,
Speaker 1: but we're actually having the party today. And on the
Speaker 1: same day, Apple announced at their.
Speaker 2: WDCC, Yeah, their.
Speaker 1: Developers conference, got up on stage and this one kind
Speaker 1: of hit me, Like we had the thousand episodes that
Speaker 1: was good. The ten years kind of hit me in
Speaker 1: a big way. But they got up on stage today
Speaker 1: and they said that Stuff You Should Know is now
Speaker 1: the first podcast in history, first and only to reach
Speaker 1: five hundred million downloads and streams on their platform, which
Speaker 1: is I didn't know, No, it hit me too somehow.
Speaker 1: Adam Carolla is in againness book of world's records. But
Speaker 1: here we are as the only one. And that's because
Speaker 1: of you all out there. Yes you said a gazillion times,
Speaker 1: but without you, there is no us. We would have
Speaker 1: been long gone if not for your support, So we
Speaker 1: canntinue to give thanks.
Speaker 2: Thank you again. Yeah, we and will continue to give thanks.
Speaker 1: And we will continue to podcast.
Speaker 2: Yes we will chuck, Yes we will.
Speaker 1: And that's all I got.
Speaker 2: If you want to get in touch with us, you
Speaker 2: can send us all an email the Stuff podcast at
Speaker 2: houstuffworks dot com and as always, joined us at our
Speaker 2: extraordinarily grateful home on the web, Stuff youshould Know dot com.
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