Episodes
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It's not just twitter or the 24-hour news cycle that have led to public fascination and uproar about politicians and sex. Turns out, sex scandals been a part of American politics from it's very beginnings. Here's a quick taste of what we're working on for the next episode. Unobserved mourning periods! Social calls left unreturned! Accidental bigamy! Presidential cabinets resigning! Oh wait, that last one is pretty serious...
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Listeners, we're back together again! And this week we are asking the hard-hitting questions about the history of menstruation, like, will sharks be attracted to my period if I swim in the ocean and is my feminist book club really all on the same moon cycle?! But, f'reals, this episode is chocked full of stereotypes, mythologies, and concerns over women and their periods.
After Lauren nerds out about the linguistic origins of the word menstruation, she gets into the ideas and practices related to periods in Ancient Greece. We then discuss contrasting views of menstrual women. While some cultures see them as powerful, others see them as impure. Turns out, orthodox and traditional forms of most major world religions fall into the latter camp, leading to different types of prohibitions on menstruating women. Sadface.
Next we delve into period technology and airquote science! We get into the terror of sanitary belts and why we both were convinced we were always minutes away from contracting toxic shock syndrome as teenagers. Thank god for modern adhesives and government regulation, both from the 1970s. In particular, the dramatic warnings on tampon boxes today are the result of epidemics and activism during the era. Stay tuned to the end to learn if ladies' periods are really controlled by the moon and all sync up together.
And finally, you might be asking, where's the sex?! Well, don't worry, we also talk about period sex etiquette and why some people are really jazzed to bone when menstrual blood is involved. -
Missing episodes?
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The world of academia has temporarily torn us apart, but never fear, listeners - VOICE MEMOS TO THE RESCUE!
This week we talk about love letters from two famous couples - Heloise and Abelard, and Rivera and Kahlo. Heloise and Abelard are your typical 12th-century romance: lots of involvement with the Catholic Church, a castration, and a child smuggled into Brittany. You know, standard stuff. The academic telling of the story has minimized Heloise until quite recently, but don't worry: Lauren is here to point out how she was actually a proto-Marxist badass bitch.
Erin discusses Rivera and Kahlo, who had their own rather violent love story. Maybe it's the passion that makes their letters so rich. All this leaves us with an important question, though: since so few people write love letters, what is taking their place? Could it be sexting? Is this bad for the nation? Will we survive the anarchy of explicit emojis?? Find out in this thrilling episode. -
Hey guys, we're busy getting the next episode together, but thought we'd share a few minutes of our convo with you in the meantime.
We'll be talking at your real soon! -
In our experience, every boner at some point won't bone, but there still seems to be a lot of anxiety wrapped up in very common issues we define as dysfunction.
As usual, we start of the episode shooting the shit about our personal experiences with dysfunction. Spoiler: theres a lot of "idiosyncratic boners" in our dating histories. Stay tuned to the end of the ep for some honest and thoughtful talk from friend of the show, Kasey, on desire in long-term relationships. She tells us what its like to be both the partner with no sex drive and the one doing all the initiating.
Our history this week is not so old. Sexologists didn't really start studying dysfunction until the 1960s. After their widely popular first book on the physiology of sex, awesome researchers Masters & Johnson started looking into "sexual inadequacy" and developing ways to treat it.
The next big milestone in the history of sexual dysfunction is the invention of viagra and the beginning of direct to consumer marketing. Seriously, can anyone else get through an episode of something without seeing an "ED" ad? You're drunk Hulu analytics, go home.
Lauren also gives us the skinny on the other cultural changes happening in the the 90s and 2000s that lead everything from conservative Christian marriage advice manuals to Cosmo sex columns touting "10 New Ways to Drive Him Crazy in Bed!" to tell everyone they should constantly be having awesome sex. If there are any sex wizards out there who know the secret to mind-blowing boning every time, you know how to reach us.
