The Ladies Want Smarts

**Dr. Kiki Sanford** (0:00)
This is Twist. This Week in Science, episode number 1063, recorded on Wednesday, June 17th, 2026 The Ladies Want Smarts. I'm Dr. Kiki, and today we will fill your head with pregnant moms, forever chemicals, and sexy spatial cognition, but first. Thanks to our amazing Patreon sponsors for their generous support of Twist. You can become a part of the Patreon community at patreon.com/thisweek in Science.
Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer.
A non-injection universal COVID vaccine might be on the way. HPV vaccination keeps cervical cancer at bay, along with all sorts of other nasties. So protect your sons and daughters today. Without routine vaccination, we run the risk of running natural experiments on ourselves. What do we think we will learn by discarding the evidence of decades past? We know once upon a time, many of us died or were damaged, disfigured by diseases that ravaged. We created vaccines to control those demons.
But nuance to treatment came with costs of their own. So many lessons were learned over so many years at a price. But of course, we still can't target our targets perfectly. There are so many parameters to consider and so much science still to be done, but is starting over really what we need to remember that we already have the technology and the know-how and This Week in Science coming up next.

**Blair** (2:26)
Good science to you, Kiki.

**Dr. Kiki Sanford** (2:28)
And a good science to you too, Blair, and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We're back again to talk about all the wonderful things going on that we found worthy to share this week.
Oh, what a wonderful week it has been. The good, the bad, the everything.
And we're here to talk about things. I have stories from the underground. I've got a question of forever or just for now. I've also got some blood thinning news. And I've also got, what did I also bring? Oh yeah, I've got knee pain. I'm looking for skills or at least, yeah, at least some ladybirds looking for skills. Some critical gamers and possibly an immune response.

**Blair** (3:25)
Don't we all? Yeah.

**Dr. Kiki Sanford** (3:28)
What's in the animal corner, Blair?

**Blair** (3:29)
Oh my, I just have a litany of stories related to animals communicating threats. And I will leave it at that.
Oh, and I also have some climate change news before that.

**Dr. Kiki Sanford** (3:44)
That makes me feel threatened as well. I feel like you're just coming in full of threats, Blair.

**Blair** (3:50)
Yeah, aren't we all?

**Dr. Kiki Sanford** (3:55)
We're threatening you here. No, the animals are, the climate is, but it's just the stories.

**Blair** (4:00)
They're just responding to the threat, all right? I feel part of staying alive is recognizing threat. That's really what this is about.

**Dr. Kiki Sanford** (4:08)
That's so important. Thank you for saying that.
If only people could see the threats that were right in front of us.

**Blair** (4:16)
For example, I don't know, just at the top of my head, taking a vaccine that is proven and tested and will keep you from dying.

**Dr. Kiki Sanford** (4:25)
Yeah. That's what the HPV Vaccine News This Week in The Lancet published a study from the UK in which they're basically looking at all the kids that were vaccinated 10, 15 years ago. I think it was 2012 when the vaccines became available. The kids that were vaccinated, they started vaccinating girls at the age of 12 to 13 years old in 2012
Their adults now in their 20s, when women begin to show signs of cervical cancer and rates of cervical cancer have been increasing around the world, they showed 100 percent. Like basically, I mean, not 100 percent, nothing is that perfect. I'm not going to say that. But they showed the HPV vaccine directly is linked to a decrease in cervical cancer rates. People who are vaccinated for HPV as a child or at any point really, they're much, much less likely to get cervical cancer years later. And this also applies, they said, to other forms of cancer that are related to HPV infection. Additionally, it has kept, this study wasn't about males themselves, but by vaccinating males, it reduces the spread of HPV to women who would then get cervical cancer. So if you vaccinate the boy children, it also keeps the girl children from getting cervical cancer and keeps the boys from getting warts and other things.
So, well, it's also great evidence of great evidence of very beneficial result of vaccines. Yeah. I'm just going to say, well, what are you humming about?

**Blair** (6:18)
Yeah. So I just, without giving too much personal information out, I will say that I was of a prime age to receive the vaccine when it came out, and I had a doctor who convinced me not to take it because it was too new.