How Shame Became the New Sex Ed with Carter Sherman

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "How Shame Became the New Sex Ed"

What Now? with Trevor Noah
Guest: Carter Sherman (Reproductive Health & Justice Reporter, The Guardian)
Date: November 13, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the complex landscape of sex, shame, and education with journalist Carter Sherman, author of "The Second Coming." Trevor, Carter, and Eugene Koza explore why Gen Z is having less sex, how shame has become a silent curriculum, and how both public discourse and institutional approaches have shaped young people's sexual realities. With wit and candor, they discuss everything from virginity angst to the pitfalls of abstinence-only education, the impact of porn, the role of social media, and the search for genuine connection amid shifting cultural narratives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The "Sex Recession" and Gen Z's Changing Attitudes

• Observation: Gen Z and millennials are having less sex and starting later compared to previous generations.
  • “20 and 30 somethings are having less sex than previous generations and are starting their sex lives later. Gen Z have been done dirty.” – Carter Sherman (00:02)
• Social Media’s Role: Social media has increased isolation among teens, affecting their sexual and social development.
  • “Greater use of social media means a far greater sense of isolation.” – Carter Sherman (00:15)

2. The Failure of Sex Education

• Gaps in Sex Ed: U.S. sex ed is described as confusing, focusing on safety over pleasure, while porn offers the opposite—pleasure without context or safety.
  • “Sex ed teaches you how to be safe but not the pleasure…porn teaches you the pleasures, sort of, but not how to be safe.” – Carter Sherman (00:24)
• Abstinence-Only Funding: More than $2 billion has been spent since 2000 on abstinence-only sex education, which evidence shows “does not work.”
  • “$2 billion into convincing people that they should not have sex until marriage.” – Trevor Noah (17:31)

3. Shame as Sex Education

• Cultural Shifts on Virginity: Virginity was historically prized, especially for women, but now being a virgin is seen as "lame" in the U.S. Young people are pressured both ways—early sex is expected, but openly discussing desires or struggles is taboo.
  • (See timestamps [07:16–12:33])
• Personal Stories: Carter recalls the distress over being a 17-year-old virgin and the open, supportive (and rare) conversation she had with her mother about it.
  • “I was so upset to be a 17-year-old virgin. I thought I was the last 17-year-old virgin on the planet…” – Carter Sherman (07:16)

4. The Deep Confusion and Silence

• Lack of Honest Conversation: Both among peers and families, sex remains stigmatized or sensationalized. Young men report rarely being asked about feelings or preparedness, while young women and queer people are more likely to have thought about these issues but feel unsupported.
  • “We don't really have open conversations about sex.” – Carter Sherman (12:59)
  • “A lot of the young men I interviewed had not necessarily thought about or even come to the table with things to talk about.” – Carter Sherman (25:00)

5. Myths, Stereotypes, and Hegemonic Masculinity

• Defining Manhood: “Men should be big, strong, tall, emotionless cavemen who are good at obtaining sex and always want to have sex.” – Carter Sherman (27:16)
• Systemic Neglect: Young men aren’t given space to explore vulnerability, leading to pressure and confusion in intimate relationships.

6. Porn as Teacher, Porn as Problem

• Education by Porn: With sex left undiscussed in schools and families, teens turn to porn as their de facto sex ed, despite “knowing” it’s fake.
  • “It’s basically like if you learn to drive by playing Grand Theft Auto.” – Carter Sherman (34:23)
• Normalization of Rough Sex: Porn has normalized acts like choking for under-40s, with many reporting those acts often occur without consent.
  • “If you’re under 40, you are almost twice as likely to have been choked during sex.” – Carter Sherman (37:38)
• Lack of Communication: No scripts or teaching in porn about communication, consent, or humor—the real ingredients for enjoyable, safe sex.

7. The Social Media & "Fuckability" Trap

• Self-Objectification Online: Feedback loops of likes and matches incentivize people to see themselves through the eyes of others, not their own experiential pleasure or desires.
  • “They understand their sexual value and how to convey it online because they’re constantly getting feedback in the form of likes…” – Carter Sherman (53:36)
• Negative Outcomes: Increases in eating disorders, lower self-esteem, and in some cases, avoidance of sex due to anxiety about appearance and judgment.

8. Sexting, Nudes, and Revenge Porn

• Generational Shift: Sending nudes and sexting are normalized among Gen Z; the stigma lies more in exposure (“leaks”) than the act itself.
• Language Matters: “Revenge porn” diminishes the violation—“non-consensual image abuse” is a more accurate term.
  • “Someone leaking your nudes is not revenge porn…It was never porn in that way at all.” – Eugene Koza (67:43)

9. Legal and Political Battlegrounds

• Title IX as Political Football: Rules swing back and forth depending on administration, leaving survivors without reliable recourse and campuses without clarity or consistency.
  • “Title IX became unusable for survivors.” (70:21)
  • “We have a resistance to having any of these kinds of conversations about the system…” – Carter Sherman (77:15)

10. The Role of Fear and Shame in Sexual Decision-Making

• Roe v. Wade Fallout: Loss of abortion rights has intensified anxiety and shame around sex, for both young men and women.
  • “She felt like she was being humiliated for having sex… she felt like Republicans in particular were trying to punish her for having been a person that had sex.” – Carter Sherman (90:46)
• Generalized Fear: Fear over consent, sexual assault accusations, and social/political stigma is pushing some to simply “opt out” of partnered sex.

11. Possible Paths Forward and Radical Hope

• Learning from the Fringes: Consent culture in marginalized spaces like BDSM can model how to create safer, more communicative sexual landscapes.
• Restorative Justice: Sometimes, what survivors want isn’t incarceration but acknowledgment and apology, though the current system doesn’t facilitate that.
  • “I think an apology would have actually done a lot.” – Carter Sherman (83:03)
• Nuanced Sex Ed: Healthy relationships, vulnerability, and communication should be central—not just biology and disease prevention.
  • “Healthy relationship education is also a part of sex ed.” – Carter Sherman (44:55)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [07:16] Carter Sherman: “I was so upset to be a 17-year-old virgin. I thought I was the last 17-year-old virgin on the planet…”
• [17:31] Trevor Noah: “$2 billion into convincing people that they should not have sex until marriage. $2 billion.”
• [27:16] Carter Sherman: “There are a lot of very narrow ideas about what a man should be—and particularly when it comes to sex...”
• [34:23] Carter Sherman: “It’s basically like if you learn to drive by playing Grand Theft Auto…”
• [37:38] Carter Sherman: “If you’re under 40, you are almost twice as likely to have been choked during sex as someone if you’re over 40. … Many people are not asked for consent before they’re choked.”
• [53:36] Carter Sherman: “They understand their sexual value and how to convey it online because they're constantly getting feedback in the form of likes…”
• [67:57] Carter Sherman: “Advocates now would say instead of using revenge porn, we should use terms like non-consensual image abuse.”
• [83:03] Carter Sherman: “I think an apology would have actually done a lot.” (on what she would have wanted after being sexually assaulted)
• [90:46] Carter Sherman: “She felt like she was being humiliated for having sex… [like] Republicans in particular were trying to punish her for having been a person that had sex.”
• [96:24] Eugene Koza: “What’s tricky about sex is it’s both a want and a need at the same time.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–02:04 — Setting the stage: Sex recession, Gen Z’s changing relationship to sex
• 06:04–12:33 — Carter’s personal story of shame around virginity, changing cultural scripts
• 14:43–18:49 — Focus on policing young people’s sex; abstinence-only education and its goals
• 25:00–28:17 — Gendered divides in sex education and self-understanding
• 33:11–37:38 — Porn as a faulty substitute for sex ed; normalization of rough sex
• 53:36–56:01 — Social media and the commodification of “fuckability”
• 63:27–68:18 — The rise of sexting, non-consensual image abuse, and the importance of nuance
• 68:51–77:15 — Title IX, “kangaroo courts” on college campuses, political football of abuse
• 82:37–84:06 — Restorative justice, what survivors actually want
• 89:18–92:34 — The role of fear, consequences after Roe v. Wade, and emotional toll
• 94:39–96:19 — Is there hope? Young people’s activism, embracing complexity

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Podcast Tone & Dynamic

The episode is lively and candid, blending personal anecdote, journalist insight, sharp humor, and frank discussion. Trevor Noah’s playful skepticism and Carter Sherman’s approachable expertise create an open, thoughtful space for topics that are too often sensationalized or stigmatized.

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Conclusion: Where Do We Go From Here?

• The hosts and guest agree that the invisibility and confusion around sex harms everyone, not just Gen Z.
• Both comprehensive sex ed (including emotional and relational aspects) and honest cultural discussion are urgently needed.
• Change is possible, especially if young people embrace activism, communication, and community—acknowledging both the personal and political stakes.

“We shouldn’t try to make sex something that is black or white… We should try to look at sex in the landscape of its messiness and enjoy that.” – Carter Sherman (94:39)

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For more: Check out Carter Sherman’s book, The Second Coming, for more stories, research, and perspective on how American sex education, culture, and politics shape a generation.

Transcript

[Trevor Noah]

Gen Z is having a sex recession.

[Carter Sherman]

20 and 30 somethings are having less sex than previous generations and are starting their sex lives later. Gen Z have been done dirty when.

[Eugene Koza]

It comes to dating and people's views.

[Carter Sherman]

Of dating is more polarizing than ever.

[Trevor Noah]

For many teenagers, greater use of social.

[Carter Sherman]

Media means a far greater sense of isolation.

[Trevor Noah]

The average 14 year old boy today has seen more hardcore porn than all of the American fighting forces in the second World War.

[Carter Sherman]

Sex ed here in the United States is nonsense and confusion because it teaches you how to be safe, but not the pleasure. And porn teaches you the pleasures, sort of, but not how to be safe.

[Trevor Noah]

Carter Sherman, reproductive health and justice reporter at the Guardian, who interviewed over 100 young people for her new book. It's called the Second Coming. This is what now with Trevor Noah. This episode is presented by Whole Foods Markets. Eat well for less. Mint is still $15 a month for premium wireless. And if you haven't made the switch yet, here are 15 reasons why you should. One, it's $15 a month. Two, seriously, it's $15 a month. Three, no big contracts. Four, I use it. Five, my mom uses it. Are you playing me off?

[Carter Sherman]

That's what's happening, right?

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, give it a try.

[Carter Sherman]

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[Trevor Noah]

I'm truly so excited to have this conversation, you understand.

[Carter Sherman]

Well, thank you for having me on. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Because like sometimes you reading a book and then it's just like facts, facts, data, data, facts, facts, facts. And then here it's like facts, data, sex. Yeah. Good times.

[Eugene Koza]

Why don't you lead with that? I mean, coffee, coffee, marriage, coffee, hospitals, hospitals, research.

[Carter Sherman]

You know, I like to surprise.

[Eugene Koza]

Okay.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah. That's the secret thing that I also write about in addition to health care is sex. Which is more fun. That's for sure.

[Eugene Koza]

Sherman, your husband's no it's my name.

[Trevor Noah]

What?

[Carter Sherman]

He asked if Sherman was my husband's name, and I was instantly like, no. Just, no way.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, that's funny.

[Carter Sherman]

His name is. His last name is Conway Pearson. And so I would like to combine our names and be like, Con man and Sherman. Conway and Sherman. And be Conman. And so I'm a journalist. I could be journalist. Con Man. He's a doctor. He could be Dr. Con Man. I think it would be. That's the only way I would change my name.

[Trevor Noah]

Those are some of. That's. I mean, like, those are some of those things in life that are terrible in the thought, but, man, what a beautiful idea. Yes, that would be a great one. Thank you, Dr. Con Man. Especially if anything went wrong. You've, like, immunized yourself.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

What went wrong?

[Carter Sherman]

Were you expecting.

[Trevor Noah]

Well, when Dr. Con Man. I'm sorry. You trusted Dr. Con Man.

[Eugene Koza]

Totally your fault.

[Trevor Noah]

It just becomes that in everything. Dr. Con Man.

[Carter Sherman]

His malpractice insurance might be really hard to come by, but. Right.

[Eugene Koza]

I loved your reaction when I asked if that's his surname or yours, and you were like, mine. So you haven't changed your surname or you only use your surname when you're doing business?

[Carter Sherman]

I haven't changed my surname at all. No.

[Trevor Noah]

South Africa just made it. Do you see? The law just changed.

[Eugene Koza]

Yes.

[Carter Sherman]

Now.

[Trevor Noah]

Now I did. I was shocked that you could only do it now. Now husbands can take the woman's name. But I was like, now, you know, when you.

[Eugene Koza]

You learn about it before.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. But I was just like, wait, I didn't know that there was a law against this. Yeah.

[Eugene Koza]

Would you.

[Trevor Noah]

Would I what? Take my wife's name?

[Eugene Koza]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

Depends on if her name made my name cooler or more interesting. Like it. Like, it's like. Let's say her last name was, like, Weber. I wouldn't want to be like, Trevor Webo.

[Carter Sherman]

I don't know. I like that. Actually.

[Trevor Noah]

No, I'm not doing this.

[Eugene Koza]

I actually do as well.

[Trevor Noah]

Trevor Webber. No, no. Now it's like I'm roasting myself. Everywhere I go, people are roasting me.

[Carter Sherman]

Oh, Trevor Webber.

[Trevor Noah]

No, I'm not. I don't want that.

[Carter Sherman]

Okay, maybe so it'd have to be like, lightning.

[Trevor Noah]

Trevor Lightning.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah.

[Eugene Koza]

No.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay. I like that this was your. I like that this was your contribution. Trevor Lightning.

[Eugene Koza]

Are you surprised by the person who said con man?

[Carter Sherman]

What's, like, a cool last name?

[Trevor Noah]

No, but what I mean is, like, you've got to take me, like, Eugene Causa. It has a music to it because.

[Eugene Koza]

You'Re used to it.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, no, no. It does. There's certain names that don't have a music. And to those people, I apologize because your parents messed you up. Carter Sherman. That has music to it. Carter Sherman.

[Eugene Koza]

That is best.

[Trevor Noah]

You know what I mean?

[Eugene Koza]

Bestselling author written all over.

[Carter Sherman]

If somebody did tell me it would be a good name for like, a airport paperback thriller writer.

[Trevor Noah]

It would indeed.

[Carter Sherman]

Like the latest Carter Sherman.

[Trevor Noah]

It would indeed. The latest Carter Sherman. It has that vibe even, like a rapper would say, Carter Sherman. Never heard him. You know what I mean?

[Eugene Koza]

It's got like a cool, like, strictly not German.

[Trevor Noah]

There we go. What? You see? You see what I'm talking about?

[Eugene Koza]

Uma Thurman.

[Carter Sherman]

I'm gonna leave here with the theme song. That's what's gonna happen here.

[Trevor Noah]

This is. You see what I mean? These are good names. Eugene Causa has the flow. Trevor Noah.

[Eugene Koza]

Trevor Weber.

[Trevor Noah]

Noah Trevor Webber. It just sounds like you stumbled after saying it. I wouldn't do that. But that's for your next book.

[Carter Sherman]

Okay. The best names.

[Trevor Noah]

Just a list of the best who should take. Whose last name is your next book?

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah, I mean, I would add, I think it is cool when men take their wives. Last name.

[Eugene Koza]

Why?

[Carter Sherman]

I also think it's cool because it's unusual.

[Eugene Koza]

Do you want to be the unusual guy at the bar?

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, not. No, it depends. Is it like, oh, I think this guy's Mrs. Conman. Yeah.

[Eugene Koza]

Think about this carefully.

[Carter Sherman]

I think that would be so fun to sign everything as, like, Carter Conman. Yeah, it could.

[Trevor Noah]

You know what? It could be a natural evolution, because, like, I look at all the stuff, not all the stuff that you've written, but I was going back into some of your older writings, and one of the first pieces I could find was the one that you did for Ms. Magazine. Right. I think you were still an intern.

[Carter Sherman]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

And it was a piece about.

[Carter Sherman]

Why.

[Trevor Noah]

Aren'T condoms designed for female pleasure? You know what I mean?

[Carter Sherman]

I have no memory of writing this. What's the answer?

[Trevor Noah]

No, no. You were asking the question. You were saying, like, why aren't they. Why are they not considering? Why? Is it like, how does it fit on the penis? Does it work well on the. Does he like it? Does it work well for him? Does it feel this? Does it feel that? But you're like, but none of this work and none of this research is around. But how does it feel for her? And as I was reading that and then reading through your book, I went, oh, wow, this is. It's. It's cool to see somebody's trajectory and, and, and watch them. You. You know, like, we always meet people as they are now, but it's cool to meet them as they sort of were at a different time. And it made me wonder, like, what was the first thing that got you obsessed with the topic of sex? How we view sex, why sex is important to a society, a culture. Like, what was that first lightning bolt in your world?

[Carter Sherman]

Oh, I mean, I think it was one of the stories I used to open up the book, which is that I was pathologically obsessed with my own virginity. I was so upset to be a 17 year old virgin. I thought I was upset, upset. I thought I was the last 17 year old virgin on the planet. I mean, it felt like it. Like I fully. My. One of the last girls in my friend group to lose her virginity texted me during class that she had lost it. Cause she cut school.

[Trevor Noah]

Wow.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah. Had sex with this guy on her laundry room floor. I mean, it was great. It sounded like. And I kept it together for the rest of school. And then I got into the car when my mom picked me up from school and I burst out sobbing because I was so upset over the fact that I had.

[Eugene Koza]

You're the last one standing.

[Carter Sherman]

I know.

[Trevor Noah]

Wait, did you tell your mom why you were crying?

[Carter Sherman]

Oh, yeah, of course.

[Trevor Noah]

Wait, of course?

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, there's no of course in my. Wait, so your mom's like, why are you crying? And you're like, well, because. Because I can't get some.

[Carter Sherman]

Yes. And she was like, you know, it's fine. Like, everybody loses it at different times. It's not a big deal. And I was like, these are the.

[Trevor Noah]

Families I watched in movies and thought never existed.

[Eugene Koza]

But also, imagine how people were born to be villains. I mean.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, their villain origin story. They're the opposites.

[Eugene Koza]

Like Carter Sherman, the last hymen.

[Carter Sherman]

That's my next book.

[Trevor Noah]

Can you imagine, Eugene? Let's. Let's just play. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to give you. I'm going to take you through time. We're going to transport you to a black family. A South African family, to be exact. To be exact.

[Carter Sherman]

Okay.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay. I will play Carter Sherman. This. Trevor Noah as Carter Sherman. Right. And then I am. I am going to. And then you will be. You will be my mom and dad. You can be both at the same.

[Eugene Koza]

Just Parent Sherman.

[Trevor Noah]

I want parent Sherman. But in South Africa, who was in.

[Eugene Koza]

The car with you that day?

[Carter Sherman]

My mother. Just my mom.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. So Just. Just the two of us. All right. And action.

[Eugene Koza]

And then, you know what? If you don't stop behaving like a white girl in this car, I'm going to drop you off now.

[Trevor Noah]

Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Mama. Sorry. It was just such a hard day, Mom.

[Eugene Koza]

It was such a hard day. What happened?

[Trevor Noah]

My friend texted me, mom. And I found out that I'm the last virgin. I'm the only person who's not getting sex, Mama. What?

[Eugene Koza]

You had a phone at school.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, man. Okay, wait, so your mom.

[Carter Sherman]

No, she shouldn't have had that.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, wait, so your mom. Your mom goes, don't worry, It'll happen in time.

[Carter Sherman]

Yes. And then I was like, well, did you. Were you a virgin when you were my age? And she was like, oh, no, no, no.

[Eugene Koza]

Your mom. Your mom is black.

[Carter Sherman]

What's wrong?

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, this is amazing.

[Carter Sherman]

Oh, wow.

[Eugene Koza]

This is amazing.

[Carter Sherman]

This is really. Yeah. Oh, wow. She, of course, totally forgot this story. Cause you know how parents just fully. For the experiences that shape you forever. She forgot this. And then I was telling her the story again, you know, when I was writing the book, and she was like, I can't believe I said that. I really should have lied. And I was like, okay, I get it. Like, you were not a virgin at 17.

[Eugene Koza]

Cool.

[Carter Sherman]

Thank you for that. She really wanted to impress upon me.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. But I feel like that story.

[Eugene Koza]

Oh, man. Sorry.

[Trevor Noah]

It's.

[Eugene Koza]

It's.

[Trevor Noah]

It's the perfect jumping off point into. Into what? You know, it's. I don't know if there's right or wrong in it. I think rightly and wrongly, our obsession with sex. Cause on the one, there's one part of my brain that goes, why are we so obsessed with sex? There's another part of me that always goes, like, why aren't we more obsessed with sex in that it is. It is the thing that means most of us are here. Yeah. It is the reason the human race will or will not continue in many ways. But what I love about your book is. And we'll go through, like, you know, all the different topics that you get into in every single one of the chapters. Cause I think you do it amazingly is like, it's not necessarily our obsession with sex that's wrong. It's what elements of sex we're obsessed with that become detrimental to a society. And so, like, let's talk about virginity. You know, when you look at virginity throughout the decades, it's amazing how it changes. Cause you're talking about crying because you're the last virgin. And then you Just rewind time or go to a different place. And the tears are because people aren't a virgin. Do you know what I mean?

[Carter Sherman]

Right. I mean, for so long, virginity was something to be prized, and in many places of the world is still something to be prized, particularly for women. Like, it is essential to maintain your virginity in a lot of places at risk of, I mean, potentially even death, depending on where you are in the world. And so it is kind of stunning how quickly that has flipped here in the United States, where it is seen as lame to be a virgin past a certain age. And I was really struck in writing the book that the feeling that I had that it was so uncool to be a virgin was shared by so many young people I talked to. Like, all of them felt like having held onto their virginity for as long as they did, even if they lost their virginity early on, like, that was the wrong age to do it. I talked to one young man who, like, as soon as. At 14, he started feeling really bad that he. At 14? Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

That he had not going down.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah, well. But it's interesting because younger people are actually having less sex than previous generations. So these young people are telling themselves, oh, I'm so lame for not having sex. But it doesn't match the reality that, like, most of their peers probably aren't having sex at this point.

[Trevor Noah]

So do you find that. Are people just lying about having sex or are they.

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, if.

[Trevor Noah]

If everyone thinks they're lame for not having sex, but they are having less sex than ever before, I don't know.

[Carter Sherman]

If it's lying so much as we don't really have open conversations about sex. I think the extent to which we talk about sex in public is oftentimes to stigmatize sex. Or when you talk about sex amongst your friends, you're oftentimes, like, not lying, but maybe embellishing stories or talking about, like, only the good stuff. Yeah, you're not really discussing the complexity of it or maybe your own feelings about how much sex you're having, how much sex you're not having, what your last sexual experience was like. And so I think that we're not really able to have conversations that get into the nuances of sex and the role that it plays in our lives. Because I think that we see sex oftentimes as something that, like, should be private. And I'm not saying it's not something that can't be deeply personal and something that you should hold for yourself. But I do think that we underestimate the ways that what's going on in public shape our approach to sex and shape even our ability to have the kind of sex that we like.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, there's some. There's some parts of the book where it feels like. It feels like you're forcing us to ask the question, who is obsessed with whose sex and why and what does it mean? You know, like when I was reading through, I was thinking of, you know, going through the decades and there's always these new moments in media where they'll be like, hookup culture. Is it out of control? Is there hookup cult? What does it mean for your kids? You know, and there's those news headlines and then you like, fast forward a few years and they'll be like, there's a virginity recession. There's a Whoa, whoa. And there's like, they always have these, like these catchphrases.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

But it always focuses on young people. That's something your book really made me realize. I hadn't thought of it before, but they very seldom are talking about 50 year olds or 40 something year olds or 60 year olds even. It's always focused on a peculiar thing that is happening in and around young people's sex. Like, why do you think that is? When you researched it, what did you find?

[Carter Sherman]

Why do we love telling young people that they're doing sex wrong? Yeah, I mean, I think that in a lot of ways, like, controlling how young people have sex means you control the future. You can reset the narrative about what an American family should look like, what an American life should look like, how to be good in the United States, depending on how you condition young people to think about sex. I mean, I would also argue that there's probably some element amongst people, as we get older and maybe lose more of our sex appeal, that we feel like.

[Trevor Noah]

Jealous.

[Carter Sherman]

Yes. Yeah. Like, we want to control these young people who are sort of like, you know, rising up, flourishing, what have you. But I think that there is also a great political utility in telling young people how to live their lives and in particular, making them feel certain types of ways about sex and making them afraid of certain kinds of things.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like you've nailed it. And I guess that's why you are a great author and.

[Carter Sherman]

Well, I don't know about great author, but thank you.

[Trevor Noah]

You don't be. Hey, you're Eugene Koza. You don't forget that.

[Eugene Koza]

Thank you, Trevor. Yeah, thank you so much.

[Trevor Noah]

I don't care what happens in your life, you never forget that. Right? Yes. She's a great author. And you might be useless at everything, but you're still Eugene Kozak.

[Eugene Koza]

Thank you.

[Carter Sherman]

Your name has a. What did you say?

[Trevor Noah]

Your name has a. It's a musicality.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah. Musicality.

[Trevor Noah]

You don't forget that.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah.

[Eugene Koza]

Guys, I don't know what to say. I'm touched. I mean, thank you, Eugene. Thank you for seeing me, guys.

[Trevor Noah]

We see you.

[Carter Sherman]

You're welcome. We can all go now. We're done here. Yeah. The intervention. Done.

[Eugene Koza]

What was your question? My thing is, you're absolutely right. It almost feels like sex, money, religion are the only levers that parents can still use to control their children. And once they've lost one, they'll try to cling on to another because while they're still your dependent, you can tell them what car to drive, what, how they must do at school because you are paying.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah.

[Eugene Koza]

And then you can also tell them. Yeah, if you become morally corrupt by having sex, all of this goes away.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah. You know, but I don't necessarily think, at least here, that it is parents that are passing on this messaging to young people, telling them that certain kinds of sex are bad or that they should be ashamed or afraid of certain kinds of sex. I think it is institutions, like, in general, most Americans believe that it is okay to teach young people about more than abstinence and sex ed.

[Eugene Koza]

Okay.

[Carter Sherman]

They do accept that premarital sex is a normal part of life. They would like their young children to know. Well, maybe not young children, but they would like their children to be provided with their age appropriate, medically accurate information about things like condoms and STIs and pregnancy prevention.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Carter Sherman]

But what we see instead in this country is an extreme support among politicians and institutions for absence only sex ed. The US government has since 2000, poured more than $2 billion into absence only sex ed, which in general does not work.

[Trevor Noah]

$2 billion. $2 billion into convincing people that they should not have sex until marriage. $2 billion.

[Eugene Koza]

We're in the wrong business. No. Who did I get? Did they get Trevor Noah or Trevor Weber?

[Trevor Noah]

You touched me. $2 billion.

[Carter Sherman]

It's. And I mean, and this continues under Democratic administrations. It's not like just Republican presidents are in favor of absence only sex ed. Every year, hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing to absence only.

[Trevor Noah]

What is, what is their. Like to play devil's advocate? What is their argument for what is, what is their intention before I assume anything?

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah. I mean, it's true that absence is the only way to totally avoid getting things like STIs or getting pregnant. And. But I Think that that is not only the message that's communicated through absence only sex ed. Like oftentimes absence only sex ed has been embedded with specific notions around, like, who, what a man should be or what a woman should be, or what a family should look like. And so I think for many of the advocates of absence only sex, that this is about creating a kind of American family that looks a lot like the American family of the 1950s, which is to say like two very young people getting married. Because in the 1950s, the average age of marriage dropped to an unprecedented. I think it was 20 for women and 22 for men.

[Trevor Noah]

Wow.

[Carter Sherman]

So it was a man and a woman get married, they have 2.5 kids, man works.

[Eugene Koza]

What's the point?

[Carter Sherman]

At home, the dog is.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I've always loved that point five.

[Eugene Koza]

But never in black families ever heard of a zero point five. Never.

[Carter Sherman]

It's always, maybe it's like always the possibility of more children or, you know, your neighbor's child.

[Trevor Noah]

They have three and you have two.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah, well, that's the, that's the point. Five.

[Trevor Noah]

Five. That's the half.

[Eugene Koza]

Okay, got it.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah. And I mean, implicit in this is the idea that this family is white because like, this was not the reality for black families in the 1950s. This was how white families lived. Yeah, they, the white families have the. Had the 0.5. And so I think that a lot of these absence only advocates, like, they're not just really talking about sex.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. They're talking about a lifestyle. They're talking about a way to be. A way to be perceived values.

[Carter Sherman]

They're talking about a way that they want the United States to look.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, damn. Damn. So when you dig into it, you know, like when I came across your work, it was, it was around, there were all these headlines about the sex recession. That's what got me intrigued. Cause I'd be reading the news and then all of a sudden I'd see a headline, Sex recession. I was like, what is this? And you click into it and it was like, Gen Z are not having sex. They're having less sex than ever before. The sex is going down. No sex for Gen Z. What does that mean for your children? And you'd see all these headlines and you really, in truly one of the most brilliant ways you break down what people are missing is that it's not a sex recession. Because like, kids are like, ah, no sex. Or I don't want sex. Or you go into the nuanced ideas in and around sex, intimacy, the responsibility, the bonds that People have. What do you think people miss when they just go, gen Z doesn't want to have sex?

[Carter Sherman]

I think we take the idea of sex as being like, good in and of itself for whatever reason, even though there's so much shaming around sexual, it's like treated as a bad thing, a knee jerk bad thing that the sex recession is going on.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Carter Sherman]

And I think we should be asking ourselves, like, why does it matter if young people aren't having sex? Because, like, to be honest, I don't really care if young people are having sex or not. Like, what I care about is whether or not they are willing to be vulnerable, whether or not they learn skills like how to risk rejection and how to handle rejection and what it means to connect with other people, not just sexually, but platonically and romantically. And so like, the reason I, I find all these headlines about the sex recession to be very interesting is because I think we don't actually interrogate what sex is or means or the role that it plays in our lives. Which goes back to this earlier question that you were asking about. Like, what are we not talking about when we talk about sex? And I think that that's what we're not really talking about. And I think the way that the sex recession headlines happens is it sounds really dramatic and you can understand why people would avoid having sex because sex is kind of fun. But I think that it's.

[Trevor Noah]

I like the way she said, kind of fun.

[Eugene Koza]

I mean, selling it well.

[Trevor Noah]

Kind of fun.

[Eugene Koza]

Kind of fun.

[Trevor Noah]

Kind of fun.

[Carter Sherman]

I like it. I've had time.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

You know, kind of fun.

[Carter Sherman]

Kind of fun. Sex is kind of fun.

[Trevor Noah]

That's a great sticker, by the way. Sex is kind of fun. It's kind of fun.

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, it's breaking news right here. I don't know if anyone's heard.

[Trevor Noah]

We'll be right back after the short break. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Each Apple product, like the iPhone, is thoughtfully designed by skilled designers. The titanium Apple Card is no different. It's laser etched, has no numbers, and it earns you daily cash on everything you buy, including 3% back on everything at Apple. Apply for Apple Card on your iPhone.

[Eugene Koza]

In minutes subject to credit approval.

[Trevor Noah]

Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch terms and [e-mail] you've worked hard to build your business. SimpliSafe helps you protect it with SimpliSafe for Business. AI powered cameras watch over your entry points and instantly alert live monitoring agents. They can deter Intruders before they get inside. It's protection built for growing companies. 24. 7 monitoring, no contracts and a 60 day money back guarantee. To get 60% off your new system, go to SimpliSafe.com podcast. That's SimpliSafe.com podcast for 60% off. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. So when you talk to Gen Z, when you talk to young men, young women, you know, however people identify, like across the board, people are saying that at that age they generally have a different relationship to sex than maybe the mainstream would think they should have. But how do, how do they express themselves? What do they say their views on sex are or aren't? What is, what is happening from the inside?

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, there's definitely.

[Eugene Koza]

No, nothing's happening on the inside.

[Trevor Noah]

No, that's, that's not what I meant, Eugene. That was a great joke, but that's not what I meant.

[Eugene Koza]

Sorry.

[Carter Sherman]

Yes, I appreciate that. I love a sex pun. I want to be really clear. I don't know if the headline or the title of the book made that clear, but I mean, I think it depends on who you're talking to. Like, people, these young people. I interviewed more than 100 people under 30 for the book. And so like every conversation felt really different depending on where these people had come from and what their backgrounds were and, you know, how they identified their sexual orientation or their gender. But I think what was uniform amongst these young people is they really hadn't been asked a lot of the questions that I was asking them. They all, virtually all of them had had sex education that they thought was incompetent. There was a lot of references to, if you've seen the movie Mean Girls, you know how Coach Carr says, like, if you have sex, you will die. A lot of people unprompted brought up that exact analogy to me and said that that's what their sex ed was like. But then beyond that, they, a lot of them had never. They didn't have parents like mine. They couldn't talk to them about sex. They didn't have friends that they felt like they could speak openly about sex with. And so I think a lot of them enjoyed being able to have these in depth conversations because each of these interviews ran like maybe 90 minutes.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Carter Sherman]

And I think particularly what I found was interesting. There was kind of a gender divide that happened, which is that a lot of the young women and also a lot of the queer folks I interviewed, they came to the table with more to say, okay, they had thought about it even if they hadn't had these conversations before. Whereas a lot of the young men I interviewed had not necessarily thought about or even, like, come to the table with things to talk about. And I thought that. My theory around that is I feel like the young women and the queer people had understood that their sexual desires or their interests maybe created more friction for them because, like, those desires, those interests were not treated as being as important as young men's interests, young straight men's interests. Whereas the young men, like, they. It sort of took them longer to come to start thinking about some of this stuff because they hadn't really had to put as much thought into it.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. And it's interesting because society tells you what your story is a lot of the time, you know.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So if I. If I think of it from a young man's perspective, when you're a young man, you're sold a story of yourself. You're sold a story that tells you where you should be at a certain time, how you should be viewing sex, what you. And you think of, like, there's like, the fun version, super bad. A movie, like, super bad. Or for me, Growing Up, American Pie. You know what I mean? It's just this. You got to lose your virginity by prom, man. You got to lose it by prom, man. Come on. You get what I'm saying? But there's this idea, and even in those stories, and don't get me wrong, those are comedies. I'm not saying don't make them. But society is telling you a story as a young man about your relationship with sex and what your relationship with sex means about you and your. Your success in life. And I can only imagine, you know, if you're a woman, you know, if you're queer, if you're any. If you identify as anything, this is a very different relationship. And maybe. Maybe you have less influence and more room to think about it, but also less support. Maybe for lack of a term, it's.

[Carter Sherman]

Harder to make it real. Yeah. Or to see it out in the real world. There is this concept that I came across while I was reporting the book called hegemonic masculinity.

[Trevor Noah]

Hegemonic masculinity.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah. Which is a sort of weighty word for, I think, something that people understand very easily, which is that there are a lot of very narrow ideas about what a man should be.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Carter Sherman]

And like, particularly when it comes to sex. Like men should be big, strong, tall, emotionless cavemen who are good at obtaining sex and always want to have sex.

[Eugene Koza]

Good at obtaining It.

[Carter Sherman]

Yes.

[Eugene Koza]

And also want it.

[Carter Sherman]

Also want it. So, like, there's not a lot of space in those stereotypes for men to have the feelings that they do have about sexual. And I feel like we've done a very good job in the United States over the last 50 years of expanding the ways that we think about, like, women's relationship with sex in some ways. And, you know, even if it's harder for those young girls that I was interviewing or the young queer folks I was interviewing, it's harder for them to see this out in the real world or they have to think about it more and they have all these ideas and, like, swirling around inside them. But, like, we haven't even created the space for men to start having those conversations or thinking about those stuff for themselves. And so I. When I was interviewing these young men, they talked a lot about dealing with those stereotypes and feeling like they had to be a particular kind of way.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I remember having a. Yeah, a conversation about this. It was. I forget where this was, but there was. There was a panel that was being hosted, and there were some really interesting psychologists talking about it. And then afterwards, there was a little break off, and everyone's just chatting. And one of the therapists there, they were family therapists, sex therapists, all of this. They said something that stuck with me for years. They said, we've lived in a world where men have been taught that they only think about sex and sex has no feelings. And we've taught women that sex is only their feelings, and it defines them as a human being. And, you know, it's the most. It's the most valuable, powerful, like, oh, this is your. And so you. You have this imbalance where men go, stick it in good times. And then women like, it is my sanctity. And she was saying that, no, no, no, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Men need to be taught that they do have an emotion. They do have a little bit of a fear. They do have a connection. They do have a warmth, they do have a tenderness. They. You get what I'm saying? And then women can also be taught, like, hey, there's a liberation in going like, it is yours to wield as you please. It is not only your sanctity, it's just yours. So you know what I mean? In the same way someone can choose to spend their Friday night drunk or reading a book. There's gotta be a freedom in saying to people, your sex is your sex. Do with it as you please, and don't think that it defines you in Like a singular forever. Do you know what I'm saying?

[Eugene Koza]

I. I think all of this is. And it makes total sense. I think all of this, much like anything else, is a byproduct of marketing. I think sex products don't need to use sex to market anything anymore. For example, cigarette smoking, going. Remember those ads where you used to see guys and girls at the beach having a. A bonfire?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Eugene Koza]

Car ads. This famous Mustang one where there's a woman in the man and the arm over. Have you noticed how car ads look now? It's usually one guy driving it being responsible, or it's like a family.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Eugene Koza]

Yes. But it's never second.

[Carter Sherman]

Car ads are wildly gendered, I have to say.

[Trevor Noah]

They really are.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah. They'll pop up when I'm watching television. I'm like, gosh, this is like. It's like a car for big, strong men or a car for families. And like, Those are the two genders of cars.

[Eugene Koza]

They don't sell the M3 or the whatever fancy super sports car with a man and a woman. The only time you see that is when you watching those videos of people in Monaco. So now people have sold. Have brands have stopped being interested in selling sex to use. To sell a product. So I think now when kids that are younger Gen Z's look, this just my opinion. When they look at the kind of women of the people that they idolize, they know they'll never have that woman. When they look at their favorite sports star, their favorite rapper, and they look at the kind of women that they're with, I don't think they see themselves with that kind of person.

[Trevor Noah]

So you think that's affected how they see sex because of that?

[Eugene Koza]

Yes. But that's why kids now, when you ask them, what do you want to be? They say, rich or famous. Yes. Because they know that's the only way to get the kind of girls that they want. Yes. Because now the normal is not marketed anymore because it's one or the other. It's either a guy, Macho, macho guy in a car by himself.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Eugene Koza]

Or you have a whole guy with five kids, and the person's like, I'm 16. I don't want.

[Trevor Noah]

I don't want either of these.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah, I'm gonna have sex. Must come with these ones.

[Carter Sherman]

I mean. But it's interesting, though, because young people are growing up on, you know, on an Internet that is saturated with sex. Like, they're being exposed to so many more different kinds of sexuality.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, yeah, that's true.

[Carter Sherman]

Ever had growing up I mean, I'm 31, so I grew up a bit on the Internet, but not in the way that young people are now. And so I think that this is also sort of one of the questions that perplexes people with the sex recession is like, how is it possible that young people are running into like, every possible kind of sex that they want and probably a few that they don't on the Internet, and yet not having IRL sex? And so I think that it's really hard to say what the messaging is that young people are getting around sex right now, because the world of the Internet is just full of all kinds of different sex.

[Trevor Noah]

Is that part of the problem, though, in like.

[Eugene Koza]

Exactly. Yeah, it is.

[Trevor Noah]

You know, when we think about sex. Yeah. And you talk about this in the book, it is pretty crazy that one of the most important aspects of your life as a human being, something that will stick with you until you probably leave this planet, is not taught to you in any formal way. For the, like, yes, you can say the sex ed. But you know, as you write and as we've seen, sex ed has dropped its. The window that it thinks of sex through. So it tells you, like, the physical function of sex. This is a penis. It goes into a vagina.

[Eugene Koza]

Hey, baba, we still from Africa?

[Trevor Noah]

And so. No, but I'm saying, like, when you think of that, what do you think that's also done to. Not that it was better per se, but there's a flattening of sex and the education that goes around it.

[Carter Sherman]

It means that you have to go to the Internet.

[Trevor Noah]

That doesn't equip people with the tools to know what sex encompasses.

[Carter Sherman]

Right. Cause all they hear in school is like, don't have sexual die. And then they open up their phone or their laptop or whatever, and then they see porn. I mean, three quarters of American teenagers have seen porn by the time they're 18. And so I think. And what porn purports to do is like, show you what sexual pleasure looks like and what it feels like to give it and what it feels like to receive it. And so especially if you are coming from a school that teaches you next to nothing about sex, like, of course porn is going to feel like, oh, well, this is sex ed. This is what I should use instead. And like, young people do say, like, oh, I know that porn is not accurate, and yet they still rely on.

[Eugene Koza]

It for this, but what does it not tell you? So if, if I'm. If a kid is watching porn thinking, oh man, this looks like so much Fun. What is it not telling them?

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, it's not telling them a lot. Like, because porn is scripted, right? Yeah, it's basically what I know. I'm so sorry. I'm yet again breaking news here on the podcast.

[Eugene Koza]

Mr. Penis over here is surprised. Captain Pe.

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, it's basically like. I use this analogy in the book, but it's basically like if you learn to drive by playing Grand Theft Auto, right? It's just not. It has very little to do with what real life sex looks like.

[Eugene Koza]

And what does, Cutter? Real life sex. Because obviously it's bang, bang, swing from the chandeliers.

[Trevor Noah]

Please send me that link. Yeah, please send me that link, Eugene.

[Eugene Koza]

I got you, fam.

[Trevor Noah]

We'll put that in the show notes. Let's get that link to everyone. I want to watch that video.

[Carter Sherman]

It sounds acrobatic.

[Trevor Noah]

It really sounds fantastic.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And classy. There's a chandelier.

[Carter Sherman]

Oh, yeah. This was a really nice set that they probably.

[Eugene Koza]

It's called Cirque du Soleil.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, Soleil. I see what you did there. Nicely done.

[Carter Sherman]

Wow.

[Trevor Noah]

Nicely done.

[Carter Sherman]

You need to catch up on the sex balance, by the way. I don't feel like you're really pulling your weight.

[Eugene Koza]

So what.

[Trevor Noah]

So if.

[Eugene Koza]

If that's advertised, clearly through these clips that they watch and these movies that they watch, what is the reality of it? Because we're so quick to say that's not realistic. But what's the realistic part of it?

[Carter Sherman]

What is realistic about porn?

[Eugene Koza]

No, what is realistic about sex that porn is not showing people?

[Carter Sherman]

Oh, I mean, it's. It's not showing, like, communication. It's not showing. I mean, I think the things that make people good at sex are an ability to communicate, having a sense of humor, a willingness to be awkward. Because, like, let's be honest, sex, in addition to being kind of fun, is usually fairly inelegant. And, like, none of those things are present in porn because porn is very sleek and scripted, and these are professionals operating on a closed track, and that's fine. I really don't want the message from me or from the book to be that porn is bad. It's just porn has very little to do with the way people, and particularly young people around. And so what I found was interesting in the book is I kind of had thought that young people on the right would be opposed to porn. I thought that young people on left would have better feelings about it. But what I found inside is that young people almost routinely thought that porn was bad for them, and they felt that it had warped their sexuality. There's this concept in sociology called the deep story, which is basically the story that people feel is true. And that story can have more power than the actual facts. And we see this in politics all the time, right. People vote for the guy who they just have a good feeling about, even if he doesn't actually align with any of your opinions. And so the deep story among young people is that porn has been very bad for them. And they feel like, in particular, because they can't talk to their parents about sex or their friends, and because sex ed has so failed them that they're just stranded in front of all of this pornography, and they've just been left to deal with it on their own. In particular, one of the things that really stuck with me is they really felt that porn had normalized rough sex. And in particular, choking. If you're under 40, you are almost twice as likely to have been choked during sex as someone if you're under 40, if you're under 40 compared to people over 40. And like, if you like choking, that's fine. Just do it safely and consensually. And the thing is that most people, or many people, I should say, are not asked for consent before they're choked. And choking is, you know, it can be strangulation. It can be actually very dangerous.

[Trevor Noah]

Right. Yeah.

[Carter Sherman]

And so it was fascinating to me to talk to these young people, and they would. So many of the young women I talked to just would relay spontaneously that they had been choked during sex. Like, there was one young woman who told me that, you know, they called it a love squeeze in her high school. And again, it's just one of those things where if you like it, go for it, but it's not a normal part of sex. It's not like an average part of sex. And you do have to have a real conversation about it before you do it. And that's just not something you see in porn.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. As. As you're saying this, I realize the paradox of not having a thought out and centralized form of education means that the normal becomes defined by the abnormal. Oh, wow.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you know what I mean? Because you just said choking's not normal.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And then I went, except when it is.

[Carter Sherman]

Right.

[Trevor Noah]

Because everything that's in sex was not normal at some point. I remember when I was. How old was I? I think I was 12 or 13 years old. And I remember seeing. It was like distant aunts and uncles, but they kissed using their tongues. And I remember my mind was like, what just I'd never seen adults do that. Like, because at that time in my life, that was not normal. Even in TV shows, people kissed. It was just like a smooch. You just plucked your lips and you.

[Carter Sherman]

Camera swirls around them. You can't really get a good view of what's happening.

[Trevor Noah]

Exactly that. You know what I mean? And then one day there were tongues, and there were more tongues and there were more tongues. But now if you said to somebody, kissing with your tongue is not normal. They go like, what are you talking about? That's. That's weird that you're not opening your mouth. What's wrong with you? So the. The paradox then becomes that normal does exist. Or rather like the Overton window of normal exists. But what's really wrong is how it's being defined. You know, it's like, if nobody's talking about the thing that's not happening in porn, then porn becomes the only teacher, in essence. You know what I mean?

[Carter Sherman]

Well, the thing is, they're also like, they're not even really talking about it either. Right.

[Trevor Noah]

Silence is the teacher. It's like $2 billion to be quiet.

[Carter Sherman]

Yes, exactly. And so they're just. They're not even talking about it, and it's going on behind closed doors. And, you know, there's been, like, I was reading stories and studies where, like, women would talk about having a guy, without asking, use his belt around their neck.

[Trevor Noah]

Use his what?

[Carter Sherman]

His belt. His belt, yes. Oh, geez. Or like a necklace to choke her. And it's like, you know, these are things that can be dangerous. Yeah, yeah. And if you like it, do it safely, consensually again. But we're not really, as the Internet has shown us, more and more different kinds of sex and maybe help normalize more and more different kinds of sex. Sex education has receded as a resource that people can find in institutions.

[Trevor Noah]

I also think there's a. There's a. There's an ex. Like, there's almost an amplification effect that can happen with algorithms and social media. Because you. You're saying this, and I'm thinking about all the videos young men see where women are mocking them for the type of boring sex they have. Do you know. Do you know what I mean? It's not abnormal to see, like, young men going, oh, yeah, like. Like you still out here. Like, you'll see these videos, and I'm not blaming those people. You make whatever video you want to make, but you'll see some of these videos where they'll be like, oh, yeah, when he still wants to hug you before da, da, da. And you know, like, it's like a little tick tock and it's. And it is funny. But I can also imagine being a young man and going, oh, man, I guess I've got to know this stuff because if I don't know it, do I know sex? And do I wanna be mocked? And do I wanna be teased and do I wanna be. To. To. To rewind to back in my day. But I remember in, in high school how boys and obviously I wasn't spending all the time with the girls, but how boys particularly were mocked if they didn't like, seem to know things. And back then it was much less sex based, but it was still, do you know how to do that? Do you know how to finger somebody? And it was like, ugh, ugh, ugh. And it's like, if you don't know exactly like that, Eugene. See, I taught you well. So.

[Carter Sherman]

But it was. This podcast is not sex ed. I just.

[Eugene Koza]

You said $1 billion. You had us there.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, you had us there. $2 billion. We're coming for that billion. We're doing our best here. But no, what I. Yeah, it's, it's. Do you see what I mean? The conundrum is like, you're in a world where, as you so eloquently say, you've got women who are saying, oh man, this is my experience of the men and what they're doing. And I also go, yeah, there's a world where the men are going. This is my experience of what I've been told a woman likes. And because I don't meet a woman until I'm having sex with her, I don't know actually what the thing is. And I don't wanna get there and then not know what the thing is. And you don't wanna be the fumbling guy and then what? So to your point, because the original sin is committed by not having the education everyone is now bumping, it's the blind leading the blind.

[Carter Sherman]

Well, it also, I mean, it goes back to what we're talking about with like these stereotypes of masculinity where it's this ide. Men have to know everything about sex and should be good at sex. And like, there's no room for men to ask questions, including of their partner, which is the person they should be directing these questions at, because it's seen as not being cool, including oftentimes by women. It's not like, oh, men are just telling men to be this way. There's a lot of messaging from all kinds of areas, including from women at men, to tell them to be a particular kind of way when it comes to sex.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Carter Sherman]

And I should say one of the things I wanted to do in the book was also explain, like, porn is not a monolith. And a lot of the young women I talked to, the kind of porn that they liked wasn't video porn. It was something like erotica or fan fiction or romance novels, which oftentimes can also feature rough sex. But because they also had this idea of, like, rough sex from those forms of pornography, like, they brought that to the table as well. And so if these young men are watching video porn where rough sex is being normalized and these women are reading porn where rough sex is being normalized, the story that young women were telling me and the story that young men were telling me and the sort of deep story among young people is like, that's how rough sex becomes just treated as just another kind of sex and not something you need to have a conversation about. And I should also say, I do want to say we actually don't really know what porn does to us. Like, the science on porn is incredibly muddied. It's very hard to find a control group these days of people who haven't seen Internet porn.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, geez. Yeah, that's a good point.

[Carter Sherman]

So, you know, to the extent that this is the story that's being told, I find that valuable and I find that interesting. But we don't actually know from a scientific perspective exactly what is happening to us and our sex lives because of the proliferation of Internet porn.

[Eugene Koza]

I think from just listening to you and the research that you've done, the people that you've spoken to, I think the whole entire world is missing a big part of what sex education should be. Instead of sex health education, they should focus more on sexual mental health education. Oh, the ability to connect or disconnect. Should the act not go right? Because I feel like a lot of men, I mean, young men who grew up to be men and how they view relationships, it's usually having to prove yourself. And then finally, when the act is done, you realize you don't have to be someone that you are not all along because, again, of the romanticization of relationships and the end goal being sex. And on the other end, it's the. Now that we've done it, let's talk.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah. Well, advocates of comprehensive sex, I would say, like, healthy relationship education is also a part of sex ed. Oh, yeah.

[Eugene Koza]

Healthy relationship.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah. Like how to Talk about your relationships, your feelings, the sex you want to be having. Like that could also be a part of sex ed. And honestly, the first time someone said that to me, I was like, my mind has been blown. But because I thought I had pretty good sex ed. Like my sex ed. I'm from Seattle, Washington, which is a very liberal place. And it talked about STIs, and it talked about condoms and it talked about pregnancy prevention. But it did do its best to pathologize sex. Like they had us watch a video of, I think this woman was giving birth to a 16 pound baby, which is huge, it's large. What's the point of that video other than to make me afraid, traumatize you?

[Trevor Noah]

Big babies day out.

[Carter Sherman]

Well, I am. I would love to track down the woman from that video and be like, what's up? Why did you participate in this?

[Trevor Noah]

That's one way to learn.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah, but. And it didn't include like, they made sex seem scary, even if they were trying to provide me with the resources. Much more so than other schools do. And they didn't talk about like, and here's how to talk to your partner or here's how to talk to someone you might be interested in about not only sex, but about just the relationship.

[Trevor Noah]

Is part of this because parents are also saying, I don't want my kids learning about sex. Cause you see that happening more and more in America. And I mean, but it flares up all over the world at different times. Parents will say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hey, you don't know. You don't tell my kid anything. And there's many parents who I think very naively think if they don't hear about it, they won't know it exists, you know, but. But how much of it is that? How much, how much of it is. It's like we sort of blame the schooling system, but parents oftentimes can shake what a schooling system does or doesn't teach.

[Carter Sherman]

I think it's a vocal minority of parents who feel the way that you're describing. And I think we especially see that in the United States post 2020 and post the pandemic, where we've always had a lot of conversations around sex and ed and a lot of fighting around sex ed here in the US but post 2020, I would say that those fights have reached a new level where people at school board meetings, for example, have just started spouting off things that have nothing to do with, with reality. So I describe in the book, There was in 2020 a school board meeting in Texas, because Texas was changing its sex ed curriculum for the first time in two decades. And during this school board meeting, parents were coming up and talking about things that, I mean, I struggled to even understand what they were saying because it didn't make any sense. Like, they were talking about. I kept on having to rewind and be like, am I hearing this right? But they were talking about, like, you know, teachers grooming students and teachers grooming students not only for sex, but into being transgender, which is not a thing. And they were talking about, oh, comprehensive sex ed is just a way to, you know, make students gay or trans. And consent, even of itself. Consent, even by itself is a gateway word, is what one actually, a school board member said where they were saying, like, this is a gateway word. So that, like, I believe he said that, like, Planned Parenthood and nambla, the male. Was it man, Boy, Student Man Boy, National Man Boy. A National American Man, Boy Love Association. Sorry, that took me a minute.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Carter Sherman]

To, like, consent is a gateway word so that those organizations, Planned Parenthood, nambla, et cetera, can sink their hooks into these young people. And I'm paraphrasing what he said, but it was a very staggering thing to hear.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Carter Sherman]

And obviously, it doesn't have anything to do with reality.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Carter Sherman]

And so it got to the point where it's like, oh, we can't even necessarily talk about consent in schools, because that is a politicized word at this point.

[Trevor Noah]

The tough thing is it doesn't have to do. You know, to go back to what you're saying about, like, a slither of porn, a slither of people. I, I, I truly feel bad for those parents because I think they sort of care the most. Do you know what I mean?

[Eugene Koza]

Mm.

[Trevor Noah]

Think of what you must feel like as a parent. You're watching the news. You see a story about a teacher who had sex with one of their students, man or woman. You see another story where teachers had sex with their students. You see a story where this child was kidnapped or this child was this. You see a story of grooming. You see people come out and say they were groomed from a young age. It's so hard to say to that person. Cause I. And I've been guilty of this. Don't get me wrong. Cause I would dismissively go, like, that's not a thing. But then I'm like, oh, man. But how do you. How do you get through to people? Or how do you help them balance out the weighting of risk? Because they're Saying, I'm trying to protect my child at all costs. And then you want to go, yes, but what cost is too great? At what point are you not protecting the child? You know, because it is a tough one. Because they are teachers who've molested kids. There are kids who. You know what I mean? It's this.

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, the world is a scary place and schools are a scary place.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

But it's funny. I don't think the world is a scary place in that way. No, genuinely. And I don't mean this, like, facetiously. I just think the world feels scarier when, you know, everything that is happening in it at this at the same time. But most of the world is not a scary place. You know, like, people are like, ah, I'm scared of flying. But they're scared of flying because of the plane crashes we focused on. Yeah, but there's no news story about planes that land. They just aren't, you know, And. Yeah, and we do this with everything. And I'm not saying we shouldn't focus on those things, but the human brain is very difficult at understanding how much or how little to focus on something, depending on how much it's been told to us.

[Carter Sherman]

Accurately. Gauging risks.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, it's, you know.

[Carter Sherman]

Well, I think also during the pandemic in particular, you know, people were trapped at home on their computers, looking constantly at bad news and conspiracy theories proliferated.

[Eugene Koza]

That's what you said. Bad nudes.

[Carter Sherman]

Oh, well, I was like, I've had.

[Trevor Noah]

Those during the pandemic, trapped with bad news.

[Eugene Koza]

I was like, eh, man, I've had.

[Carter Sherman]

There's nothing worse than lockdown with bad news. Lockdown on itself.

[Eugene Koza]

And I'm like, I know the stores are run out of razors now.

[Trevor Noah]

Actually, let's talk about social media, because you talk about what you call the fuckability trap, you know.

[Eugene Koza]

Hey, hey, Kara.

[Carter Sherman]

I'm sorry. Yes. Oh, okay. I didn't realize that was approval. Thank you. That.

[Eugene Koza]

What is it again?

[Trevor Noah]

The fuckability trap?

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, I have to credit. Fuckability is not my concept. It's the concept of this philosopher whose name I'm definitely gonna mispronounce. It's Amia Sevastian. I'm so sorry. So sorry if I'm mispronouncing that, but she is a philosopher who talks about, basically, fuckability is sexual desire as constructed by our politics.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Carter Sherman]

Wow. Which is the idea that, like, you know, how can we differentiate the ways that, like, racism and sexism and all other kinds of isms affect which Bodies are seen as most desirable. So that's the definition of the fuckability trap. I don't know where you're going with.

[Trevor Noah]

The actual no, but the trap that you were talking about. And you see, this is where I, like, I get stuck because it's so complicated and layered. You talk about social media and how we're given these signals, we're shown these signals. Post a picture of yourself, you know, just sitting in a park, drinking your coffee.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Get a few likes. Post the same picture in a bikini. Likes go up. Go back to a picture of you reading a book. A few likes. Bikini likes go up.

[Carter Sherman]

Am I reading in the bikini in this case? Yeah.

[Eugene Koza]

Cut.

[Trevor Noah]

I mean, that's good value.

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, look, everybody wants to be smart and hard, hot. Like that's the goal.

[Trevor Noah]

That is the goal. Can I tell you, we need to normalize that. By the way, I'm jealous of that.

[Eugene Koza]

Line because I wish I had it.

[Trevor Noah]

No, but it's true though. But no, I like this because I feel like we, we make it seem like it has to be one or the other. We make it seem like we also make it seem like it, it shouldn't like exist. And maybe, maybe that goes into this, this conversation. But, but like, what did you notice in how social media has played a role in how we define ourselves and portray ourselves in society, in and around sex?

[Carter Sherman]

I think it is exactly what you're talking about with the bikini photos and the ways that those are valued more. So there was one young man I was talking to and I appreciated that he said this, where he was talking about, you know, if he might see a girl that he likes on Instagram, he might keep scrolling and see another girl he likes, but she'll be in a bikini. And he's like, well, I'm probably gonna like her more. Like he's gonna be more into her. And that's, I think this thing that people have internalized, which is that they understand their sexual value and how to convey it online because they're constantly getting feedback in the form of likes and matches and follower counts, and they can quantify what makes them appear to be sexually desirable to other people.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, appear to be being the key phrase.

[Carter Sherman]

Right. And I think for young people who grow up constantly having that kind of feedback loop, it leads to a kind of self objectification where they don't think about their bodies and what their bodies can do for them. They think about what their bodies look like and how other people think about their bodies. And that feeling is linked to all kinds of negative outcomes like eating disorders or low self esteem or even potentially people having less sex. Because, you know, if sex is another occasion for you to be judged and found wanting, you're not going to do it. If you feel like your body is perfect, has to look perfect in order to get naked, you're probably just not going to get naked.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I think, I think about when I was young, we thought the worst thing, you know, when society was talking about this, the worst thing was the magazines have very perfect bodies and perfect people. What does this mean to you? And we thought that that's the worst it could get. But now you're on the COVID of your own magazine and no one's buying your magazine.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you know what I mean? Like, what does that mean?

[Eugene Koza]

And you can see it now.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah, that would be devastating.

[Trevor Noah]

But that's what's happening. Think about it.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Because before you could go like, oh, that's a supermodel and I'm not that. And that's the beauty standard. But the judgment wasn't about you. You knew what people were aspiring to and you knew where you were maybe in relation to it, but it wasn't about you. But now it's completely about you. Cause now you've put your magazine right next to somebody else's magazine online, and then a little button tells you how your magazine stacks up against somebody else's. And so now it's not just an aspirational thing that you cannot reach a realistic one.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah, you see it here, right here and right now.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

[Carter Sherman]

And you know, also we've been given, young people have been giving many more tools to make themselves appear more attractive. There was one young woman I was talking to who was talking about, you know, she posts on TikTok a lot and she took somebody else's filter and she didn't realize that the filter had made her cheeks look slimmer. And when she accidentally removed the filter, she realized, oh, I don't like my face this way. I don't like the way my face actually looks. I liked it with the filter.

[Eugene Koza]

More catfish to herself.

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, kind of. And she was saying, like, that's a terrible feeling, like looking at your own face and being disappointed by it. And so not only are you like, you're given all the tools to change how your body looks on social media, can't really change your body in the same way without a lot more money and probably some surgery in real life. And so you're again, just constantly being compared and Contrasted and falling short.

[Trevor Noah]

Could. Could that be one of the things? I don't, I don't know. I don't haven't done any research in this field. But could that be one of the factors? If people are living in a world where they're able to augment themselves so perfectly online, could it prevent them from interacting in real life? Because you, you to your. What you just said that. The catfishing of it all. I know how I look online. I don't want to show up in person because I can't. I can't do anything. There's no filter.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

I can't, I can't match it. And so if I stay online, I never get disappointed. I keep accruing this feeling and this, you know, but if I come into the real world, it all, it all falls apart. Did you speak to anyone where that happened? Were there people who were more comfortable existing as their full filter selves and then wouldn't go into the real world anymore?

[Carter Sherman]

I think that what has happened for young people is like just so much more of their lives has been outsourced online. And the pandemic contributed to this. Right. Because these are young people who are growing up like they didn't have promotion, they didn't have graduation.

[Eugene Koza]

Missed a few years of school.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah. They missed a lot of the sort.

[Trevor Noah]

Of the formative moments.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah. The ways that. The moments that teach you how to handle being embarrassed or being rejected or just the nuances of human connection. And so instead they were on their screens all the time. And that for them replaced a lot of those interactions. But there's nothing that can really replace an IRL Real life battle experience. Exactly.

[Eugene Koza]

I'm a big fan, me personally, of real life battle experience. And I feel like there's nothing that will make you tougher and nicer at the same time than being done a favor instead of being rejected. Cut. I'm gonna tell you the truth. There's some moment back in my life where I look back and I'm like, why did you date me? But.

[Trevor Noah]

You.

[Eugene Koza]

But you know what it did for my self esteem, it took it from here to that. That was real battle life. And also. So I've decided every year I do charity drive. I date someone who I wouldn't. It's my outreach.

[Carter Sherman]

That's so generous of you. Oh my God.

[Eugene Koza]

I write it off with my taxes. I'm like, no, there's this time I will never get back.

[Carter Sherman]

You are a philanthropist.

[Eugene Koza]

A few tanks of gas that I used and I put my credit card. I Write it off. And I'm going, okay, this is my corporate social responsibility. So that that person goes home. What they'll do is they'll say to themselves, if that guy saw me, then someone else can see me. And we laugh. But there's a lot of marriages that I think are based on my theory, because now people are like, you know who I dated? Now they look at me going, I dated that guy. And the person behaves. But no, I love that idea that they're using you as the vitri.

[Trevor Noah]

So they go like, I'm just picturing a couple right now. And then the husband is saying something. I don't know if this is working for. Working for you. Do you know who I used to date? And then they pull up your profile and like, it's like, you dated him. Yeah.

[Eugene Koza]

Why is he wearing a bikini and reading a book in the park?

[Carter Sherman]

He's smart and hot. Yeah.

[Eugene Koza]

So. But that's my thing.

[Carter Sherman]

On.

[Eugene Koza]

On. Let's.

[Trevor Noah]

But you're right, though. Good. No, but I do like the point behind. Which is beautiful. And we forget that it's all real life.

[Eugene Koza]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

We often will say, like, the. The bad and the. But, man, the good of real life as well. Being real life accepted. Being real life chosen.

[Eugene Koza]

Yes, Yes.

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, there's nothing to replace it for sure.

[Eugene Koza]

Nothing to replace the feeling of being told, look, man, I'm out of your league. And I've realized that I can do better in life. And then at that moment, you feel, you know, shattered, broken. But you go, I look, if I were you, I would totally do the same. And then you move on. And then you start punching in your weight class. And when you're in your weight class, you're like, no, man, I actually can do better than you. And that. But I think the Kraft McGrath of relationships is what's missing. It's.

[Carter Sherman]

It's.

[Eugene Koza]

The end goal has become the win. Where people. I've heard people saying, why would I want to go out there and meet people where I could be sitting here watching porn? Yeah, yeah, I've heard people saying that.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Eugene Koza]

So I feel like the. The close quarter combatness of dating that eventually leads to sex. The adventure of it all has been. Has been taken out.

[Trevor Noah]

It's all outcome based.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah. It's Netflix and Chill, and then we skip to URL and then we come back again. And then now you're talking to your friends online. You're watching girls that you will never have online. You're watching people having a good time online. Where else with us you had to go out there and be rejected. So that's why my outreach program is still continuing till this day. I.

[Trevor Noah]

It's so beautiful, Eugene.

[Eugene Koza]

Thank you, Trevor.

[Trevor Noah]

So beautiful.

[Eugene Koza]

Thank you.

[Trevor Noah]

I'm touched and I think inspired as well. I think a lot of people don't consider.

[Eugene Koza]

Imagine what kind of impact you would have with your reach, with. With your everything you can just the. The impact. I mean, you can have one in Harlem, the Bronx, you can outreach even in Africa. You can definitely do an outreach where a person can say, look who I took yourself and look, I dated this person. And then you can just lift up your self esteem one girl at a time. Sometimes a man here and there. But if. If anyone can do both. I've seen the things you do when no one is looking.

[Trevor Noah]

Thank you for seeing me, Eugene. Thank you so much for seeing me.

[Eugene Koza]

I've got you.

[Trevor Noah]

That's me almost crying.

[Eugene Koza]

Thank you, Shep.

[Trevor Noah]

Beautiful.

[Eugene Koza]

Over to you, Garter.

[Carter Sherman]

Oh, thank you. I don't have anything to add.

[Trevor Noah]

Don't press anything. We've got more. What now? After this. Hey, Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I don't know if you've heard, but Mint's Premium Wireless is $15 a month. But I'd like to offer one other perk. We have no stores. That means no small talk, crazy weather we're having. No, it's not. It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment.

[Carter Sherman]

Of $45 for three month plan. $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com Planning a trip this year?

[Trevor Noah]

Travel smarter and connect deeper by learning the local language with Rosetta stone. With over 30 years of experience, Rosetta Stone's immersive, intuitive method helps you live the language, not just memorize it. Choose from over 25 languages, including Spanish, French, Japanese and more. Their Truaxent speech recognition technology gives real time feedback to help perfect your pronunciation. No translations, just natural learning that builds from words to phrases to full conversations. Whether you have five minutes or an hour, you can learn anytime on desktop or mobile. Get a lifetime membership and unlock all 25 languages. Learn as much as you want whenever you want. Rosetta Stone. Learn confidently. Connect authentically. Don't wait. Unlock your language learning potential. Now listeners can grab Rosetta stone's lifetime membership for 50 off. That's unlimited access to 25 language courses for life. Visit Rosetta Stone.com pod50 to get started and claim your 50 off today. Don't miss out. Go to Rosetta Stone.com pod50 and start learning today. Let's talk about sexting. Throughout time, the way humans have expressed their sexuality has constantly evolved and changed. And you spend a section in the book talking about, like, you know, like, how people see sexting and what it should be and how they communicate their sexuality to each other. What would you say has been the biggest change for, like, Gen Z from what a previous generation might have considered? What's appropriate, not appropriate, what they're doing or not doing. Has there been a shift?

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, it might be sexting. I think that, you know, when I was growing up, my parents were always like, you know, everything you put online, be prepared for the New York Times to publish on its front page.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, wow.

[Carter Sherman]

I know. Really puts the fear of the New York Times into you. But now I think, like, everybody sends nudes.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Carter Sherman]

And that's just how it is. And I think that there is a much more generational acceptance that, like, yeah, probably, you know, depending on the future of American democracy, if we end up having a younger president, that president will probably have nudes out there. And that's just how it is. And so I don't think that, like, sexting is an inherently bad thing. I think it gets stigmatized a lot of the time because it's new and because it's lewd.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. But one day it could be the norm. Ask not what pictures your president can send to you. Ask what pictures you can send to your president.

[Eugene Koza]

That's the best Kennedy ever. He even did Kennedy with a. With a bad radio speaker. Kennedy's like, I never started like that.

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, look, if any president got a lot of nudes, it was probably Kennedy. Let's be honest.

[Eugene Koza]

I knew you had it in you.

[Carter Sherman]

But. Yeah, and I don't think that. I think that we just like porn, treat sexting as a monolith, and treat it as a bad thing. And the thing is, though, that by in so doing, similar to how we pathologize sex through sex ed, we make it impossible for people to handle it when something does go wrong. We don't create avenues for people to be able to seek accountability or to even feel better about themselves when their nudes are leaked or shared oftentimes without their consent. And that kind of stuff happens all the time. And we just blame those people for having sent out the nudes instead of recognizing everybody sends nudes and actually leaking somebody else's nudes without Their consent is a violation.

[Trevor Noah]

But to your point, the difficulty. And I think this is something we struggle with in society across the board. We love flipping between binaries.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

You know, and we think the equilibrium gets reached when we go to the opposite end of a spectrum, but it doesn't, you know, so people will go, oh, this is unequal. And let's switch to the complete opposite. Now it's like. Then it's like, no, now it's an unequal. The other way, you know, And I remember, like, I think of.

[Eugene Koza]

Goes from exclusive to super inclusive.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And it's like, but. But if you think of the. Nelson Mandela, for instance, a lot of people wondered why he said. He was like, I do not seek the oppression of black people. I do not seek the oppression of white people. I do not. And people are like, why is he saying that? Cause he was like, I wanna be crystal clear with you. I'm fighting for equality. I'm not fighting for a role reversal. And sometimes people miss that. And I think when you're saying that, to go back to what your parents said, that is one of the dichotomies that we also face in this world. One half of sending nudes and your nudes getting leaked is not your fault because somebody leaked your nudes.

[Eugene Koza]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

One half is your fault because you've sent nudes. Now, I'm not saying you deserve it. Please don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

But I'm saying there's like, we don't want to live in a world where there's nuance. We don't want to live in a world where there's gray. But I think it's important for us to say to each other and to the parents and to also go like, hey, hey, hey. Please know you are making it more likely that a nude can be. I'm not saying it's good if it happens to you, and I'm not saying you deserve it, and I'm saying should. But just understand that there's a risk that you're taking. But on the other hand, even if that risk, if you are a victim of that, I'm not going to now blame you.

[Eugene Koza]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

But understand, like, the. The complicated ramifications of this thing, you know?

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah. I mean, I think in the flipping from one side to the other, like, you just. It's a rejection of reality because reality is always in the middle.

[Eugene Koza]

Yes.

[Carter Sherman]

And so we can't actually acknowledge or grapple with the nuances of reality if we're constantly moving from One extreme to the other.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, I like that.

[Eugene Koza]

Actually, I'd even say it's the language that people use to not make that a crime. People call it revenge porn. You're like, no, porn is an industry. It's a business with actors, willing participants, with incentives. Someone leaking your nudes is not revenge porn. Yeah, yeah. Because it was porn at all.

[Trevor Noah]

Because it was never porn in that way at all. Yeah, yeah.

[Eugene Koza]

So I think the wording around it gives these tech companies plausible deniability because once they get dragged into what they allow someone else to do as a proxy of someone else's willingness, then they'll be in trouble. Right.

[Carter Sherman]

Well, there's new. I mean, advocates now would say instead of using revenge porn, we should use terms like non consensual image abuse or.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, yeah, there you go.

[Eugene Koza]

There you go.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, you nailed it.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah. And acknowledge. Yes, to your point, like, porn is an industry. People participate in it for money. It's their job. Like someone who's nudes leaks. That is not them agreeing to be a performer. That is them being victimized.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, it's a completely different thing. And now we've made it seem like they're part of an industry that they're not. How do we expand that into the world of dealing with sex and the way we think about it? You know, you talk in the book about college campuses and how there's this swing that goes back and forth in how college campuses have dealt with and then are now dealing with sex that is consensual or non consensual or somewhere in this gray area on campus. What have you found has happened in the past few years?

[Carter Sherman]

I think in general, college campuses are oftentimes treated as like ground zero for all of the kinds of battles that we're having in American life. Like right now, for example, there's a lot of discussion around free speech on college campuses and what we should do there. But one of the things that I was looking at in the book is Title ix. And Title IX is the federal civil rights law that protects against sex discrimination in education. And it has become a political football over how we should be treating sex and rape on college campuses. Which is to say, like, under the Obama administration, it was. Its powers were, I don't want to say expanded, but maybe more illuminated to the extent that you could use Title IX to combat sexual harassment and sexual abuse. And that sparked a huge backlash from the right that said that this was overreach by the Obama administration. And for example, they took specific aim at the standard of Proof that the Obama administration said that should be used in adjudicating these kinds of cases. And so then when the Trump administration came in, they changed a lot of the rules around Title ix and they rewrote them to, for example, make it that you have to have like in person hearings around these kinds of things where both the survivor, the alleged survivor and the alleged perpetrator have to be there. And this, amongst other changes, made it, as one activist told me, basically Title IX became unusable for survivors. It just did not change.

[Eugene Koza]

It came a kangaroo court.

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, that's that. I mean, they basically, the Trump administration said that you guys made Title IX a kangaroo court first.

[Trevor Noah]

And then we're fixing it, we're going the opposite direction.

[Carter Sherman]

Right. And then so like, basically it's now at this point, the Biden administration rolled in, they again rewrote the rules of Title 9. Trump administration, as people might have heard, is back in power. And wait, what?

[Trevor Noah]

I know, how long have we been in here?

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, what is interesting is like, there are things, there are things in the book that I predicted would change under a Trump administration, and Title 9 was one of them, but I did not predict the speed at which a lot of this stuff would change.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, yeah, okay.

[Carter Sherman]

Like in between, I mean, writing a book takes time. In between turning in the final draft and the book actually coming out. Some of the stuff that I predicted would happen over the course of a four year Trump administration happened more or less immediately. And so the Title IX rules have reverted at this point to what they were underneath the Trump administration. And I think for a lot of survivors on college campuses, it's been very difficult and upsetting to see like, sex effectively being treated as a political football and not really being the nuances of it, not really being reckoned with, just people again, flipping from one side to the other. And, you know, I think we have to think about, like, what is a college campus? Like, a college campus is where people go and learn about the world. And if they're being taught at that age that maybe there are not consequences for sexual abuse, for sexual harassment, for rape, like, what does that say for the rest of their lives? Sex or rape is one of the. Rape is one of the number one reasons that women leave college campuses.

[Trevor Noah]

Damn, no way.

[Carter Sherman]

And so when that happens, we're creating a situation where women are less able to flourish. They're not able to get the education, they're not able to get the jobs, they're not able to ultimately have as much of a public voice. And so we create like a snowball effect here when we don't take sexual abuse and harassment on college campuses seriously in all kinds of ways.

[Trevor Noah]

It's also. I always feel like it's also a little disingenuous to deal with the people who are dealing with the ramifications of a system without thinking of the system itself. Like, one of the biggest ones that throws me in my daily life is I'll think about, like, drunk driving. I always think it's confusing that if you sign a contract and you are inebriated, most courts would argue that you did not have the capacity to sign that contract. Let's say you were drunk at the time, so you couldn't agree.

[Eugene Koza]

Altered.

[Trevor Noah]

You were in an altered state. If somebody drives drunk and they crash their car into people, they are prosecuted fully because the law says they made a decision to drive drunk. But I'm like, yeah, but that same law in another instance says you did not have the capacity to make a decision. Do you know what I mean? And it's these small paradoxes that are complicated. And that's what law needs to get into. That's what I think law was fundamentally meant to be about, is trying to understand the complicated nuances in a society, provide clarity as to how to deal with them on a case by case basis. But the messiness of the system isn't dealt with. Like, whenever these college things came up, I would see them have all these conversations, but very seldom would I see colleges say, what do we think about how we allow alcohol on a campus? Do you know what I mean?

[Carter Sherman]

Mm.

[Trevor Noah]

And I'm not saying that that is the cause, but I'm going, you cannot separate a conversation about sex and young people from alcohol. But you are just gonna talk about the people and not the environment that the people are in and how they're consuming the alcohol. And then what then happens? And then you with me. And sometimes I think it's such a. It's such a short sighted and small approach that you may end up swinging back and forth the whole time because you just go, oh, yeah. You know, one administration goes, it's the guys who are the problem then. Now it's the girls who are the problem. Then it goes. It's just gonna keep going back and forth. And the institutions never actually have to ask themselves, wait, what environments are we creating? To your point in educating in, they do those campus tours, they tell you about the morals of the camp. This is what it's like to be a student here. This is where you should go. For this.

[Carter Sherman]

This is.

[Trevor Noah]

I feel like even on that level, colleges should say, hey, we're gonna teach you about sex on campus. This is part of your onboarding. This is part. Not sex, also in life. But we're gonna, like. We're gonna talk about sex in a college setting. We're gonna talk to people about sex. We're gonna talk to you about shame, we're gonna talk to you about pleasure. We're gonna talk to you. But these things are all part of sex itself. And if we don't, we're just gonna be living in a world where everyone is coming in with, like, their own little manual that was written by porn or their friends or their parents or a random school teacher. And then we wonder why there's so many breakdowns in that world. Do you get what I'm saying?

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah, I mean, I do think colleges do try to some extent. Like, I remember on my college campus, we did get, you know, a talk about how to handle sex, how to handle drinking. And the thing is, like, I still didn't really know that Title IX existed until my senior year.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, got it.

[Carter Sherman]

And so it's not something that I think can be solved by, like, one talk that the college campus gives to incoming freshmen. Especially, I mean, when you're in a.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I mean, more than a talk. I mean, like, it's. It's. To me, it's a syllabus. It's part of life. But. But carry on.

[Eugene Koza]

Sorry.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah, no, I mean, I think that it just. I don't know. I think. I'm thinking back to all these young women I interviewed. So in the course of doing these interviews, I never asked people if they had been sexually assaulted. Like, that was not a standard question that I had because it didn't necessarily want to put people into a space if they weren't willing to talk about it.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Carter Sherman]

But I was staggered by the number of young women and some young men who told me that they had been sexually assaulted, that it just came up organically in the course of the conversation. And to me, I feel like we are just simply not at a place where we are dealing with this or thinking about this at the scale that it's occurring.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Carter Sherman]

I did ask young people, can you tell me about a cultural or social or political event that shaped your approach to sexual. And almost all of them said MeToo. Most of them had memories of it. Some of them didn't, which was very shocking to me because Made me feel very old. But it turns out that very little has really changed post Me too. In terms of actual legal reforms, actual changes on college campuses. The main change we saw post, me too, was reforms in NDA laws, which are not very helpful for college students who are not working. And better HR training, or more HR trainings, I should say, on sexuality.

[Eugene Koza]

Yet again, they're also not at work.

[Carter Sherman]

Right. And so it just. We really, I think, have a resistance to having any of these kinds of conversations about the system or about how the system can be improved or what the law should do or what even, like, we should talk about in terms of culture. Like, is the law always the best mechanism for dealing with the aftermath of sex?

[Trevor Noah]

That's a great question, actually.

[Carter Sherman]

Like, not everybody actually wants to go through the legal system. I, I can tell you I was sexually assaulted in college. I never thought about going to the cops because it was me and him alone in a room, and I knew that was my word against his and it wasn't going to end well. And incarceration is also not necessarily the same thing as justice. And so I felt like what became very clear to me is in talking to these young people is like, there is just a resounding failure across the board to take sexual assault and sexual abuse and its aftermath seriously. And like, maybe Title ix, we at least need to be talking about Title IX as more than a political football in this environment. It can't just be something that Democrats and Republicans use to wield against each other to prove that one. Oh, you're attacking men, you're attacking women. It has to be something that we actually have real conversations about as a law or as like, the beginning of a foundation for cultural change.

[Trevor Noah]

It's a noble thought, but I can't. No, I can't.

[Carter Sherman]

No, fair enough. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

I can't help but think to myself, is that a possibility, like, ever in our evolution as humans? Because you can go back and read, I mean, like, like ancient texts, and it's shocking to find, like, the Greeks and the whatever, like, on a. On a legal level, talking about morality and what is and isn't permissible and what a pervert is. And, you know, it feels like it's always going to be politicized, it's always going to be political, because to what you said in the beginning of the conversation, there's a power attached to it. And it's also a very, very. It's the perfect tool to define where morality lies in a society. You know, you think of like.

[Carter Sherman]

Or.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, no, no, but like how we view sex and, and the. Even beyond the laws around it. Itself, but the. How we view it, you know. You know, you think of colonial writing that the savages. The way they have sex and the savage sex and the. It's such a powerful tool to define where the norm exists and where the other starts. And I actually wonder, because you do write quite a lot about this, I actually wonder how much you think we can learn from societies or peoples who have been pushed to the fringes of society. Cause I often find that they do a lot of work in defining sex in a way that, like, mainstream doesn't. You know what I mean? Like, I remember in around the MeToo movement, I learned more from the BDSM communities that came up online. Everyone was like, but how would we know? And then BDSM people were like, oh, so this is what we do. This is because we have been choking, we have been whipping. We have been. And it's. It was. I was ignorant to it. I couldn't believe that people who were in those communities had checklists and had very, you know, like, tender and interesting guidelines on how to go about this. And so I wonder, like, what you learned about what we could learn by engaging with groups or communities who have generally been pushed out to the fringes.

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, a lot. I think that a lot of these groups. I mean, BDSM is a great example, and I'm paraphrasing somebody else who said this, a philosopher at Yale who's talked about BDSM needs hierarchy into an erotic resource through consent. And so you can use consent to take all of these different hierarchies in society and work with them and make them a part of your sexual play and your pleasure. And the fact of the matter is, I don't think that we should necessarily be aiming at abolishing hierarchies, because I just don't think it's necessarily possible. But I do think that there are a lot of communities that have thought a lot about how do we take the world as it is and figure out a way to wring pleasure out of this. I was really inspired in doing these interviews by the number of young people I spoke with who were interested in activism around sex. I talked with a lot of young people who were fighting against sexual assault, who were fighting for abortion rights, against abortion rights, who were fighting for LGBTQ rights. And there was one young woman who I talk about in the book, Zoe, who actually, she had been sexually assaulted, and she had also had her nudes leaked multiple times. And she. It was devastating for her. It was profoundly difficult for her to pick herself up again after that. But she got involved in pleasure advocacy on campus and became really invested in sex ed. And she got to a point where she is interested in sending nudes to her now boyfriend. And so the answer isn't necessarily, you know, never send nudes again. You've been hurt by it. It's to create a framework for yourself where you can say, okay, I recognize the risks. Like, maybe my nudes will get leaked again. Maybe this boyfriend who I love so much will betray me. But if I go into these situations knowing the risks, I will feel more empowered than I did in a previous situation that I was in. And I found those kinds of stories to be very inspiring because people do pick themselves up and go on after these circumstances, and they do think about new frameworks for themselves that make them feel comfortable as opposed to just rejecting the thing that had hurt them in the past.

[Trevor Noah]

I don't want to probe into your past, so please feel free. Feel free to not share, but I'd love to know what you would have thought justice would have looked like in your story. Because you say you weren't comfortable in going to the police, but you wanted something to happen. But you said an interesting phrase after that. You said you don't necessarily think that incarceration would have been the right solution. So when you look back on that, and again, like I said, we can move on. But, like, what do you think justice would have looked like for you?

[Carter Sherman]

I think an apology would have actually done a lot.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Carter Sherman]

Like, it actually, I wasn't. I wouldn't have really needed, frankly, that much. And I should say that I wasn't raped. I describe it in the book, but it basically became like he wanted a blowjob. I didn't want to give him one. We had, like, a physical tussle over it. And I ultimately was able to effectively push him out of my apartment. And so maybe if someone had had, like, a different kind of assault or was just a different person, they would have wanted more. But I would have felt that if he had acknowledged what had happened as something that had hurt me and said, I'm sorry that I did that, that would have been enough for me. And, you know, this is something that gets talked about in the concept of restorative justice, which I bring up a little bit in the book, which is that you can have if you have conversations and create a safe space for conversations. I think people don't necessarily realize that, like, you know, there's actually a wide variety of outcomes that some people would accept that are not Just punitive. But we don't create the space for those kinds of outcomes. We don't create the possibility for envisioning a world where it's like, it's not necessarily the law that's gonna solve all of this stuff for us.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. In a world where the law has now become responsible for handling all of communities, conversations, like every aspect of a conversation that should be held in a community, everything becomes legal. Do you know what I mean? And it's. That's like one of the things that you see. It's really big in America, but it's expanding to the rest of the world as well, where people have lost or misunderstand the value of. As you said. I'm sorry.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Or the value of. Do you acknowledge the thing that happened to me? The value of. And because of the business side of it.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

You know, which you talk about all the time. There isn't really value in the other one. There's no. There's no money in the sorry side, but there's money in the legal side. You know what I mean? There's money in the punitive side. In the punitive side, you put the person away in jail, there's money to be made somewhere, but there's no money in connecting human beings on a restorative. On a restorative path. So that's like a. It's a. It's a beautiful way to think of it. Thank you for sharing that.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah, I. I think in the. In the most softest side of it, which is the one extreme, which is an emotionally unavailable boyfriend for a woman, is again, the battleground is a female body. And on the extreme side of it, which is assault and rape, is still the female body. And on the other end of it, there can only be one perpetrator because they come from one gender. So even the innocent parties feel like one step could get me in a wrong place. So I think young people are not having sex because they don't like the human connection. I think they're scared. Women are scared for what might happen to them. Men are scared of what they might do because they don't know much. So I think you're right when you're saying it should be all encompassing when it comes to sex education. Because I think it exposed how much is missing from those people that we look at and go, those were the nuclear family who are conservative in how they behave.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. How they saw the world. Yes.

[Eugene Koza]

Because at some point we have to admit that that generation also raised well balanced and well rounded individuals. So now this freestyling that's going on has left kids to their devices quite sooner. Kids take themselves to school earlier, they do their own homework, they bring themselves back. So there's no conversation. There's no way. And also there's no. For males especially. I can speak for myself. I'll see that with younger ones. There's no examples of what a good man is, of what a good protector is. You know, I've had these conversations in South Africa where during gb, Gender Based violence month. I would say I hate.

[Trevor Noah]

That's where we're against it, by the way.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah. That one month just.

[Trevor Noah]

No, but we're against it. Just so you know, because you never know the 31st. You never, you. But you can't just say the month because you never know if you fall against.

[Carter Sherman]

Against, I assumed against.

[Trevor Noah]

But I'm just letting you know, I don't want you walking away being like, in South Africa they celebrate gender based violence for a month.

[Eugene Koza]

We don't celebrate it.

[Trevor Noah]

Highlighted against.

[Eugene Koza]

Yes. So and I said these activists and these NGOs, I feel like there's someone behind them, obviously, because the assault side of it, like punitive side of it is a big business. And when they say they want to take the drive to younger men at school, I'm like, no, you can't automatically assume that a young man is going to commit sexual assault against or gender based violence against a woman. You're not giving them the benefit of a doubt. You're already accusing them before they've gotten their first kiss or their first crush.

[Trevor Noah]

Fear, to your point, is something you talk about even on the, you talk about in the book, in and around like Roe v. Wade. And it is something that has to be. Again, we don't know any number conclusively, but I do appreciate how you talk about what fear does to us and how we should like counting all these things. You're in school, the fear is you have sex, you're gonna die.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Or you're gonna have a 16 pound baby. These are your options. And then you move on to another one. And then it's like your fear. If you're a virgin, you're a loser, you're gonna die. You know, it's fear. And then there's another type of fear. If I come forward, I'll be shamed or I, I will be, you know, I won't be listened to or this or it'll be a kangaroo call. It becomes a fear and then you come. If I say no, it's a fear. If I If I don't say yes, even as, like, guys, do you know how many young men I've talked to who go, I don't think that as a man I have the option to not want sex.

[Carter Sherman]

Yeah. I want to be clear Also, you know, 1 in 25 young, 1 in 25 men in the US has been penetrated against their will, and 1 in 9 has been made to penetrate somebody else against their will. Wow. So this is.

[Trevor Noah]

But I'm saying that's, that's them, like, even against their will. I wonder if that includes men who will say, and this is what I mean by the complicated nature of it. They may go, not, not against my will. But I didn't know that I can say no.

[Carter Sherman]

And I think it was because men are expected to always want sex.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, forget it. From like, even kids sides, you know how many couples are in therapy because a wife is going, he doesn't want to have sex? And the man's like, yeah, well, I don't always want to have sex. She's like, I mean that. Clearly there's something wrong with me. And then now you're living in a world where one half of the couple's going, there's something wrong with me because men always want sex. Why doesn't he always want sex? And the man's like, men don't always want sex. That's not like a real thing. But now, I can't say this to.

[Carter Sherman]

You now, or the man is thinking, men always want sex. Why don't I always want sex? What's wrong with me?

[Trevor Noah]

That's exactly. So when we talk about that fear, I think of you. Add another layer to it. People go, oh, Gen Z, why are they so afraid of. And then you go, yeah.

[Carter Sherman]

Have you seen sex lately?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. And also, like, look at Roe v. Wade. If you've told somebody that the actions of your sex could lead to somebody being pregnant when you, they didn't wanna be pregnant, you didn't wanna be pregnant. And now that, that's your life, that's your baby, you're moving forward, otherwise you're a criminal. I can see some people going, ah, then I don't even wanna have sex. Then, you know, and I, I'm assuming you, you, you saw this or you felt this. How much, how much do you think that affected how Gen Z now sees sex in America?

[Carter Sherman]

I think one of the theses of the book is that the changes in the landscape around sex have added so much anxiety and fear around sex that it is for young people easier to opt out And I'm not saying that this is a conscious decision that they're making, but when it feels so fraught to be vulnerable with another person, to have sex with another person, you know, why do it when porn is out there? Actually, one of the sort of moments I decided to write the book was there was a young woman who messaged me right after Roe was overturned, I think it was the following day. And she told me that she was pregnant and she didn't want to be. But she lived in Arizona, and Arizona had a law on the books that was centuries old that banned virtually all abortions.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Carter Sherman]

And abortion providers were afraid to provide abortions because they thought that the law might be back in effect. And so she could not end her pregnancy in the state where she was living. She ultimately ended up ordering abortion pills online and ending her own pregnancy in a motel room with her ex boyfriend. And, you know, that is safe to do. Medical experts widely agree. You can order pills online and you can end your pregnancy in your first trimester. You can end the pregnancy in the first trimester of pregnancy safely. But what she told me and what really stuck with me was that she felt like she was being humiliated for having sex. That even though the abortion was something she wanted, she felt empowered in having it. She felt like that was a good decision for her. She felt like Republicans in particular were trying to punish her for having been a person that had sex. And I think that that is a feeling that a lot of young people are grappling with right now, which is that, oh, there is politics is making me a bad person for having sex. Or the state of politics, I would say right now, is making me a bad person for having sex. And, you know, with Roe v. Wade gone and more than a dozen states having banned almost all abortions at this point, we're creating a generation that has to grapple with that fear every day and has to think about, okay, if I did get pregnant or if I do get somebody else pregnant, what are we going to do? Do I have the money to end this pregnancy? Could we go out of state? What does it mean if I just continue to have this baby? One in five men have been involved with somebody who went on to have an abortion. And so this is not just something that affects women knowingly or un, unknowingly, both. And so this is not just an issue that just affects women. It is something that many of the young men I spoke to were also thinking about and were also racked with anxiety over.

[Eugene Koza]

Yeah, I've seen how it Also, what's happening in the world affects how men date, because sometimes disagreements with someone that you're dating are very tricky when you think what could happen when they leave here. You know, I've seen people who are going, eh, but, you know, might not agree about me not wanting to have sex with her or her wanting to do it with me. Not, nah, she's here. I must play along so that at least I'm safe. It's not a thing of when she can go out there and change her mind about what happened here. Because also, we've had stories of people who become malicious and weaponize the fact that many women get raped and many women get sexually assaulted and a slight disagreement in relationship can turn to, you.

[Trevor Noah]

Know, we had a few of those stories. It is actually sad how that happens. We've seen a few of those stories recently in the news. And it is, it is interesting to use the airplane analogy. It's amazing how people can use a few stories to create so much fear. And do you know what I mean? It's like, it's messy and it's complicated, and it's like, I wonder if you came to any. I wonder if you came to any light at the end of a tunnel. And not that this is a morbid thing, by the way, you know. Yeah, but, like, listen, like, to what Eugene is saying now. I agree with completely. Do you know what I'm saying? Think about, like, some of the conversations we've had on this podcast in different episodes. You, you know, you have a healthcare industry that does something that's pretty good for people with their kidneys, dialysis. And then there's a few companies who come in and go, this is how we can use this to make money. And it hurts people in the same instance here, you know, some people can use the laws in their favor to hurt somebody. They can hurt women, can use a law to hurt men. Men have been using the law in their favor to hurt women for, you know, decades and decades. But where's. Where's like, the. Is there a hope in all of this, or is it just us always grappling with the messiness that is never contained?

[Carter Sherman]

I mean, I think grappling with the messiness can be something that is a hopeful process because I think the messiness of sex is what makes it interesting, is what makes it kind of fun. And I think that we shouldn't try to make sex something that is black or white or that is very strictly one thing or the other. Like, I think we should try to look at Sex in the landscape of its messiness and enjoy that. And I think one of the things that did give me hope was the extent to which young people were trying to do that. And I think because these young people have grown up seeing Roe get overturned, seeing MeToo break out, dealing with a profoundly turbulent political environment, I think they understood a lot earlier than say, I did that sex has political dimensions and that no matter what we do, sex will always have those political dimensions and that political valence. And they said to themselves, in many instances, okay, given that that is true, what can I do in my community to change those dimensions and make sex be something that is something that I don't have to be afraid of or that my friends don't have to be afraid of? And I think that as much as the political elements of sex can make people anxious, it can also be. It can also give them the feeling like, okay, I can create change around sex. It's not just something that happens in a bedroom between me and my partner or me and my partners. It's something that I can go out and try to redefine the terms of in school rooms or go out and try to redefine the terms of in school board meetings and in courtrooms and in state legislatures and in Congress. Like, it is possible to change, as opposed to thinking that sex is just this dirty thing that we can never, ever seek to make better.

[Eugene Koza]

100. I think what's tricky about sex is it's both a want and a need at the same time.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, damn.

[Eugene Koza]

So it makes people, you know, very confused about where to draw the line. So, yeah, yeah, that.

[Trevor Noah]

I never thought of it like that, did I?

[Eugene Koza]

You see what I did there?

[Carter Sherman]

You.

[Eugene Koza]

So these things happen often in this podcast. I'll take it to the top, top, top. Then we get stuck there.

[Carter Sherman]

Then there's just a moment of silence, of reverence.

[Trevor Noah]

There's a moment of silence.

[Carter Sherman]

The pointedness of your just. That was incredible insight.

[Trevor Noah]

I mean, more than that, what happens is I think to myself, we're so lucky that he would dare to be with us. This community service is just. I go, wow.

[Carter Sherman]

Begin your philanthropy.

[Trevor Noah]

We just don't deserve. I just. That's all I think to myself. I'm like, man, I've got to go and talk to somebody who doesn't deserve it the way I don't deserve to listen to you. Carter, we really had fun. This was great. I think I appreciate more than anything how nuanced your book is. You know, in a world where everything is turning into, like, one thing or another. It's so rare to read an account of just like human complexity. You know, age, gender, legal, parent, child, you name it. I don't think there's anyone who wouldn't be seen in this book. And so thank you for coming and chatting to us about it and, and you know, I hope everyone reads it and I can't wait to see what you write about in the next one.

[Carter Sherman]

Thank you so much. That's very kind of you to say.

[Trevor Noah]

Thank you very much. This was dope. Too much fun.

[Carter Sherman]

Thank you for all the sex puns.

[Eugene Koza]

You are so good. You made this so much fun.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, man. Thank you very much. For real?

[Carter Sherman]

Of course. Thank you.

[Eugene Koza]

Jeez, that was fun.

[Trevor Noah]

This episode is presented by Whole Foods Market. Whole Foods Market is the place to get everything you need for Thanksgiving. With great prices on turkey, quality organic produce, grab and go sides and everyday low prices from $3.65 brand, you can prep for the holiday with big savings. Shop everything you need for Thanksgiving now at Whole Foods Market. What now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius and the show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jess Hackle. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiou. Music mixing and mastering by Hannis Brown. Random other stuff by Ryan Parduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of what Now.

[Carter Sherman]

Foreign.

[Trevor Noah]

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[Eugene Koza]

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[Trevor Noah]

All the cooking and wrapping in between.

[Eugene Koza]

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[Trevor Noah]

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[Eugene Koza]

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[Trevor Noah]

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[Eugene Koza]

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[Trevor Noah]

You can't go wrong with a gift from Coop.

[Eugene Koza]

Visit coopsleepgoods.com comedy to get 25% off their gift guide picks. That's coopsleepgoods.com Comedy.

[Carter Sherman]

I've never felt like this before. It's like you just get me. I feel like my true self with you. Does that sound crazy? And it doesn't hurt that you're gorgeous. Okay, that's it. I'm taking you home with me. I mean, you can't find shoes this good just anywhere. Find a shoe for every you from brands you love like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas and more at your DSW store or dsw dot com.