The Great Mysteries of Sex with Mary Roach

Dr. Dung would be a good, you know, he's just so kind of matter of fact.

“You don't have to play some music, right, as well?”

Oh, God, yeah, yeah, he goes, and I was kidding. And I said, "Where's the romantic lighting and music?" And he goes, "Oh, wait, on my laptop, I have the soundtrack to lay me this." Okay. Good at you, science, chats, without fail-written notes. Yeah.

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and today on the show, we have talking about the science of sex.

“And in particular, how scientists have desperately and awkwardly tried to study sex for decades?”

Yes, today we bunk, which is possibly the best word for sex. Fulled closely by Stup, but bunk is also the title to Mary Roach's best selling book on this very topic. And even though bunk was written a hot minute ago, it is still at least fabulous, highly relevant book of science is still mind-blowing. So today we are talking to Mary about her book. We uncover the mysteries of orgasms.

We'll tell you how to sexually stimulate a pig, also a human. Yes, we'll talk about how to have mind-ripling sex. If you are elisd to this unspotify, you can be watching it too. It's on video. After the break, my interview with The Amazing Mary Roach. Come on up!

Welcome back today on the show, my interview with The Amazing Science Rider Mary Roach, and we're talking about her book, bunk, which is absolutely fabulous, so let's talk about the new book. Welcome back today on the show, my interview with The Amazing Science Rider Mary Roach, and we're talking about her book, "Bunk." Just absolutely fabulous, so let's just get into it.

Mary Roach, I'm so excited. They say never meet you heroes, but here we are.

So thank you so much for joining us on the show. My pleasure. I have heard you say that in high school, you thought science was a drag.

“What changed for you? When did you start to fall in love with science?”

Well, I had that sense of science, I equated it with science homework, and the textbooks that I had to read, and it just seemed like a slog, and then I started out doing just mainstream journalism.

What's given these assignments that were so interesting, and they were so, I mean, a lot of traveling, and I began to realize that science is basically you, your body,

your computer, your dog, the world, I mean, how could it be boring? It's basically how the world works. Science is it's all about following your curiosity and just sort of asking, why and how and then what made you want to write a book about sex, so really, this is the science of sex. Yeah, that was, well, I was looking around for another book topic, this is my third book, and around that time, I was looking through, it was an old back issue of some film, some really kind of nerdy film journal, I don't remember why, or what waiting room I was in, but there was a reference to the cultoscopic films of Masters in Johnson, and I was thinking, "Colposcopy" that's something to do with this cervix, and I'm like, "Holy crap, did they actually film inside a woman's body?"

And in fact, they did, they made a penis camera and they put it in, and the woman was like having sex with this palace with a light source and a camera, and I was like, "Holy crap, that's my next book, sex research," because like, how delightfully awkward is that, to bring people into a laboratory setting and have them do sexual things, and you're the researcher in your white coat, and I just thought that scene is very, very roach. I've got got to do a book about that. What made it, I mean, it's a delightful and awkward and fabulous, see, what made it very roach.

and stuff, and all this weird crap's going on, and that's kind of cool. You know, it's almost like travel. I used to love to do a lot of travel from my reporting, and at some point realized that the human body is kind of a foreign planet that is fun to play around. Yeah, for sure, and particularly all these very important areas, but that we just don't probe or talk about that much, all the more, they're the dark side of the moon or whatnot. Yeah, now there's this wonderful quote that comes from your book, it's from the psychologist John B. Watson, writing in the early 20th century.

I'm basically, he was a bit myth at science as reluctance to study human sexuality, which I would say still exists today, and he says that we should have our questions answered,

not by our mothers and grandmothers, not by priests and clergymen in the interests of middle class mors, nor by general practitioners, not even by Freudians, we want them answered by scientifically trained students of sex. And I love this, it's true, and it's even more true today, we don't have so many Freudians, but we have influences in our own version of this.

“What, yeah, why did you, we sort of open with this, you know, it comes early in your book, what, you know, I could see you smiling as you remember, what is this passage made to you?”

Well, it was amazing to me when you think about the act of sex, even independent from fertility, just sex, this is a biological physiological thing, and yet, even up through the mid 1900s, nobody was, he wouldn't find it in a textbook, like a classic physiology textbook, there'd be no mention of like intercourse or rousal orgasm, like doesn't exist. But moving along, moving along, you know, and particularly for people who are having any kind of trouble sexually or, you know, whether or not just not satisfied or not conceiving or whatever, you know, you've behooves us to understand, and it's not just, it's good to know because of the sake of knowing it was also actually really helpful for people to know what could be going wrong.

I mean, you look back at Robert Latu Dickinson, who was the one who got Kinsey interested in sex research, Kinsey had been studying gall wasps. Dickinson, like, hey, I guess something a little more interesting for you. How about sex?

Yeah, Dickinson was an amazing guy who had, he was a gynecologist, but he was very open with his patients, and he talked about how, you know,

we would have patients who were having trouble conceiving because they didn't realize like the penis has to actually go in there. Yeah. No, how to do it. Like, I mean, we tall a cock going the butt, a cock going the butt, you know. You're not that whole, this whole.

Yeah. Well, maybe that whole later, but, you know.

“But it's actually people felt so uncomfortable bringing it up. Who do you ask? And who do you talk to?”

People didn't feel like they could talk to their partner or their doctor. And so anytime you can break down a taboo like that, I think it's, it's a good thing. And it was really hard for Kinsey and Masters and Johnson, the early researchers, it was so taboo. What did you kind of learn about what it was like to be a trained student of sex or a science researcher back then? Not only difficult and that's such a taboo even more than today.

But they were also quite creative, as you mentioned with the penis cameras. Yeah, I mean, and I really wanted to see that penis camera.

“I mean, it should be in this Smithsonian.”

And I tried to find it Virginia Johnson's son. I was like, look, we don't want to talk to you. I'm like, well, where is it? I finally heard that it had been dismantled. Like it doesn't exist anymore. It could be, you know, was attached to a motor and was like, I don't know.

And the woman could control the speed and like they were cranking it up. And Kinsey didn't even have a lab. Kinsey was using his attic.

People were coming up to the attic and just, you know, the creativity was kind of amazing.

At one point, there was this, there was a belief that when a couple is having trouble

Enough, it wasn't shooting out.

And there was this belief that it should be shooting out. And Kinsey was like, no, it doesn't, it just kind of glops. And I'm going to prove this and he went out. I hired a bunch of male prostitutes set up a camera and put down two,

“I remember it was Oriental carpets and had them jerk off and then filmed the stuff coming out.”

And did show that it mostly just glops. Although there were some people with some very, you know, projectile ejaculations. But anyway, I'm like, you had a question and he figured out a way. Yeah, and that is super important because if you expected to shoot out, so many people would think that was something wrong with them.

And people who are having trouble conceiving would be like, oh my God, my stuff isn't coming out right. You know, it's like, no, no, it is. You're good.

It just needs to glow up.

Don't worry. It's a cloppy thing. It's not like a glorious fountain. [laughs] And in your book, you mentioned you have a favorite like a seed.

Obviously you were reading, Kinsey and Wasis and Judson. What is your favorite line of Kinsey's from? Sexual behavior in the human female. I think. Okay, here's my favorite line.

There's lots, but this is the favorite. Okay. Cheesecrumb spread in front of a pair of copulating rats will distract the female, not the male. [laughs]

I just love that. And you know that he did that. He did the crumbs out. Oh God. And he watched.

You know. [laughs] And the female's like, oh, what's that? Oh, something to eat. The male's like, what are you talking about?

Why are you even like, my God? [laughs] So one of the big questions you tackle in this book is female orgasm. It's sort of this mystery of why females orgasm at all.

“Why, if are those who've never really thought about it?”

Why is this a mystery? Well, with men, orgasm is obviously tied to reproduction. You know, you have your ejaculation, which delivers the semen, and then does how conception happens. So it's obvious what function it serves.

And with women, it wasn't so clear. But there was, for centuries, this belief that it was tied to conception and that the contractions, uterine contractions that happened during orgasm. They thought there was this belief that they were sucking up the semen, like delivering it more quickly and therefore and boosting the odds of conception.

You know, as far back as the 1700s, there was this belief that it was good for women, because you know, if a woman was having trouble conceiving the sort of take the man aside and go, you know, like there was a famous line who knows if it's true. Emperors Maria, the Habsburg monarchy, Maria Theresa was having trouble conceiving, and the royal physician takes the husband aside and goes,

it's just, you know, the opinion of the physicians that the vulva of her majesty should be titillated for some time prior to intercoming. Yeah, so let's make sure she's enjoying this. And that was, you know, hundreds of years, I was a belief. Wow, how wonderful.

Yeah, I wonder for exactly. But to answer this question, and really get into the deep mysteries of Fabel orgasm across the animal kingdom, you went to Denmark to make some peaks. Can you tell me about this adventure? Yeah, yeah.

“Tell me, how did you feel when you got that invite as well?”

Oh, I'm all as very excited when somebody agrees, because, you know, I send these emails like, oh, you don't know me, and you guys disseminate sounds. And I've heard that you sexually stimulate the sound before you deliver the seamen and that that boosts the odds of conception. And can I come watch?

So, you know, they're like, sure, come on down.

And I'm always very excited.

And somebody says, yeah, you can come watch us stimulate the sounds in the barn. So, yeah, this was the national committee for Danish national committee for pork production was, I believe, the name of the group. And yeah, there's this, I think it's a 6% increase in the feroing rates, which is the, you know, how many piglets does it produce?

So, they had found that right that if you sexually stimulate, yes, female pig is so,

So, how exactly do you sexually stimulate a female pig?

Oh, Wendy, I'm glad you asked me that. I actually, they gave me a poster of the different steps. I mean, what you do is not, with the exception of one step, it is not like anything you do with a human. Okay, partner. Okay, I feel like I should be taking notes.

The male, the bore, that is, is using his snout. And he does stuff like he sticks his snout in the Inquino fold, which is where the thyme, it's the torso and kind of lifts her up a little bit, which I guess is exciting for the sound. Yeah. So, about 70, 40 similar to what we do, right?

It's just lifting up and dropping a little bit for a while, very exciting. And then kind of poking around the vulva, also, I met with the snout. So, because you don't have hands, I don't know, hand, hand, hand, hand, hand, hand, hand. See, the snout is right.

There, the snout comes in handy.

Uh-huh.

“So, that's what the work, the inseminators are doing.”

They're lifting, they'll go and lift the sound up. Like that, lift her up, and then drop her down a little bit. And then poke her around the vulva of the sound. And then they also, and here's the overlap, pigs and people, that they lie on the sounds back, which mimics the weight of the bore on the sounds back.

And then they reach around and kind of funnel the memories, the teats. Oh, interesting. A little bit. And that's the part where I think the Danish pig farmers felt a little uncomfortable. Oh, that was it.

That was what tipped them over there. That was what did it, yeah. There's a scene in the video where, and I felt it was intentional. This is an instructional video, right? Yes, it was.

Exactly an instructional video. And they have just had some blonde Danish young man. And they, one point that kind of zoom in on his hand as it's down near the teats. And you can see, he's wearing a wedding ring. It's kind of like the, I felt that they were kind of going, you know, we just want to reassure you.

He did, there's nothing weird going on with the pig. He's happily married. Yes. It was just like that.

“But I have the poster if you want to see it.”

The police, I want to see the party. It's totally disintegrating because this has been a while. And they, they must have used, oh my God, it's just falling apart. It's like a little higher. I know, yeah.

It's a, um, it's in Danish. It looks like, it looks like a pirate's treasure map. That's right. It's totally crumbling. It's called optimal reproduction.

And did the, so look like she was having a good time? No, the sound looked very bored, but they, she's like, where are the cheese crowns? She now, not, but they told me or someone told me, look, a pig, like a dog, expresses its emotion and its delight, et cetera, with its ears more. Emotions in animals is often with the ears.

“And I was, you know, looking at the eyes and the mouth.”

So I, I wasn't tuned in to how the sound might have been showing her delight. Wow. Yeah, pigs off, I feel the pig, pigs have a very vibrant sex life. Not only is the ejaculation going on for minutes at a time, five minutes, apparently. The female, the clitoris is right just inside the vagina.

So it's getting stimulated. If the, if the sound is enjoying things, then it is. You know, there's a, it does affect conception. And I was like, whoa, does that mean, yeah, whoa, how do we drive that with, just this mean with women in women?

Does this happen? Also, because there's a number of studies. So there was like hamster and jurble and rodent, other rodent studies that maybe it did affect fertility. So along come, masters and Johnson. They're like, I don't think so.

I don't think so at all, and we're going to prove it. And so they did, here again, the creativity of these researchers was amazing.

And they're like, okay, here's what we do.

We make some artificial seamen, okay. And I had the recipe in the book. I think it involved cornstarch. Anyway, I didn't want to be the right viscosity and everything. They put it in a sort of a cervical cap and installed it or the woman, you know, put it in.

And then they set her up in front of an x-ray machine and she masturbated.

So the seamen will show up so they can see if it's being slept up during orgasm.

And that's what they did. And they didn't see any upsuck.

“So when the women orgasm, the sperm didn't move more inside of them.”

It didn't, no, no, they didn't find that that happened. Also, someone else pointed out that the uterine contractions are expulsive. They're not sucking in. They're shooting out. Like they're pushing out.

Like they do during a woman's period, they kind of help the material. The blood come out. So there was that argument. Someone else then came along and said, well, no, it cycles during, you know, certain parts of the woman's cycle. It's sucking in and then certain type parts of the cycle.

So anyway, amazing that all this confusion and work that's been done in the name of proving or disproving upsuck.

Personally, I just like to say upsuck because it's a great work. It's an x-loat upsuck. And then I have looked, I did look into the research pool since you published your book to see if there's been any new studies, new exciting studies,

“exploring what's going on with female orgasm, why do those with vaginas orgasm?”

And I did, it's funny that, you know, the more things change the more they stay the same, because I did find this study from just a couple of years ago that looks like it could have come straight out of Master's and Johnson. They got six women, put a sperm stimulant into their vaginas. And then they were asked to masturbate, but with the flip of a coin, it decided whether they were going to orgasm or not orgasm. And then they put a moon cup into their vagina and walked around for an hour.

And then the researchers looked at what fell out. How much dropped out and how much was sucked up? Exactly. Exactly. And then the study of only six people, they found that there was more retention of this sperm stimulant if they were to orgasm.

It was large by about 15% leading, of course, the tabloids in the UK, just scream, women up to 15% more likely to get pregnant if they orgasm. Well, well, it's okay. Good. Good. Let them believe that. Let them believe that. Yes, exactly. Which is not that the study did not test actual pregnancy. So yes, but yeah, as you said, so we keep going back and forth on this, why, why does this look as it happened and excited to say the research will continue? It will continue. So in your book, you look at some fascinating sexual discoveries that have been made by scanning people.

Either in an MRI or an ultrasound. And there is one case report that I cannot get out of my mind in the book you called it "George Rupping."

“Do you remember, do you know which case report I'm talking about?”

The seven-month-old? Yes. In utero. Okay. This is a seven-month-old male fetus of fetus. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And this was a sonogram, ultrasound, sonogram, and the researcher. This was just written up as a letter to the editor in a journal like, "Hey, I saw this and it's pretty weird." And they have two still images from the ultrasound. One is the fetus, and his low hand is right on his little penis.

Oh, no, near it. It's near it. And then the second image, he's grasping it.

So it's two stills, but then the R if you read the letter, he says the researcher is Real Meizner, says that he observed a little guy playing with himself. For like 15 minutes? 15 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. But when you think about it, I mean, there's nothing to do in there. You're seven months. It's true. It's all. If you discover that, you'll be like, "Oh, this is going to make the time go faster." Exactly. It must have happened a lot.

If we've got one case of it, there must be doctors who have seen this, and they're just turning a blind eye out. Exactly. You would think, "So yeah. What did you think when you saw the images and read that case report?" Oh, I've just like sprinted to the copy machine. This is going in a book. This segment is brought to you by the all new Audi Q3. Here's an impressive fact.

Now let's go to dinner party genius.

And then the segment sponsored by Audi will give you a fun and delightful science facts. That's sure to impress your friends and get the conversation going at your next party. And to talk about this, I'm here with producer Akadi Foster Kees. Hey Akadi.

“Hey, Merrill. So do you struggle with small talk at parties?”

Yeah, sometimes. I really don't like when a lot of people are looking at me and expecting me to say something funny. Right? Yeah. It can be hard, but I have a fun science fact for you to help you out. And it's about nightmares. Do you struggle with nightmares? I do. There's this one that comes up quite a bit where I'm being chased through like a building by a tiger. And the tiger can bust through different walls and climb through really small spaces even though it's ginormous.

That sounds terrifying. I'm sorry, but, you know, nightmares are super common, but we are not helpless.

The science has a way to help us to stop having this scary dream. So yeah, there's this technique. Here's how it works. So first you take your scary dream.

But you kind of reimagine it. So that instead of the tiger just like, you know, catching you and mulling you or whatever, you kind of give it a happy ending. So maybe you're thinking of the dream, the tiger's chasing you, and then you have like a magic wand and you turn around and go like presto and change it the tiger into a little kitten. And then the kitten does like me, oh me, oh me, oh, hi a kitty. And that's scary anymore because it's a cute kitten. So, and then so after you have your happy version of the dream, when you're awake, you just think about that version of the dream. Again and again and again and again, until it kind of gets cemented into your brain.

And so the idea is to kind of retrain your brain while you're awake so that the next time you actually have the dream that happy version will kick in and you'll like end up with a cute kitten. Oh my gosh, that's so awesome. I would love to have a cute kitten that's just like crawling over me as opposed to a tiger. That's mulling you. That sounds like way better. Right. Yeah. I didn't know that I'm not dreaming. It's great.

Yeah. And so several studies find that this works like really well.

So yeah. And you know, not only will you have a cute dream, but you'll have a great conversation starter at your next party.

“So do you think you'll use this next time you're at a party?”

Oh, yeah. Next time someone's telling you about their nightmares, I'm going to come in like Doctor Who and just relax. Well, presto. And this is what you do. Perfect. Thanks, Aketi. Thanks, Merrill. That segment was brought to you by the All-New Audi Q3.

Here's a few more fun facts. The All-New Audi Q3 features more power and more space than ever before. Plus Quattro, all-wheel drive gets you there with confidence. It's built to impress kind of like you at your next dinner party. Say yes to the All-New Audi Q3 made for the Yes Life. Learn more at AudiUSA.com.

Welcome back.

“The brilliant best selling science ride at Mary Roach is here with us.”

We're going to keep bumping along. You and your husband signed up to be guinea pigs in an ultrasound experiment. Tell us about this. Yeah. Well, you know, it wasn't my plan to be a subject in this study. This was, again, an ultrasound study.

So you could take this sort of moving image three-dimensional image of whatever the body part was. And the researcher in question had done this three-dimensional imaging of a penis erect penis. And the idea being if somebody had say payrollies disease where the erect penis goes crooked, which can be kind of painful. Like, he could preview by taking a 3D ultrasound movie of the patients erecting penis.

He could get a sense of what he was going to do in the surgery. Well, that was the idea. And so I wrote to this doctor, Dr. Dungy and I was like, "Wow." And then in that paper he said, you know what? And then the next, for my next act, I'm going to bring a couple in.

And I'd like to film genitals in sexual congress. And I'm like, "I need to be there for that." So I wrote to him and I'm like, "Would it be okay if I came to London?" And so I was there to observe why you did this project. And he's like, "Yeah, we could arrange that.

But I've been unable to find a couple who want to do this. So if your organization can provide a willing couple, so my organization called, it's husband."

I was going to London." We could go see a play, like, "Yeah." Jeremy, iron's is in something.

“We can go see a play and we'll go out to eat.”

And we have to have sex in front of some guy with an open sound. And I also had a such a good sport. You know what I'm like? Yeah, I mean, it was only on. He'd been like, "Oh, sex research signed me up for that."

You know, like, "Okay, here's your chance." And it was so awkward. Oh, my God. Don't make everything. It was just so, you know, because we're in, you know,

it was after hours. We're in the radiology department. There's no one around.

And we were, you know, first we're waiting for a while.

And they're sitting in the hallway. And then, like, we see him coming down the hall. And Ed goes, "It's my husband." He's like, "Here he comes." Oh, my God.

He's like, "We were both just wide. Did we say yes? This is so weird." You know, it was, if you're going to have sex in front of a researcher with an ultrasound wand, Dr. Dunn would be a good, you know,

he's just so kind of matter of fact. And he's making conversation while this is going on. We had a lie.

“You know, he had the wand up to my belly.”

So this had to be a from behind situation, right? You don't have to play some music, right? As well. Oh, God. Yeah. He goes, "I was kidding," and I said, or no Ed said,

"Where's the romantic lighting and music?" 'Cause we're in this, you know, lab with fluorescent lights.

And he thought Ed was being serious.

And he goes, "Oh, wait. On my laptop, I have the soundtrack to leave me." (laughing) Okay. And he also gave Ed, you know,

it's like some stimulative literature to quote masters in Johnson's term for porn. But it was, it was an issue of men's health or some like with the, well, as choir where there's like one kind of,

not naked, but scantily, clad, woman is like, "Okay." (laughing) Okay, great. You know, when we're wearing those horrible hospital

johnny's, you know. Oh, wow, you know. But it was kind of shy, so it's like, "Yeah, with the back open." And it's kind of chilly, so he's like,

"You can leave your socks on." (laughing)

You got the scene, you have the scene.

(laughing) Afterward Ed's like, I can't, but it will also Viagra was involved. Okay. I was going to say, "You can imagine."

Yeah, so Viagra was using it. Exactly. You go through all this effort. You fly to London, you know. And then, right, and did,

it was it enjoyable at all? Like, no, no, no, no, no. But I, yes, in the sense that I'm taking notes and I'm writing down what's happening and I'm like, this is going to be so fun to write up.

Wow, that's it. So I'm like, I'm like the female with the cheese crumbs because I've got a no-pad and I'm writing. No, like, I don't know, let's go on back there, but whatever.

But I did feel kind of bad that I dragged Ed into this. I felt kind of bad. Yeah, the instructions from the doctor that you describe with the book, I quite funny now. He said, "Now, please make some sort of movement in and out."

Yeah, yeah, and then he, one point he goes,

“"I think it was something like he's asking about”

and the littleist one. How old is she now?" And then he's like, "You can't exactly now." [laughter] Oh my God.

Wow, but Ed was able to ejaculate. In that situation? Yeah, yeah. I think so. Wow.

And what was up people, please, sir? He's a people, please, sir. [laughter] It's like, yeah, the worst sex ever. For me.

Did you learn any, did you get to see the images at the end? And did you learn anything? He did send me an image and at some point I sent it to slate and they had it online. Oh, thank you.

So it was on the internet. It's like two seconds long. It's the most g-rated, x-rated footage you will ever. It's just like in and out. It's in and out.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's not very sexy. Yes. Okay, the last experiment I'm going to ask you about

that you signed up for is, you did use a vaginal photo... "Let's autograph." Let's autograph. Let's autograph.

Let's autograph. Let's autograph. Probe. She described in the book as Cinderella's tampon. If you could see through its glass, it's glass.

It's like a little glass tampon. Yeah. Because, okay, this is device for measuring a rousal. It goes in the vagina. The photo plus size, the plus size in my graph,

is measuring blood flow in the vagina.

Depending out like a light signal and depending on how aroused,

“you are thick and aroused and engorge the walls of the vagina,”

it sends a signal back. But this little see-through thing that you... The size of a tampon and you put it in, and then this was a study about female arousal. And so I was a subject in that study.

The interesting thing about when you study penises and them getting aroused, it's fairly obvious. They get erect, they get aroused. Not always, not always. You can obviously feel arousal without erection.

But if you have a vagina, it's more complicated. Sometimes you can feel arousal, but you don't get wet. So it's not so clearly one-four-one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's the work of this is Cindy Meston at the University of Utah,

University of Texas Austin.

She was studying arousal women. It's interesting because if you show them stimulative literature. Sorry, more, stimulative media, pornography. Women tend to respond across the board, whether it's gay, lesbian, straight.

I mean, hetero, animals, whatever. Women tend to have a response.

“Men are much more men are like, "That's what I like to see."”

And that's what arouses me. So women will respond. But the difference, compared to men, they don't necessarily realize it. Because they're not getting a boner.

It's like there's something going on in there. And you can measure it with a photo-plusides, you measure it.

But then afterwards, you interview the person as they did me.

And they said, "So that, where you aroused, how aroused did you think that you were from this part of the film?" And then that part of the film. And if you say, "You know, I didn't do anything for me." It was like some really creepy porn.

The guy was disgusting and a horrible mustache. He, the sexless boy. I wasn't aroused at all. They'll look at the ratings or the data that they're getting. And go, "Actually, you were, you were responding."

Very interesting. Does that mean that when they're being honest with ourselves about what truly arouses us? Or more that we genuinely weren't aroused. But somehow, it's physiological rate.

It definitely happened. There's physiological arousal, but it's not necessarily tied to a psychological arousal. Like in terms of you having a satisfying sex life, it's not like, you know, somebody's going to say,

"Well, we put a little see-through device in your vagina. In fact, you were responding. Yeah, but a good time. You know, you'd be like, "No, it wasn't." Yes.

No. Moving on to then, like I said, we've been talking about sex all the time. I don't know. I'm just going to say, "Wait, just more sex." You look at the in your book.

You look at the many things that can trigger orgasms. Sex obviously, or good sex, dreams. The tell us the story of a woman from Taiwan. Yeah, their orgasm is a reflex. And it can be triggered in ways that you wouldn't imagine.

You know, you wouldn't imagine. It doesn't sort of drive with how you imagine orgasm. But they're all manner of, I mean, people are wired very differently. So anyway, this woman would have an orgasm when she brushed her teeth.

And I would think that that'd be a delightful thing. You'd have really great gum-dic gum health. You know, you'd be like, "You don't need to go to the dentist." Because I'm brushing like three times a day. Yeah.

But it bothered her. And she was avoiding. I mean, there's another woman in the book who had spontaneous orgasm. And she was a practicing Muslim. And it was sometimes what happened during devotional periods.

And it was very upsetting, very disturbing. And there was someone else rubbing her eyebrow. What was interesting after I did a TED talk that was based on things in the book. And after that talk was put online, I got a lot of interesting email from people saying, "They thought, "Well, they thought I was a researcher."

“So people would write to me that's how I got a woman who said on a good day,”

putting lip gloss on will do it. And another guy wrote to me and said, "You know, every time I write a bicycle, I have an orgasm." And when I go somewhere, I mean, anticipating is going to happen.

And if it hasn't happened, I'll kind of write around for a while. And it makes me late. It was this whole story. Wow. He's like, "So just, you know, people are wired in different ways."

Then you can somehow get that response going.

Just triggers that response. In Bong, you visit a Dildo Manufacturing store, which had the model of an anus, which is based on a porn star, and your book, you have in caps lock. You guys showing you around this factory. And he goes, "Yeah, you have an anus in caps lock."

When it comes to the anus, I mean, it is so taboo. I've heard you talk about how people don't even describe when they have anal cancer. And there's no ribbons for brown ribbons for anal cancer. There's no day for anal cancer. Like, it's like an evening with the butt.

Right. Why do you think this is? And again, why? Because it's where crap comes out, where shit comes out. It's just it's very personal.

And it's it's smelly and and Jeremy. And so it is.

There's all kinds of reasons why it would be taboo.

But the fact that it is taboo, there's risks associated with that. Like you mentioned, you know, there was no ribbon for anal cancer. Fairfacet died of anal cancer.

And the news it was reported as colon cancer. It was like down there, cancer. Nobody really even talked about it.

“And I remember reading about the early days of anatomy,”

partly because this was before air conditioning. And you know, that it was often hot or room temperature or warm in the dissecting room. And the colon was, you know, stinky and full of bacteria.

So they would take the whole thing out throw it away. So nobody was really even. And I was looking at it. Nobody's studying it. You know, and, and, you know,

even today, I imagine. The guy who does my colonoscopies. He said that his son for a long time believed that surgeons were assigned a specialty. Because he's like,

"Why else would you become the guy? He was looking up everybody's ass all." He's like, "You mean you chose this?" [laughter] But you know, with any taboo,

whether it's the asshole or, or it's just something relating to sex. If somebody feels that they can't speak about it openly with their partner or with their doctor. Yeah. And then they're unhappy.

They're putting their health possibly at risk. And so it's, I think it's just healthy to talk about it. I mean, when the book came out, I remember my public is saying, "Merry, how are you going to promote this book?

Are you going to just stand in front of like a hundred strangers and say things like clitoris and orgasms?"

“And I'm like, "Yeah, that's what I'm going to do."”

And I think the audience really appreciated that, because it would come to the question and answer time and people would actually ask pretty personal questions and, you know, and I got the sense that people like appreciated having the freedom to just ask things.

You know, that's why I felt like these researchers were so heroic in a way, you know, that they dared to break down that taboo. So especially the forties, you know, when Kinsey was working, the 50s and 60s masters in Johnson, and Robert Lutu Dickinson before all of that.

And so it's, I don't know, I had a lot of respect for people who do this, who do this work. Yeah. It's interesting having, you know, he ever put it on a bunch of different sex topics.

How I had thought we were so much more advanced than we are, you know, but they still say, it's so hard to get funding, it's so hard to be taken seriously. Oh, yeah, yeah. There was Roy Levin talked about how he was at,

“I think it was a conference of yourologists, maybe,”

and he was, he did a paper about, I think it was vaginal secretions. It's like nobody knows, nobody has ever looked at vaginal secretions. What's in them, how are they secreted? I mean, nobody had looked at that.

So he's like, I'm gonna look at that. Yeah. And he's described being in the men's room and the inside the stall and hearing people like joking about him in the bathroom. You know, just, yeah.

Yeah. And these are, yeah, these are MDs. Now you're last chapter of Bunk. It opens with this line. When I began this book, I habit an naive fantasy

that I would find a team of scientists working to discover

the secret to amazing mind-ripling sex.

So Mary, what's the closest you got? You know, I wasn't finding very many papers just about like, what works best for amazing sex. But then I found this paper from 1979,

And they had brought in, they called them, "Reacting Units" couples.

They were couples. They were couples. They were couples.

“The "Reacting Units" he brought in hadero-reacting units,”

gay and lesbian-reacting units, and he had them. He actually had people hooking up. So he found that the couples that were actually in relationships, particularly gay and lesbian relationships,

were having the best sex. And part of that he was saying was, "Gender empathy," which is to say, "If you're a man, you know what feels best." And if you're a woman, you know what feels best. And so the gay and lesbian couples,

it was very easy for them to, you know,

based on their own experience of their own bodies

to know what to do and what feels good. Whereas in the hetero couples, the men would complain that the woman wasn't holding the penis hard enough, and the women would be like, "Hey, you're too rough. Stop it." You know, so it would be like this to kind of mismatch.

But also he talked about just how the couples who were very attuned to the reactions, and the arousal of their partner, and they were aroused by that arousal. So it was this really, there was this connection there. Yeah, you wrote that they did watch the couples having sex with them.

They did stop watches, and taught a chance. As you write, but then they have to stop watch. Otherwise you're just a pervert. You're not a scientist, exactly.

“You need a clipboard, and you need to stop watch.”

And then you can come in and watch. Yeah, you write that the best sex, which was being out by committed gay and lesbian couples, they took their time, they lost themselves at each other, moved slowly, lingued.

Yep. So if you're in a relationship with someone with different genitals to yours, there's ways to overcome this empathy gap with communication, I suppose. Yes. To cap us off, we have a lightning round of oddball questions,

which is most of the sort of funny in the context of some of the questions I've been asking you about. But here we go, are you ready? I'm ready. Yeah, we might even have a jingle by the time this episode comes out. What was your favorite title to a paper that you read while researching this book?

Oh, definitely. Sexual intercourse as a potential cure for intractable hiccups. Oh, yeah. Yeah, somebody had some guy was reporting like, if you have sex, the hiccups go away.

“And then he's like, I don't know if it's intercourse or orgasm that's doing it,”

but you know, unattached hiccupers. I love the demographic unattached hiccups could try masturbation. This is a journal paper. Again, ran to the copy machine and copy that. You know, a touch tick up is also allowed to masturbate too.

Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Yeah, right.

Yeah, right. Oh, right. Finish the sentence.

Now that I know blank, I'll never look at my blank the same way again.

Oh, yeah. Now that I know how a boldness is formed inside the mouth when you're chewing before you swallow, boldness formation like you eat food like you take it apart and then your tongue forms this bowl as this sort of like pickle-shaped thing that you swallow. I don't know the study of chewing and mouth stuff to me was like so gross that I am began to think

people should have sex in public, but then eat in a room on their own. It's disgusting. They're chewing their boldness forming. Yeah. So yeah, kind of ruined eating out for me for a while.

Funnest object sitting in your house. You know what? I brought an object. Okay. It's called the feminine personal trainer and it's a it's for it's resistance training combined

with key going. Okay. So you inserted in the vagina and you're lifting this weight. You want to see it? Yeah.

Oh, my god. Of course I want to see it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

And so you depend. Okay. Depending on which side goes in like if you have that heavy side down, that's hard to lift. So that's the advanced kegling, right? Yeah.

I only used it once. How was it? It was just, it looked like I was giving birth to a dorn on.

Like it's, you know, I knew it was just to walk around the house.

“You're just a little walk around with it, right?”

I'm with that. Wow. But that's dangerous because if that's sucker drops out on your toe, you're going to have a broken toe. Is it heavy? Is it?

I used it as a paperweight.

Not during out interview.

You. You. Yeah. I just pulled this out. Right now it's a little damp.

Yeah.

“I wrote about it actually years ago for a column I used to write.”

And the guy, the company, it's like this Christian company.

And I'm like really, huh? And he goes, why is that surprising to you. He said, you know, he said, good sex is a gift from God. Okay. That's wonderful.

Thank you so much, Mary. This was so, so much fun. Oh my God, when you thank you so much, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was so fun. It's such a great podcast.

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks.

“And, you know, if you want to try the feminine personal trainer, I'll send it to my wife.”

It's just collecting dust. Yeah. Mary Rachel's new book, Replaceable You, is about adventures in human anatomy and replacing body parts. And it's out now.

I'm Wendy's looking in and I'll fetch you next time. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

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