Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • Eve

  • How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution
  • By: Cat Bohannon
  • Narrated by: Cat Bohannon
  • Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (54 ratings)

$0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Eve cover art

Eve

By: Cat Bohannon
Narrated by: Cat Bohannon
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
activate_primeday_promo_in_buybox_DT

Listeners also enjoyed...

Disobedient Bodies cover art
Growing Up Human cover art
Poor Things cover art
Space cover art
The Stage of Time cover art
Paleofantasy cover art
The Seven Daughters of Eve cover art
Ishmael cover art
Fossil Men cover art
Humanology cover art
The Language Instinct cover art
Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes cover art
Hominids cover art
Sex at Dawn cover art
Julia cover art
A Story of Us cover art

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Why do women live longer than men? Why do women have menopause? Why are women more likely to get Alzheimer's? Why do girls score better at every academic subject than boys until puberty, when suddenly their scores plummet? And does the female brain really exist?

In Eve, Cat Bohannon answers questions scientists should have been addressing for decades. With boundless curiosity and sharp wit, she covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex. Eve is not only a sweeping revision of human history, it's an urgent and necessary corrective for a world that has focused primarily on the male body for far too long. Bohannon's findings, including everything from the way C-sections in the industrialized world are rearranging women's pelvic shape to the surprising similarities between pus and breast milk, will completely change what you think you know about evolution and why Homo sapiens have become such a successful and dominant species, from tool use to city building to the development of language.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Cat Bohannon (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

A smart, funny, scientific deep-dive into the power of a woman's body, Eve surprises, educates, and emboldens. Who runs the world? Girls! (Bonnie Garmus, author of LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY)
Such a rare book: scholarly, funny, accessible and very important. A truly original history of humans that explains so much of who we are today (Chris van Tulleken, author of ULTRA-PROCESSED PEOPLE)
Utterly fascinating. This book should revolutionise our understanding of human life. It is set to become a classic (George Monbiot, author of REGENESIS)

What listeners say about Eve

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    45
  • 4 Stars
    6
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    2
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    45
  • 4 Stars
    4
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    43
  • 4 Stars
    6
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant

A must for every woman who thinks about herself and her children and making a better world for her grandchildren.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Writing women back into our origins story

This is evolutionary history of Woman - rather than man, for once. Its extraordinarily well researched, shocking, hilarious, tear-jerking and insightful. Most of all it's beautiful and resonant. I hope all women and men read it. Thankyou

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

a must read not only for women

Informative, funny and eye opening. This must be read in schools to all young adults over the globe not only women looking for answers. I will rate it as high as Harari's Sapiens. It answered most of my questions about my body, mind and cultural development of our grandmothers along human evolution. Really enjoyable audio.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Absolutely Outstanding 🌟

Not only does Cat make a complicated subject easy to understand but her humour and natural flow made this one of the most enjoyable books I’ve ever listened to. It has completely changed my perspective and understanding and I am extremely grateful for all the time and energy that has gone into creating it. Thank you 🙏

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Interesting and enlightening

This book is a meticulous factual journey through the evolution of the female body, telling the story through “Eves” of various evolutionary changes. I learned a lot. The author gave new perspectives on what that biology means, from why we walk on two legs to the development of writing to monogamy or otherwise. I liked the author’s reading (rare!)

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Much needed but flawed

I loved this book! The authors opens with the notion that there's much more biological and medical research being done on men than women, and then goes all in on writing a female-centric narrative of how evolution shaped our species through the lens of how it shaped the female body and physiology. It's completely women-centric and scientific literature like that is so much needed today. I do hope it will spark many more books of this sort, so we can have a proper understanding of the our entire species, not just the half with testicles.
However, while listening to it, it was evident that some parts lacked fact checking. For instance, the ratio of male to female births is said to be 1.7:1. In other words, it claims that there are 70% more boys being born than girls. Where are all the extra men of the world?! Obviously, this must be a typo of some sort, but it's present in both the kindle and audio version of the book and somehow it didn't grind on the ears of the author herself as she was reading it out loud. (My guess is that the 1.7 figure was a mistake made while transcribing the data from the actual statistic, which says that the boys to girls ratio is between 1.03 and 1.07 to 1, although why the author picked the upper bound of that range is unclear.) Another example - it says that 4.4 kHz is the frequency of the A note, while actually, 4.4kHz is C# (A is 440 Hz). I know these are small details, but if the author and her editors were too lazy to fact check them, it's possible that other facts in the book are also inaccurate, maybe even facts that are central to some arguments mode within. And I would hate for a book as important as this one to be open to attacks on its merit, because it's getting the odd fact wrong. Hopefully, there will be a second edition with the errors weeded out.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Every therapist, scientist, politician and executive should listen to this book!

It’s not for the faint-hearted… pretty graphic biological descriptions that e.g. could make one wonder why on Earth we’d commit to pregnancy, and alot of unashamed references to our various paths of mortality and our basic biological and sociological urges - but equally empowering to all realms of humanity, not only women but all the other self-identifying genders, including men. The author’s effectively feminist and egalitarian stance is carefully backed up by evidence-based science and, IMO, successfully avoids bias on this basis. I LOVED this book, I loved the author’s humour, I loved the feelings of emboldening I got from the clarifying science that women are WAY more effective than males would sometimes have us believe.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Eye opening, absolutely brilliant

Beautifully written and very very interesting, especially reading this as a man. Read really well by author herself. Highly recommended

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Interesting Listen

Excellent, intriguing and well spoken. Easy listening and great storytelling. Came across it from a Freakenomics Radio interview and lived up to my expectations.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A must read

Seriously. Especially for those who thinks they understand human evolution and biology.
The depth of the research is matched by an excellent narrative flow and humour.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!