Everyone gets shown the same picture. A crowd of sperm, tails going, all pointed the same way. Ahead of them one round thing, pale and enormous and entirely still. The story attached to it never varies either: millions set off, one arrives, he breaks through, and she is fertilised. It is a good story. It has a hero and an obstacle and a prize. It is also, in almost every particular, not what happens.

September loses roughly 3.5 minutes of daylight per day — the fastest rate of any month in autumn. Your pineal gland is reading that shift in real time. The question is whether your light environment is letting you receive what it's trying to send.

I was 17 when I was first prescribed the pill. The appointment lasted eight minutes. I was not told about SHBG. I was not told which synthetic progestin I was being given or what else it binds beyond the progesterone receptor. I was not told about the cortisol profile changes, the depression association documented in over a million women, or the preference reversal. The information existed. It was published. It was not passed on.