Science Vs - Blue Balls: A Ball-Faced Lie?

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

We join forces with Sarah Marshall from You’re Wrong About to dive into a question for the ages: Blue balls — are they real? And we’ve got some BIG blue balls news in this episode! The survey we did when it originally aired has been turned into a peer-reviewed paper led by scientists at Queen’s University! WE MADE SCIENCE! And if you took our survey, you helped! So join us as we revisit this romp where we ask if blue balls are a ball-faced lie, something that men make up to pressure women to have sex with them. Our guests include Sam Pierstorff, Dr. Jamin Brahmbhatt, Professor Caroline Pukall and Dr. Jonathan Chalett. Find our blue balls paper in the journal Sexual Medicine: https://academic.oup.com/smoa/article/11/2/qfad016/7148610 Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/sciencevsblueballsupdate  Link(s) to related episode(s), if desired (and ask Jen Hahn to make a button once published):  In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Chapter One: We’ve published a scientific paper on blue balls! (04:05) Chapter Two: A cautionary blue balls tale (09:25) Chapter Three: Could a semen backup cause blue balls? (15:00) Chapter Four: Is blue balls caused by blood flow? (19:05) Chapter Five: We do our own blue balls research! Credits: This episode was produced by Wendy Zukerman with help from Ekedi Fausther-Keeys, Meryl Horn, Nick DelRose, Michelle Dang, and Rose Rimler. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Gimlet’s managing director is Nicole Beemsterboer. Fact checking by Eva Dasher, update fact checked by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. The updated version was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Music written by Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, Bobby Lord and Bumi Hidaka. A huge thanks to all the experts we got in touch with for this episode, including Dr Gordon Muir, Dr Michael Leapman, Dr Karan Rangarajan, Dr Randal Rockney, Dr Nan Wise, and Dr Kevin Gandhi. A big thanks to Joel Werner, R.E. Natowicz, Eric Mennel, Ayo Oti, Andrea Scott, Jack Weinstein, the Zukerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Science Vs is a Spotify Original Podcast and Gimlet production. Follow Science Vs on Spotify, and if you wanna receive notifications every time we put out a new episode, tap the bell icon! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet. Today on the show, we're pitting facts against the family jewels as we tackle blue balls. Are they real? For the uninitiated, blue balls is this idea that people can get an awful pain in their testicles if they get aroused but don't ejaculate. But for many years, there's been this question surrounding the idea of blue balls. Like, is this a real medical condition? Or perhaps something that men make up to pressure women to have sex with them?

Which happens more often than you might think. A few years ago, we surveyed you, our listeners, about blue balls. More than 2,000 people responded, and 40% of those with vaginas said that they had been pressured to do something sexual because of their partner's so-called fear of blue balls. 40% had felt this pressure. One listener said that she'd been called a tease. Others said they were made to feel really guilty

about not making their partners ejaculate. In this survey, we also uncovered a whole lot of other mysteries about blue balls. And then we joined forces with researchers at Queen's University in Canada to publish the results in a peer-reviewed journal, Sexual Medicine. And that paper, it's just come out. So with that nut cracked, a first scientific paper for Science Versus,

we thought it was the perfect time to revisit the episode that we made on Blue Balls, which started, I have to be honest with you, as a bit of a joke. But then it turned into this huge medical mystery and a scientific paper. So let's dive in to find out what is up with Blue Balls. And joining me today is Sarah Marshall. She's the host of the podcast You're Wrong About. Hey, Sarah. Hi, Wendy. I'm so happy to be here.

We are so, so happy to have you. Sarah told us that as a kid, a lot of her ideas about sex came from magazines like Cosmo. It was like I knew 1,500 ways to give a blowjob, and I hadn't figured out how to advocate for my own desire yet. It's so true. They were all about blowjobs. They really were. Well, not all. As Sarah remembers it, some of the articles were also about blue balls. And thinking back, she figured that it seemed legit.

I have to say I find balls themselves like very mysterious and interesting. And so I feel like it has seemed real enough to me. After all, it feels like if you're getting hot and heavy, things might get a little blocked up, so to speak. To not put too fine a point on it, you have all this extra spunk that's causing you pain, I guess. But on the other hand, there's all these people saying,

nope, this doesn't exist. In fact, even Cosmo recently ran an article called, quote, blue balls aren't real, you're welcome. So today on the show, is Blue Balls an actual medical thing or just something that dicky guys use to pressure people to have sex with them? And if it is real, is it just for balls? Or do people with vaginas have something similar? When it comes to Blue Balls, there's a lot of...

It has seemed real enough to me. But then there's science. Ah. Ah. Ah. Science vs Blue Balls is coming up just after the break. It's season three of The Joy of Why, and I still have a lot of questions. Like, what is this thing we call time? Why does altruism exist?

And where is Jan 11? I'm here, astrophysicist and co-host, ready for anything. That's right, I'm bringing in the A-team. So brace yourselves. Get ready to learn. I'm Jan 11. I'm Steve in the A-team. So brace yourselves. Get ready to learn. I'm Jana Levin. I'm Steve Strogatz. And this is...

Quantum Magazine's podcast, The Joy of Why. New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 1st. What does the AI revolution mean for jobs, for getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology? And what do they think? I'm Rana El-Khelyoubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI. Think of it as your guide for all things AI, with the most human issues at the center.

Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in. Welcome back. Today, we are diving into the topic of blue balls. Do they exist or not? And we're here with Sarah Marshall, host of You're Wrong About. Hey, Sarah. Hi, Wendy. All right. So we're going to put blue balls to the ultimate testes. Thank you. And I want to start with the teenage exploits of Sam Pearsdorf. Sam is now a full grown adult, but I want you to meet Sam in the 90s. He's 16, living in Riverside, California, and he is horny. The only problem.

From my mother's point of view, the idea of kissing girls like dialing Satan with your tongue, right? Like you are just calling. You're going straight to hell. So Sam and his mum are Muslim and sex before marriage was a no-go. So instead, Sam did what he could. I was quite the dry humper, I have to say. Just a lot of gene on gene friction, like you could almost start a fire, you know, with all of the dry humping.

And that felt pretty good for a 16-year-old boy. So all's going well with the dry humping. But then Sam met Liz. Oh, Liz. Liz was my very first, very serious girlfriend. I was 16. She was 16 and a half. She drove, you know, her own car. She wore this sexy miniskirt. And then one night, Liz and her miniskirt drove Sam to a special place that I like to call Hookup Hill. The moon was full. The stars were aligned. It was the perfect night.

We park, and then we just start, you know, she leans in, I lean in. We're just kissing. We're making out. We're rubbing each other. There was some unbuckling. There was some touching. So Sam is so up for going all the way. This is the closest he's ever gotten.

But then his head starts thinking about his mom and his God. Oh, boy. It's a lot like those scenes in movies where the devil pops up on one shoulder. He's like, get it, get it, get it, get it. And then the angels are like, dude, that's not okay. You should not be doing this. The angels prevented me from following through. But then the next day, it felt like hell. okay, you should not be doing this. The angels prevented me from following through. But then the next day, it felt like hell.

I woke up in my Star Wars queen size bed. I just feel like I ate something. There's a pain in my lower abdomen. But, you know, as I continued throughout the day, that pain got lower and lower. By the afternoon, it was even worse. It felt like an anvil being attached to my scrotum by like safety pins. There was a stinging and a heaviness and a weight. It is a giant kick in the balls.

Was it so painful you would have gone to the hospital? Like how painful? You know, it was that painful, but I would never have gone to the hospital because it was my balls, and I would have been too shy for that. So little 16-year-old Sam has no idea what's going on. He asks his mum, and she gives him some hot tea and tummy medicine.

That doesn't help. But then he thinks maybe his dad, maybe he has the answer. So I call my dad. I'm like, hey, Dad, you know, my testicles really hurt, man. He's the one who brought up, son uh i gotta ask you a question it's like yeah did you and your girlfriend get hot and heavy i was like i did not know how he knew that right i really felt like holy crap these gods and angels are communicating with my father and i said well yeah actually and i felt guilt i said we. And I said, well, yeah, actually. And I felt guilt.

I said, we did. And he said, did you go all the way? And I was surprised by that. And I said, of course not. No. And he said, well, there's your problem. There's your problem. And he said, have you ever shaken a soda bottle?

I was like, yeah. He's like, that's your dick. Your dick is that soda bottle you done shook it up and you didn't pop the top you know and he's like you gotta take care of that son yes so he's telling me like go jack off you know so once you took care of it what happened to the pain oh immediate release immediate release. Immediate release. Interesting. Just, I mean, it really is like twisting the top of, you know,

popping the cork on a champagne bottle. Just, ah. And pain gone. Pain gone. Pain gone. I have no idea where the science is going to come out but like I I believe in this story right and you know it's not just Sam so when I looked up the medical literature on blue balls I found a similar case report which was published in the year 2000 in the esteemed journal of pediatrics which is the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. And in it,

there's this description of a 14-year-old boy who goes to the hospital because the pain around his balls was so bad. And ultimately, the doctor who treats him is like, what do you know, kid? You've got blue balls. So these stories are very gripping, but they're super anecdotal, right? Right. Both the case report and Sam's description. So for me, I was still curious, like, how common is this? Could it really be real? I still didn't know whether blue balls was a thing.

And one way that scientists try to work this kind of thing out is by thinking through the mechanism like that is what is actually happening in the balls of someone to make them hurt do you have any ideas you mentioned spunk yeah i my only guess is that is that your body gets ready and it's like creates a load to use in a minute and then it's's like, wait, wait, no, stand down. Yeah, yeah. No, no, that, I mean, Sam said that is exactly what it felt like to him. So this is what he said about why this might have happened. To me, it felt like a massive load of semen just hanging out like a water balloon in your sack.

Yeah, you don't want that. So could it be, this is our next question, could this be from a buildup of sperm? And to get to the bottom of this question, we need a scientist. We need this guy. My name is Dr. Jamin Brombads. I'm a urologist and sexual wellness expert at Orlando Health right here in sunny Florida. And Jamin is literally the perfect person to answer our Blue Balls questions because he sees hundreds of patients that have balls that hurt every year. If you go to myballshurt.com, it goes to our website. Does it really?

Yeah, it does. Yeah. So the kinds of patients he sees, I didn't know about all the things that could go wrong with testicles, but the kind of things he sees is this thing called testicular torsion. Have you heard of this? Okay, so this is where your balls twist around a little and this can cut off the blood supply going to one of your balls. It can be incredibly painful. And if you don't see someone, you can actually end up losing your ball.

They just, you know, they seem really stressful to walk around with. External genitalia just seems like a bad idea to me. I mean, I get it for the temperature and blah, blah, blah, but yeah. So this testicular torsion, I told you about it just so now you know, it has nothing to do with blue balls. This is just the kind of stuff that Jamin sees. Occupational hazards. Exactly.

Exactly. So I talked to Jamin about this sperm buildup blue balls theory, and he was like, okay, there's this idea that sperm gets made in the testicles really, really quickly. But that's not true. Oh, interesting. Okay. So a few studies have estimated that it actually takes around two to two and a half months.

Whoa. Right? To go from a baby sperm cell to the tadpole-like sperm that you know and love. Whoa. So yes, it sounds like in theory that it's freshly made and it's stored there and then it comes out. But really what's being sent out may be like months old. So I asked Jamin.

Oh, so this idea that like as you're dry humping or making out is this feeling of it's all churning it's happening sperm's being created and now it's ready to come out no it's not ah no blue balls no it's this is not like this is not like amazon prime you know delivery no it's and when jaymond thinks about his patients who really should have sperm building up, like guys who have trouble getting erections or ejaculating, but their testicles are still making sperm, he says that often they don't have testicular pain and that the sperm and other seminal fluids don't seem to build up. Like instead, their body finds other ways to deal with

it. So for example, in his patients, Jamin says that sometimes semen will kind of dribble out in their pee. Yep, absolutely. Yep. They may see little white chunks or cruds come out in their urine. But also a lot of young guys also get wet dreams. So that's when they may empty their pipes. Okay. So blue balls has nothing to do with the sperm building up. Blue balls doesn't really have anything to do with sperm building up. No.

Okay. So that's debunked number one. Yeah. Yeah. I think we can be certain that this sperm buildup idea is kind of bogus because, you know, it takes a long time to make sperm and then your body stores it. Because it's like it's not like a bakery.

It's like an Etsy store. Exactly. Exactly. I love science. Okay, so I went searching for another explanation as to what on earth could cause Sam's pain and I guess anyone else who feels like they've experienced blue balls. Like what else could be flowing down there?

Is anything coming to your mind? Well, I mean, there's blood, of course, and then... You can stop right there. All right. Blood. So when guys get aroused, when anyone with testicles get aroused, the blood rushes to the genitals, and that's what makes penises go erect,

that they're getting filled with blood. And Professor Carolyn Pical, who's at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, told me that if the blood sticks around, then it can get uncomfortable. So there's a huge pooling of blood in these areas, just then squishing on everything in there. I mean, if you take a look at internal anatomy of the male reproductive system, there are muscles and tubes and coils and all sorts of things and everything because of that, because of the blood pressure, because all the blood is being held in

that area, everything just kind of gets kind of squished upon. Okay, so when you ejaculate, the body is like, all right, I don't need all this blood in my penis anymore. And the blood drains out. So the penis gets all limp and wiggly again. But if you don't ejaculate under this theory, the blood might still leave the penis, but then stay in the testicles. And from what we know about basic anatomy, the penis and the testicles have different nerve and blood supplies. So it's totally possible that the penis would go limp, but blood would pull around the testicles have different nerve and blood supplies. So it's totally possible that the penis would go limp, but blood would pool around the testicles. And as for why this might end up being painful,

well, Carolyn says think about it like a stuffy nose. Probably not like the sexiest analogy out there, but you have, you know, you have mucus building up in your nose, right? And unless you blow your nose, have an orgasm, right? Like it's going to build up, build have, you know, you have mucus building up in your nose, right? And unless you blow your nose, have an orgasm, right? Like it's going to build up, build up, build up, and then you might get that head pain and sort of the face pain, right? Yeah. And the curious thing is if you go online, you'll see this fancy medical term for blue balls, which is epididymal hypertension, suggesting that the blood is building in the blood vessels around this particular thing

called the epididymis. And the epididymis, it kind of sits on top of the testicles. It's where sperm hangs out in, and it's like a wormy suitcase that stores sperm. So all over the internet, you see this legit sounding medical term for blue balls, epididymal hypertension, suggesting that that is kind of ground zero for the blood building up and causing pain around the balls. But here is what's weird. There's pretty much no record of this term, epididymal hypertension, in textbooks or medical journals. So the World Health Organization has this like giant list epididymal hypertension in textbooks or medical journals.

So the World Health Organization has this giant list of diseases. It's called the International Classification of Diseases, or the ICD. And it even has a chapter on conditions related to sexual health. But no epididymal hypertension. There's also no blue balls in there either. Hmm. From what I could gather, it just seems like this is something that some urologists called it and then it stuck. One urologist told us, quote,

epididymal hypertension is entirely unproven, end quote. I'm so intrigued. And this takes us to this kind of wild thing about blue balls. Crazy. It's unprecedented. There's nothing like it in medicine. After the break, the case of blue balls is about to go balls up. Welcome back. Today on the show, blue balls, are they real? So far, we've had some very compelling stories of people who have suffered from what looks like blue balls,

and we have a scientific reason for why they would exist. Blood pooling around your balls, causing pressure and pain. Sarah Marshall from You're Wrong About joins us as we now dive deeper and deeper into the mysteries of blue balls. Because there is something really odd when it comes to the science here. Okay. And it's driving me nuts. Okay. So to tell you more about it, I want to go back to that case report that I told you about

that was published in the year 2000. Do you remember this one? It's like published in Pediatrics, Fancy Journal. This is where the doctor saw the 14-year-old boy. The doctor's name is Jonathan Shallott at Mary Bridge Children's Hospital in Tacoma, Washington. And he told me that when he saw that kid, he could not believe it. It was like, oh, my God, this is blue balls. This is blue balls. Okay, so since that paper was published more than 20 years ago,

and to give you a sense of that, it's when Kryptonite by Three Doors Down was on the radio. Okay, since that time, there has been no research into blue balls. And I talked to Jonathan about this. Do you know that you are the one paper on blue balls? Like the only. The only paper. The only paper.

And you wrote it 20 years ago. Right. This is crazy to me. Crazy. It's there's nothing. It's unprecedented. There's nothing like it in medicine. I am it.

I like there's no other subject where you can say many people have written about high blood pressure. Many people have written about whatever. I am it. You are Dr. Blue Balls. Yeah, I am the Blue Balls guy. Dr. Blue Balls. How can nothing be written about Blue Balls? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. And this rang some huge alarm bells in my head because men's health problems tend to get a lot of attention compared to women's. Right. Right? So, like, it's not often you would see a problem with men and penises that isn't getting some medical love. And, you know, literally a study came out looking at funding from the National Institutes of Health and it found that in nearly three quarters of the cases where a disease affected mostly one gender,

the disease affecting men got more money. So either women's diseases were underfunded or the disease that affects men were overfunded. What is this making you think about in the world of blue balls? This lack of attention does seem curious because it's like even with generally neglected issues of women's health, there's more research and more papers. Exactly. There's more papers on the G-spot, which doesn't exist. So in the words of Jonathan, how can nothing be written about blue balls

yeah and then so I started thinking like maybe this is just really really rare like it happened to guys like Sam it happened in the case report and then it becomes like a legend that's like be you know be careful or else the blue balls will get you. Exactly. And then it becomes this useful tool for some men to use to get sex and then it just kind of blows up or something. So I started asking around to how many doctors have seen blue balls. Jonathan said that since that case 20 years ago, he'd seen like a handful of other cases. Jamin, who, you know, Jamin, myballshurt.com, Bram Bart. Here's what he said when I asked him. I hate to be boring here, but I've never sent someone home with a diagnosis of blue balls.

Carolyn had heard of people having it, but then like cases like Sam's that were so extreme. Yes, that is like one of the most extreme cases I've ever heard of. And so with the research cupboard so bare naked, we did our own informal survey, which is now literally the biggest survey on blue balls that I could find. Nice sciencing. Thank you. Here is what we discovered. Oh, my God.

Almost 1,500 people with penises responded, and we asked them, when you've approached orgasm but didn't ejaculate, have your testicles or the area around them ever hurt or felt achy? Over half, 56%, said yes. But then when we asked them how painful was it, only 7% said that it was severe, like a sharp or stabbing pain. And then zooming out to all of the people with penises who've experienced this, most of them said that the pain

didn't happen every time. It was actually mostly rare or even very rare. Right. So some academics told us that one reason why there's probably no research here is because it's not that painful very often. This is a rare phenomenon. Another reason is because the treatment here is actually pretty simple. Like, for one, you could just wait it out and the pain will probably go away on its own.

Hmm. Right. And there is another sort of very obvious thing you could do. You could have a wank. And when you think about it, Jonathan was like, this is also kind of cool. What other medical condition where the treatment is 100% safe, 100% effective and pleasurable? Wow. Wow. Right? There's nothing else in medicine that you can say that to you take aspirin it has side effects you I mean everything has some side effects so literally you're sending these patients home with a script for masturbation as a possibility all right so if if the pain

really is coming from blood pulling around the genitals, then obviously scratching Yoda behind the ears would help because it would send the body a signal like, blood, you can leave the genitals, it's okay now. I'm already seeing this false equivalence where it's like, baby, I have to have sex or I'll get blue balls. So like I have to have sex with you. And it's like, we're making a lot of assumptions here. Like, and it's like, okay, go nurse Mary five

fingers is at the ready, you know? Speaking of side effectless prescriptions, I feel like it's this kind of whisper network thing that I have, you know, with other people occasionally about the fact that like, if you have periods, like masturbating can be a way of lessening or getting rid of period cramps. And like, I almost feel like if, if we were living in like in a society where I was trained to, to behave as in a similar attitude of entitlement, I'd be like,

oh man, I'm on my period. So you have to pleasure me right now. Do it. And it's your responsibility. I would never, I have never had that thought. Right? That is exactly what we're talking about. Yeah. Okay. So, all right.

So here's where we are at with blue balls. It seems like quite a lot of dudes and people with testicles do get some kind of achy pain when they don't ejaculate. But it is rare for it to be super painful. Yeah. And if it happens, the best that I can tell is that it's from blood pulling into the genitals and then stretching and squashing the balls and the stuff around it, which did leave me with this big vagina-shaped question.

Can people with vaginas get blue balls? And so I asked a bunch of doctors and researchers about this. When you think of the sort of physiological processes that happen with arousal, would this be any different if you had a vagina or a penis? Technically, no. Not that I can imagine. That sensation of that heaviness and sort of that

aching is still going to be there. Because the anatomy is pretty much the same. The wiring is surprisingly similar. Your clitoris enlarges, blood flow increases to the pelvic area, and I've talked to women that have had it. There's no doubt. This is like fight club. I'm like, oh my God, you're telling me that I've had blue balls this entire time? Tell me, I mean, have you had blue? What do you think of this?

Yeah, like I don't feel it as like sharp pain, but like as someone who has a vagina, like during periods when I'm like very aroused and can't do anything about it, I do feel discomfort and this, you know, just a kind of ache and it becomes this kind of feeling of heavy pressure. It's like, oh boy, a storm is coming. But you do feel it. Okay. So in our survey, over 40% of the people with vaginas said that they too felt something like blue balls. 40%.

So one person wrote to us saying they felt sharp pains. Another described it as throbbing or a deep achy feeling. Now, curiously, very few people said that it was like a severe pain. It was only 1%. But still, like for that many people to feel something like it. I mean, one person even said, I thought I was the only one. I can't wait to hear how many others feel this. I mean, I didn't. It's funny. I've never had a conversation about this before. Like this is an exciting day for me.

This is great because, and you know, we don't know a lot about this and something could be going on with the testicles and the epididymis. But given in our survey, a lot of people with vaginas have experienced something like blue balls and a bunch of scientists are telling us that it's due to blood flow in the genital area, which is exactly the same thing that happens to vaginas, then it totally makes sense that this would happen.

And so I asked Professor Carolyn Pakal, like, why all the focus on the balls? Why is this the first time that you and I are talking about it and thinking about it? And the answer, you might have guessed, rhymes with the catriarchy. But Carolyn put it like this. I think it's because of the sort of primacy of the penis. Primacy of the penis.

So what she's saying is that the story a lot of us have about sex is how important it is for men to ejaculate. Sexual activity will end when the penis is done, when there's ejaculation. That is considered by many to be the end. And there's probably a lot of befuddlement as to the sexual activity not ending unless there is that orgasm associated with that penis. So people were probably like, this is not normal. You should be is that orgasm associated with that penis. So people were probably like, this is not normal. You should be having an orgasm. Like you shouldn't still feel sexually aroused. Like it is, it is the, you know, the penis's job to be done with sexual activity and

to end it. Like, and nobody's talking about the vulva and vagina involved in the sexual activity. Is it done? Is it done yet? We don't know because it has no chapter in the book. Right. This is based on this construct that like, teen boys are sex monsters and teen girls are like the objects the sex monsters happen to. And it's like, I was a sex monster too, okay? And we still are sex monsters. Yeah. Sex monsters. Right? You know, we need to change the name. Yeah.

Jonathan and I started thinking of some other names. You don't want it to be pelvic congestion after sustained sexual arousal syndrome. No, no. It has to be like, you know, puffy pelvis or something. Puffy pelvis. Pink puffy pelvis. Puffy pelvis could be for everyone, everyone right because it's not just the balls that hurt right right pink puffy pelvis what do you think what do you think i like that ppp yeah ppp right like how you feel it ah last night was nice but a little bit of ppp i You know, I guess I got some PPP.

It's no big deal, but like I'm a little bit off my game today. Yeah. All right. Blue Balls is out. For now, the pink puffy pelvis. Thank you so much, Sarah. It's been so lovely having you on the show. Thank you so much.

I had no idea this would be so useful and relevant to my life. I'm so much. I had no idea this would be so useful and relevant to my life. I'm so happy. That's Science Versus. Hello? Hey! Hey, Katie Foster-Case. Hey, Wendy Zuckerman. How is your week of blue balls?

Well, safe to say I've been knee-deep in balls, but it's been great. And how many citations on this week's episode? On this week's episode, there are 51 citations. 51. And given that there is so little research of blue balls, most of those citations are like basic anatomy things. Yeah. It's kind of sad, but honestly, we're pioneering research.

Isn't that exciting? That is exciting. That is exciting. And if people want to see these citations, where should they go? They should hit up the transcript, which is in our show notes. And what did you think of Pink Puffy Pelvis? Pink Puffy Pelvis, I think that it's catchy. I like a little PPP. Not actually, but if you want to use something, better than blue balls. Better than blue balls. And if listeners have other ideas for what they think this new name

should be, they could tweet me at Wendy Zook, or they could tweet Sarah Marshall at remember underscore Sarah. And if people want to know more about the survey results, where should they go? Well, they can go to our Instagram, which is science underscore VS. Thanks, Akedi. Thanks. The article on blue balls that we published with Queen's University is out now. It's called Blue Balls and Sexual Coercion, a survey study of genitopelvic pain after sexual arousal without orgasm and its implications for sexual advances. You can find it in the journal Sexual Medicine and it's free to read.

So if you are a nerd who's into that, check it out. We're going to link to it in our show notes. A huge thanks to the team at Queen's University for all of your amazing work on that, including Sam Levang, Megan Henkelman, and Carolyn Pakal. And the pink in pink puffy pelvis was meant to be a play on blue balls, like pink puffy pelvis, blue balls. But as our listeners told us when this episode first came out, not everyone's bits are pink or blue. So we need a totally new name for this.

Our editor, Blythe Jarrell, suggested achy breaky parts. One of our listeners suggested penultimate arousal syndrome as in pass what have you got for us let us know also we know that not everyone has a penis or a vagina there's a rainbow of genitals out there and our survey didn't capture that it's something we're going to keep in mind for next time and one final thing after this season we're going to re-air some of your favorite episodes, which means we need to find out what your favorite episodes are. So we made a survey. You know the power of our science versus surveys now. We could get them published in peer-reviewed journals. Doubt this one's going anywhere, but we really do want you to vote. You can find the

survey in the show notes, also on my Twitter, which is at Wendy Zook, or our Instagram, which is science underscore VS. So please weigh in. We need you to tell us what your favorite episodes of Science Versus have been. Plus, I just started a TikTok account. Yes, come find me. I'm at Wendy Zookerman. That's Z-U-K-E-R-M-A-N.

Seb Peerstorf has his own podcast. I'm at Wendy Zuckerman. That's Z-U-K-E-R-M-A-N. Seb Pierstorff has his own podcast. It's called Burn and Rave. And Sarah Marshall's podcast is called You're Wrong About. It's super fun. Go check it out. This episode was produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, with help from McKeddie Foster-Keys, Meryl Horne, Nick Delrose,

Michelle Dang, and Rose Rimler. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Gimlet's Managing Director is Nicole Beamstier-Ball. Fact-checking by Eva Dasher. Updated episode was fact-checked by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. This updated version was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Music written by Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, Bobby Lord and Bumi Hidaka.

A huge thanks to all the experts we got in touch with for this episode, including Dr. Gordon Muir, Dr. Michael Liepman, Dr. Karan Rajarajan, Dr. Randall Rockne, Dr. Nan Wise and Dr. Kevin Gandhi. A big, big thanks to Joel Werner, Ari Natavich, Eric Mennell, Aya Oti, Andrea Scott, Jack Weinstein, the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle-Wilson. Science Versus is a Spotify original podcast and Gimlet production. Follow Science Versus on Spotify.

And if you want to receive notifications every time we put out a new episode, just tap on that bell icon that you see. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time. I can promise you a cure for blue balls is coming. And blue balls comes and it goes and it goes as it comes. It goes as it comes.

That's right. It's poetry and truth. Yes.