YOUR EYES DO NOT DECEIVE YOU! WE ARE FINALLY BACK WITH A NEW EPISODE! Arriving fashionably late to remote podcasting just eight months after everyone else, here we are. We promise it's been worth the wait for this one.

Episode 16 sees Ella joined by the brilliant, hilarious and ACTUAL AWARD WINNING SCIENTIST Dr Bahijja Raimi-Abraham. Bahijja is a pharmacist, Lecturer in Pharmaceutics at King’s College London, Founder and Academic Lead of King’s College London Fight the Fakes. She also hosts the Monday Science podcast, and is an expert in drug delivery and global health. Aka, the perfect person to talk to right now.

We discuss first periods (of course), how you even do a PHD, being creative with science, Tim Westwood, giving professional vagina advice and being in James Bond. Yep, Bahijja was in James Bond. We also talk about coronavirus and periods - how it’s affected some people’s cycles, and the research into COVID-19 and wider women's health currently taking place.

You can find Bahijja on Twitter @DrBahijjaRaimiA, and her podcast Monday Science on Twitter @MondayScience_ and Instagram @MondayScience.

The studies we talk about include:- 'The Impacts of Coronavirus on Women', Fawcett Society, https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/the-impacts-of-coronavirus-on-women- 'Sex differences in COVID-19 immune responses affect patient outcomes', Yale News, https://news.yale.edu/2020/08/26/sex-differences-covid-19-immune-responses-affect-patient-outcomes- 'Estrogen and COVID-19 symptoms: associations in women from the COVID Symptom Study', medRxiv, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.30.20164921v3

First Blood is a podcast about periods and puberty, hosted by Ella Woods. Get in touch at [email protected], and follow us on @FirstBloodPodcastUK on Instagram, @FirstBloodPodUK on Twitter. Thanks to Charlie Woods for the music.