May 16, 2022 • 26 mins
We’re still hung up on sex and love. Is there a biochemistry of love? And how do we talk about sex if it’s making us crazy with all these hormones? Dr. Justin Lehmiller helps us answer that question and shines a light on the role of sex education in learning to talk about sex. Noam tells the story we lovingly call ‘the art of the blowjob.’ Writer Lux Alptraum helps us feel better about our kinks. And then we look at the biological and cultural factors that color our views of sex and love with actor Tadgh Murphy, Dr. C. Sue Carter, and Dr. Martha Kauppi.
Dr. Ian Kerner
https://www.iankerner.com/
Dr. Ian Kerner’s best-selling book, She Comes First
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060538260/
Dr. Justin Lehmiller
https://www.sexandpsychology.com
https://open.spotify.com/show/6DCIGjOUaenoKdY71N7NqI
Lux Alptraum
http://www.luxalptraum.com/
Lux Alptraum’s book, Faking It
https://www.sealpress.com/titles/lux-alptraum/faking-it/9781580057660/
Martha Kauppi
https://www.instituteforrelationalintimacy.com/
Dr. C. Sue Carter
https://kinseyinstitute.org/about/profiles/cscarter.php
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/conversations-with-friends-strangers--5711089/support.
Dr. Ian Kerner
https://www.iankerner.com/
Dr. Ian Kerner’s best-selling book, She Comes First
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060538260/
Dr. Justin Lehmiller
https://www.sexandpsychology.com
https://open.spotify.com/show/6DCIGjOUaenoKdY71N7NqI
Lux Alptraum
http://www.luxalptraum.com/
Lux Alptraum’s book, Faking It
https://www.sealpress.com/titles/lux-alptraum/faking-it/9781580057660/
Martha Kauppi
https://www.instituteforrelationalintimacy.com/
Dr. C. Sue Carter
https://kinseyinstitute.org/about/profiles/cscarter.php
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/conversations-with-friends-strangers--5711089/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Straw hot media.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You know there is in this fear. Maybe they'll think
I'm weird and they'll decide like I'm the purv they
can't be friends with.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to Conversations with Friends and Strangers. I'm Maggie, I'm
noahm In the show, we take a closer look at
the complicated relationships in the Hulu series Conversations with Friends.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
We'll meet some of the cast and crew, chat with experts,
and share our own kind of sexy, kind of uncomfortable,
but relatable stories about the messy relationships we find ourselves.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
In today or still hung up on sex and love?
Is there a biochemistry of love? And how do we
talk about sex if it's making us crazy with all
these hormones?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Doctor Justin Leigh Miller helps us answer that question and
shine the light on the role of sex education and
learning to talk about sex.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Noam tells the story we lovingly call the Art of
the blow Job.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Writer looks Alptrom helps us feel better about our kinks.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
And then we look at the biological and cultural factors
that color our views of sex and love with doctor
Sue Carter, Act Tiger Murphy, and doctor Martha Colpi By
the end of today, you'll feel like you can talk
about sex to anybody. It's a really big promise. Noah,
you're right. Let's recap and decide later.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
How we feel.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Well.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Summer is over and the final year of university has begun.
Bobby moves in with Francis. They've moved past their fight
and it looks like things are pretty good.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Nick is also back in town and things are looking
good for them too. They're having hot sex, they're going
for walks, they're doing couple stuff, even define what they're
doing as a relationship.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Bobby and Francis through a house swarming party, and later
on they run into Melissa at the bookstore and go
and grab a coffee with her.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
And the big thing in this episode is Nick tells
Francis he wants to tell Melissa about the affair.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Do you find that most people have trouble talking about
sex with their friends or even their partners?
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Definitely their partners. I think people have more of a
problem talking about sex with their partners than they do
with their friends.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
That's doctor Ian Kerner.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
I think when we're actually getting into the intimacy and
the vulnerability of communicating about sex with our partners. I
think that's where shame can come into play. That's where
embarrassment can come into play. That's where really just from
not talking, thinking we sort of have a mental model
(02:22):
of our partners that might prevent us from talking. In short,
we don't really know our partners very well sexually, and
so the whole impulse towards conversation can really just sort
of get obscured in kind of a cloud of shame
and shyness and embarrassment.
Speaker 5 (02:41):
One of the things that I've said in my work
before is that people often find it easier to have
sex than to talk about sex.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
And here's doctor Justin Leigh Miller.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
It's often the case that when two or more people
get together for a sexual encounter, there's very little communication
beforehand about people's boundaries and limits or their sexual desires
and what feels good to them, and so they end
up in this sexual situation physically interacting, but they haven't
communicated about any of what they actually wanted beforehand. And
(03:15):
sometimes it works out just fine because people are on
the same page and they're following essentially the same script,
and it can turn out very well. But oftentimes it
turns out very poorly. Because people have totally discrepant expectations
about how this encounter should go or what feels good
to them, and they're expecting their partner to sort of
(03:35):
read their mind and figure out how to bring them pleasure.
And so when people sort of start out a relationship
sexually and they don't have that communication, you know, again,
sometimes that can go off in a positive direction, it
often goes off in a negative direction. But if you
start out having really good sex without talking about it,
there's a real risk long term in that relationship that
(03:58):
you're going to grow incompatible and you're never going to
have a discussion about it, and you're just going to
grow further apart and the sex life is going to
wilt to some degree. So it's really important, I think,
for people to establish strong communication patterns with their sexual partners,
even if the sex they're having is already great, because
what feels good to you now can change over time.
(04:19):
What turns you on now might change over time. So
there's this enormous value in sexual communication, but we just
often don't put in the effort to do it because
we're not equipped with the sexual communication skills we need.
And that's really where sex education especially in the United States,
is failing us.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
And it's where DIY sex education comes in. Gorilla sex
d gorilla sex, well, not like a gorilla, but like gorilla,
like gue gorilla.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
Never mind, what's it like having sex with the man?
Like is a penis just not observed? There's just a
device with no aesthetic relation to anything.
Speaker 7 (05:04):
That's kind of its term.
Speaker 5 (05:09):
It's much better in other parts of the world. It
is much better in certain parts of the country than others.
But we really need to equip people with the skills
so that when they're in sexual situations they can communicate
it about what they want, what feels good, what's pleasurable,
so that they can have optimal sexual experiences, because too
many of us are having suboptimal experiences that are just
(05:31):
not feeding our needs at all.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
My experience with sex education was actually surprisingly good, considering
that I went to high school in a kind of
small town in central California. And when I say good,
I mean it was an abstinence only education. What is
sex education like in Israel? Well, you know, they teach
us about the sheet with the whole.
Speaker 8 (05:53):
Now.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Honestly, we focus on about gender in literature, but not
a lot about sex education, so it was pretty sparse.
One thing I do remember about my sex ed was
that it was very, very heteronormative, and it had literally
zero mention of pleasure.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
Historically, you know, the United States has been very puritanical
when it comes to sex, and talking about sex at all,
let alone sexual pleasure and orgasm and all of these
other things has been really taboo, and so just the
idea of having any kind of sex ed is controversial.
And if you add in the fact that it could
be pleasurable and that people might enjoy it, that's a
(06:31):
whole other thing. And it's really unfortunate the pleasure is
missing in so much sex education. You know, it's common
throughout the United States and actually in many other parts
of the world for there to be no mention of
the clitorists whatsoever in sex education courses. And it's interesting
because the clitorist is the only organ in the human
body whose sole function is pleasure, Like, we don't know
(06:52):
any other purpose that it serves, and yet it's being
totally ignored in most sex education courses. A travesty, I
think in a lot of ways, and it's a big
part of why we have the orgasm gap. That we
do where heterosexual women in particular reach orgasm so much
less frequently than heterosexual men, and in part it's because
we're just not teaching women about their bodies and pleasure.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Sex education in the US also consistently fails LGBTQ plus
youth with its narroscope.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
And so queer kids, trans kids, they're not learning what
they really need to know, even the basics of how
they might protect themselves during sex. So that is another
huge blind spot that exists in the world of sex education,
and it actually creates this vulnerability for more STIs, more
nonconsensual sex, more other negative outcomes to happen, just because
(07:44):
we're not teaching these very important, sizeable populations anything meaningful,
useful about sex.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Maggie, where do you think you learn most of what
you know about sex? If I may ask, you know,
that's a really good question, And honestly, I don't know.
And I also feel like I'm still learning, always learning.
What about you?
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Well, you know, I learned a lot from sexual partners,
and I learned also from my friends from talking about sex,
and I think I have a really good example. Ooh, okay, friends, family,
This gets a little detailed A little explicit. If you're uncomfortable,
skip ahead. I had just started dating someone that I
(08:27):
felt very strongly towards and also very attracted to, and
we had some athletic.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Sex and he was.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Well equipped, if I may say, but also he was uncircumcised,
and that was my first experience with an uncircumcised penis.
So I was kind of in a pickle, you know,
all the tricks that I knew didn't work, and I
kind of was scared of googling it. I don't know.
We were late at the bar that I was working
at one night. I was with a couple of colleagues
(08:58):
and a couple of friends, and you were sick on
the bar drinking and smoking and just you know, three
am being in I don't know, a little tipsy, and
I brought it up and they were all just so sweet.
They just like, oh honey, let us help you. And
there were different ages, you know, different classes, different everything,
(09:22):
and they each grabbed like a phallic object, a cucumber,
saran wrap, a banana, I don't remember anything they could grab,
and they just demonstrated.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
They taught me.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
They taught me how to give a blow job to
uncircumcised penis. So I'm getting really good reviews. By the way,
that's great. So you're a five star blowjob. I don't know,
five star.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
But so you learned this and you went back to
this person and was he like great?
Speaker 3 (09:51):
He was like, I mean I just made a look
that you can't see. But he was surprised because it
was very much a jump.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Okay, So I have to ask what did you learn?
What did they teach you? M I mean, it's I
can go on. And also I think I need to demonstrate.
Is there one tip you could share with the listeners.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Yeah, just be gentle when it comes to the foreskin.
Not a lot of pulling. It does a lot of
the work. It's like, you know, it has its little hoodie,
you know how Yeah, uncircumcised penis has come dressed, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
So just use it. You have to use it.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
It's easier than it looks, you know. I don't overthink it.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Okay, Wow, what about to Maggie, what about what did
you learn anything from your fronts? Have I learned anything
from my friends? Maggie's uncomfortable talking about second now I'm
honestly thinking about it. I do remember talking with many
women about how terrible shower sex is. Like we're supposed
(10:58):
to believe that it's gonna be super hot and it's
like in movies, and like, I have never had pleasant
shower sex in my life. And I have tried. Lord,
have I tried had pleasurable shower sex? Did I ever? Climax?
Speaker 7 (11:17):
No, I can't.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
I keep thinking about the water waste. That is a
really good point. I mean, climate change is real, people,
Climate change is real. We're in California, there's a drought.
I think that's a really really good point. Guys, stop
trying to have shower sex. Not only is it not
going to be as good as you want it to be,
but you're also wasting water. Stop having shower sex. Think
of the planet.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
So I have always been very curious about sexuality, very
open about sexuality. I have always talked to my friends
about sexuality. So for me, there's not really a lot
of like stigma or taboo.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
This is lux Albtrom. She wrote a book called Faking It,
The Lies women tell about sex and the truths they reveal.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I think for a lot of people it can be uncomfortable.
I mean especially I think a lot of us have
this idea that sex is something you only talk about
if you are about to do it, and sometimes you
don't even talk about it then, but it's like you
just do it and there's never any discussions. So for
a lot of people it can be difficult to get
over this mental barrier and this idea like if I
(12:24):
talk to somebody about sex, then it must mean I
want to have sex with them. But I think when
you can get past that and realize that sexuality is
really important part of human life and that interest in
sexuality or talking about sexuality does not necessarily indicate that
you want to be sexually involved with that person, I
(12:47):
think you can really get to some really important and
good places because when we talk about sex with people
who we don't want to have sex with, we relieve
some of this pressure, Like you don't have to worry
will they think I'm sexy? What if I reveal something
that makes them not attracted to me? Because you're not
trying to be attracted to them, you can have a
(13:09):
little bit more of the like isn't it weird? When
isn't like have you ever had this problem? Like you
can talk more freely about things when you're not worried
that revealing something is going to be a turn off
to someone. It's just a conversation that can be about
like sex is weird, sex is funny. Sometimes sex is painful,
sometimes it's uncomfortable. It's so many things, and I think
(13:32):
like the conversation in the space we have with our
friends just allows us to explore it much more fully.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah, even now, I think there's a certain amount of
vulnerability that comes with opening up about what you're doing
in your sex life when you talk to your friends, right.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
I don't mean to make it sound like it's easy
and effortless. I think for a lot of us there's
a huge amount of vulnerability, and especially if you're not
sure that your friends will think what you're into is
quote unquote normal. Certainly people who have like taboo or
kinky desires, but even people who just have stuff they're
personally ashamed of. There is always this fear like if
(14:09):
I tell my friends I like whatever it is like
having somebody eat cheese out of my belly button, They're
gonna think I'm gross and weird and they're not gonna
want to be my friend. That they're gonna think I'm
like that gross cheese belly button girl, so delightful. But
if you do like having cheese eaten out of your
belly button, I support that, But no, I think you know,
(14:31):
there is this hesitancy because we're always so afraid that
that we're going to be judged. We're always so afraid
that we're going to out ourselves as like the.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Freak and the gross weirdo. You kind of outed yourself.
There noamas having a potential cheesecink. It would have to
be really good cheese. Okay, Well, we're going to take
a quick break when we come back, the scientific side
of falling in love and the way our culture influences
our relationships. Welcome back. So we've talked a lot about sex.
(15:13):
What about love? I ask, because in this episode it
really feels like Francis and Nick are on the express
trained love town.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
And what happens when we love someone. When we were
talking about monogamy, we talked a little bit about those
neurochemicals that make us form social bonds. We learned that
oxytocin is the same chemical associated with maternal love, and
with that in mind, there must be more to say
scientifically about romantic love.
Speaker 9 (15:35):
And there aren't that many experiments as you can imagine love,
falling in love with falling out of love are periods
of extreme vulnerability.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
This is doctor C. Sue Carter, a neurobiologist who spent
the last forty years researching the physiology of love and
social bonds.
Speaker 9 (15:54):
And that along with sex are areas that we don't
do many experiments. In so called reality programming, they get
away with doing some amazing things with human behavior that
if I, as a SCIENTI has tried to do, I
would not be allowed because of the ethics involved. In fact,
(16:20):
I don't know how they get away with it, frankly,
because if it works, if you form a relationship, whether
it's on television or not, it's still real and the
biology responds to it. And the biology that we're really
(16:40):
often interested in is what happens when the bonds break.
We feel formation of social bonds and falling in love,
but that's kind of transient for most people. There are
estimates about how many years or days or minutes you
can really have a kind of high level of passionate love,
(17:04):
because that's a very kind of again energetically expensive behavior
to engage in. But the real benefit of love is
when it's working well there's a sense of safety, a
sense of a perception that the world is okay and
(17:28):
you're going to be somehow benefited by this relationship.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
The problems come when that sense of safety is called
into question, and we'll talk more about that in a
later episode. Not no, no, no, things are still too
good between Nick and Francis and Bobby. We're not falling
apart yet, you know. So instead let's go back to
show Kirshenbaum and hear about the healing properties of love.
Speaker 10 (17:52):
We know that positive feelings, laughter, feeling supported surrounded by
love has better health outcomes, and I think you know
they're probably is a lot of healing potential to just
being loved and being cared for by someone and having
all of those important sensations and important emotions associated with
knowing you or secure.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
And then of course there's a cultural aspect. How we
make meaning when it comes to love and sex differs
based on where we're from and the behaviors we were
modeled during formative years.
Speaker 8 (18:22):
Well, you know, Ireland was a very repressed nation.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Here's Teg Murphy again.
Speaker 7 (18:28):
I don't know what the percentages of you know that
we were church and state like for a very long time.
The church has lost its hold here and there'd be
very few people that I know that have any interest
in being connected to the church in any way. I
grew up in a very strict Catholic like my father
had trained to be a priest, and you know, I
was an altar boy, and I think that's probably why
(18:50):
I got into acting, because he used to go to
Mass and'll be so bored, but I would be, like,
got to be much more interesting to be up there
and sitting down here and I have to listen to this,
you know. And when we were because there's so much
sort of there was so much abuse that's obviously come
out in the last few years, and it's always been known,
but and it always exists.
Speaker 8 (19:10):
But therefore.
Speaker 7 (19:15):
I think people would agree that there's there's there has
been great sexual repression in this country. And only now
that you see the young people, that's they're much freer now.
You know, they have their own anxieties that are different
and all that, you know, but it's sexually been much
more liberated, I think. And obviously I lived in Berlin
for five years, so you know, once you go there,
(19:35):
it's like for editor, after about a year, you're you've
seen everything.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah, it doesn't get more sexually liberated than Berlin.
Speaker 7 (19:42):
It does, and they do that really well and I
love that. I mean, that's one thing I absolutely loved
about Germany was how there's a like a space for
for every single human being, for every single quirk that
you could possibly imagine. There is a space where those fantasies,
that role play can be played out, whether it's amongst
people on your own, but there's a space for that,
(20:03):
and it's and it's a safe space, and it's encouraged.
Speaker 8 (20:09):
And like there's saunas there. I really missed this.
Speaker 7 (20:13):
There's naked saunas there, you know, like in the Nordic
countries that have that as well, obviously, and I love
that because it's that's not sexual, that's just naked bodies. Sorry,
everything is sexual, right, so nothing that knows going on?
I God, that's absolutely beautiful. Of course you're looking at
seeing beauty around you and all that, but you're not
walking around with a horn in a sauna, you know,
(20:35):
because that's not that's not okay. There's a place, there's
another place to do that's called the sex club, you
know what I mean. So I don't think you could
have that experience here in Ireland, you couldn't have a
sauna for like a mixed sauna, because there's there's still
a lot of shame and guilt, Catholic shame and guilt
(20:58):
carried in our subconscious mm hmm in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
So in that way, it just said it's kind of
like a backlash maybe you know this, uh, this like openness,
especially in like Irish you know, younger maybe Irish people.
Speaker 7 (21:13):
Yes, definitely, I think a lot of people left here
because of because of the inordinate amount of abuse that
took place. And yes, backlash, Yes, definitely, And for that reason,
the landscape period is changing and there will be a
time when it makes sauna will be set up.
Speaker 8 (21:33):
They're already here, they're already here, but they're not as
like it was.
Speaker 7 (21:39):
It was it wasn't unusual to be going to a
sauna every two or three days to fucking relax, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 8 (21:46):
That would be unusual here at the moment, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, Yeah, And there's still kind of a lot of
like I feel like a lot of push and pull
in Irish politics right now between the conservative and the.
Speaker 7 (21:59):
More the world at the moment some fucking boringly binary, isn't.
It's like it's it's just a discourse around it. You know,
the discours just needs to get a little bit more open,
doesn't it. And people just need to talk. People like
to argue. Obviously it's good crack, right, But you know,
(22:20):
I have friends who are very different views to me.
Right there, there were other end of the spectrum. But
they are so much fun to be around because they're
liberated in their thought, even though I don't stand by
them and I wouldn't be fucking marching with them for anything,
you know what I mean, for their you know, they
would be much more conservative than me.
Speaker 8 (22:40):
Right, Oh my god. They're fun to be around, you
know what I mean, And we can find the middle ground.
Speaker 7 (22:46):
Where we go, Like if we're just we're just we're
still having the same experiences and the same feelings, you know,
so at least we can talk about that. You know,
they would think that I'm absolutely bad ship like.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
You know, yeah, the same experiences, but it's important to
talk about. That's how we can move forward.
Speaker 7 (23:07):
It is, and it's important to identify the places where
we where we are similar, and most of that is
in bounds within love. I think you know, because it
doesn't matter what your politics are, what your views are,
you can you still know what it is to be hurt.
You still know what it is to be loved, you know.
So that's that's human condition, isn't it? To be alive?
(23:29):
You're experiencing the world, You're you're sharing fucking breadth with
me in this space.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Something else to keep in mind. Regardless of those larger
influences on our beliefs and choices, ultimately we're each living
our own unique lives.
Speaker 11 (23:43):
There are clearly cultural differences, but I operate so much
on individual differences because I hate to paintlet too broad
of a brush anyway, And I would say we're all
socially constructed, and we have a sense of what something means,
(24:04):
and every single human being is going to have a
unique way of making meaning of things.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
That's doctor Martha Cappy.
Speaker 11 (24:12):
I think we could probably find an exception to any
cultural assumption. And for me and my work, it's very
important to me to help people figure out actually what
they want for themselves. And that's quite a deep inside
dive to get in touch with your own self, even
(24:36):
if you're not sure you're going to get what you want,
even if you care very much about somebody who's not
going to like hearing what you want, but to actually
figure out what you want is the cornerstone of everything
that I do.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
I know.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
It sat a show I don't know emmy all.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
This show is hosted and produced by Me, Maggie Bowles
and me Noa'm Gadweiser. It's written and edited by me,
with assistant editing by Noah. Our supervising producer is Ryan Tillotson,
with help from Tyler Nielsen, Frank Driscoll, Nick Bailey and
the entire Straw Hut team. Theme music is by Maggie
Glass and Square Fish and Big Thanks to Aria via Shi,
Lauren Thorpe, Exavior Salas, and the Hulu team.
Speaker 6 (25:49):
No mag Smile Hid
Speaker 2 (26:00):
A Little Child
Straw hot media.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You know there is in this fear. Maybe they'll think
I'm weird and they'll decide like I'm the purv they
can't be friends with.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to Conversations with Friends and Strangers. I'm Maggie, I'm
noahm In the show, we take a closer look at
the complicated relationships in the Hulu series Conversations with Friends.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
We'll meet some of the cast and crew, chat with experts,
and share our own kind of sexy, kind of uncomfortable,
but relatable stories about the messy relationships we find ourselves.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
In today or still hung up on sex and love?
Is there a biochemistry of love? And how do we
talk about sex if it's making us crazy with all
these hormones?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Doctor Justin Leigh Miller helps us answer that question and
shine the light on the role of sex education and
learning to talk about sex.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Noam tells the story we lovingly call the Art of
the blow Job.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Writer looks Alptrom helps us feel better about our kinks.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
And then we look at the biological and cultural factors
that color our views of sex and love with doctor
Sue Carter, Act Tiger Murphy, and doctor Martha Colpi By
the end of today, you'll feel like you can talk
about sex to anybody. It's a really big promise. Noah,
you're right. Let's recap and decide later.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
How we feel.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Well.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Summer is over and the final year of university has begun.
Bobby moves in with Francis. They've moved past their fight
and it looks like things are pretty good.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Nick is also back in town and things are looking
good for them too. They're having hot sex, they're going
for walks, they're doing couple stuff, even define what they're
doing as a relationship.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Bobby and Francis through a house swarming party, and later
on they run into Melissa at the bookstore and go
and grab a coffee with her.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
And the big thing in this episode is Nick tells
Francis he wants to tell Melissa about the affair.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Do you find that most people have trouble talking about
sex with their friends or even their partners?
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Definitely their partners. I think people have more of a
problem talking about sex with their partners than they do
with their friends.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
That's doctor Ian Kerner.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
I think when we're actually getting into the intimacy and
the vulnerability of communicating about sex with our partners. I
think that's where shame can come into play. That's where
embarrassment can come into play. That's where really just from
not talking, thinking we sort of have a mental model
(02:22):
of our partners that might prevent us from talking. In short,
we don't really know our partners very well sexually, and
so the whole impulse towards conversation can really just sort
of get obscured in kind of a cloud of shame
and shyness and embarrassment.
Speaker 5 (02:41):
One of the things that I've said in my work
before is that people often find it easier to have
sex than to talk about sex.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
And here's doctor Justin Leigh Miller.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
It's often the case that when two or more people
get together for a sexual encounter, there's very little communication
beforehand about people's boundaries and limits or their sexual desires
and what feels good to them, and so they end
up in this sexual situation physically interacting, but they haven't
communicated about any of what they actually wanted beforehand. And
(03:15):
sometimes it works out just fine because people are on
the same page and they're following essentially the same script,
and it can turn out very well. But oftentimes it
turns out very poorly. Because people have totally discrepant expectations
about how this encounter should go or what feels good
to them, and they're expecting their partner to sort of
(03:35):
read their mind and figure out how to bring them pleasure.
And so when people sort of start out a relationship
sexually and they don't have that communication, you know, again,
sometimes that can go off in a positive direction, it
often goes off in a negative direction. But if you
start out having really good sex without talking about it,
there's a real risk long term in that relationship that
(03:58):
you're going to grow incompatible and you're never going to
have a discussion about it, and you're just going to
grow further apart and the sex life is going to
wilt to some degree. So it's really important, I think,
for people to establish strong communication patterns with their sexual partners,
even if the sex they're having is already great, because
what feels good to you now can change over time.
(04:19):
What turns you on now might change over time. So
there's this enormous value in sexual communication, but we just
often don't put in the effort to do it because
we're not equipped with the sexual communication skills we need.
And that's really where sex education especially in the United States,
is failing us.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
And it's where DIY sex education comes in. Gorilla sex
d gorilla sex, well, not like a gorilla, but like gorilla,
like gue gorilla.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
Never mind, what's it like having sex with the man?
Like is a penis just not observed? There's just a
device with no aesthetic relation to anything.
Speaker 7 (05:04):
That's kind of its term.
Speaker 5 (05:09):
It's much better in other parts of the world. It
is much better in certain parts of the country than others.
But we really need to equip people with the skills
so that when they're in sexual situations they can communicate
it about what they want, what feels good, what's pleasurable,
so that they can have optimal sexual experiences, because too
many of us are having suboptimal experiences that are just
(05:31):
not feeding our needs at all.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
My experience with sex education was actually surprisingly good, considering
that I went to high school in a kind of
small town in central California. And when I say good,
I mean it was an abstinence only education. What is
sex education like in Israel? Well, you know, they teach
us about the sheet with the whole.
Speaker 8 (05:53):
Now.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Honestly, we focus on about gender in literature, but not
a lot about sex education, so it was pretty sparse.
One thing I do remember about my sex ed was
that it was very, very heteronormative, and it had literally
zero mention of pleasure.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
Historically, you know, the United States has been very puritanical
when it comes to sex, and talking about sex at all,
let alone sexual pleasure and orgasm and all of these
other things has been really taboo, and so just the
idea of having any kind of sex ed is controversial.
And if you add in the fact that it could
be pleasurable and that people might enjoy it, that's a
(06:31):
whole other thing. And it's really unfortunate the pleasure is
missing in so much sex education. You know, it's common
throughout the United States and actually in many other parts
of the world for there to be no mention of
the clitorists whatsoever in sex education courses. And it's interesting
because the clitorist is the only organ in the human
body whose sole function is pleasure, Like, we don't know
(06:52):
any other purpose that it serves, and yet it's being
totally ignored in most sex education courses. A travesty, I
think in a lot of ways, and it's a big
part of why we have the orgasm gap. That we
do where heterosexual women in particular reach orgasm so much
less frequently than heterosexual men, and in part it's because
we're just not teaching women about their bodies and pleasure.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Sex education in the US also consistently fails LGBTQ plus
youth with its narroscope.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
And so queer kids, trans kids, they're not learning what
they really need to know, even the basics of how
they might protect themselves during sex. So that is another
huge blind spot that exists in the world of sex education,
and it actually creates this vulnerability for more STIs, more
nonconsensual sex, more other negative outcomes to happen, just because
(07:44):
we're not teaching these very important, sizeable populations anything meaningful,
useful about sex.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Maggie, where do you think you learn most of what
you know about sex? If I may ask, you know,
that's a really good question, And honestly, I don't know.
And I also feel like I'm still learning, always learning.
What about you?
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Well, you know, I learned a lot from sexual partners,
and I learned also from my friends from talking about sex,
and I think I have a really good example. Ooh, okay, friends, family,
This gets a little detailed A little explicit. If you're uncomfortable,
skip ahead. I had just started dating someone that I
(08:27):
felt very strongly towards and also very attracted to, and
we had some athletic.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Sex and he was.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Well equipped, if I may say, but also he was uncircumcised,
and that was my first experience with an uncircumcised penis.
So I was kind of in a pickle, you know,
all the tricks that I knew didn't work, and I
kind of was scared of googling it. I don't know.
We were late at the bar that I was working
at one night. I was with a couple of colleagues
(08:58):
and a couple of friends, and you were sick on
the bar drinking and smoking and just you know, three
am being in I don't know, a little tipsy, and
I brought it up and they were all just so sweet.
They just like, oh honey, let us help you. And
there were different ages, you know, different classes, different everything,
(09:22):
and they each grabbed like a phallic object, a cucumber,
saran wrap, a banana, I don't remember anything they could grab,
and they just demonstrated.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
They taught me.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
They taught me how to give a blow job to
uncircumcised penis. So I'm getting really good reviews. By the way,
that's great. So you're a five star blowjob. I don't know,
five star.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
But so you learned this and you went back to
this person and was he like great?
Speaker 3 (09:51):
He was like, I mean I just made a look
that you can't see. But he was surprised because it
was very much a jump.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Okay, So I have to ask what did you learn?
What did they teach you? M I mean, it's I
can go on. And also I think I need to demonstrate.
Is there one tip you could share with the listeners.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Yeah, just be gentle when it comes to the foreskin.
Not a lot of pulling. It does a lot of
the work. It's like, you know, it has its little hoodie,
you know how Yeah, uncircumcised penis has come dressed, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
So just use it. You have to use it.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
It's easier than it looks, you know. I don't overthink it.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Okay, Wow, what about to Maggie, what about what did
you learn anything from your fronts? Have I learned anything
from my friends? Maggie's uncomfortable talking about second now I'm
honestly thinking about it. I do remember talking with many
women about how terrible shower sex is. Like we're supposed
(10:58):
to believe that it's gonna be super hot and it's
like in movies, and like, I have never had pleasant
shower sex in my life. And I have tried. Lord,
have I tried had pleasurable shower sex? Did I ever? Climax?
Speaker 7 (11:17):
No, I can't.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
I keep thinking about the water waste. That is a
really good point. I mean, climate change is real, people,
Climate change is real. We're in California, there's a drought.
I think that's a really really good point. Guys, stop
trying to have shower sex. Not only is it not
going to be as good as you want it to be,
but you're also wasting water. Stop having shower sex. Think
of the planet.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
So I have always been very curious about sexuality, very
open about sexuality. I have always talked to my friends
about sexuality. So for me, there's not really a lot
of like stigma or taboo.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
This is lux Albtrom. She wrote a book called Faking It,
The Lies women tell about sex and the truths they reveal.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
I think for a lot of people it can be uncomfortable.
I mean especially I think a lot of us have
this idea that sex is something you only talk about
if you are about to do it, and sometimes you
don't even talk about it then, but it's like you
just do it and there's never any discussions. So for
a lot of people it can be difficult to get
over this mental barrier and this idea like if I
(12:24):
talk to somebody about sex, then it must mean I
want to have sex with them. But I think when
you can get past that and realize that sexuality is
really important part of human life and that interest in
sexuality or talking about sexuality does not necessarily indicate that
you want to be sexually involved with that person, I
(12:47):
think you can really get to some really important and
good places because when we talk about sex with people
who we don't want to have sex with, we relieve
some of this pressure, Like you don't have to worry
will they think I'm sexy? What if I reveal something
that makes them not attracted to me? Because you're not
trying to be attracted to them, you can have a
(13:09):
little bit more of the like isn't it weird? When
isn't like have you ever had this problem? Like you
can talk more freely about things when you're not worried
that revealing something is going to be a turn off
to someone. It's just a conversation that can be about
like sex is weird, sex is funny. Sometimes sex is painful,
sometimes it's uncomfortable. It's so many things, and I think
(13:32):
like the conversation in the space we have with our
friends just allows us to explore it much more fully.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah, even now, I think there's a certain amount of
vulnerability that comes with opening up about what you're doing
in your sex life when you talk to your friends, right.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
I don't mean to make it sound like it's easy
and effortless. I think for a lot of us there's
a huge amount of vulnerability, and especially if you're not
sure that your friends will think what you're into is
quote unquote normal. Certainly people who have like taboo or
kinky desires, but even people who just have stuff they're
personally ashamed of. There is always this fear like if
(14:09):
I tell my friends I like whatever it is like
having somebody eat cheese out of my belly button, They're
gonna think I'm gross and weird and they're not gonna
want to be my friend. That they're gonna think I'm
like that gross cheese belly button girl, so delightful. But
if you do like having cheese eaten out of your
belly button, I support that, But no, I think you know,
(14:31):
there is this hesitancy because we're always so afraid that
that we're going to be judged. We're always so afraid
that we're going to out ourselves as like the.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Freak and the gross weirdo. You kind of outed yourself.
There noamas having a potential cheesecink. It would have to
be really good cheese. Okay, Well, we're going to take
a quick break when we come back, the scientific side
of falling in love and the way our culture influences
our relationships. Welcome back. So we've talked a lot about sex.
(15:13):
What about love? I ask, because in this episode it
really feels like Francis and Nick are on the express
trained love town.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
And what happens when we love someone. When we were
talking about monogamy, we talked a little bit about those
neurochemicals that make us form social bonds. We learned that
oxytocin is the same chemical associated with maternal love, and
with that in mind, there must be more to say
scientifically about romantic love.
Speaker 9 (15:35):
And there aren't that many experiments as you can imagine love,
falling in love with falling out of love are periods
of extreme vulnerability.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
This is doctor C. Sue Carter, a neurobiologist who spent
the last forty years researching the physiology of love and
social bonds.
Speaker 9 (15:54):
And that along with sex are areas that we don't
do many experiments. In so called reality programming, they get
away with doing some amazing things with human behavior that
if I, as a SCIENTI has tried to do, I
would not be allowed because of the ethics involved. In fact,
(16:20):
I don't know how they get away with it, frankly,
because if it works, if you form a relationship, whether
it's on television or not, it's still real and the
biology responds to it. And the biology that we're really
(16:40):
often interested in is what happens when the bonds break.
We feel formation of social bonds and falling in love,
but that's kind of transient for most people. There are
estimates about how many years or days or minutes you
can really have a kind of high level of passionate love,
(17:04):
because that's a very kind of again energetically expensive behavior
to engage in. But the real benefit of love is
when it's working well there's a sense of safety, a
sense of a perception that the world is okay and
(17:28):
you're going to be somehow benefited by this relationship.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
The problems come when that sense of safety is called
into question, and we'll talk more about that in a
later episode. Not no, no, no, things are still too
good between Nick and Francis and Bobby. We're not falling
apart yet, you know. So instead let's go back to
show Kirshenbaum and hear about the healing properties of love.
Speaker 10 (17:52):
We know that positive feelings, laughter, feeling supported surrounded by
love has better health outcomes, and I think you know
they're probably is a lot of healing potential to just
being loved and being cared for by someone and having
all of those important sensations and important emotions associated with
knowing you or secure.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
And then of course there's a cultural aspect. How we
make meaning when it comes to love and sex differs
based on where we're from and the behaviors we were
modeled during formative years.
Speaker 8 (18:22):
Well, you know, Ireland was a very repressed nation.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Here's Teg Murphy again.
Speaker 7 (18:28):
I don't know what the percentages of you know that
we were church and state like for a very long time.
The church has lost its hold here and there'd be
very few people that I know that have any interest
in being connected to the church in any way. I
grew up in a very strict Catholic like my father
had trained to be a priest, and you know, I
was an altar boy, and I think that's probably why
(18:50):
I got into acting, because he used to go to
Mass and'll be so bored, but I would be, like,
got to be much more interesting to be up there
and sitting down here and I have to listen to this,
you know. And when we were because there's so much
sort of there was so much abuse that's obviously come
out in the last few years, and it's always been known,
but and it always exists.
Speaker 8 (19:10):
But therefore.
Speaker 7 (19:15):
I think people would agree that there's there's there has
been great sexual repression in this country. And only now
that you see the young people, that's they're much freer now.
You know, they have their own anxieties that are different
and all that, you know, but it's sexually been much
more liberated, I think. And obviously I lived in Berlin
for five years, so you know, once you go there,
(19:35):
it's like for editor, after about a year, you're you've
seen everything.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah, it doesn't get more sexually liberated than Berlin.
Speaker 7 (19:42):
It does, and they do that really well and I
love that. I mean, that's one thing I absolutely loved
about Germany was how there's a like a space for
for every single human being, for every single quirk that
you could possibly imagine. There is a space where those fantasies,
that role play can be played out, whether it's amongst
people on your own, but there's a space for that,
(20:03):
and it's and it's a safe space, and it's encouraged.
Speaker 8 (20:09):
And like there's saunas there. I really missed this.
Speaker 7 (20:13):
There's naked saunas there, you know, like in the Nordic
countries that have that as well, obviously, and I love
that because it's that's not sexual, that's just naked bodies. Sorry,
everything is sexual, right, so nothing that knows going on?
I God, that's absolutely beautiful. Of course you're looking at
seeing beauty around you and all that, but you're not
walking around with a horn in a sauna, you know,
(20:35):
because that's not that's not okay. There's a place, there's
another place to do that's called the sex club, you
know what I mean. So I don't think you could
have that experience here in Ireland, you couldn't have a
sauna for like a mixed sauna, because there's there's still
a lot of shame and guilt, Catholic shame and guilt
(20:58):
carried in our subconscious mm hmm in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
So in that way, it just said it's kind of
like a backlash maybe you know this, uh, this like openness,
especially in like Irish you know, younger maybe Irish people.
Speaker 7 (21:13):
Yes, definitely, I think a lot of people left here
because of because of the inordinate amount of abuse that
took place. And yes, backlash, Yes, definitely, And for that reason,
the landscape period is changing and there will be a
time when it makes sauna will be set up.
Speaker 8 (21:33):
They're already here, they're already here, but they're not as
like it was.
Speaker 7 (21:39):
It was it wasn't unusual to be going to a
sauna every two or three days to fucking relax, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 8 (21:46):
That would be unusual here at the moment, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, Yeah, And there's still kind of a lot of
like I feel like a lot of push and pull
in Irish politics right now between the conservative and the.
Speaker 7 (21:59):
More the world at the moment some fucking boringly binary, isn't.
It's like it's it's just a discourse around it. You know,
the discours just needs to get a little bit more open,
doesn't it. And people just need to talk. People like
to argue. Obviously it's good crack, right, But you know,
(22:20):
I have friends who are very different views to me.
Right there, there were other end of the spectrum. But
they are so much fun to be around because they're
liberated in their thought, even though I don't stand by
them and I wouldn't be fucking marching with them for anything,
you know what I mean, for their you know, they
would be much more conservative than me.
Speaker 8 (22:40):
Right, Oh my god. They're fun to be around, you
know what I mean, And we can find the middle ground.
Speaker 7 (22:46):
Where we go, Like if we're just we're just we're
still having the same experiences and the same feelings, you know,
so at least we can talk about that. You know,
they would think that I'm absolutely bad ship like.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
You know, yeah, the same experiences, but it's important to
talk about. That's how we can move forward.
Speaker 7 (23:07):
It is, and it's important to identify the places where
we where we are similar, and most of that is
in bounds within love. I think you know, because it
doesn't matter what your politics are, what your views are,
you can you still know what it is to be hurt.
You still know what it is to be loved, you know.
So that's that's human condition, isn't it? To be alive?
(23:29):
You're experiencing the world, You're you're sharing fucking breadth with
me in this space.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Something else to keep in mind. Regardless of those larger
influences on our beliefs and choices, ultimately we're each living
our own unique lives.
Speaker 11 (23:43):
There are clearly cultural differences, but I operate so much
on individual differences because I hate to paintlet too broad
of a brush anyway, And I would say we're all
socially constructed, and we have a sense of what something means,
(24:04):
and every single human being is going to have a
unique way of making meaning of things.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
That's doctor Martha Cappy.
Speaker 11 (24:12):
I think we could probably find an exception to any
cultural assumption. And for me and my work, it's very
important to me to help people figure out actually what
they want for themselves. And that's quite a deep inside
dive to get in touch with your own self, even
(24:36):
if you're not sure you're going to get what you want,
even if you care very much about somebody who's not
going to like hearing what you want, but to actually
figure out what you want is the cornerstone of everything
that I do.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
I know.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
It sat a show I don't know emmy all.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
This show is hosted and produced by Me, Maggie Bowles
and me Noa'm Gadweiser. It's written and edited by me,
with assistant editing by Noah. Our supervising producer is Ryan Tillotson,
with help from Tyler Nielsen, Frank Driscoll, Nick Bailey and
the entire Straw Hut team. Theme music is by Maggie
Glass and Square Fish and Big Thanks to Aria via Shi,
Lauren Thorpe, Exavior Salas, and the Hulu team.
Speaker 6 (25:49):
No mag Smile Hid
Speaker 2 (26:00):
A Little Child
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