Picture this: You live in Central America, and you start hearing the women up in North America are not having live births anymore … but are laying eggs. 

The stuff of sci-fi?

Maybe! But in this interview with undergraduate biologist and neuroscientist Ginger Lee Owens, we learn about humanity’s own history with laying eggs and species that have responded to environmental changes by adapting childbirth. 

Some highlights: 

• Why a single animal species concurrently has egg laying and live births
• How we could genetically hack humans to switch to laying eggs, and why proximity to water matters
• Potential environmental causes for an evolutionary shift away from live births 
• Ways our culture could benefit from multigenerational spaces, and evidence of the value of elder wisdom 

Read Ginger Lee’s blog post “When KNEW meets NEW” on the Northwest Noggin blog here: https://nwnoggin.org/2025/11/21/when-knew-meets-new/ 

Want to visit a world where women lay eggs? Buy Dani’s futuristic matriarchy novel Sister Earth here: danifankhauser.com