The Great Mysteries of Sex with Mary Roach

Summary

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Science Vs: The Great Mysteries of Sex with Mary Roach

Podcast: Science Vs (Spotify Studios)
Air Date: March 26, 2026
Host: Wendy Zuckerman
Guest: Mary Roach, bestselling science writer, author of Bonk

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Episode Overview

In this lively and candid episode, host Wendy Zuckerman delves into the science of sex with Mary Roach, acclaimed author of Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. Through a mix of humor, history, and hands-on research tales, the episode explores the awkward, taboo-busting, and sometimes downright bizarre lengths scientists have gone to understand sexual behavior, orgasms, and anatomy. The conversation offers both laugh-out-loud stories and insightful commentary on why sex science remains both fascinating and, at times, controversial.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Falling in Love with Science

• Mary Roach's Journey:
  Roach reflects on viewing science as "a dragon" in high school, associating it with boring homework, only to later realize—through journalism—that science is woven into everything in life, fueling curiosity about the world.
  • Quote (Mary Roach, 03:38):
    “I equated [science] with science homework and... the textbooks I had to read. It seemed like a slog. ...But I began to realize that science is basically you. Your body, your computer, your dog, the world... It's all about following your curiosity and just sort of asking why and how.”

The Awkward Origins of Sex Science

• The taboo nature of sex research is highlighted, with early researchers like Kinsey and Masters & Johnson pushing boundaries that society and even the scientific community found shocking.
• Historical Anecdotes:

  • Penis Camera: Early sex researchers built devices to view intercourse internally, such as a camera inserted into a phallus to film inside the vagina, evincing both the creativity and the awkwardness of studying sex (05:27).

  • Kinsey’s Attic Studies: Kinsey conducted research in his attic, hiring male prostitutes to ejaculate onto carpets to debunk myths about “projectile” ejaculation.

  • Quote (Mary Roach, 09:52):
    “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.”

Science Breaks Taboos—But Slowly

• Even today, many topics—like which hole is involved in intercourse or the actual mechanics of conception—are little understood due to historical reluctance for open discussion (08:39).

• The social cost for researchers studying sex is real—mockery (bathroom jokes at conferences), difficulty getting funding, and persistent hush around “down there” issues.

  • Quote (Mary Roach, 09:13):
    “People felt so uncomfortable bringing it up. Who do you ask and who do you talk to? ...Anytime you can break down a taboo like that, I think it’s a good thing.”

Female Orgasm: A Scientific Mystery

• Why Does Female Orgasm Exist?

  • The evolutionary function remains unclear; historical theories posited that uterine contractions during orgasm help "suck up" semen to aid conception.

  • Roach recounts the rich (and often ridiculous) history of trying to prove “up suck,” including bizarre experiments with artificial semen, cervical caps, and radiographs.

  • Quote (Mary Roach, 14:44):
    “They thought... contractions... were sucking up the semen, delivering it more quickly and therefore boosting the odds of conception.”

The Up-Suck Debate: Fact or Fiction?

• Repeated experiments (both historical and recent) find little evidence for contractions significantly aiding conception, though a study with six women did find a 15% increase in retention of a sperm stimulant post-orgasm—but didn’t assess pregnancy (22:56).

  • Quote (Wendy Zuckerman, 22:50):
    “In this study of only six people, they found there was more retention...if they were to orgasm...Tabloids in the UK scream: ‘Women up to 15% more likely to get pregnant if they orgasm.’”

The Science of Animal (Pig) Sex

• Roach visits Danish pig farms, learning how artificially inseminating sows with accompanying “boar-like” stimulation—snout prodding, lying atop, mammary fondling—increases farrowing rates by 6% (15:41).
• Discussion of animal arousal cues (pigs use their ears), and the parallels—and lack thereof—between human and animal sexual response (18:44).
• Memorable moment: the instructional poster, now crumbling, for optimal pig reproduction (18:19).

Candid Experiments: Sex Under the Scanner

• Mary Roach and Husband as Research Subjects (Ultrasound Study):
  Roach and her husband volunteered to have intercourse under ultrasound in a London radiology lab. The situation was deeply awkward:

  • Fluorescent lights, crisp hospital gowns, “stimulative literature” (magazine), Les Mis soundtrack, and necessary Viagra set the scene.

  • The doctor prompts: “Please make some sort of movement in and out...You can ejaculate now.” (37:13)

  • Result: The most G-rated, X-rated footage ever (“just like, boop—in and out, in and out.”)

  • Quote (Mary Roach, 36:31):
    “No, no, no, no, no [not enjoyable]. But 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. So I’m like the female with the cheese crumbs…”

Measuring Female Arousal: The Plethysmograph

• Roach describes participating in a study using a vaginal photoplethysmograph (a transparent “Cinderella’s tampon” that measures blood flow as a marker of arousal), revealing how women’s physiological and subjective arousal often diverge; women’s bodies may respond to a much wider range of stimuli than they consciously realize (39:20).

  • Quote (Mary Roach, 41:21):
    “There’s physiological arousal, but it’s not necessarily tied to psychological arousal...somebody’s gonna say, well, we put a little see-through device in your vagina. In fact, you were responding, you were having a good time. And you’d be like, no, I wasn’t.”

Unusual Sexual Reflexes & Anecdotes

• People are “wired very differently”—triggers for orgasm can be surprisingly mundane or inconvenient (tooth brushing, bike riding, eyebrow rubbing).
• Roach receives emails post-TED Talk from people sharing odd orgasm triggers, demonstrating the wide variety of human sexual responses (42:41–43:43).

Taboo and the Butt

• Roach reflects on the intense taboo around the anus—even affecting medical awareness (“no brown ribbons” for anal cancer).
• Taboo can be dangerous—people avoid discussing symptoms with doctors, potentially putting health at risk (44:33–47:25).

What Makes Sex Mind-blowing?

• Masters and Johnson’s research: Committed gay and lesbian couples had “the best sex” due to “gender empathy” and a high degree of mutual attentiveness—knowing from their own bodies what feels good and responding to partner cues (48:41–50:51).

  • Quote (Mary Roach, 50:17):
    “Couples who were very attuned to the reactions and the arousal of their partner and they were aroused by that arousal...There was this connection there.”

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Cheese Crumbs:
  “Cheese crumbs spread in front of a pair of copulating rats will distract the female, but not the male.”
  – Mary Roach [12:01], quoting Kinsey

• Pig Sexual Stimulation:
  “They had found that if you sexually stimulate...while artificially inseminating her, it leads to a 6% improvement in fertility.”
  – Wendy Zuckerman [15:49]

• Ultrasound Sex Scene:
  “He offered to play some music...he goes, Oh wait, on my laptop I have the soundtrack to Les Mis.”
  – Mary Roach [35:08]

• Cinderella’s Tampon:
  “It’s a little glass tampon...measuring blood flow in the vagina...I was a subject in that study.”
  – Mary Roach [38:28]

• Taboo Dangers:
  “With any taboo, whether it’s the asshole or...something relating to sex, if somebody feels they can’t speak about it openly...they’re unhappy, they’re putting their health possibly at risk.”
  – Mary Roach [47:01]

• Best Research Paper Title:
  “Sexual intercourse as a potential cure for intractable hiccups...unattached hiccuppers could try masturbation.”
  – Mary Roach [51:28]

• Feminine Personal Trainer:
  Mary presents a vaginal weight-lifting device (“it looked like I was giving birth to a doorknob”) and recounts the Christian company founder’s perspective:
  “Good sex is a gift from God.”
  – Mary Roach [53:10–54:41]

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Notable Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:38 | Mary Roach discusses falling in love with science | | 05:27 | Early sex research: penis cameras and awkward labs | | 09:52 | Kinsey’s attic studies and myth-busting | | 14:44 | Theories about female orgasm’s evolutionary function | | 15:41 | Pig insemination research and (human/animal) sexual response parallels | | 22:50 | New “up suck” study and media exaggeration of results | | 32:06 | Roach and husband’s experience as sex research subjects (ultrasound) | | 38:28 | Roach describes the vaginal plethysmograph | | 41:21 | Dissociation of physiological/psychological arousal in women | | 42:41 | Unusual orgasm triggers | | 44:33 | Taboo, the anus, and medical consequences | | 48:41 | What “mind-rippling sex” research actually reveals | | 51:28 | Funniest sex research paper: sex as a cure for hiccups | | 53:10 | The Feminine Personal Trainer: vaginal weight-lifting device |

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Original Tone and Approach

Mary Roach’s characteristic wit and curiosity permeate the episode, with Wendy Zuckerman matching her irreverence and humor. They discuss taboo subjects with frankness and warmth, seamlessly blending scientific rigor with comedic storytelling. Memorable stories, awkward research setups, and an unabashed embrace of all things bodily make this episode a uniquely engaging—and educational—listen.

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Conclusion

This episode serves both as a fascinating primer on the history and current state of sex research and a broader meditation on why talking about sex—and the messiness of bodily science—matters. With Mary Roach’s trademark humor, the podcast tackles taboos, celebrates scientific curiosity, and reminds listeners that the best sex, scientifically, involves empathy, communication, and a willingness to ask awkward questions—whether in the lab, the bedroom, or the pig barn.

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Transcript

[Mary Roach]

If you're gonna have sex in front of a researcher with an ultrasound wand, Dr. Dung would be a good. You know, he's just so kind of matter of fact, he did offer to

[Wendy Zuckerman]

play some music, right? As well.

[Mary Roach]

Oh, God, yeah, he did, 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 Les Mis. Okay.

[Interviewer/Host]

Okay.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Do, do, do science chats with our favorite nerds. Yeah. Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and today on the show we are talking about the science of sex. And in particular how scientists have desperately and awkwardly tried to study sex for decades. Yes, today we bonk, which is possibly the best word for sex, followed closely by stup. But bonk is also the title to Mary Roach's best selling book on this very topic. And even though bonk was written a

[Interviewer/Host]

hot minute ago, it is still this fabulous, highly relevant book.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

The 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 rippling sex.

[Interviewer/Host]

If you are listening to this on

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Spotify, you could be watching it too.

[Interviewer/Host]

It's on video.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

After the break, my interview with the amazing Mary Roach. Coming up,

[Meryl Horan]

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[Claude AI Sponsor]

this episode is brought to you by Claude from Anthropic. Some of the greatest innovations came from someone just wanting to help. The scientists who founded Anthropic wanted to build AI that's safe and benefits humanity. And Claude is where that research comes to life. Claude doesn't just hand you quick answers, it thinks with you. Digging into complexity, flagging contradictions and helping you work through the nuance, which, if you listen to this show, you know is where the real science lives. See why problem solvers choose Clodde as their thinking partner at Claude AI Scienceverses.

[Interviewer/Host]

Welcome back.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Today on the show, my interview with the amazing science writer Mary Roach. And we're talking about her book Bonk, which is absolutely Fabulous. So let's just get into it.

[Interviewer/Host]

Mary Roach, I'm so excited. It's the. You know, they say never meet your heroes, but here we are. So thank you so much for joining us on the show.

[Mary Roach]

My pleasure.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I have heard you say that in high school you thought science was a dragon. What changed for you? When did you start to kind of fall in love with science?

[Mary Roach]

Well, I had that sense of, you know, science was. I equated it with science homework and, you know, the textbooks that I had to read. And it just. It seemed like a slog. And then I started. I started out doing just mainstream journalism, was given these assignments that were just. That were so interesting and they were so. I mean, I did 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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And so then what made you want

[Interviewer/Host]

to write a book about sex or really this.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

The Science of Sex?

[Mary Roach]

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 colposcopic films of Masters and Johnson. And I was thinking, colposcopy, that's something to do with the 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 phallus with a light source and a camera. And I was like, holy crap. That's my next book, Sex Research. It's 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. Mary Roach got to do a. About that.

[Interviewer/Host]

What made it. I mean, it's a delightful and awkward and fabulous scene. What made it? MARY Roach.

[Mary Roach]

Just science that you don't really expect. And I think also I'm drawn to the human body just because it is this kind of weird foreign planet. You know, when you get beyond. You know, we walk around mostly as minds thinking of ourself as, you know, this personality and this mind. But we're in this big bag of meat and bones 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 for my reporting. And I at some point realized that the human body is kind of a foreign planet that is fun to play around on.

[Interviewer/Host]

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 the dark side of the moon or whatnot. Yeah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

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. And basically he was a bit miffed at science's 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

[Interviewer/Host]

in the interests of middle class Moors,

[Wendy Zuckerman]

nor by general practitioners, not even by Freudians. We want them answered by scientifically trained students of sex.

[Interviewer/Host]

And I love this. It's.

[Mary Roach]

It's true.

[Interviewer/Host]

And it's. It's even more true today. We don't have so many Freudians, but we have influences and our own version of this. What?

[Mary Roach]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

Why did you sort of open with this? You know, it comes early in your book. What? You know, I could see you smiling as you're remembering. What does this passage mean to you?

[Mary Roach]

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, you wouldn't find it in a textbook, like a classic physiology textbook. There'd be no mention of intercourse. Arousal, orgasm, like, doesn't exist. Move along, move along. You know, and particularly for people who are having any kind of trouble sexually or you know, with whether or not just not satisfied or not conceiving or whatever it 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. What could be going wrong. I mean, you look back at Robert Latou Dickinson, who was the one who got Kinsey interested in sex research. Kinsey had been studying gall wasps. Dickinson like, hey, I got something a little more interesting for you.

[Interviewer/Host]

How about sex?

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. But Dickinson was this amazing guy who had. He was a gynecologist, but he was very open with his patients and he talked about how he would have patients who were having trouble conceiving because they didn't Realize the penis has to actually go in there. Like, they didn't know how to do it.

[Interviewer/Host]

I mean, which hole? It can't go in the butt. It can't go in the butt.

[Mary Roach]

No, not that hole. This hole. Well, maybe that hole later. But

[Interviewer/Host]

exactly.

[Mary Roach]

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 a good thing. And it was really hard for Kinsey and Masters and Johnson, the early researchers, it was so taboo.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

What did you kind of learn about what it was like to be a

[Interviewer/Host]

trained student of sex or a science researcher back then?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Not only.

[Interviewer/Host]

And it's such a taboo, even more than today, but they were also quite creative, as you mentioned, with the penis cameras.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, I mean, and I really wanted to see that penis camera. I mean, it should be in the Smithsonian. And I tried to find it. Virginia Johnson's son was like, look, we don't want to talk to you. I'm like, well, just where is it? I finally heard that it had been dismantled. Like, it doesn't exist anymore. I'm like, are you kidding me? Yeah. You know, it was attached to a motor, and it was like. And the woman could control the speed, and, like, they were cranking it up, and it was. 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 was having trouble conceiving, it's because the sperm, the semen, wasn't coming out enough. Like, it wasn't shooting out. And there was this belief that. 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, he 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 projectile ejaculations. But anyway, I'm like, he had a question, and he figured out a way to answer it.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And that is super important, because if you expect it to shoot out, so many people would think there was something wrong with them.

[Mary Roach]

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.

[Interviewer/Host]

It just needs to glop.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Don't worry.

[Mary Roach]

It's a gloppy thing. It's not like a glorious face fountain.

[Interviewer/Host]

And in your book, you mentioned you have a favorite line, because obviously you were reading Kinsey and Marston Johnson. What is your favorite line of Kinsey's from Sexual Behavior in the Human Female?

[Mary Roach]

I think, okay, here's my favorite line. There's lots, but this is the favorite. Okay. Cheese crumbs spread in front of a pair of copulating rats will distract the female, but not the male. I just love that. It's so cute. And you know that he did that. He did. He put the crumbs out, of course. And he watched, you know, and the female's like, oh, what's that? Oh, something to eat. And the male's like, what are you talking about? Why are you even. My God.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So one of the big questions you tackle in this book is female orgasm is sort of this mystery of why females orgasm at all.

[Interviewer/Host]

Why, for those who've never really thought about it, why is this a mystery?

[Mary Roach]

Well, with men, orgasm is obviously tied to reproduction. You know, you have ejaculation, which delivers the semen, and then this is 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 boosting the odds of conception. You know, as far back as the 1700s, there was this belief that. And it was a he was good for women, because if a woman was having trouble conceiving, they sort of take the man aside and go, like. There was a famous line. Who knows if it's true? Empress Maria, the Habsburg monarchy, Maria Theresa, was having trouble conceiving. And the royal physician takes the husband aside and goes, it is the opinion of the physicians that the vulva of Her Majesty should be titillated for some time prior to intercourse. Yeah. So let's make sure she's enjoying this. And that was hundreds of years. That was a belief. Wow.

[Interviewer/Host]

How wonderful.

[Mary Roach]

How wonderful. Exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

But to answer this question and really get into the deep mysteries of female orgasm across the animal kingdom.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

You went to Denmark to meet some pigs.

[Interviewer/Host]

Can you tell me about this adventure? And how did you.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, yeah, tell me.

[Interviewer/Host]

How did you Feel when you got that invite as well.

[Mary Roach]

Oh, I'm always very excited when somebody agrees. Cause you know, I send these emails like, oh, hello, you don't know me. And you guys inseminate sows. And I've heard that you sexually stimulate the sow before you deliver the semen and that that boosts the odds of conception and can I come watch you do this? So you know, and they're like, sure, come on down. And I'm always very excited, you know, when somebody says, yeah, you can come watch us stimulate the sows 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 farrowing rates, which is the, you know, how many piglets does it produce?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So they had found that. Right. That if you sexually stimulate.

[Mary Roach]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Host]

Female pigaso while artificially inseminating her, it leads to a 6% improvement in fertility.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So how exactly do you

[Interviewer/Host]

sexually stimulate a so of female pig?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

How do you.

[Mary Roach]

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 partner.

[Interviewer/Host]

Okay, okay.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I feel like I should be taking notes.

[Mary Roach]

The male, the boar that is, is using his snout and he does stuff like he sticks his snout in the inguinal fold, which is where the thigh meets the torso, and kind of lifts her up a little bit, which I guess is exciting for the sow so far.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Sounding pretty similar to what we do.

[Interviewer/Host]

Right, right.

[Mary Roach]

Just lifting up and dropping a little bit for a while. Very exciting. And then kind of poking around the vulva also with the snout. So because he doesn't have hands, the guy doesn't have hands, sees him.

[Interviewer/Host]

Similarities, right.

[Mary Roach]

The snout comes in handy.

[Interviewer/Host]

Uh huh.

[Mary Roach]

So that's what the worker, the inseminators are trying are doing. They're lifting. They'll go and lift the sow up like that. Lift her up and then like drop her down a little bit and then poke around the vulva of the sow. And then they also. And here's the overlap, pigs and people, they lie on the sow's back, which mimics the weight of the boar on the sow's. And then they reach around and kind of fondle the mammaries, the teats.

[Interviewer/Host]

Oh, interesting.

[Mary Roach]

A little bit. And that's the part where I think the Danish Pig farmers felt a little uncomfortable.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh, that was it. That was what tipped them over.

[Mary Roach]

That was what did it. Yeah. There's a scene in the video where. And I felt it was intentional.

[Interviewer/Host]

This is an instructional video, right?

[Mary Roach]

Yes, it was exactly an instructional video. And they have this handsome, blond, Danish young man. And at one point, they 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. I felt that they were kind of going, you know, we just want to reassure you there's nothing weird going on with the pig. He's happily married.

[Interviewer/Host]

It was just like that.

[Mary Roach]

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

[Interviewer/Host]

The place. I want to see the poster.

[Zepbound Sponsor]

Yes.

[Mary Roach]

It's totally disintegrating. Because this has been a while. And they must have used. Oh, my God, it's just falling apart. It's like a little. I know. Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

This is a.

[Mary Roach]

It's in Danish.

[Interviewer/Host]

It looks like a pirate's treasure map at this point.

[Mary Roach]

It does. It's totally crumbling. It's called optimal reproduction. Ah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And did the sow look like she was having a good time?

[Mary Roach]

No, the sow looked very bored. But they. She's like, where are the cheese crumbs? No, 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 emotion in animals is often with the ears. And I was looking at the eyes and the. So I wasn't tuned into how the sow might have been showing her delight.

[Interviewer/Host]

Wow.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. Pigs have a. 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. So if the sow is enjoying things, then it does affect conception. And I was like, whoa. Does that mean. Whoa? How do we drive that with. Does this mean that women. In women. Does this happen also? Because there's a number of studies. There was, like, hamster and gerbil and other rodent studies that maybe it did affect fertility. So along come Masters and Johnson. Masters and Johnson to the rescue. They're like, I don't think so. I don't think so at all. And we're gonna prove it. And so they did. Here, again, the creativity of these researchers was amazing. They're like, okay, here's what we do. We make some artificial semen. Okay. And I had the recipe in the book, I think it involved cornstarch. Anyway, they had to be the right viscosity and everything. They put it in a sort of a cervical cap and installed it, or the woman put it in and then they set her up in front of an X ray machine and she masturbated and they took X rays cause the radiopaque. So it'll show up, so the semen will show up, so they can see if it's being slacked up during orgasm. And that's what they did. And they didn't see any up suck.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So when the women orgasmed, the sperm didn't move more inside?

[Mary Roach]

No, no, it didn't. They didn't find that, 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 cycle. It's sucking in and then certain parts of the cycle is going. So anyway, amazing that all this confusion and work that's been done in the name of proving or disproving up suck. Personally, I just like to say up suck because it's a great word.

[Interviewer/Host]

It's an excellent word.

[Mary Roach]

Up suck.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And then I have looked, I did

[Interviewer/Host]

look into the research pool since you

[Wendy Zuckerman]

published your book to see if there's been any new studies, new exciting studies exploring what's going on with, 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

Because I did find this study from just a couple of years ago that looks like it could have come straight out of Masters and Johnson.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

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.

[Interviewer/Host]

And then the researchers looked at what

[Mary Roach]

fell out, how much dropped out and how much was sucked up.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Exactly, exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

And in this study of only six

[Wendy Zuckerman]

people, they found that there was more

[Interviewer/Host]

retention of this sperm stimulant if they were to orgasm. It was large by about 15%, leading, of course the tabloids in the UK to scream women up to 15% more likely to get pregnant if they orgasm.

[Mary Roach]

Oh, wow. Well, this is. Yes, okay, good, good. Let them believe that. Let them believe that.

[Interviewer/Host]

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 orgasm happen? And I'm excited to say the research will continue.

[Mary Roach]

It will continue.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

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.

[Interviewer/Host]

In the book, you called it jaw dropping. Do you remember? Do you know which case report I'm talking about?

[Mary Roach]

The seven month old.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah.

[Mary Roach]

In utero. Okay. This is a seven month old male,

[Interviewer/Host]

a fetus, a fa. Wow.

[Mary Roach]

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. It's pretty interesting. And they have two still images from the ultrasound. One is, there's the fetus and his little hand is right on his little penis. Oh, no, near it. It's near it. And then in the second image, he's grasping it. So it's two stills. But then the art. If you read the letter, he says, the researcher Israel Meisner says that he observed a little guy playing with himself for like 15 minutes.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

15 minutes, yeah.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. All right. But when you think about it, I mean, there's nothing to do in there. You're seven months.

[Interviewer/Host]

It's true.

[Mary Roach]

Months old. If you discovered that, you'd be like, well, this is going to make the time go fast.

[Interviewer/Host]

Exactly.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

It must have happened a lot. I am, I. If it's.

[Interviewer/Host]

If we've got one case of it, there must be doctors who have seen this and they're just turning a blind eye on something, Right?

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, exactly. You would think so.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

What did you think when you.

[Interviewer/Host]

When you saw the images and read that case report?

[Mary Roach]

Oh, I just like sprinted to the copy machine. Like, this is going in the book.

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[Meryl Horan]

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[Mary Roach]

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[Interviewer/Host]

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[Wendy Zuckerman]

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[Meryl Horan]

This segment is brought to you by the all new Audi Q3. Here's an impressive fact. The Q3 features a roomy, comfortable refreshed with a 12.8-inch touchscreen. Now let's go to dinner party genius. I'm Meryl Horan, and in this segment sponsored by Audi, we'll give you a fun and delightful science fact 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 Ekedi Foster. Keys. Hey, Akedi.

[Akedi Foster]

Hey, Meryl.

[Meryl Horan]

So do you struggle with small talk at parties?

[Akedi Foster]

Yeah, sometimes. I really don't like when a lot of people are looking at me and expecting me to say something funny.

[Meryl Horan]

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?

[Akedi Foster]

I do. There's this one that comes up quite a bit where I'm being chased through a building by a tiger and the tiger can bust through different walls and climb through really small spaces, even though it's ginormous.

[Meryl Horan]

That sounds terrifying. I'm sorry. But you know, nightmares are super common. But we are not helpless. Science has a way to help us to stop having these scary dreams. 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 mauling 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 the tiger into a little kitten. And then the kitten's just like, meow, meow, meow, hiya, kitty. And it's not scary anymore because it's a cute kitten. 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 like kick in and you'll like end up with a cute kitten at the end.

[Akedi Foster]

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 mauling me. That sounds like way better, right?

[Meryl Horan]

Yeah. I didn't know that dream. 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?

[Akedi Foster]

Oh, yeah. Next time someone's telling me about their nightmares, I'm going to come in like Doctor who and just be like, well, presto, this is what you do.

[Meryl Horan]

Perfect. Thanks, Aketti.

[Mary Roach]

Thanks, Meryl.

[Meryl Horan]

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 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

[Interviewer/Host]

welcome back.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

The brilliant best selling science writer Mary Roach is here with us. We're going to keep bonking along. You and your husband signed up to be guinea pigs in an ultrasound experiment. Tell us about this.

[Mary Roach]

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, Peyronie's disease, where the erect penis goes crooked, which can be kind of painful. Like he could preview by having, you know, by taking a 3D ultrasound movie of the patient's erecting penis, he could get a sense of what he was gonna do in the surgery or whatever. That was the idea. And so I wrote to this doctor, Dr. Deng, D E N G. And I was like, wow. And then in that paper he said, you know, 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 was there to observe while 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 its husband, and I'm like, yeah. You know, I said, you haven't been to London in a long time. Let's go to London. We could go see a play. Like, yeah, Jeremy Irons 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 ultrasound. And my husband is such a good sport, you know, he's like, yeah. I mean. Cause early on, he'd been like, oh, sex research. Sign me up for that, you know, I'm like, okay, here's your chance. And it was so awkward, though.

[Interviewer/Host]

Oh, my God, Tell me everything.

[Mary Roach]

It was just so. You know, because we're in the. It's after hours. We're in the radiology department. There's no one around. And we were in. You know, first. We're waiting for a while, and I'm sitting in the hallway, and then, like, we see him coming down the hall, and Ed goes, ed's my husband. He's like, here he comes. Oh, my God. He was like. We were both just. Why did we say yes? This is so weird. And, you know, it was. If you're gonna have sex in front of a researcher with an ultrasound wand, Dr. Dung 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. He had the wand up to my belly. So this had to be a from behind situation, right?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

He did offer to play some music, right, as well.

[Mary Roach]

Oh, God. Yeah, he did. Yeah. He goes. And I was kidding. And I said, well or no. Ed said, where's the romantic lighting? And. Cause we're in this lab with fluorescent lights. And he thought Ed was being serious. And he goes, oh, wait, on my laptop, I have the soundtrack to Les Mis.

[Interviewer/Host]

Okay, okay.

[Mary Roach]

And then also he gave Ed. It was like, some stimulative literature, to quote Masters and Johnson's term for porn. But it was. It was an issue of, like, Men's Health or some, like, with Esquire, where there's, like, one kind of not naked, but scantily clad woman. He's like, okay, okay, great. You know, and we're wearing those horrible hospital johnnies, you know, the little. You know, and it was kind of chill. So he's like, yeah, with the back open and it's kind of chilly. So he's like, you can leave your socks on. So you got the scene. You have the scene afterward. Ed's like, I can't. Well, also, Viagra was involved.

[Interviewer/Host]

Okay.

[Mary Roach]

I was gonna imagine.

[Interviewer/Host]

How could you possibly. So Viagra was used. Exactly. You go through all this effort, you

[Wendy Zuckerman]

fly to London, you know, and then.

[Interviewer/Host]

Right. And was it enjoyable at all?

[Mary Roach]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But 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. So I'm like the female with the cheese crumbs. Cause I've got a notepad and I'm writing and I'm like, I don't know what's going on back there, but whatever. But I did feel kind of bad that I dragged Ed into this. I felt kind of bad.

[Interviewer/Host]

The instructions from the doctor that you describe in the book are quite funny. Now, he said, now please make some sort of movement in and out.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, yeah. And then at one point he goes. I think it was something like he's asking about. And the littlest one, how old is she now? And then he's like, you can ejaculate now.

[Interviewer/Host]

I don't know.

[Mary Roach]

Oh, my God.

[Interviewer/Host]

Wow. But Ed was able to ejaculate in that situation?

[Mary Roach]

He was, Yeah, I think so. Wow. He's a people pleaser. He's a people pleaser. It's like, yeah. The worst sex ever for me.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Did you learn any?

[Interviewer/Host]

Did you get to see the images at the end and did you learn anything?

[Mary Roach]

He did send me an image and at some point I sent it to Slate and they had it online. Oh. 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, boop.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

In and out, in and out.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not very sexy.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yes. Okay.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

The last experiment I'm gonna ask you

[Interviewer/Host]

about that you signed up for is

[Wendy Zuckerman]

you did use a vaginal photo plethograph.

[Mary Roach]

Plethysmograph.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Plethysmograph probe, which you describe in the book as Cinderella's tampon.

[Mary Roach]

If you could see through. It's glass.

[Interviewer/Host]

It's glass.

[Mary Roach]

It's a little glass. It's like a little glass tampon. Yeah. Because. Okay, this is a device for measuring arousal. It goes in the vagina and like, the photoplethysmograph is measuring blood flow in the vagina. So if you're aroused, there's more blood flow to the vagina. So it's sending out like a light signal. And depending on how aroused the you are vat, you know, how thick and aroused and engorged the walls of the vagina are, it sends a signal back. But this little see through thing that you. It's about 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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

The interesting thing about when you study penises and them getting aroused, it's fairly obvious they, when they get erect, they get aroused.

[Mary Roach]

Not always.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Not always. You can obviously feel arousal without erection, but it's very.

[Interviewer/Host]

But with.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

If you have a vagina, it's more complicated, right? Cause sometimes you can feel arousal but you don't get wet. So it's not so clearly one for one.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's the work of. This is Cindy Meston at the university UT Austin, University of Texas Austin. She was studying arousal in women. It's interesting because if you show them stimulative literature, sorry, porn, 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 is 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 photople seismograph, you can measure it, but then afterward you interview the person as they did me, and they said, so that. Were 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 it didn't do anything for me, it was like some really creepy porn. The guy was disgusting, he had a horrible mustache. The sex was boring. 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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Very interesting. Does that mean that we're not being honest with ourselves about what truly arouses us? Or more that we genuinely weren't aroused, but some physiological reaction happened.

[Mary Roach]

There's physiological arousal, but. 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 gonna say, well, we put a little see through device in your vagina. In fact, you were responding, you were having a good time. And you know, you'd be like, no, I wasn't.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yes.

[Mary Roach]

Nah, nah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Moving on to then.

[Interviewer/Host]

Well, I guess we've been talking about sex the whole time. I don't know how I'm gonna do a segue into more sex. You look at the, in your book, you look at the many things that can trigger orgasms.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Sex, obviously, or good sex dreams. But tell us the story of a woman from Taiwan.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. Well, orgasm is a reflex and it can be triggered in ways that you wouldn't imagine. You wouldn't imagine. It doesn't sort of jive with how you imagine orgasm. But they're all manner of. 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 know, you'd be like, you'd have really great gum health. You know, you'd be like, you know, I don't need to go to the dentist because I'm brushing like three times a day.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah.

[Mary Roach]

But it bothered her. She was avoiding. I mean, it's weird. And there's another. There was a woman in the book who had spontaneous orgasm and she was a practicing Muslim and it was, you know, sometimes it would happen during devotional periods and it was very upsetting, very disturbing. And there was someone else, like, 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 this. 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 ride a bicycle, I have an orgasm. And when I go somewhere, I'm anticipating it's going to happen. And if it hasn't happened, I'll kind of ride around for a while and it makes me late. It was this whole story.

[Akedi Foster]

Wow.

[Mary Roach]

So just, you know, people are wired in different ways, right.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Then it can somehow get that response going.

[Mary Roach]

Just triggers that response. Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

In bonk, you visit a dildo manufacturing store which had the model of an anus, which was based on a porn star. And in your book you have in caps lock. The guy's showing you around this factory and he goes, you know, here you have an anus in caps lock.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

When it Comes to the anus.

[Interviewer/Host]

I mean, it is so taboo. I've heard you talk about how, you

[Wendy Zuckerman]

know, people don't even describe when they have anal cancer. And there's no ribbons for, you know,

[Interviewer/Host]

brown ribbons for anal cancer or whatnot,

[Wendy Zuckerman]

or there's no day for anal cancer. Like, it's like anything to do with the butt, right? Why do you think this is? And.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, why? Because. Because it's where crap comes out. Where comes out. It's. It's just. It's very personal and it's smelly and germy, 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, there's no ribbon for anal cancer. Farrah Fawcett died of anal cancer. And the news, it just 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 it was often hot or room temperature or warm in the dissecting room. And the colon was stinky and full of bacteria, so they would take the whole thing out and throw it away. So nobody was really even. Nobody's looking at it. Nobody's studying it. And 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 who's looking up everybody's asshole? He's like, you mean you chose this? But. I mean, but it's. But, you know, with any taboo, whether it's the asshole or just something relating to sex, if somebody feels that they can't speak about it openly with their partner or with their doctor, then they're unhappy. They're putting their health possibly at risk. And so I think it's just healthy to talk about it. I mean, when the book came out, I remember my publicist saying, mary, how are you going to promote this book? Are you going to just stand in front of, like, 100 strangers and say things like clitoris and orgasm? 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 I got the sense that people appreciated having the freedom to just ask things, you know, and that's why I felt like these researchers were so heroic in a way, you know, that they dared to Break down that taboo, especially the 40s, you know, when Kinsey was working the 50s and 60s. Masters and Johnson and, you know, Robert Latour, Dickinson before all of that. So it's. I don't know. I had a lot of respect for people who do this. Who do this work.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, it's.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

It's interesting having, you know. Yeah. Reported on a bunch of different sex topics. How I had thought we were so much more advanced than we are, you

[Interviewer/Host]

know, but they still say it's so

[Wendy Zuckerman]

hard to get funding. It's so hard to be taken seriously.

[Mary Roach]

Oh, yeah, yeah. There was Roy Levin. Talked about how he was at a. I think it was a. A conference of urologists, maybe. And he did a paper about. I think it was vaginal secretions. He'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 described being in the men's room, 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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Now, your last chapter of Bonk opens with this line. When I began this book, I harbored a naive fantasy that I would find a team of scientists working to discover the secret to amazing mind rippling sex.

[Interviewer/Host]

So, Mary, what's the closest you got?

[Mary Roach]

You know, I wasn't finding very many papers, just about, like, what works best for amazing sex. But then I found this paper. It was from 1979, and it was Masters and Johnson. And they brought in, they called them reacting units. Couples. They were couples. They were couples. The reacting units. He brought in hetero 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 kind of what. What to do and what feels good. Whereas in the hetero couples, like, 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. So it would be like this 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

You wrote that they did watch the couples having sex with.

[Interviewer/Host]

They did stop watches and tata charts, as you wrote.

[Mary Roach]

But then they have the stopwatch. Otherwise you're just a pervert.

[Interviewer/Host]

You're not exactly.

[Mary Roach]

You need a clipboard and you need a stopwatch. Then you can come in and watch.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, you're right that the best sex which was being had by committed gay and lesbian couples, they took their time, they lost themselves in each other. Moved slowly, lingered.

[Mary Roach]

Yep.

[Interviewer/Host]

So that's. If you're. 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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

To cap us off, we have a lightning round of oddball questions, which I

[Interviewer/Host]

suppose is sort of funny in the context of some of the questions I've

[Wendy Zuckerman]

been asking you about, but here we go. Are you ready? Are you?

[Mary Roach]

I'm ready.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

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?

[Mary Roach]

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 hiccuppers. I love the demographic. Unattached hiccuppers could try masturbation. This is a journal paper. Again. Ran to the copy machine. Need a copy of that?

[Interviewer/Host]

Also attached. Teacuppers are also allowed to masturbate to solve their teacupping. Amazing. Amazing.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

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

[Mary Roach]

Oh, yeah. Now that I know how a bolus is formed inside the mouth when you're chewing before you swallow. Bolus formation. Like, you eat food, like you take it apart and then your tongue forms this bolus, 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 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 bolus forming.

[Interviewer/Host]

They're.

[Mary Roach]

Yeah. So, yeah, it kind of ruined eating out for me for a while.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Funnest object sitting in Your house.

[Mary Roach]

You know what? I brought an object, okay. It's called the Feminine Personal Trainer. And it's for. It's resistance training combined with Kegeling. Okay. So you insert it in the vagina and you're lifting this weight. You wanna see it?

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah. Oh, my God.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Of course I wanna see it.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mary Roach]

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 Kegeling, right?

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah.

[Mary Roach]

I only used it once.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

How was it?

[Mary Roach]

And it was just. It looked like I was giving birth to a doorknob. This thing, like, it's. You know, and you're supposed to walk around the house. You're supposed to walk around with it in.

[Interviewer/Host]

Wow.

[Mary Roach]

But that's dangerous because if that sucker drops out on your toe, you're gonna have a broken toe.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Is it heavy? Is it?

[Mary Roach]

I used it as a paperweight.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Not during our interview.

[Interviewer/Host]

You ended practicing?

[Mary Roach]

Yeah, I just pulled this out right now. It's a little damp. 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

Thank you so much, Mary. This was so, so much fun.

[Mary Roach]

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

[Interviewer/Host]

Thank you. Thanks.

[Mary Roach]

And, you know, if you want to try the Feminine Personal Trainer, I'll send it to you. It's just collecting dust.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Mary Roach's new book, replaceable you, is about adventures in human anatomy and replacing body parts. And it's out now. I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and I'll back to you next time.

[Mary Roach]

It.