The XX Lab

Why do you eat when you’re not hungry? If you’ve ever finished dinner and found yourself back in the kitchen twenty minutes later, or stood in the pantry at 3:30 in the afternoon looking for something sweet, it may not be a willpower problem.

I’m a research psychologist, and I’ve studied health and behavior for more than 25 years. In this video, I explain why stress eating may be an old survival strategy: when life feels stressful or uncertain, your brain can read it as a sign that resources are running low, tune out your hunger a...

Thinking about freezing your eggs? The ads make it sound simple: a few shots, a quick procedure, and more time on your biological clock. What does it really cost, what does it do to your body, and how often does it lead to a baby?

In this episode of The XX Lab, Dr. Sarah Hill sits down with health and science journalist Kristen V. Brown, creator of Misconception, the Bloomberg Prognosis series that followed her own path through the fertility industry. Kristen froze embryos at 36 while reporting the story. They cover whether egg freezing is worth it...

Love your partner but rarely feel like having sex?

Most of us were taught that desire should strike out of nowhere, and that if it doesn’t, something is wrong with us. What if desire never worked that way for anyone?

In this episode of The XX Lab, Dr. Sarah Hill sits down with Dr. Cynthia Graham, Senior Scientist at the Kinsey Institute and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Sex Research, who has spent decades studying sexual response and about 35 years working with individuals and couples in sex therapy. They talk about why planned sex ca...

Can the birth control pill change who you’re attracted to? If you’ve been on social media lately, you’ve probably heard some version of this: go on the pill and you’ll pick the wrong partner, or come off it and suddenly realize you’re not attracted to the person you’re with.

In this video, I explain how estrogen, progesterone and the pill shape what you notice in a partner, why there’s no hormone-free “real you” hiding underneath, how to tell low libido from lost attraction, how to track your own patterns, and how to work with y...

Why do we feel so misunderstood, even by the people closest to us? Clinical psychologist Dr. Yael Schonbrun says it’s because we’re trying to fix misunderstanding with the wrong tool. Communication happens between people, but understanding happens inside them. It’s shaped by overconfidence, mood, hunger, history and the stories we tell about each other.

Most of us are certain we understand other people, and just as certain they don’t understand us. That math doesn’t work out. Our brains are built to feel sure of what we perceive, and even Nobel Prize - winning ps...

What if the reason you don't feel like yourself isn't stress or burnout, but a hormonal transition that started years before your cycle ever changed? For many women, early perimenopause begins in the late 30s or early 40s with brain fog, poor sleep, and mood changes, while periods and labs still look completely normal.

In this episode of The XX Lab, I sit down with Dr. Mariza Snyder, women's hormone expert, host of the Energized podcast, and author of The Perimenopause Revolution. We explore early perimenopause symptoms, why midlife weight gain comes down to insulin resistance and...

What if saying yes when you mean no isn't a boundary problem, but a predictable feature of how your brain protects your place in the group? "No is a complete sentence" sounds simple, but the research says the moment of being asked is anything but.

In this episode of The XX Lab, I sit down with Dr. Vanessa Bohns, social psychologist, Cornell professor of organizational behavior, and author of the new book Should I Say Something? We explore compliance vs consent, why we underestimate how often people say yes, the persuasion tactics salespeople use, how to say...

You've been told midlife brain fog is just stress. What if perimenopause is actually revealing a brain you've been masking your whole life?

In this episode of The XX Lab, I sit down with Dr. Jolene Brighten, board-certified naturopathic endocrinologist and author of Beyond the Pill, to talk about her new book, ADHD and Women. We explore why perimenopause unmasks ADHD, how to tell it apart from brain fog, the birth control connection, and what actually supports the ADHD brain.

Whether you're curious about ADHD in women, hormones and the brain, or the hidden side...

What if the strongest predictor of how long you live has nothing to do with your diet, your sleep, or the gym? I have spent my career studying hormones and behavior, and this one still stops me: the quality of your relationships predicts mortality at roughly double the effect of exercise.

In this episode of The XX Lab, I sit down with Dr. Rich Slatcher, Gail M. Williamson Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Georgia and director of the Close Relationships Lab. Rich and I were in the same graduate program at UT Austin, so...

You've been told the pill is too small to change who you are. What if the science says otherwise, and you're not imagining it?

For years, women who reported mood changes on the pill were told it was in their heads, and the research was called conflicting. A new meta-analysis suggests the pattern was there all along. We just weren't looking at the best studies.

In this episode of The XX Lab, Dr. Sarah Hill sits down with Dr. Nusa Faric, a health psychology researcher whose meta-analysis pooled the highest-quality trials on hormonal contraception and...

You've been told the pill and the hormonal IUD act "locally," that they barely touch the rest of you. What if science says almost the opposite? Most of us treat hormones as background chemistry for periods and pregnancy, when they are really broadcast signals traveling everywhere blood goes, switching genes on and off in the brain, the muscles, and far beyond the reproductive organs.

In this episode of The XX Lab, Dr. Sarah Hill sits down with Dr. David Puts, evolutionary anthropologist and neuroendocrinology researcher at Penn State, to explore what hormones actually are, how they shape...

Your WHOOP recovery score dips, you slept fine, you did everything right, so why does the number look worse? What if that "bad" reading is your body working exactly as it should?

In this episode of The XX Lab, Dr. Sarah Hill sits down with Dr. Kristen Holmes, Global Head of Human Performance and Principal Scientist at WHOOP, to explore what wearables really measure in women, resilience to hormonal change, sleep-wake regularity, mental health as the foundation of performance, and her new book, Aligned.

Whether you are curious about what your...

You did everything right, kale, running, annual blood tests, and still ended up with a mass in your lung. So why does the disease killing more young, healthy women than breast, ovarian, and colon cancer combined still carry the stigma of a smoker's disease?

In this episode of The XX Lab, Dr. Sarah Hill sits down with Shira Boehler, lung cancer survivor, author of the New York Times bestseller One Scan Saved My Life, and founder of the Cancer Doesn't Care foundation, to explore why lung cancer is rising in young non-smoking women, sex differences in medicine...

Why does attraction change once you're in a long-term relationship? And could hormones, physical attractiveness, and even what happens after sex shape how satisfied couples remain over time?

On this episode of The XX Lab, Dr. Sarah Hill sits down with Dr. Andrea Meltzer, Professor of Social Psychology at Florida State University, to explore the science of attraction, mate choice, sexual satisfaction, and long-term relationship health.

Dr. Meltzer has spent years studying how individual differences and interpersonal dynamics shape romantic relationships. Her research uses longitudinal and experimental methods to...

What does your voice say before you even finish a sentence?

Long before someone processes your words, their brain has already begun decoding your voice. In a fraction of a second, people can make surprisingly accurate judgments about your age, biological sex, emotional state, health, native language, and even aspects of your social relationships. The fascinating part? Most of this happens automatically.

In this episode of The XX Lab, Dr. Sarah Hill sits down with cognitive scientist Dr. Greg Bryant, Professor and Chair of Communication at UCLA, to explore...

Are women really less competitive than men, or have we been measuring competition the wrong way?

In this episode of The XX Lab, Dr. Sarah Hill sits down with Dr. Khandis Blake, PhD, evolutionary psychologist and researcher, to explore how hormones, competition, confidence, mate preferences, and modern environments shape women's behavior in ways that are often misunderstood.

Why do women compete differently than men?

Drawing on years of research in evolutionary psychology, Dr. Blake explains why women often compete through different strategies than men, how...

We have more health information than ever before, yet we're getting sicker, more stressed, and more overwhelmed. So what's missing?

In this episode of The XX Lab, Dr. Sarah Hill welcomes Sarah Ann Macklin, registered nutritionist, former international model, host of Live Well Be Well, and author of Healthy Shouldn't Be This Hard. Together, they explore why today's $8.5 trillion wellness industry isn't delivering better health and why the missing ingredient may have less to do with information and more to do with how we relate to ourselves.

Why...