SPEAKER_1: Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.
SPEAKER_1: StarTalk begins right now.
SPEAKER_1: Welcome to StarTalk Radio.
SPEAKER_1: I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson.
SPEAKER_1: I'm an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History here in New York City, where I also serve as director of the Hayden Planetarium.
SPEAKER_1: And today, the topic is The Science of Sex, and who else could I possibly bring in to talk about this, but the one, the only, the inimitable Dr.
SPEAKER_1: Ruth.
SPEAKER_1: Dr.
SPEAKER_1: Ruth, welcome to StarTalk Radio.
SPEAKER_2: I love the way you said sex.
SPEAKER_1: Sex.
SPEAKER_1: Now, we went to the Facebook page, and I got some questions from a few people, and some interesting ones here.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know if you know that I was an accessory to the demotion of Pluto from its planet status, and it's now just called a dwarf planet, okay?
SPEAKER_1: And so, someone who wrote in was aware of this fact, and had a question related to this.
SPEAKER_1: This is D.
SPEAKER_1: Haventon Wilson.
SPEAKER_1: Concerning Pluto's planetary status, does size really matter?
SPEAKER_2: Oh, wonderful question.
SPEAKER_2: Neil, tell all of your viewers, size of that part of the male anatomy that we are talking about, the penis, size does not matter.
SPEAKER_2: A woman's vagina can accommodate all sizes.
SPEAKER_2: Now, if somebody has a minuscule one, that's a different story.
SPEAKER_2: I said it to a urologist.
SPEAKER_2: But here's-
SPEAKER_1: But you have a whole set of, you have a whole network.
SPEAKER_2: Of course.
SPEAKER_2: But here's what I tell.
SPEAKER_2: There are men who are very concerned about it.
SPEAKER_2: And here's what I tell them to do.
SPEAKER_2: Yes, but here's what I tell them to do.
SPEAKER_2: Not in your studio, at home.
SPEAKER_2: Stand in front of a full-length mirror.
SPEAKER_2: Bring yourself to sexual satisfaction.
SPEAKER_2: Stand there and admire the direction.
SPEAKER_2: You will never worry about penis size again.
SPEAKER_2: Really?
SPEAKER_2: And women have to know.
SPEAKER_2: Never to say to somebody like you or anybody in your studio, my last lover had a bigger one.
SPEAKER_2: That would be terrible.
SPEAKER_2: That would be very destructive.
SPEAKER_2: So loud and clear.
SPEAKER_1: So there's a whole psychology to this.
SPEAKER_1: That's what it is.
SPEAKER_2: Loud and clear, it does not matter the size.
SPEAKER_1: Now how about in the animal kingdom, typically when we want to justify certain behavior in society, we find some other animal out there that does what we want ourselves to do and say, see.
SPEAKER_1: So for example, the bald eagle, they make for life, right?
SPEAKER_1: They build a nest, huge.
SPEAKER_1: They're like condos up there in the trees.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, I've seen some, I've even seen a bald eagle nest, it's huge.
SPEAKER_1: And it's so maternal, paternal.
SPEAKER_1: And they say, we should be doing that too.
SPEAKER_1: But then there are other animals that all they do is copulate with whoever is closest to them every day of their lives.
SPEAKER_1: And so do you have any sense of whether humans are naturally monogamous?
SPEAKER_2: You are very fortunate that I'm not Sigmund Freud.
SPEAKER_2: Because right away I would say, I know where you are going with that question.
SPEAKER_2: However, I want to tell you something.
SPEAKER_2: I'm not a zoologist.
SPEAKER_1: My museum has zoologists, but all the animals they work on are dead.
SPEAKER_2: But I really don't have an answer.
SPEAKER_2: You see, somebody like me has to be able to have the courage to say, I don't know.
SPEAKER_1: Not enough people say they don't know.
SPEAKER_2: I know that in our culture, most people want to have a significant other.
SPEAKER_2: They want to have somebody they can count on, even if it's not the same person throughout life.
SPEAKER_1: Serial monogamy in that limit, yes.
SPEAKER_2: But the idea that you walk around, I'm not talking to you personally, that people walk around and say, I wonder how that person would be in that position.
SPEAKER_1: It's hard sometimes not to think that, right?
SPEAKER_1: I mean, people walking by, you know.
SPEAKER_2: Half naked.
SPEAKER_2: And it's okay to think, but don't touch.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, look but don't touch, I see, I see.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, so the fantasies are healthy.
SPEAKER_2: The fantasies are very helpful, especially in our world, because there are so many pressures on everybody.
SPEAKER_2: So to use fantasies is wonderful.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, and is there anything in your life that has surprised you most about the human nature, either good or bad, something that just came out of left feeling, saying, my gosh, that's shocking.
SPEAKER_1: Shocking good or shocking bad?
SPEAKER_2: Very good point.
SPEAKER_1: You're part of the psychology of people's, the dynamic of human emotion and interaction.
SPEAKER_2: In my sex therapist, like myself, psychologist, psychosexual therapist, has to know one's limitations.
SPEAKER_2: If a person walks into my office and I, in that intake, in that first encounter, I realize they are depressed, man or woman.
SPEAKER_2: I don't give them a second appointment with me.
SPEAKER_2: I say, you have to go and see a psychiatrist.
SPEAKER_2: So it's very important that you know your own limitations when you are trying to help people.
SPEAKER_2: Maybe the funniest question, where I was able to show the philosophy of how I teach, is a young man calling, I told it on David Letterman, a young man calling saying his girlfriend loves, they love each other, they are going to get married, they have terrific good sex, they don't want to be parents right now, so they are using what?
SPEAKER_2: Contraception.
SPEAKER_2: I was very happy.
SPEAKER_2: They love each other, they are going to get married.
SPEAKER_2: I said, what's your comment?
SPEAKER_2: And he said that his girlfriend likes to toss onion rings on his erect penis.
SPEAKER_2: I did what you are doing, I giggled.
SPEAKER_2: Because a good sex therapist has to visualize what people do, and it permitted me to state my philosophy.
SPEAKER_2: Anything two consenting adults do on their kitchen floor, living room couch, bedroom is perfectly all right.
SPEAKER_1: Including ring toss.
SPEAKER_2: Whatever.
SPEAKER_2: So here's the point.
SPEAKER_2: In the Talmud, in the Jewish tradition, it says, a lesson taught with humor is a lesson retained.
SPEAKER_2: I could never tell you a joke.
SPEAKER_2: I hear jokes every day.
SPEAKER_2: They go in one ear and out the other.
SPEAKER_2: But I can hear of a question, or I can hear of a situation in my office that can make me laugh and that I can use as an educational moment to teach.
SPEAKER_2: Exactly.
SPEAKER_1: Before we take a break, here's some of the science behind human arousal, Charles.
SPEAKER_2: Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_3: I'm taking notes.
SPEAKER_1: You're taking notes, okay?
SPEAKER_1: And when we're interested in someone, our pupils become dilated.
SPEAKER_1: And studies confirm that heterosexual men tend to rate women with wider pupils as more attractive and feminine.
SPEAKER_3: It's too bad we can't see other people's pupils on the radio.
SPEAKER_1: Or see it in a dark club, where most of this action takes place.
SPEAKER_3: Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_1: On the other hand, heterosexual women only moderately preferred men with dilated pupils.
SPEAKER_1: And so that means perhaps women like men to be interested but not too excited, perhaps.
SPEAKER_1: And also, arousal causes our brains to release, I've got it written here, norepinephrine.
SPEAKER_3: Norepinephrine.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, see, that's why I have you on the show.
SPEAKER_1: Professor of astrophysics, Charles Liu here.
SPEAKER_1: Norepinephrine, there we go, thank you, which stimulates sweat glands.
SPEAKER_1: The human palm has 3,000 sweat glands per inch.
SPEAKER_1: So that sweaty palm feeling is real.
SPEAKER_1: No wonder our hands get that way when we get close to someone we're interested in.
SPEAKER_1: Oh, yes.
SPEAKER_1: Well, when Star Talk Radio returns, we'll learn much more about arousal and the role it plays in sex.
SPEAKER_1: We're back with StarTalk Radio, and I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I'm here with Kristen Schaal.
SPEAKER_1: I love having you on this.
SPEAKER_1: And I got you here because, not just because you're funny and I like having you around, but on this show of The Science of Sex, who knew that you had written a book called The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex?
SPEAKER_4: Yeah, I know a lot about sex.
SPEAKER_1: And that makes you an expert.
SPEAKER_4: It does.
SPEAKER_1: I'm just saying, and you're here on the Buticelli remake here, and Buticelli's got nothing on you with Venus coming out of the seashell.
SPEAKER_1: So, we also have clips from my interview with Mary Roach, who wrote the book Bonk.
SPEAKER_1: Bonk, all about sex, the science of sex.
SPEAKER_4: Bonk, the sexiest word in the human language.
SPEAKER_1: Is it?
SPEAKER_4: Bonk.
SPEAKER_1: So, we've got those clips.
SPEAKER_1: We'll put them in.
SPEAKER_1: In the next clip, we talk about porn.
SPEAKER_1: And I always wondered, you know, I think guys look at porn more than women do.
SPEAKER_1: So, what's up with that?
SPEAKER_1: Do you have any insight into that?
SPEAKER_4: I do, Neil, cause I was just saying, I think that, because this generation of kids can access porn so easily.
SPEAKER_4: Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_4: And I'm worried.
SPEAKER_1: They don't have to walk into peep shows around 42nd Street.
SPEAKER_4: All they have to do is say, yes, I'm 18, and they've got all the porn they can handle.
SPEAKER_4: But I'm worried that the girls who watch it are going to grow up being attracted to men without faces.
SPEAKER_4: Because the camera's always down here.
SPEAKER_1: Well, okay, plenty of guys are attracted to women without reference to their faces.
SPEAKER_4: Oh, the butt of faces.
SPEAKER_4: Yes.
SPEAKER_1: So there's precedent for that.
SPEAKER_1: So any other insight into porn?
SPEAKER_4: Well, you know, I think I do think that it's helpful, actually.
SPEAKER_1: Because the stereotype is like the teenage boy getting a hold of the magazine, you know?
SPEAKER_1: You don't think of the teenage girl getting a hold of it.
SPEAKER_4: No.
SPEAKER_1: The same stereotype isn't there.
SPEAKER_4: It isn't there.
SPEAKER_1: Did you?
SPEAKER_4: I know.
SPEAKER_4: Well, boy, yeah.
SPEAKER_4: When I was...
SPEAKER_4: This is trouble.
SPEAKER_4: When I was pretty young, I would say...
SPEAKER_1: You're still pretty young.
SPEAKER_4: Thank you.
SPEAKER_4: I can't remember the exact age, but I would say maybe like early high school, late junior high.
SPEAKER_4: I did come across a dirty video that I didn't know what it was.
SPEAKER_1: You see, guys would have been there by 12, okay?
SPEAKER_1: You're saying, oh, at high school, sometimes I came across a dirty video and couldn't identify it.
SPEAKER_4: I know.
SPEAKER_4: It was like hot nights on the beach.
SPEAKER_4: And I was like, what is this?
SPEAKER_4: Is this a new police academy?
SPEAKER_4: And I popped it in and I was like, ho, ho.
SPEAKER_4: I saw two guys and they were like double teaming a lady.
SPEAKER_4: And it was the first time I'd seen sex.
SPEAKER_4: And that image is like...
SPEAKER_4: And it's branded in my brain.
SPEAKER_4: If I meet those actors, I mean, they'll be a lot older, but I'll be like, I saw you guys.
SPEAKER_4: I know what you did on that hot summer night.
SPEAKER_4: Wow, I'll never forget.
SPEAKER_4: I'll never forget.
SPEAKER_4: How's your butt?
SPEAKER_4: Is your mouth still there?
SPEAKER_4: And I know who you are, you know.
SPEAKER_4: Because it was...
SPEAKER_4: It's so jarring.
SPEAKER_4: I mean, it's really...
SPEAKER_4: But I do think for old...
SPEAKER_1: And that messed you up for life.
SPEAKER_4: No, I was pretty healthy about it, I guess.
SPEAKER_4: But I think it's good when people watch porn, like people who are in a relationship or whatever, if you do want to watch it from time and again.
SPEAKER_4: You get some ideas and it's fun, but you don't want to do it too much.
SPEAKER_4: Just like you don't want to do one thing in sex too much, because it kind of gets gross.
SPEAKER_4: You got to shake it up with sex and with porn.
SPEAKER_4: A little porn here, a little porn there.
SPEAKER_1: How about romance?
SPEAKER_4: I don't like romance.
SPEAKER_1: What kind of girl are you?
SPEAKER_4: I'm kidding.
SPEAKER_4: Yeah, Dr.
SPEAKER_4: Ruth was 100% right.
SPEAKER_4: She was talking about the men who take the Viagra and are ready to do it, but they've ignored their wife.
SPEAKER_1: They've walked past the bouquet of roses and past the box of chocolates, and they've got their divining rod ready to find its target, and all the romance is gone.
SPEAKER_4: Yeah, romance only makes sex hotter.
SPEAKER_4: And I think that you're dumb not to think so.
SPEAKER_4: I guess so, but I mean, on emotional level, if you're connecting romantically, the woman is gonna wanna give so much more back, in a way.
SPEAKER_1: And guys are just idiots about this.
SPEAKER_4: Well, they gotta smarten up.
SPEAKER_4: Smarten up, guys, smarten up.
SPEAKER_1: Let's go to my next clip with Mary Roach.
SPEAKER_1: She was kind enough to visit me in my office at the Hayden Planetarium.
SPEAKER_1: I know, it was fun, it was fun.
SPEAKER_1: And I pulled out my trusty microphone, and let's talk about arousal and the role of pornography.
SPEAKER_5: Usually what's going on with the scientists and the white coats and the people having sex, it's one person and a finger or a vibrator.
SPEAKER_5: I mean, if you're studying arousal and orgasm, you don't need two people.
SPEAKER_5: So, just for simplicity's sake, just you have one person come in, and whether they're in an MRI or whatever, you're rigging them up for measurement, it's simpler, just to have one person.
SPEAKER_1: So it's really just the autonomic response.
SPEAKER_1: So it's not the arousal triggered by another person.
SPEAKER_1: It assumes you could do it yourself, or that a machine can do it to you.
SPEAKER_5: And they'll show pictures.
SPEAKER_5: Yes, they call it visual erotic stimulation.
SPEAKER_5: It's porn.
SPEAKER_5: V-E-S.
SPEAKER_1: Get that in one syllable.
SPEAKER_5: Porn.
SPEAKER_5: So they'll show snippets.
SPEAKER_5: And I thought there was a special educational scientific research porn supply house.
SPEAKER_5: I said, where do you get these films?
SPEAKER_5: And she looked at me like, of course, you get them at the porn shop.
SPEAKER_1: On the corner porn shop.
SPEAKER_1: They're not a special medical version.
SPEAKER_5: I thought it was like a special, somehow sanitized erotic scientific video, but no.
SPEAKER_1: Is there an understanding of why women are perfectly arousable with soft core porn in ways that a man might require hardcore porn?
SPEAKER_1: Did they look at sex differences among arousal?
SPEAKER_5: You know, this is kind of counterintuitive, but what they found surprisingly, that men were aroused by porn that fit their sexual orientation.
SPEAKER_5: Like, they weren't aroused by gay, or if there are animals involved or whatever.
SPEAKER_5: They were aroused by men and women having sex, or women and women, because there's two naked women.
SPEAKER_5: But the women responded to anything.
SPEAKER_1: The entire spectrum.
SPEAKER_5: The entire spectrum.
SPEAKER_1: Animals.
SPEAKER_5: Anything, you name it.
SPEAKER_5: They responded in terms of the measurement.
SPEAKER_1: Not what they would say, but how the body was reacting.
SPEAKER_5: Vaginal blood flow.
SPEAKER_1: Because they can't say.
SPEAKER_5: Well, or they just didn't pick up on it.
SPEAKER_5: Like, either they were in denial or they were so subtle that they weren't picking up on it.
SPEAKER_5: But physiologically, they responded to everything.
SPEAKER_5: They used, I think, some images of bonobo monkeys.
SPEAKER_5: Anything.
SPEAKER_1: Anything will turn into a woman.
SPEAKER_5: No one thinks that.
SPEAKER_5: People think of, you know, man is being visually stimulated and women just could care less.
SPEAKER_5: But if you asked the women, they wouldn't necessarily say that.
SPEAKER_5: I mean, they might say, that didn't do anything for me.
SPEAKER_1: We have electrodes that say otherwise.
SPEAKER_5: Their vaginas were saying otherwise.
SPEAKER_5: And this is also, there's a disconnect with women between the vagina, the body and the brain.
SPEAKER_5: Like, Viagra actually does, quote unquote, work on women.
SPEAKER_5: It does increase vaginal blood flow, but the women don't pick up on it.
SPEAKER_5: They don't feel aroused.
SPEAKER_5: It doesn't change, no, no.
SPEAKER_5: It does have an effect, but it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, which is make them feeling like they want to have sex.
SPEAKER_1: Right, so it doesn't affect the libido.
SPEAKER_5: It doesn't affect the libido.
SPEAKER_5: So that is an interesting disconnect that isn't there with men so much.
SPEAKER_5: And I asked a researcher, like, well, why is that?
SPEAKER_5: She said, well, it could be just because if you're a man, you know, and you have an erection, it's kind of hard to ignore.
SPEAKER_5: And you're a woman, it's a little more subtle.
SPEAKER_4: Wow.
SPEAKER_1: So women are turned on by everything.
SPEAKER_4: Yeah, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_1: Even if you won't admit it to yourself.
SPEAKER_4: Well, I'll admit it.
SPEAKER_4: I've watched game porn and I really like it.
SPEAKER_1: Really?
SPEAKER_4: Gay guys, guys doing it.
SPEAKER_1: Well, that's two guys.
SPEAKER_4: Four guys in a train.
SPEAKER_4: They can do that.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, and four women.
SPEAKER_1: But what Mary Roach was saying is it's animals.
SPEAKER_4: Bonobos monkeys are incredible too.
SPEAKER_1: They just like it.
SPEAKER_4: Yeah, they just like, they'll hump you to say hello.
SPEAKER_4: They're amazing.
SPEAKER_1: And they're very close genetically to us.
SPEAKER_1: So maybe we're in denial of true inner urges.
SPEAKER_4: Maybe.
SPEAKER_1: You know, usually to find monogamous other animals, we have to like find tree shrews or something or bald eagles, but not the very closest genetic identity to us, the bonobo chimps.
SPEAKER_1: So what do you know about bonobos?
SPEAKER_1: Did you like see the Nature Channel?
SPEAKER_4: Oh yeah, well I researched them for the book.
SPEAKER_4: We have a section in the book about them.
SPEAKER_1: In your book, the Sexy Book of Sexy Sex?
SPEAKER_4: Yeah, we have a section about...
SPEAKER_4: What we did is we went into the jungle and we lived with the bonobos.
SPEAKER_4: So we learned our language from them.
SPEAKER_1: So sex is their vehicle to communicate ideas and thoughts?
SPEAKER_4: Yeah.
SPEAKER_1: So are you in denial of this result?
SPEAKER_4: No.
SPEAKER_4: 100% I agree.
SPEAKER_1: You're on it.
SPEAKER_4: Well, because women too, I think...
SPEAKER_4: Well, I don't know.
SPEAKER_4: You know, because the biggest sexual organ, of course, is the brain.
SPEAKER_4: And so it's silly to say that...
SPEAKER_1: That's what women tell each other, right?
SPEAKER_1: A guy would never say that.
SPEAKER_1: It's well known the guy's brain ceases functioning.
SPEAKER_4: Well, let's just say for today that the...
SPEAKER_1: The brain is the man's smallest sexual organ, okay?
SPEAKER_1: It plays no role.
SPEAKER_4: But we have fantasies and also we have all our smut novels too.
SPEAKER_4: You can't forget those.
SPEAKER_4: Like on the chain, like that's how I learned about sex too, was I would just flip to page 60 and page 180 of all those harlequin romance novels.
SPEAKER_4: That's when they started it.
SPEAKER_4: That's when they started and they had a fight and then, oh, made it up.
SPEAKER_1: I knew a woman who was a romance novelist.
SPEAKER_1: I was kind of scared to walk by her.
SPEAKER_4: Why?
SPEAKER_1: Because, you know, you just never know what's going on in their head.
SPEAKER_4: Oh, well, what's going on in her head is going on in all our heads.
SPEAKER_1: All right, when we come back, more of The Science of Sex with Kristen Schaal and my clips with the author, Mary Roach.
SPEAKER_1: You're listening to StarTalk Radio.
SPEAKER_1: See you in a moment.
SPEAKER_1: We're back on StarTalk Radio.
SPEAKER_1: I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson with Kristen Schaal.
SPEAKER_1: And we've also got clips of my interview with Mary Roach.
SPEAKER_1: She'd come to my office, pulled out my microphone, and she did some crazy things.
SPEAKER_1: Which, no, pulling out and whipping out are two different things.
SPEAKER_1: So if you get your vocabulary.
SPEAKER_4: I got pulled out all the stuff.
SPEAKER_1: Great.
SPEAKER_1: So Mary Roach wrote a whole book on this science of sex and all the research that had ever been done.
SPEAKER_1: Did you know that she not only did research on all the science that was done in sex, she was her own subject.
SPEAKER_4: Really, she was just masturbating like crazy while she wrote, because that's what I did.
SPEAKER_1: Let's find out on our next clip of Mary Roach telling us about sex in the lab.
SPEAKER_5: I didn't set out to do this with the book.
SPEAKER_5: I was thinking, well, I'm a journalist.
SPEAKER_5: I'll be in the room with a notepad and there'll be a couple and the researcher and I'll just be, oh, don't mind me.
SPEAKER_1: Don't mind me as I watch you have sex, yes?
SPEAKER_5: But the researchers, of course, would say, are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_5: You can't be in the room.
SPEAKER_5: First of all, you might influence the experiment.
SPEAKER_5: Second, nobody wants to have you there and you're gonna.
SPEAKER_1: Plus, you're not wearing a white lab coat.
SPEAKER_5: You're not wearing, yeah, exactly, yes.
SPEAKER_5: And then invariably they'd go, I know you can be the subject.
SPEAKER_5: And there was one study where my poor husband got dragged into the fray.
SPEAKER_1: You and your husband went into the lab, observed by a lab-coded scientist.
SPEAKER_5: Lab-coded scientist, Dr.
SPEAKER_5: Dang.
SPEAKER_1: Wait, wait, there's a doc named Dr.
SPEAKER_1: Dang?
SPEAKER_5: Yeah, yeah, Dr.
SPEAKER_5: Dang.
SPEAKER_1: So, wait, wait, wait.
SPEAKER_5: Not Dr.
SPEAKER_5: Dong.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know, but wait, you're telling me that someone by the name of Dr.
SPEAKER_1: Dang convinced you and your husband to have sex in his lab while he's watching with his lab coat?
SPEAKER_5: Precisely.
SPEAKER_5: He's published in The Lancet.
SPEAKER_5: I will have you know, buster.
SPEAKER_1: He's a scientist.
SPEAKER_1: So how'd you do?
SPEAKER_1: What'd you learn about yourself?
SPEAKER_5: Obviously, the burden of performance was on my husband, Ed.
SPEAKER_5: And Ed did very, very well indeed.
SPEAKER_5: Viagra helps.
SPEAKER_5: They gave, well, here, let me tell you what it was.
SPEAKER_5: It's this four-dimensional ultrasound moving picture image that they were trying to see if that would work.
SPEAKER_5: They've done these really cool images.
SPEAKER_5: There's one, you can go online and you can see like a puckering lip or an erecting penis.
SPEAKER_5: That's his previous one that he had done.
SPEAKER_5: And he was trying to do a four-dimensional moving ultrasound image of genitals having sex.
SPEAKER_1: So four-dimensional would be, you have all the spatial information and a time information.
SPEAKER_5: Exactly, the fourth dimension being time.
SPEAKER_5: So it's a 3D movie in ultrasound.
SPEAKER_5: You know, I've seen the image, it's on the internet.
SPEAKER_1: Your vagina's on the internet?
SPEAKER_5: It's in ultrasound.
SPEAKER_5: It doesn't, it's a grainy, it's the most G-rated.
SPEAKER_1: I bet someone's colored it in and made it like real.
SPEAKER_5: Oh God, I hope not.
SPEAKER_5: But anyway, it was an interesting experience in that it.
SPEAKER_1: Did you learn anything about yourself?
SPEAKER_5: No, I didn't learn anything about myself.
SPEAKER_5: It felt less like sex than like some awkward thing that you have done at the hospital.
SPEAKER_5: You know, I'm wearing the little dorky hospital Johnny with the open back, pair of socks, and there's equipment everywhere.
SPEAKER_5: So it was a very.
SPEAKER_1: Sanitized.
SPEAKER_5: Perfunctory and sanitized version of sex.
SPEAKER_1: I got you.
SPEAKER_5: Really not the kind of sex you would want to be having.
SPEAKER_1: But that means you're living your books.
SPEAKER_1: This is extraordinary.
SPEAKER_5: I'd try.
SPEAKER_1: This is the journalist who gets the story, who, if I gotta have sex, I'll do it.
SPEAKER_5: Yeah, I have to have sex in the open space.
SPEAKER_1: Damn it, I gotta have sex for this one.
SPEAKER_5: I took one for the reader.
SPEAKER_4: Wow.
SPEAKER_1: You gotta do the research.
SPEAKER_4: Oh man, that sounds terrible.
SPEAKER_4: I hope she had a vibrator at least.
SPEAKER_1: Well no, she had her husband.
SPEAKER_1: Then apparently she said he did fine.
SPEAKER_1: Gave him some Viagra.
SPEAKER_1: It was working.
SPEAKER_1: No, she didn't.
SPEAKER_1: Cause it didn't have the flowers.
SPEAKER_1: Like you said.
SPEAKER_1: But it's interesting.
SPEAKER_1: Earlier we were talking about sort of monogamy.
SPEAKER_1: And I think about, you know, how do you know if we're monogamous?
SPEAKER_1: I mean, when you walk down the street, do you feel, I do, yeah.
SPEAKER_1: Is that how you feel too?
SPEAKER_4: No, but also, is it though men spread their seed?
SPEAKER_1: Perhaps, but I'm saying the Bonobos are not buying each other flowers.
SPEAKER_1: That's true.
SPEAKER_1: One is not coming up with a daisy.
SPEAKER_1: They're just doing it.
SPEAKER_4: I don't know.
SPEAKER_4: For me, maybe I'm special.
SPEAKER_4: But when I met my guy, it was just like, he was game over for everybody.
SPEAKER_4: He's the best one.
SPEAKER_1: Your guy here who you wrote the book with.
SPEAKER_4: I'm very lucky and it doesn't happen to everybody.
SPEAKER_4: Also, I think if you do find someone, it's something you work on, right?
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, it's work.
SPEAKER_4: I don't know, what is your love with your lady?
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, no work.
SPEAKER_4: I mean, maybe you want to get with other ladies.
SPEAKER_1: Well, so we married 25 years ago.
SPEAKER_1: Kids, there's a whole world going on there.
SPEAKER_1: And what's interesting, you walk by the clubs and they're all like the 20-somethings not married, no kids, all going in there trying to find the love of their life.
SPEAKER_4: Right.
SPEAKER_1: Right, and then there's a whole other line of the married people trying to find people out.
SPEAKER_1: It's an interesting opposite thing.
SPEAKER_4: I wonder if the line of married people may be settled when they shouldn't have.
SPEAKER_4: Like, I think you have to really know.
SPEAKER_4: Keep looking.
SPEAKER_4: But I'm also lucky, and when I was single, which was 30 years of my life, and anyone brought up their romantic relationships, I was like, oh, ah, shut up!
SPEAKER_4: This is not real!
SPEAKER_4: You know, so I'm sure people are like, puking at home.
SPEAKER_1: Well, we have no training for what happens after you're married, because all the fairy tales say they lived happily ever after.
SPEAKER_4: Right.
SPEAKER_1: The story's only up until they get married.
SPEAKER_4: Yeah, because then it's sheer bliss, right?
SPEAKER_1: That's the assumption, but there's no data.
SPEAKER_1: It's not from the fairy tales.
SPEAKER_1: And what was your state of mind writing this?
SPEAKER_1: Like, were you aroused by doing this?
SPEAKER_4: Um, no, because like the Casey Anthony trial was going on at the same time, and-
SPEAKER_1: Nobody says you gotta watch TV.
SPEAKER_4: Amanda Knox trial says it's like really distracting.
SPEAKER_1: Nobody says you gotta watch TV at all.
SPEAKER_1: You just put yourself in a room and just write.
SPEAKER_4: That sounds magical.
SPEAKER_4: You just go in a room and it all just flows out of you because you're an astrophysicist.
SPEAKER_1: When we come back with StarTalk Radio, more on our show dedicated to the science of sex.
SPEAKER_4: That's not a good sound.
SPEAKER_1: You're back on StarTalk Radio.
SPEAKER_1: I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, Kristen Schaal.
SPEAKER_1: Have I pronounced that right?
SPEAKER_1: Schaal.
SPEAKER_5: Schaal, there you go.
SPEAKER_4: The longer you can make it, the better.
SPEAKER_1: I've got you.
SPEAKER_1: And in these segments, we've been replaying my audio clips of my interview with Mary Roach, who wrote the book, Bonk, all about the research into sex over the decades and over the centuries.
SPEAKER_4: Really?
SPEAKER_1: She did it?
SPEAKER_4: She researched for centuries?
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, she's 300 years old.
SPEAKER_1: So apparently experiments have been done for quite some time, just to understand what are the secrets to good sex, for example.
SPEAKER_1: Let's find out what Mary Roach has to say about the secret to good sex.
SPEAKER_1: It's one thing to have all these lab-coded people observe others stimulating themselves or having sex.
SPEAKER_1: That's one thing.
SPEAKER_1: So another thing, if the fruits of all this research could be put into a volume that would advise people of how to have better sex, a manual, give me a recipe so we go home, we can make it even better.
SPEAKER_5: Right.
SPEAKER_1: Have anybody done this?
SPEAKER_5: Yes.
SPEAKER_5: Masters and Johnson actually did a study where they had straight couples, gay couples, long-time couples and couples who had just met.
SPEAKER_5: And they all looked at what they were doing, whether they had orgasm, how easily they had orgasm, et cetera.
SPEAKER_5: And they came to some conclusions.
SPEAKER_5: And what was interesting was that the long-term couples were having the best sex.
SPEAKER_5: And the reason was that they were...
SPEAKER_1: They knew each other's spots.
SPEAKER_5: Yeah, well, they were also living in the moment in that they weren't just sort of going like, well, first I got to do this to her, and then I got to diddle that for a little while, and then I do this, and that ought to do it.
SPEAKER_5: They were losing those.
SPEAKER_1: Diddle that for a while.
SPEAKER_5: It wasn't like there was...
SPEAKER_5: But I was going to say the gay couples were having better sex than the straight, because the straight couples, like the guy would be going, oh, I know she likes me, I'll do this, I'll do that, that ought to do it.
SPEAKER_5: That was formulaic sex.
SPEAKER_5: But the gay couples and the long-term gay couples in particular would take their time, and they were kind of focused on the other person's responses.
SPEAKER_5: They were very much kind of losing themselves in it and not just going through the motions.
SPEAKER_5: So all those things you see on Cosmo, these 10 tips to drive him wild now, it's really more just like...
SPEAKER_1: Cosmo the magazine.
SPEAKER_1: You say Cosmo around me, I'm thinking Cosmo's the universe, so I have to specify.
SPEAKER_1: Cosmo Politan, the magazine, where every issue is about diet, sex and how to be better in bed with your boyfriend.
SPEAKER_5: Exactly.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah.
SPEAKER_5: Exactly.
SPEAKER_5: So they were finding that secret little techniques and tips was not the answer.
SPEAKER_5: It was more about losing yourself in the moment and just going with it and focusing on the other person's arousal.
SPEAKER_5: That was arousing for people, not just focusing on yourself.
SPEAKER_5: Sounds really hokey, but kind of being one organism.
SPEAKER_1: Or being sensitive.
SPEAKER_5: Yeah.
SPEAKER_1: That's another word for this, isn't it?
SPEAKER_5: But being tuned in to the other person's responses and not just kind of going, okay, now it's your turn, now it's my turn, that kind of, yeah.
SPEAKER_5: So anyway, that was-
SPEAKER_1: She's saying a sensitive man is-
SPEAKER_5: Yes, a sensitive man is a good thing.
SPEAKER_5: A sensitive woman.
SPEAKER_5: It went both ways because some of the women were really bad at pleasuring the men.
SPEAKER_5: This is the 70s.
SPEAKER_5: Presumably, women have learned a lot more.
SPEAKER_5: The homosexual couples had gender advantage.
SPEAKER_5: In other words, I know it feels good for me.
SPEAKER_5: It feels good for you.
SPEAKER_1: Got the same organs.
SPEAKER_5: I got the same organs, so they had that advantage going for them.
SPEAKER_1: Same organs.
SPEAKER_4: Yeah.
SPEAKER_1: You know exactly what's going on.
SPEAKER_4: Yeah.
SPEAKER_4: Reach around.
SPEAKER_1: So, did you have tips of your own in your book, the sexy book of sexy sex, that you put in here for people to?
SPEAKER_4: One of them was to go to the slow zone, and that might have been what Mary was talking about a little bit, too, about being in the moment and just not like a wham-bam-bam.
SPEAKER_1: What's that?
SPEAKER_1: I thought sometimes there's a time and a place for quickies.
SPEAKER_4: Sometimes quickies are really, really exciting.
SPEAKER_4: You're running late.
SPEAKER_1: It's the running late sex, right?
SPEAKER_4: Yeah.
SPEAKER_1: But the long and slow, you're...
SPEAKER_4: Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_4: We talk like a week.
SPEAKER_4: Just put some locks on the doors, so yeah.
SPEAKER_4: No, I don't know.
SPEAKER_4: Again, this is a joke book.
SPEAKER_3: Right.
SPEAKER_4: To keep reminding myself.
SPEAKER_1: So this is not a documentary of the...
SPEAKER_1: This is a joke.
SPEAKER_4: These are all jokes.
SPEAKER_3: Yes.
SPEAKER_4: Oh, but we do...
SPEAKER_4: Oh, I can't even do it.
SPEAKER_4: We had some sex toys.
SPEAKER_4: They were really gross.
SPEAKER_4: Okay.
SPEAKER_1: You have to get the book to find out.
SPEAKER_4: You have to buy the book or, you know, borrow it.
SPEAKER_1: And Mary Roach's book, Bonk, that's been out for a while.
SPEAKER_4: How do you spell that?
SPEAKER_1: Bonk, B-O-N-K, exclamation point.
SPEAKER_4: Okay, sometimes I'm hearing bonk.
SPEAKER_1: No, no, not bonk, it's bonk.
SPEAKER_1: And of course, Dr.
SPEAKER_1: Ruth has a book out.
SPEAKER_1: It's all about a woman to understand her own body and sexuality.
SPEAKER_1: And I've kept thinking guys should read that just so we get secret access to that information.
SPEAKER_1: It shouldn't be.
SPEAKER_1: Here's a bit of sexual trivia for my fellow math geeks.
SPEAKER_1: When a man ejaculates, 120 million sperm travel through the Vos Deferens at an average of 28 miles per hour.
SPEAKER_3: But did you know that pigs ejaculate many times more sperm than that?
SPEAKER_1: No, no, I don't know that and I'm not going to ask why you know that, Charles, professor of astrophysics.
SPEAKER_1: But once they're transported out of the penal shaft, they slow down to 0.0011 miles per hour.
SPEAKER_1: Man, yeah.
SPEAKER_3: That's why we need rocket boost.
SPEAKER_1: When Star Talk returns, we'll end our show on The Science of Sex by featuring more of my interview with the sex therapist, Dr.
SPEAKER_1: Ruth Westheimer.
SPEAKER_1: Welcome back to StarTalk Radio.
SPEAKER_1: You've been listening to The Sex Show, featuring Mary Roach, Dr.
SPEAKER_1: Ruth, my comedian co-host, Kristen Schaal, and right with me now is Charles Liu.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, he's professor of astrophysics, but he should be professor of everything.
SPEAKER_1: You know, scientists once theorized that a deeper male voice was correlated with better sperm quality.
SPEAKER_3: Oh, well, that explains a lot.
SPEAKER_3: Hey, I got three kids, man.
SPEAKER_1: Did you sing baritone or something and some quartet?
SPEAKER_3: Yes, and bass.
SPEAKER_1: And bass.
SPEAKER_1: Yes.
SPEAKER_1: A recently published study found that higher levels of testosterone, which leads to deeper voices, can also impair sperm production.
SPEAKER_1: So while women tend to be more attractive to voices on the very white end of the spectrum, that may be because of other high testosterone qualities, like greater strength and overall physical dominance.
SPEAKER_3: Oh.
SPEAKER_3: Well, okay, I don't have to worry about hiding my voice there.
SPEAKER_1: No, that's why the skinny guy with the deep voice is so fun to watch.
SPEAKER_3: That's true.
SPEAKER_1: Right.
SPEAKER_1: That's true.
SPEAKER_3: I am that guy.
SPEAKER_1: In the last segment to the show, let's hear what Dr.
SPEAKER_1: Ruth thinks about the more out of this world aspects of sex.
SPEAKER_1: What is this fascination we have in our films where we show other alien creatures and the men want to have sex with them?
SPEAKER_1: Like Captain Kirk, there'd be some blue alien and he's got action in every galaxy.
SPEAKER_2: Is the blue alien a male or a female?
SPEAKER_1: It's a female.
SPEAKER_1: Well, apparently, these aliens have males and females.
SPEAKER_2: It doesn't matter to me.
SPEAKER_2: I tell you why.
SPEAKER_1: You're cool with alien sex.
SPEAKER_2: I don't want to engage with alien sex.
SPEAKER_2: However, anybody who watches your program.
SPEAKER_1: She said it here first.
SPEAKER_1: She doesn't want it.
SPEAKER_2: That's true, but if that's what helps them not to worry about the stock market, if they can engage in some fantasy, and I don't care if the alien is-
SPEAKER_1: These are competing emotional forces in the world.
SPEAKER_2: Absolutely, if they can use an alien, I can think of that, what was the little one?
SPEAKER_2: Steve Spielberg's-
SPEAKER_2: If ET would be a grown up, then I could see that I could go for a walk with him.
SPEAKER_2: But a grown up.
SPEAKER_1: I think you're actually about the same height.
SPEAKER_1: You know, we have people trying to commercialize access to space, and you go into orbit the Earth, you have first, you have great views.
SPEAKER_1: You're also in zero G, you're floating.
SPEAKER_1: So, if you had the opportunity to have zero G sex, would you?
SPEAKER_2: I have always asked the question, do these people in outer space, some of them were couples, were they able to have sex or not?
SPEAKER_2: Were they?
SPEAKER_1: I think the answer is yes to that.
SPEAKER_2: Then I'll go.
SPEAKER_1: Americans won't admit to it.
SPEAKER_2: Then I'll go.
SPEAKER_1: Also, it's been done.
SPEAKER_2: But you have to get permission from your wife.
SPEAKER_2: I'm a widow, so I can give the permission.
SPEAKER_2: Ask permission from your wife, we go to space.
SPEAKER_1: My first date in space.
SPEAKER_2: Now you are involved in talking also about the stars.
SPEAKER_1: Heavenly bodies of another sort.
SPEAKER_2: Yes.
SPEAKER_2: So you have to help me teach everybody.
SPEAKER_2: It's wonderful to engage in that activity while gazing at the stars.
SPEAKER_2: Make sure there's no police car next to you in the privacy, but there is nothing better than to do it outside with the stars twinkling.
SPEAKER_1: Under the stars.
SPEAKER_2: Under the stars, in privacy.
SPEAKER_2: On the porch or wherever you can find privacy.
SPEAKER_1: So the ideal case would be a bedroom with a ceiling that opens.
SPEAKER_2: That's a brilliant idea.
SPEAKER_2: All of your viewers are going to want that.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, next house I design, that's what it's going to be.
SPEAKER_1: And I quickly have to tell this story.
SPEAKER_1: 10 years ago I edited a volume of Natural History magazine called City of Stars.
SPEAKER_1: And it was about all the ways that New York City, which you wouldn't normally think would conjure images of the universe.
SPEAKER_1: It was an accounting of all the ways that it can and does.
SPEAKER_1: And in fact, it's the first, it contained the first photo of Manhattan Henge where the sun sets on the grid of Manhattan.
SPEAKER_1: And it's very beautiful.
SPEAKER_1: And you were kind enough to contribute a piece at the end of this volume.
SPEAKER_1: As one of the prominent New Yorkers, just to comment on the universe in the city.
SPEAKER_1: And I don't know if you remember it.
SPEAKER_1: And what you said was, from where you live, you can't see the night sky, but you do see the George Washington Bridge.
SPEAKER_1: And at night, when it is lit, those lights become your galaxy.
SPEAKER_2: That's very true.
SPEAKER_1: And I've not forgot.
SPEAKER_2: And I have to tell you something interesting because there's now the play about me.
SPEAKER_2: And in that play, I remember.
SPEAKER_1: Wait, there's a play?
SPEAKER_1: Did I miss this?
SPEAKER_2: Yes, the play is called.
SPEAKER_2: Dr.
SPEAKER_2: Ruth, by the way.
SPEAKER_1: What?
SPEAKER_2: Listen to that.
SPEAKER_2: In that play, I recount, and Deborah Jo Rapp is playing me, and I tell of a children's song from Germany before the Nazis, while I was living there for 10 and a half years.
SPEAKER_2: And that song is all about the stars.
SPEAKER_2: So I'm going to get you the translation of that song.
SPEAKER_2: It's all about, do you know how many stars are twinkling in the sky?
SPEAKER_1: I would love it.
SPEAKER_1: There's a famous quote from Oscar Wilde where he said, we're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking up to the stars.
SPEAKER_2: Oh boy, that's the two of us.
SPEAKER_2: I like to look up at the stars.
SPEAKER_1: I'm taking you in the space, girl.
SPEAKER_2: All right.
SPEAKER_1: This has been Dr.
SPEAKER_1: Ruth Westheimer, and she books Sexually Speaking, what every woman, I'm going to put a little insert here, say, and man needs to know about the woman, sexual health.
SPEAKER_1: And Ruth, it's been an honor and a pleasure to have you on StarTalk Radio.
SPEAKER_2: Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_2: I'll come to the museum with my grandchildren.
SPEAKER_1: You give me a call.
SPEAKER_1: My universe is your universe.
SPEAKER_2: Oh, I like that.
SPEAKER_2: You're going to show me the stars.
SPEAKER_1: I will show you more than the stars.
SPEAKER_1: And the Milky Way.
SPEAKER_2: More than the stars.
SPEAKER_2: Did you hear that?
SPEAKER_1: Well, the universe has comets and asteroids and gas clouds and the edge of the universe itself.
SPEAKER_1: I'll save it for you.
SPEAKER_2: Thank you.
SPEAKER_1: You've been listening to StarTalk Radio.
SPEAKER_1: As always, keep looking up.