Ologies with Alie Ward - Phallology (PENISES) with Emily Willingham

Episode Date: June 1, 2021

Dongs. Schlongs. Peters. Intromittent organs. Gamete cannons. Biologist, gonad researcher, and Phallologist Dr. Emily Willingham joins to chat about peckers big and small, plain and fancy, barbed, coiled, colossal, pickled, and efficient. Also on the agenda: how the pressures of masculinity affect self-image, what actually contributes to a partner’s pleasure, what can cause willies to go wonky (and how to get back on track,) life beyond the binary, and sensual turtles. Stick around to the end for friendly fellatio advice from penis-owners; boy howdy it’s a hard episode to pass up.Visit Emily's website and Twitter Purchase her book, Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal PenisA donation was made to Doctors Without Borders More episode sources and linksSponsors of OlogiesTranscripts & bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, totes, masks… Follow @ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @alieward on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray MorrisTranscripts by Emily White of The WordaryWebsite by Kelly R. Dwyer

Oh, hey, it's the bouncer who pretends to check your ID, but who are we kidding? Allie Ward, I'm her. This is allergies. You're here. Unless you are my parents, in which case, please leave. Okay. Bye-bye now. Okay.

All right. They're gone. Cool. Okay. So let's get into dicks with anologist who wrote the actual book on them. She has a PhD in biological sciences from the University of Texas at Austin and authored the book, Fallacy, Life Lessons from the Animal Penis. And you have read her words, perhaps enjoyed her rye candor in Scientific American, American

Scientist, Forbes, Slate, and more. She's taught biology and genetics. I became aware of her book and I begged her to talk boners with me. And then life got busy and she gently popped up in my inbox. And what followed was a business email that included the word dong several times in all caps. And here we are. So before though, we get to the nuts and the bolts of inflatable crotches.

Let us say a quick thanks to patrons who make the show doable across a dollar a month to join that club and submit questions. Also thanks to everyone who's rated and hit subscribe on this podcast. That matters so much. And the reviews, oh, the reviews, they keep allergies right now, the number two science show on Apple. And I read them all. And this week, let's read aloud Marma the Candy Bar, who called allergies science, comedy,

life hacks, therapy all in one. So get ready for all of that and more, including if you stick around, some sex tips this week sourced from oligites, anonymously. Also Norm Saxie, I'm sorry about your pops. And as your weird internet dad, I send hugs. Okay, let's get into it, philology. It's a word it is derived from the proto Indo European root to swell, which is swell indeed. So buckle up, get ready to hear about pronged dongs, myths about toxic masculinity, why an

erectile might disfunct and what to do if size really matters and to whom turtle romance, sea slug sparring the biggest members of the animal kingdom, life beyond a binary, the gift shop that keeps on giving and reasons you might affix a metal dick to your baby. Now, as deep as we went, this whole episode could have just been miles long. And we touched on as many penis questions as possible. And even as I record this, more info is just gushing in. I'll be adding it to the very, very end. So stay tuned for trivia, tricks and of course just the tips with scientist, author and philologist

Dr. Emily Willingham. First name is Emily. Last name is Willingham, unless you're British in which case, apparently it's Willingham and my pronouns are she, her. Wow, philology. Did you know it existed? I'm sure you did. Did I personally know it existed?

I did. Yeah, I did. At some point in my life, I did learn of its existence. Yeah. Do you call yourself a philologist? No. Can you start? Because it's great.

Can you imagine that? I mean, people are like, what? What do you mean by that? Oh, my gosh. Tell me a little bit about how long your life has involved the dick. Let's see. So there's so many ways to answer that question. I mean, you know, with sex life or research life or let's start.

Let's say the research life because I don't want to get too private for people who aren't here to consent to that. I would say, you know, I actually started out with gonads because I feel like you need to start at the beginning of any story. And yeah, so I did my PhD was a focus on gonads, but when I did my postdoc, what we focused on was penises. But of course. So it was like 2002 when I started getting into that.

Can you tell me about why your research pointed in that direction? What was it about gonads and dongs? You know what? I don't know. I just really into reproductive biology. I don't know why I have an English degree. And when I went into biological sciences, I remember I was looking through this like manless like pamphlet or something from the school I attended was University of Texas

at Austin and looking through like what the researchers did, you know, like what are they what are they focused on? I put actually drew little hearts. I was way too old to be doing this next to these two labs, the pictures of the PIs and two labs that did this kind of work. And I just I mean, it just that's just what I wanted to do. I can't explain it. I'm sorry.

She just loved it. A light bulb went off, a fire ignited in her soul, and Dr. Willingham was like, gonads have my whole heart. Is the work is it very hands on or is it a lot of lab work? How does that work? It is hands on. And actually what that means and a more serious note is that a lot of times it's hands on, you know, with animals and they don't survive the hands on goodness.

So you know, there's not a lot of salaciousness to it, but it is basic research. So you do kind of learn about what makes these things tick. Did you find that because of what you were studying, you got a lot of questions from people in your social circles? I mean, did you find yourself being introduced to dinner parties is like this is Emily. She studies sticks. Well, you know, no. But I used to write about what I did and say, you know, if you start, if I started to talk

about it, parties, people sort of back away slowly, like, what do you do? Well, I studied gonads and they were just like, OK. And so I decided maybe that's not a party word. Like you shouldn't say gonads at a party, maybe. And but yeah, now I do actually get a ton of questions from people about penises all the time. Was it just easier to write a book? It's funny. It was not easy to write a book, but it was incredibly fun to write a book that was this

stuff is interesting. Can't get away from how interesting it is. Oh, for sure. And I'm sure if people do start asking you questions, you can just say, please, here's a book. I wrote a book. Can you buy the book I wrote? So let's, I guess, start at the base, if we shall.

And can you explain what is a penis or a phallus in anatomical terms? Holy cow. So that's a big question because I mean, across the animal kingdom, what they're made out of varies enormously. And if you're in the world of penis research or the genitalia researchers of the world, you'd discover that they actually also like to argue a lot about what it actually makes a penis, or at least some of them do. Maybe we were just bored, I don't know.

And so not everything is a penis that we call a penis, depending on whom you talk to. So if you take a human or a mammalian version of this, you know, they humans don't have a bone, but a lot of mammals do. So there's a bone in the bone and that's called the os penis, actually. And there's a smooth muscle, which we can't contract, you know, voluntarily. So you know, our body's going to have to do that for us. And they have blood vessels and they have spongy tissue that, you know, you can get filled with blood as we all might know, might be familiar with that.

And, and then of course, their skin and running through, it has skin on it, which is good. And then running through, running down the center of it is a urethra. And most commonly that exits at the tip of it and the tip of it, you know, there's a little helmet on it. There's a foreskin and that's a glands and then the longer part of it is called the shaft. So there you have it. Like a realtor giving you a tour of a quaint, homie schlong. So that's form.

Let's talk function and then we'll talk fun. And does something have to be a sperm delivery device to be considered a penis? So it not really because there, no, there are things that delivers from that are that don't. There are not penises and it gets very complex. So I used to describe penis as a sperm delivery systems. If that was back when I was young, beautiful and innocent and didn't know what I was talking about, somehow still teaching biology to freshmen and the universities.

But the reality is that lots of different things are used to transmit sperm, sometimes feet, for example. And sometimes the penis doesn't really do that at all. You just sort of load up the penis, you transfer its contents to some other body part and then you insert the sperm. So there are lots of ways to get that into a partner without using a penis. So sometimes the penis is just the cocking gun. Let's talk about some quick flim flam.

I think obviously culturally, there's a big binary in terms of like, you have a penis, you are a man, it transmits sperm, you do not have a penis, you are a woman. But obviously in your studies, there's a lot of gray areas, right? Yeah, you know, our problem as a species is we really like to categorize things and we don't like a lot of categories, which is not fans of it. So we'd like to make two and we like to just squeeze everything we can into those two categories. You know, nature has other ideas. The subtitle of my book is Life Lessons from the Animal Penis.

And one of the lessons is that, you know, penises don't make an animal male and not all male animals have them. And in some cases, animals that make eggs actually have the structure that transmits sperm to a partner, inserts into and transmits sperm into a partner. And I mean, I think we know from being human beings that a penis doesn't make a man and a man doesn't always have a penis. So, you know, it's way more, way more complicated than the two buckets we like so much. Hold up, let's back up here.

Who does what with a what and what kind of animals? Were you just talking about who have sperm but or who have eggs and what what types of animals do that? So there are a couple. One is the pretty well known, which is the seahorse. And they don't what they use isn't really technically a penis or I made a term in the book because across different kinds of species groups of species, people have so many different names for these organs.

They call them so many different things. And so I just needed one term that captured it. And so I decided on intramitim because intramission is inserting an organ into something and transmitting gametes. Once again, that was an intramitim organ. And so the seahorse doesn't really have this technically what the seahorse does is that the female, the one that makes the eggs takes those eggs and puts them into the male pouch and then the male brews them.

And when that happens, there's just tiny little moment where some seaman's sperm comes out of a little pour in the male and, you know, it fuses with the eggs and the male brews them. So the lady seahorse uses an ovipositor to jizz eggs into the boy seahorse. And he is like doing with a little bit of sperm, such as a salt bay might just gently sprinkle, and then he incubates them. And some cave insects, Emily told me, have an ovipositor that goes into a boy cave insect and sucks up sperm.

And that clutch info was published in a 2014 study titled Female Penis, Male Vagina and their Correlated Evolution in a Cave Insect, which just introduced me to a new ology, cave ecology. It's dark and damp and musty and mystery. Let's do it. But back to seahorses. You know, I heard from some listeners a few years ago that trans men who carry babies are known as seahorses colloquially.

Were you aware of that? You know, actually, that does ring a bell. That's pretty cool. I had no idea. Can we talk a little bit about in humans, where does a clitoris and where does a penis come from in development? Because I feel like I've seen like drawings where they kind of start in the same structural way and then they divide or sometimes with intersex humans, divisions

will be less binary. Can you kind of, can you talk about the the bulb of it all? Yeah, sure. I'm actually a developmental biologist. And so this is right in my, you know, a so-called sweet spot of things rolling into talking about the early structure is called a genital tubercle. And it's just a little nub that develops. And then what happens next really depends on what hormones are available.

Kind of regardless of, of which animal with the backbone you are, if you start out with this little genital tubercle nub. And in us, if there's a hormone, these are steroid hormones, a hormone called dihydrotestosterone, which is a version of testosterone. Then the urethra and that genital tubercle will start to elongate. And you get what we call a penis. If there's a different kind of hormone present and dihydrotestosterone isn't present, then that elongation doesn't occur and the urethra stays short.

And what I used to tell my, my sons, when they asked me why some people have penises and some people don't, I would just say, well, some people just have a shorter urethra because I didn't want them to get all caught up. And, you know, some of the other binary stuff. Yeah. So how come even in an enlarged clitoris, we don't pee out of it? In the case of development and without the dihydrotestosterone present, yeah, the urethra comes, it goes in one direction.

And that is just underneath where the clitoris is. Did you find, especially in writing this book, when you were deep in the creation process of it, did you just see ticks everywhere you went? Absolutely. I outside the window where I sit in my house, where I work, there's a hillside and it just has this like sort of bear area. I swear to God, I've been looking at it now for the longest time. And it just, it just looks like a penis and testes out there.

It just does. I look at it every day. So yes, yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. Thoughts on Darth Vader. You know, it's funny you mentioned that because I was watching that the other day as one does. And I was looking at him. And I, you know, there was that part of it and it really does look like that.

But also it's oddly just the head. Yeah, it's really large for the rest of him. And I don't really know why they did that. Why does Darth look dickish? I had to know. So I sniffed down a few happy trails, one of which asserted that they were a nod to Nazi helmets, ill. But then a few other sources said that George Lucas wanted to kind

of tip his hat toward samurai culture. So designers based it on a helmet of a 16th century Japanese warrior data massamune. And if you Google it, you're like, oh, yeah, Darth Vader is just data massamune cosplay. So now we know why he is shaped like one of those, but on the flip side. And when it comes to the head of the penis, can you explain why does it look like a Darth Vader helmet? You know, you can only infer, but, you know, there are lots of people, not

lots, but some people have tried to explain it as, oh, it's my favorite thing. It's a plunger or something. Like it plunges semen out of a woman, out of, you know, the partner's vagina because you're trying to get rid of that because you're the next guy in a line. And I'm just thinking, you know, I know people are really various in how they do things, but, you know, most people don't just have, I mean, why run into bed and have partners lined up out the door so that they can come in one after the other and just plunge the vagina, you know, and get their semen in

line. So that's kind of a funny way to look at it. And I mean, people have hypothesized all kinds of reasons, but nobody has a direct explanation for that. But is that sort of the leading hypothesis for now? No, because I think that the people who are proposing that were leading with something else when they thought that that, when they decided that or proposed it, I don't buy it. I had heard that it was to clean things out, but, and I just accepted like, OK,

that must be what it's for. But it's interesting that it might maybe could have served aerodynamic purposes as well. So I would say clean things out. I mean, I understand why you like that seems plausible. I think a lot of people have found it plausible, but there's not in the way that humans mate and the mate structure that we have, it doesn't make a sense that there would be a need to clean things out.

And also just the way sperm travels so quickly and how all of that works, that wouldn't work anyway. It's be a little too late for that to really have an effect. And it's not really that impressive. I mean, one of the things that I write about in the book is that our penis is not particularly impressive. It doesn't have a lot of adornments. It doesn't suggest that there's a lot of competition with like the males

having sex with a female or something like that, which you see in a lot of other species, because when that happens, those penises have all kinds of things on them, like spikes and hooks and, you know, just really fancy looking and ours isn't like that at all. They're very fancy. Fancy fell eye. Occult remote. Occult remote, yes.

I'm so sorry, humans with penises, not a lot of bells and whistles, but there are a lot of balls and whiskers. Anyway, Dr. Willingham says that our partner structure is pretty chill compared to some other organisms. I did want to ask about that. If you could walk us through maybe a gallery of highlights of some, some dongs in the animal kingdom, some really some notable ones, the most notable

dongs in the animal kingdom. Well, I sort of mentioned the millipedes because they just kind of kill me because they have this pair of legs that they use. And there's another pair that serves up the semen. But before they do that, they first test the partner with like an empty, uncharged pair of legs. They're like poker. And if it seems like it works okay, which I mean, one possible explanation

of that, there's just like, is this the right species? Is this a millipede? You know, you're going to make sure. But then then they get the legs and they draw up the the semen from another pair of legs and then use them for real. Just kind of, I don't know, that just sort of amazes me. Another one that amazes me are these swallowtail butterflies. And when I understand other butterfly species may have this as well, but

they have light receptors on their genitalia. Fancy. Which means they can detect light with their genitalia. Oh, my God. Imagine if you could detect light with your genitalia. Oh, my gosh. Absolutely changes the rave scene completely. It's like changes a lot.

They're like, what would you do? So that was also, I really sort of enjoy that. People talk about duck penises all the time because they're porkscrew, shave, ballistic, and I'm honestly kind of over them. Just some like, okay, fine, whatever. And if you're not yet over that fact, great news. I have more dick duck gossip. Okay.

So most birds do not have release. 97% of them happily dickless. They just perform a little cloacal kiss is what it's called. They gingerly smash buttholes and boom, you've got baby birds. But ducks not only have wings, they have ones that can be longer than their entire bodies and are spiraled like a tightly wound curly fry. And likewise, duck vaginas are just a spiral staircase of resistance, replete with hidden pockets and dead ends.

And according to Dr. Patricia Brennan, a scientist who researches duck dicks, this likely evolved to thwart male ducks forced copulation as Dr. Brennan explored in a paper titled, quote, explosive aversion and functional morphology of the duck penis supports sexual conflict in waterfell genitalia. Also, my good buddy, Dr. Jason Coleman reported Vietnam Geo a few years ago that apparently a

duck penis will shrink during the off season and then get big and weird again during a breeding frenzy. But if you're not the dominant male in your duck posse, your dingle dangle may just stay modest, but on the topic of small but mighty. The flea is a bit daunting. Oh, it has a penis that is sort of like, you know, I know people's weird. How many people have like written poetically about fleas like, you know, John Dunn, that kind of thing.

But it has a penis that like curls up inside of its body and basically takes up the whole rear half of it and is a couple of times the length of the animal. And even when it's inserted into a partner, there's still a whole bunch of it still inside. I know fleas are just wacky. John Dunn, who? Okay.

So he is a dead English poet and a cleric who secretly married a lady and had 12 kids with her and also wrote some sad emo sonnets and some erotic ditties about bugs such as the flea, which includes the lines, it sucked me first and now sucks thee. And in this flea are two bloods mingled bee. So this was like straight up horny shit in the 15th century. And people were hot and sweaty under their woolen vestments about it. And then there's one in the book, one of my favorite pictures in the

book is of this penis of fairly common snail in Australia. It's called Phala Medusa Salida or Salida. And it's kind of hard. It's like if a mop were put on top of Medusa's head and then she kind of wrapped a fancy late 18th century cravat around her neck. That's what this thing would look like. It's really quite striking. Is it true that barnacles have the biggest body to member ratio?

Yeah. So I have this whole chapter on like, you know, who's like the big winner when it comes to, you know, the biggest penis. And so I don't know if you know much, you know, about Charles Darwin's other interests, besides the natural selection situation, but he wrote this like four part gigantic set of monographs on barnacles to the point that he actually got kind of sick of them. He just got, he got to the point where he hated them, which is understandable. But there was this one teeny, teeny little barnacle.

He found that at first they thought was like a parasite or something. It turned out to be the male version on the female, which is not uncommon. There are quite a few species where the male is teeny weeny. And then when you got a close enough look at this thing, it's penis is like many times the size of its body. So it really does have the largest penis to body proportion of any animal. And if you wanted to go just like, well, what is just actually like the biggest penis on earth, you know, guess what that is?

Oh gosh, a whale. Yeah, the blue whale. Blue whale takes it. Oh God, eight feet, sorry. Yeah, eight feet. So if you know somebody who's like six feet tall, add two feet to that. And that's a blue average blue whale. I went to the Icelandic Philological Museum because, you know, if you're

running a book about penises, you kind of almost have to do that. And there are tons, you know, it's Iceland. So there are a ton of whale penises in that museum. I can't even imagine the gift shop. Oh, the gift shop was hilarious. Actually, the museum itself was a little sad to me because it was a bunch of penises, like, you know, disembodied from the animals, which I don't know. Kind of it was not uplifting to me, but the gift shop was a sterile.

Really enjoyed the gift shop. Not uplifting. Oh my God. No. There it is again. If you've just added the phallological museum to your travel bucket list, prepare for a whole gallery full of glass columns stuffed with wangs of all shapes and sizes, floating in sepia-toned liquids.

Just stroll through the gift shop and browse an array of designer condoms, creatively handled mugs, some penis pasta. They got ice cube trays, lots of plush toys. They have human sized willy warmers and more, including, of course, some carved wooden bottle openers that just straight up look like a severed pecker. Who's thirsty? Not me. That brings me to, in terms of disembodied penises, what animals in the natural

world do have a gift shop structure where the dong is broken off in a kind of courtship offering? Like, I understand that seminal plugs and dicks just break off in animals. Octopuses will just break off a sperm paddle. Who's just like, I'm good. Take it. You know, this is an interesting question because there are two kind of different sort of things driving the loss of the penis here.

And so in one case, like there might be a sperm plug or a penis bit left behind. And there's some people hypothesize that that is to, that's basically like you've just blocked the door to the tomb there. Nobody else can get in. And so it keeps other suitors from showing up and doing anything on the flip side of that. Like, for example, there's an octopus that is called the paper nodulus. And it is neither paper nor a nodulus.

I don't know why we name things like we do, but we do. And it's an Argonaut octopus. And the, the, the male is teeny weeny compared to the female and the, you know, they're octopized. They're not above just sort of eating each other. If they get a chance to, she would make a snack out of them. Maybe, you know, she got the opportunity and one of those is a hectic codilist, which takes little sperm packets and deposits them into the female.

And this little guy's like, you just keep this thing because I need to get out of here. He's just kind of like, you know, he sneaks up and like pokes it in there and swims away as fast as he can before the much larger female decides he also was lunch and people used to find these females and find all these little like squirmy, tentacle things inside of them and thought that they might be parasites or something that had gotten in there. Literally just a bag of dicks.

You are a bag of dicks. So perhaps it's not so much a ritual courtship gift as it's more akin to just tossing it all on red and then getting the hell out of dodge. It's really much more about preservation than it is about generosity though, right? Well, so in that case, it is. But speaking of courtship gifts, there are species, probably one of the most famous ones is the bush cricket. And you just do that what you will, which is known for the size of its

nuptial gifts, which is semen and just like gallon of semen. But if you were, if the crickets were our size, it would be an enormous amount of semen. But the thing is, is that semen has a crap ton of nutrition in it because, you know, it's supporting the cells in there and all that. And so the idea, the going idea about that is that it can support the female and the great deal of work that goes on with, you know, the development of new little members of a species. So that's an actual gift.

There's a scale of those. It could be here's a gigantic bolus of semen all the way to here's my entire body and joy. You know, this makes me wonder in terms of the way that a sperm organ or just in general, genitalia are used, is there any evidence that there's a ton of nerve endings for all animals and that is incentive to mate? Or is it just maybe humans or mammals that have a lot of nerves in the area? Yeah, it's an interesting question that I do not know the answer to.

I don't know if they've looked at I haven't seen anything that's comparative of like, well, the nerves or the nerves there. I will say that, for example, some animals make these out of like plates on their thorax, like some insects do that. So I don't know how much nerve ending, like, physiologically would have anything to do with that part of it. These are like the animals that go and kind of stab their, you know, intermittent into the partner and sort of leave some semen and run away.

Penis fencing. How often does it happen? I don't know. OK. I mean, a lot. I mean, it's right. They do it. They have some of these invertebrates do it, the slugs.

But, you know, I've never actually asked them. I don't know how often they do it. Sorry. Any sea slugs listening to this? Because I just wanted to congratulate you for the enviable biology of having two differing sets of genies. Although, yes, my condolences that you have to use them as weaponry. See, OK, so they fight until one gets stabbed with a dick,

inseminates the other and is like, Booyah, I'm out. Have fun raising my babies. I'll see you in hell, brother. Well, I guess now wife. So if you and your human hinge date didn't have chemistry, but you didn't stand around nude trying to impale each other with your crotch. And then one of you fled without child support. I guess you're doing OK.

I don't know. When it comes to mammals, let's get into the bone zone. Bacula, bacula, baculae. So many mammals have bones in their boners. Yeah. How about that? What do you think of that? And we don't. And nobody.

Yeah. Nobody is quite clear about why and nobody is even quite clear about why other species that have bones have them. But can I tell you the acronym for yes, the taxa that do have them is primates, like chimps and that kind of stuff, except us. We do not rodentia. So mice, rats, that kind of stuff, insectivora, which are those little furry things to eat, bugs, carnivora,

like bears, dogs and so on and caroptera with the bats. And so you have primate, rodentia, insectivora, carnivora and caroptera. What is that spell? It spells prick. And then if you add in, they have found now. But lately, like this tiny there, you know what a pica is? Yes. I love pica so much. They occur at high altitudes are so cute.

And if you get near them, you know, they throw their little hands up and go, but they have these teeny, teeny little penis bones they've discovered and they're the lagomores. And so if you add an L, you have prickle. So. Oh, my God. Too adorable. Why do you think humans evolved not to have a penis bone? And what does the penis bone do for animals that have them? Well, that's the thing is that nobody's quite sure what they're doing.

Like they have all of these hypotheses about, you know, what does the penis bone do? Does it keep things in place for a while for long enough for the copulation to complete? But nobody quite knows exactly why. This is the the bony mystery around. It's such a mysterious thing. And nobody is quite sure why we lost ours.

Evidently, we didn't need it, because otherwise it would have been selection for it, because God knows there's enough selection right there where the genitalia rubber hits the road as it were and it's gone. So, yeah. Well, speaking of God knows any history to substantiate that the rib that is given to Eve of Adams is actually a baculum? You know, I had a little bit about that in the book. And I think I had to take it out because I was running out of word space.

But yeah, it's nonsense. They apparently the Hebrew word really does mean rib. And it was never anything about. It also took away Adam's bone from his rib, except it was the rib way down there by his testes somehow. And somebody got confused, you know, no. Ribbed for her pleasure, I suppose. I suppose.

And what about culturally? Like, what part of the US are you from? I was born in Waco, Texas. I thought I detected a toy. Yes, people mention it on occasion, Ellen. I love accents. I'm not sorry. I would like to do a dialectology one day, please.

Regional idiosyncrasies are just very fascinating. Do you find in writing this book that you you came across a lot of different cultural relationships with the phallus domestically? I mean, obviously, yes, globally. But how do people think differently of dongs depending on where you're raised? Yeah, that's a that's a good question. And I'm not an anthropologist. And so I can't speak to that with like a bunch of expertise.

But I did write about a little bit in the last chapter. And it varies so much across cultures and time. You probably read. They wrote some stories about this and even some recent ones that the Greeks apparently thought it was just kind of ghost to have a giant penis, you know, and that, you know, it was much more desirable to have one that was kind of small and pencilish. And then if you ask people with vaginas who have sex with people with

penises, you find out that like the size thing is just kind of like whoop-de-doo. Not the top consideration at all. Listen, was there a 2013 study called penis size interacts with body shape and height to influence male attractiveness based on photos? Do they find that 105 female identifying people chose penises that were in the 98th percentile for size? Sure. But also, are we usually picking partners when we have only looked at pictures

and they are nude back when clothes were hair, maybe, but now usually no. Some studies have found that only 20% of be vagina people can achieve orgasm through penetration alone. 80% can't. So the clit, kids, is lit. Also, the vagine is a mere four to six inches long. So if you're out there and you have anxiety, maybe you just really need a deep, deep breath, maybe look into some positions like from behind,

which are more physiologically advantageous. And some sources say you may just be a makeover away from some confidence. Yep, you just got to trim up down there. Even experts agree. Don't hide your lightsaber under a bush. Well, cut bangs, trim pubes. You have so much dick under that muff, metaphorically and technically speaking. So let that be a lesson to all of us.

Also, I really hope that you are not listening to this at work or driving carpool, but you know what, maybe I hope you are. Do you think that it's gotten more conservative and it's gotten more taboo to discuss penises openly? That is an interesting question. I think that people talk about them a lot more openly now than they did when I was young, I feel like, but again, I'm from Waco now. I'm not there anymore.

So maybe that's partly why that is. I don't know. It seems like there's a lot more. You know what? I kind of can almost trace this back to let's see when Viagra became a thing. And I remember your way too young, probably not even alive when this happened. But I remember when Bob Dole was a senator from Kansas and a first while presidential candidate started taking it and they actually asked him

about it and Liddy Dole his wife and she's like, thumbs up. This stuff works great. I want to make it. There are many treatments available for Edie. So my advice is get a medical checkup. It's the best way to get educated about Edie and what can be done to treat it. It may take a little courage, but I've always found that everything worthwhile does. It was kind of a strange turning point, I feel like culturally, that that was

being openly discussed like that on the GOP side of the aisle, actually. Viagra, that was an incidental finding from what I understand. Right. Yeah. They were, they were looking at, sorry, to find something because what it does is relax the blood vessels, right? And the reason opinions can get engorged is if they relax and fill with blood. Well, they were trying out this drug, I think, to see if it would relax

blood vessels to reduce blood pressure. Like as an antihypertensive, but the men who were taking it were like, you know, kind of getting this, uh, this erection that's happened, it's lasting kind of a long time. It's pretty cool. And, you know, dollar signs, chitching. If you hear the commercialists are like, you know, we can cure 99% of right, all this things.

And what they really mean is that it doesn't have, um, a physiological basis, physiological in the sense that there's something, you know, wrong in that area or something related to that area. And so what it kind of comes down to is, you know, you're just not, you and your brain are not connecting anymore about like being, working towards a mutual purpose here. And so there is a straight, which is why that Viagra works. Cause it just is like, screw you brain.

I'm just going to go cut straight through the blood vessels here and fill this sucker up. And so that's what it does. One 2019 survey said that globally up to 76% of folks who have erections have had erectile dysfunction. So it happens a little bit more as you scoop past 50. But if you have ever had an uncooperative peen, fret not, you're totally normal. According to the Mayo Clinic, some causes of it, though, could be anger because

it messes with blood flow and sends more blood to the surface of the skin. Stress can also mess with you down there. Being above a medically healthy weight can lower your testosterone and mess up your blood flow, smoking, and just straight up low self image can contribute to floppy dogs. So medications can also interfere. And if so, totally talk to your doctor about it. They are literally paid to help.

They have maybe had the same problem with themselves or a loved one. And if you're like, I have the depression, but I don't want to take the medicines for it because of weighing issues. I read a study on Harvard Health. They published an article noting that about 35 to 50% of people with untreated major depression experience some type of sexual dysfunction prior to treatment. So maybe don't blame the player, the antidepressants, blame the game,

the clinical depression. Also, I've mentioned it before on this podcast, they're not sponsors of the show, but there is a test called GeneSight that shows promise in terms of pairing you to an antidepressant that might work better for you. And I used it after trying three different antidepressants and I landed on one that works much better for me based on those results. Your mileage may vary, but that was called GeneSight. Ward to the wise.

Do you find that in any of your research that there was a myth about prolonged sex and what was desired from partners or is there like a correlation between pleasure and the longer you go, the better? Yeah, there's a related myth. I didn't examine that myth exactly, but what I did examine was this kind of emphasis that people seem to place on the size of a penis and that being like really crucial and super important and also being able to last a really long time, which I think is kind of, you know, reaches into what it gets to what

you're just asking. Um, and what I found is that what women, what women, what people who are having sex with people with penises want is in these surveys, the people who are identifying as women. So, um, is a partner who knows what they're doing, um, not a partner with a giant dong, not a partner who can go forever, but a partner who knows what they're doing and also knows that the penis is not the only instrument of sexual pleasure available on the human body and knows how to use all the other

ones as well. Suggestion, get yourself a book about it. Watch some educational materials that perhaps were not filmed in a Van Nys Motel. Now, culturally, we all have a lot to learn about the clitori. And if vagine gassums are just too much to expect from a weenus, a lot of terms in this episode, I'm sorry. It's not super common.

And, and I think from, well, at least from the studies I saw and the results of those studies, it's also not something that people really give that much of a rip about. I think it's part of impossible masculinity that somewhere along the line, people with penises learn that, oh, you've got to make this happen with this like thrusting, massive organ. And if you don't, you're a failure. And that's just not evidently what a lot of people who are having sex really

want. Why have we tied a dick around our own brains? Like what's going on? You know, it's interesting. I trace a little bit of that in the last chapter of the book because there were, it looks like, at least in a lot of cultures and association, when we, when we started settling down and trying to grow stuff in one place, this kind of connection between the penises and especially an erect one.

And I get, you know, obviously the fluid that comes out of it, I think we probably made the connection that that's associated with reproduction. And so like even an early Egyptian god, which called men, M-I-N, is depicted as having, holding a flail in one hand, which is a harpist instrument. And he also has a, an instrument that is parallel to the ground, erect penis sits parallel to the ground. And so those, those are, that's just a clear association between those two things. The god, Priapus, who's probably, yeah, you know, known today for

associations with priapism, which is just this like, you know, endless erection, which is not comfortable, by the way, it's not something that is enjoyable. First started as a scarecrow. And so those associations, I think, you know, we're made in a lot of cultures. And because of also the greater muscle, relative muscle mass and physical strength that people whose gonads make testosterone con, testosterone confers on them, then you've got, well, this is fertility, it's protection, it's strength. And it's associated with this organ.

Even the Romans had little amulets that the children were aware that were foul, you know, a phallus with wings was called the fascinum, a F-A-S-C-I-N-U-M, which is where we get fascinating from because it was supposed to distract the evil eye to the amulet and fascinate them away from the children. Of course I looked this up and yeah, it looks like a mythological griffin, but if God ran out of lion and eagle parts and had to use leftover dicks instead. And one photo I looked at for a little too long appears to be made of bronze. I think it was dug up at Pompeii, but this winged, weighing amulet could

fit right in right now. I'm just saying, never goes out of style. I can see it hanging off the rear-view mirror of a car belonging to a shift manager at the Tallahassee Hooters, maybe someone who had a Red Bull toast at his wedding, just ready to get loose and party. Let's do it. I mean, on the topic of an homage. Why do we love to draw dicks on everything?

Oh my God, it's so funny because I was just, I was staying somewhere to finish my, my next book, which is about the brain. And I was, every day I was walking out to this flat form on a lake and it was really beautiful. And one day there were a bunch of teenagers there and you're having a great time. I love teenagers, by the way. So it's like, yeah, I did. And the next day went out there and there was a dick that they had drawn on, I

think, with a wide out, you know, it's ejaculating, you know, it's a little tiny, but it was there. And then the next day, a goose had shed on it and I was just like, okay, world, this is great. And then one of my sons came up yesterday with this yearbook, you know, and of course a couple of his friends, you know, inevitably there's, you know, somebody's drawn a penis in the yearbook, you know, it's like, this is for life and joy.

And in some cultures, it's way more obvious than just, you know, teenagers doodling something on it. I mean, there are parts of the world where they're on houses, you know, and they're considered protective and just kind of the same associations with a physical strength and protection. I was going to put it aside here, listing some examples, but they are too numerous from Japanese shrines to Mongolian monasteries, even the Empire State Building, a lot of boners on buildings.

Luckily for all of us, though, there is a Wikipedia page just titled phallic architecture. It's waiting for you. And so we're in our culture, I mean, it's a Western culture in US culture. We hide them away and we act like they're kind of, you know, salacious and, oh my gosh, and the word penis is scary to say and, you know, you get in trouble and things like that. And so it gives it this kind of aura of something kind of secret and funny that

you can do that the adults can't see you being up to at the time. Penis. Penis. Penis. Penis. There's kids around. Penis. And so I think it's not maybe super helpful to kind of shroud it in that kind of

air of, you know, this is something not to talk about or consider or to take seriously, except as to kind of, excuse me, put on a pedestal and set up as kind of a replacement representation for you, a young man in our culture. You mentioned a shrouded dick and I'm wondering how did you even approach the culture and the history behind circumcision? And when did we start to do that? And are there any medical benefits? I did not discuss circumcision in the book, although I did talk about it or my

co-author and I wrote about it a little bit in a parenting book that we wrote a few years ago and, you know, it's present in a couple of sort of very globally distributed religious practices and that started thousands of years ago and one of them. And as far as benefit goes, if you look at the urological literature, it comes down to almost sort of happenstance benefit in a way because, for example, children who have infantile onset urinary tract infections, right? Which means they've got something going on in their urinary system.

They're where they're probably having urine back up into their kidneys. But what they find is that if the children are circumcised, they don't have repeat, tend to have repeat urinary tract infections as much. And this kind of outcomes tend to be better. And there's some research pointing to an adult men who undergo circumcision. There's a reduced transmission to sex partners of certain viruses that are transmitted through them having sex with people. But again, that's it almost comes from sort of like serendipitous, you know,

benefit after the fact it's not something you can just look at, you know, somebody at birth and go, well, this will protect them from this. It just reduced risk for some of these outcomes in those cases. And Dr. Willingham notes that while some sexually transmitted viruses could possibly be curbed by vaccines like for HPV, HIV vaccines have proven much trickier. And hopefully one day humans will conquer that challenge. But on the topic of nonhumans, there's plenty still to bugle the brain.

Yeah, including like four headed pronged. That's the kid. Turtle dicks. What's even happening there? Well, so there's a there's a sort of a subset. If he says that instead of like, you know, waiting for like the blood to flow, like they're not going to have to have Viagra, which would be that way, because they're going to just fold it up at the ready.

And when the time comes, they just, you know, the muscle just goes whoop, whoop, whoop, and it plops it out like an airbag. So it's just turtles and alligator crocodilians have that going on. And turtles, I think in the, in the book, I write about a turtle video. Oh, really, something to be all this poor turtle is extremely aroused. And it has this little ball that has paw prints on it. Like dog paw prints on it is very pissed off or either very aroused by this ball.

And it's like trying to, I guess, mount the ball, but its penis is flipped out. And it's also the end of the penis of a turtle. Penis is like a cup sort of or open and it opens and closes like a flower. It's just angry, angry of the lanimal. With its little flower opening and closing penis, just attacking this little ball. It's quite a video. What an o-face they have too. Like, I feel like the last thing you would say is their expression, you know, just a turtle.

It's so uncomfortable. Can I ask you some lightning round questions from listeners? Yeah, sure. Let's give it a shot. I mean, wow, the speed with which these questions came in. Wow, just very fast coming in, coming in hot, well, let's just say. I'm just going to run through as many as we can. Is that cool?

Okay, sure. Absolutely bananas that we took so long to get to Patreon questions, which you could submit for future episodes, just a buck a month to join. But before we ask them, we take the chance to donate to a cause. And this week, Emily chose Doctors Without Borders, which is a non-governmental organization that provides assistance to populations in distress. So they are global first responders to emergencies and epidemics. They do amazing work.

So that hot cash injection was made possible by sponsors of the show. We can hear about now. Okay, let's get back to your hardball questions. Hollis wants to know, as a penis haver, why is morning wood a thing? And is this happening with all penis havers, human and otherwise? Don't know about other animals. Morning wood is a thing because it has to do with, I think it's hormonal changes while you're asleep.

I don't know about other animals. Like I'm pretty sure bedbugs don't wake up that way. Oh my God. REB first-time question asker wants to know, is there any scientific research around BDE, big dick energy? I feel like your book deals with this a lot. Yeah, this question I like because I think that we shouldn't use that phrase. I think that people who consider themselves progressives will say, for example,

small dick energy or big dick energy when a person is acting a certain way. I think that's a kind of part of the problem with how we talk about penises and what we make people with them think they need, how they need to be. I think it reduces them to this body part when, you know, actually our most important body part is our brain and the manifestations of that are so variegated and interesting and not reducible to just this kind of one phrase that way. So most men, I think, tend to think that they, they, they under overestimate like what averages and how they relate to that.

And they're often wrong about it. And so that's the whole side problem. But, you know, the idea that this person is this giant trope because their penis is teeny. And I kind of think that that's not the way to talk about it or approach it. The same thing if a guy's in a Starbucks with an AR 15 and people like small dick energy, this guy, you know, there are so many complicated social messages that go in to shaping somebody who does something

ridiculous like that. The size of the penis has got to be way, way down on that list in terms of what's driving performative behaviors that they think are masculine, but that are actually desperate in that way. Do you love how compassionate she is? I love how compassionate she is raising people who are comfortable with their masculine traits does not start out with shame is what I'm getting. And it's good that she's getting that message out into the open like a ball sack.

And on that note, first time question askers, Devon Lawrence wrote in, quote, as a cis female, external genitalia seems like such a hassle. The amount of times men sit on themselves is crazy. And Jordan Engelke asked, why do some creatures have their junk on the inside like birds and some creatures keep their junk on the outside like humans? Rachel had the same question out with it, Emily. You know, we had some questions about internal and external gonads, essentially. And is there anything about having external gonads that influences feelings

of insecurity or feelings of protection in terms of maybe like compensatory aggression? I would just at its face say no, because testosterone itself is associated with aggression. So if the gonads are external, they're very likely testes, which means they're making testosterone. So there's a confounding thing there because the actual hormone, those those external gonads are producing is a hormone that's very, very well known to drive aggression. That makes sense.

Celia Bell and Madeline both asked questions. I hadn't heard of this. I'm first time question asker, Madeline said, I've recently heard that data starting to come out about COVID patients who have a penis experiencing erectile dysfunction significantly more. Celia Bell said, what's the deal with COVID, Dick? Have you heard of anything about this? Yeah, I actually tweeted about this the other day.

There this is really it's not surprising. So one of the things that this virus does is that it has an effect on what's called the endothelium, which is the lining of the blood vessels. And we've already talked about the role of blood vessels and how they need to relax for a penis to become, you know, erect, right? And so if you have a virus, it's like messing with those and making them dysfunctional. Well, that dysfunction is going to be body wide.

It's not just going to be like one part of the body. There are a couple of reports about it of having had COVID and then having experiencing erectile dysfunction. There was another study, a couple of men who'd had COVID. The virus was still persisting in their penis issue a few months later. Yeah. And then there was another study that suggested that the penises were a little bit smaller, which, you know, I'm thinking, well, you know,

what mechanism underlies that? And it could relate, again, to having the blood vessels being contracted. Oh, it's like that Seinfeld episode where, you know, you get in the water and everything shrinks up and George Costanza wants to hide. It's in a tail here or something because it's cold. I'm really sorry. I was in the pool. I was in the pool.

Everything just kind of goes, whoop, you're you're you're cold. And so your body, if I understand this correctly, because I'm not, this is not my my side of physiology, but I understand this correctly. Your body shunts to the core because you're like cold and you need to keep, especially your core warm. So it's like, well, you don't need blood here right now, you know? And so it sends it away because you're cold. You're not going to be having sex right now.

You're too cold. You're just like, teeth chatter. Let's get these body temperature ups. Put your dick away. Get this man a heating pad. Logan Laveau had a great question. Wants to know what do they put in those bizarre tiger love type enhancement powders so you can get a gas stations?

And is there anything remotely legit about them? How do you feel about your him bae and horny goat weed and all of that? Oh, my God. So first of all, don't buy that stuff. I know it's what's in it. I mean, so supplements in this country are completely unregulated and their contents can be not at all what it says on there. It can be too much of what it says on there and a lot of other things.

So just don't buy stuff like that. The other problem is that a lot of things in the aphrodisiac market are acquired by abuse of animals, abuse and torture of animals. And we, you know, nobody needs to be doing that. So, yes, as a species, let's leave the rhinos alone. Let the tigers keep their dicks. Donald Hayward wants to know what's the hand foot size to penis fallacy. What's with that?

Like, where did this idea start? Alexa and Donnie want to know. That's a I looked at that and apparently for reasons that are unclear to me, the UK National Hill surface also looked at this. I don't know why and there's not an association. It probably got started because it would be a very easy shorthand or short footed way to tell what if somebody's size is since we're all wearing pants in this culture.

But yeah, there's not an association. Ah, just one and Andrea Levinson want to know, I've heard you can sprain a penis like you would an ankle or a muscle. True, if so, how you can. I mean, yeah, I mean, there's got if you have any anything that has muscle or this is smooth muscle, but anything that has sort of like a connective tissue component and stuff like that, you can over stretch it or overdo it and experience very uncomfortable outcomes from them.

Rachel Moore wants to know, is the average size listed on Google? Actually, the average, they feel like nearly every person they've been with has a larger than average penis, if it is. What is what is the average? Well, what is the average size listed on Google? This is what I would like to know. Good question, Lucy. What does Google say to us?

Five five. And also, there's a length and a girth difference, I'm sure. Yeah. Six inches. The in fact, the average is much more. I think they say five point one to five point five. Yeah, it's around it's around five and a half inches. And yeah, and our measurements somewhere around there. And I think a lot of people think that the average is bigger than that.

And it's not. And then the girth thing is another thing entirely. Have there been any studies on folks valuing girth over length? Yeah. So first of all, neither is necessarily that important compared to some other factors that are valued. But girth is is at least in a tie with length for just sort of like importance. Is there a medical term for a chode?

I don't know. I don't know either. You've got to think. Yeah, I spent two years working with urologists with you. And I honestly don't think that anybody ever, like mentioned that before. There are different size receptacles for penises just as they're different sized penises, right? Sure, sure.

I hate to say this, but when I don't really hate to say it, maybe I both hate and love to say it when I see like a certain somebody's penis being made fun of because of its shape, you know, publicly or whatever, I think, you know, we're doing this kind of as a way to target what we perceive as some kind of sensitivity in the masculinity we demand from people with penises. And it makes me feel bad. I think that's a really great point.

And I also think it's really interesting how we would never make fun of or derived full of us the way that we say that dicks are ugly or balls are disgusting. You know, right? Yeah, I think I think that that's true. Although I remember there was some one of those women who was a Hollywood madam or something. And one of the people who worked for her was described repeatedly in news stories as having a beautiful vagina.

And I think what they meant was vulva. Vulva, the outside business, vagina, the tunnel. So a beautiful vagina is really quite an exploratory observation. So they probably meant vulva just for the record. And I remember thinking, well, I wonder what makes one beautiful. So I, you know, you're right, we don't have like a cultural construct for, you know, what's the perfect iteration of the vulva? Yeah, you know, I mean, interesting.

I think all dicks, beautiful dicks, all vulvas, beautiful vulvas. There you go. You got them. You got them. Love them. Yep. Nikki DeMarco had a question kind of on that note. She said, the language around penis health versus women's health is very different.

For example, erectile dysfunction versus ovarian supply being exhausted or failure to produce hormones. No one would say ED is penis failure. So is there an expectation of masculinity or toxic masculinity? That we're just not understanding that's looking at those things differently. I think that the expectation is, is that anything that's associated with the masculine is set as the norm and that anything that deviates from that is set as abnormal and all like starts from the position of being less than and then

anything else that doesn't even meet that threshold of less than is a failure. And so that's why all of these things associated with the health of people with ovaries and vaginas is characterized that way. I saw that in the literature about genitalia as well. Anything's associated with vaginas and with women and things like that. The language around it is so very, very different or it's passive or kind of like a receptacle for things and the physiology and the reality both belie that. Elizabeth Rich had a question.

Use it or lose it. Is that fact or flimflam does lack of use cause penile atrophy? Not to my knowledge. So if you got to keep your peen under a white sheet like furniture and an abandoned mansion, it's cool. Just like a Shea's lounge, it'll be just fine to sit on later. Bear Hodge and Allison Meising both had questions about penile surgery, phalloplasty. And are transplants a viable option and is phalloplasty?

Why is that hard to get right? I'm not a urological surgeon. So I can't answer the latter part of that. I would hope that people, the clinicians who are with patients who are asking for these things really dig into what underlies it and that there's a physical indication for it. This is so terrible. All right.

If you go to message boards, which I did, cause I was going to write about it, I just didn't have space and look at what people with penises are doing to try to make them bigger, longer, last longer and all these other things. We have a lot of work to do to sort of excuse me, but pull out away from this kind of like this, this, this feeling of urgency that they have, that this thing just has to be so huge because the data show that the people they're presumably interested in having sex with, just they're not, that's not what they put at the top of the list.

Yeah. Um, any advice for penis havers on how to have a better relationship with theirs? I could have this conversation about any body part just about, about which we're not happy, right? Is that you have it and it's there and it's doing what it can for you. And you're doing what you can with it. And that's the most either one of you can ask from each other, right? Yeah.

Yeah. And you understand that you have a lot of other body parts that contribute as well as the penis does to having a great time with one or more other people. Oh yeah. That's a great way to look at it too. Um, Jackie Fleming, first-time question asker wants to know if you have a funny dong joke. My book is full of dong jokes.

There's so many and, you know, they just kind of, they come to you as it were. And, you know, it's, it's hard to just pick one. Got a hand at tour. So many dick ponds. It's nuts. Now, also a few folks had a question. My dear friend, Greg Wollick, whom's I love. And first-time question asker and dong owner, Kevin Glover, inquired as to the

rumor that they have heard gay identifying men have larger penises on average. Is this true? If so, why? And Greg notes, based on some of his own research, it seems like this might be true. A few people have asked that they have heard that gay identifying men have statistically bigger penises than straight identifying men. Is that flim flam? Um, I sort of kind of poked around, kind of looking at that and not in any kind

of significant way that I could find. And so it's a complicated question. I know why people are asking it, but no, not, not on average that I could find. And I did look. What about the hardest part about your job? The, the bookwriting job, the talking of it. In general, uh, and as a reproductive, someone who looks at reproductive biology or evolutionary biology or, or an author or a communicator or.

Oh, I would say that I think the most difficult thing is kind of the, the, the pain and the empathy I feel for people who are struggling with these issues that society imposes on them, that there's just no reason for society to do that. That's actually really difficult for me. Yeah, that's so empathetic, um, especially since your book does deal with a lot of what we might consider notions of toxic masculinity or toxic expectations that you have delved so deep into that and you've come out with such, such empathy and understanding and compassion.

I feel really strongly, um, I love men and boys like men. I feel really strongly that we could be doing better by them. And if that happens, then in general, they can be doing better by everybody as well. Is there something about your work that's changed the way that you're raising your sons? No, because when I started this particular work, they were only kind of raised. I mean, they're no late adolescence, one of them is 20. But it certainly informs some of my conversations with them. And I think I'm being like even more careful than before with language

that I use around them about men and boys and expectations and that kind of thing. Any advice for, for parents? Or yeah, I think the most important thing we can do is to take care with our language and our assumptions. I know that when I see people speak to teenagers today, they'll often make an assumption that teenager is a cis heterosexual person. They'll say, you know, do you have a girlfriend? Do you have a boyfriend?

That kind of thing. I think that we need to be careful about what we gender and what we don't and what we show is kind of a default expectation and examine that a little more closely and try to be a little more neutral in opening statements to people and that kind of thing. Oh, that's really great advice. That's awesome. Um, what about something that you, you really cherish about your work? What do you love the most?

And my favorite thing about what I get to do for a living is the research, the discovery, the going down rabbit holes, the finding new things about, um, different people, different kinds of cultures back and forth in history. I just love all of that so much. Any advice for anyone who loves researching and rabbit holes and maybe wants to write a book about this stuff? Oh, boy. Um, I would say you have to figure out when you can, when you need to stop

digging at some point. And I don't have good advice about that. You just, yeah, you've got to find a way to stop yourself from digging at some point. Oh, someone who researches this podcast every week, it can, it's like expanding foam, like the work will take as much time as I give it. Exactly. Right. It's, it's almost kind of addictive.

And you were like, okay, I just spent like 50 hours chasing down this one lizard in the literature. Now, someone's got to do it. What a joy though. Oh my gosh. So ask smart people to explain the long and the short of it because we're just a bag of gametes. We're on this rock for the ride before we die.

So follow Emily. Uh, there are links in the show notes. She's on Twitter at EJ Willingham. Her website is emilywillinghamphd.com. She is the author of fallacy life lessons from the animal penis and the upcoming book, the tailored brain. All of that will be listed in the show notes. And there are links up at alleyward.com slash oligies slash philology.

We are at oligies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at alleyward on both. Come be friends. Patreon.com slash oligies is where you can join to submit questions. Erin Talbert admins the oligies podcast Facebook group. Great group of people. Shannon Feltes and Bonnie Dutch Manage Merch and host the comedy podcast, you are that Emily White of the Wardery makes our transcripts.

Caleb Patton bleeps them and those are both up and free at the link in the show notes. Kelly Dwyer makes the website and is available for website design. Uh, her link is at the bottom of my alleyward.com website. Noel Dilworth handles the booking of guests and is amazing. Susan Hale has been making you quizzes on Instagram. Happy birthday to her. Jared Sleeper edited this week and thankfully our romantic relationship

does not count as harassment most of the time. And of course, thanks to Stephen Ray Morris, who was on standby this week and his chief, sweetie, P.D. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music and he is in a band called Islands. And if you stick around to the end of the episode, I tell you a secret. As promised, I'm going to give you blow job tips. I source these from penis havers from oligites anonymously. Here they are.

Free of charge. Are you ready? Okay. Here we go. I'm going to list off the advice. Number one, please no teeth. Also, don't forget the berries. Grab the sack with a spare hand where they connect to the peen.

Gently roll them. Only do it if you want to and enjoy it. Make an okay sign with your fingers. Gently grasp under the head. Fingers go down loose, but up tight. Good to know. Stick your tongue out on the way down. Wiggle it.

Good suction on the way up. Practice controlling your gag reflex. Focus on breath and rhythm. Don't focus too much on the head. It gets numb. Good to know. Don't neglect the balls and enjoy it. Mostly it sounds like you should just enjoy it.

The other bonus secret is I'm very good at drawing dicks all over stuff all the time. I've drawn so many dicks on so many things. Right, Jared? It's definitely very true. I have this beautiful thing right here. You should put this online. I drew a picture of a dick for Jared years ago and it's the only thing that he has on his wall behind his desk.

It says good morning, Jared and Jess. Okay, bye. Bye-bye. Hackadermatology. Amniology. Gyptozoology. Litology. Nanotechnology.

Meteorology. Peptology. Nephology. Seriology. Peptology. And I had to have a penis reduction surgery, penis reduction, which there aren't many. You're going to say I never heard of that because there haven't been many cases. How's Iran do something?

And he said, why don't you get one of those vagina enlargements? Oh, Jared, could I have some coffee over here?