Science Vs - Blue Balls: You're Wrong About Them

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

We join forces with Sarah Marshall from You’re Wrong About to dive into a question for the ages: Blue balls — are they real? We’ve heard that for people with balls, if you get aroused but don’t ejaculate, it can be incredibly painful. But is that true? Or is it a ball-faced lie, something that men make up to pressure women to have sex with them? Join us for a ball-busting episode that puts blue balls to the ultimate test-es, reaching a gripping conclusion as we ask: If blue balls is in fact real — can people with vaginas get it too?  Our guests include Sam Pierstorff, Dr. Jamin Brahmbhatt, Professor Caroline Pukall and Dr. Jonathan Chalett. Our transcript is here: https://bit.ly/3uQsujH 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. Fact checking by Eva Dasher. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. 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. And a big big thanks to Eric Mennel, Ayo Oti, Andrea Scott, Jack Weinstein, the Zukerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. 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? Blue balls is this idea that people can get an awful pain in their balls if they get aroused, but don't then ejaculate. And it's been around for a really long time. But a couple of months ago, TikTok kind of blew up when this guy said that blue balls aren't real,

that it's something that men make up to pressure women to have sex with them. And we, on the show, were like, huh, how many people think this, that Blue Balls is a total scam? And could they be right? So we did a survey of you, our listeners. More than 2,200 responded. And more than half of the people with penises,

who we figured should know about blue balls, said that they either didn't think blue balls was real or they weren't sure. On top of that, around 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. 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. So what is going on here?

Well, once we dove into this, we kind of surprisingly discovered this huge medical mystery. In fact, the case of blue balls was so big that to help crack this nut, I asked a fellow truth sleuth to join me today, Sarah Marshall. She's from the podcast You're Wrong About. Hey, Sarah. Hi, Wendy. I'm so happy to be here. Oh, 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. By the time I was in high school, it was like I knew 1,500 ways to give a blowjob, and I hadn't figured out, you know, 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 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 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 with balls saying, nope, this doesn't exist. In fact, even Cosmo recently ran an article called, quote, blue balls aren't real, you're welcome, end quote. So today on the show, is blue balls an actual medical condition 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... All this extra spank. But then there's science. Science vs Blue Balls is coming up just after the break. 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. 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 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. Welcome back. Today, we are diving into the topic of blue balls.

Do they exist or not? And we're here with Sarah Marshall, a host of You're Wrong About. Hey, Sarah. Hi, Wendy. All right, so we are going to put blue balls to the ultimate testies. 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 mom 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 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.

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 mom and she gives him some hot tea and tummy medicine. That doesn't help.

But then he thinks maybe his dad, who's from Kentucky, maybe he has the answer. So I call my dad. I'm like, hey, dad, you know, my testicles really hurt, man. You know, and he's the one who brought up, hey, son, I got to ask you a question. He's like, yeah? He's like, 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 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, psh. And he's like, you got to 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.

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 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 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. My only guess is that your body gets ready and it's like creates a load to use in a minute. And then it's like, wait, wait, no, stand down. Yeah. 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. It's occupational hazard. Exactly, exactly. So I talked to Jamin about this sperm build up blue balls theory um and 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 maybe like months old. So I asked Jamin. Oh, so this idea that like as you're dry humping or making out, it 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.

No. Blue balls. No, this is not like Amazon Prime, you know, delivery. No, Blue balls. No, this is not like Amazon Prime, you know, delivery. No. And when Jamin 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 pee. Yep, absolutely. Yep. They may see little white chunks or cruds come out in their urine. Oh. 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 um yeah yeah i think we can be certain that this sperm build up idea yeah 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? 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. 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, 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 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. Have you heard of the epididymis? That word is familiar and I assume it's from the times in anatomy class where I was like, hee hee, I'm going to look at genitalia today.

That's what we're doing today. Can I show you this photo? And late last night I was looking at the perfect epididymis photo to send you okay oh your eyes lit up with excitement it reminds me of the way that like exposed tendon looks on meat oh yeah like a chicken like yes like right yeah it looks like what you pull out of the cavity of a chicken when you're making chicken. Yeah. So the epididymis is like this long convoluted coil tube 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 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. 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. 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 21 years ago, and to give you a sense,

this is 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 which is you are dr blue balls yeah i am the blue balls guy dr blue balls how can nothing be written about blue balls 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 so 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 this year 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 than that.

Exactly, 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, maybe this is just really, really rare. It happened to guys like Sam.

It happened in the case report. And then it becomes like a legend. It's like, 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, 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 cases like Sam's that were so extreme. Yes, that is 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's what we discovered. Oh, my God. More than 1,200 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? Just over 60% 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 a hundred 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. 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 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? Yes. 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 we were living in a society where I was trained to behave 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. What?

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, I don't feel it as like sharp pain, but like I, 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 to 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 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 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 patriarchy.

But Carolyn put it like this. I think it's because of the sort of primacy of the penis. Primacy of the penis. Primacy of the penis. I love that. 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 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 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 you know we need to change the name yeah and it's not just because this isn't specifically about balls right but because I talked with Dr. Jonathan Shalit about the patient who he saw. When you examined this patient, were his actual balls blue? No. And it's not really blue. They're never really blue.

And in all the other patients you've seen, nothing blue? Nothing blue. Tinged blue? No, no. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

So let's forget blue. Let's forget balls. 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. Right, puffy pelvis, pink puffy pelvis.

Puffy pelvis could be for everyone, right? Because it's not just the balls that hurt. Right, right. Pink puffy pelvis. What do you think? What do you think what do you think I like that ppp yeah ppp right like how you feeling 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 happy. That's Science Versus. that's science versus hello hey hey katie foster keys our internet science versus hey when is it growing how is your week of blue balls well safe to say i've been knee-deep in balls but it's been great and um 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. Sam Peerstorp 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. You should go check it out. This episode was produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, with help from Akedi Foster-Keys, Meryl Horn, Nick Delbrose, Michelle Dang, and Rose Rimler. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Eva Dasher.

Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. Music written by Peter Lennert, 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. Michael Liepman, Dr. Karan Rajarajan, Dr. Randall Rockne, Dr. Nan Wise, and Dr. Kevin Gandhi. And a big, big thanks to Eric Mennell, Aya Oti, Andrea Scott, Jack Weinstein,

the Zuckerman family, and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time. I can promise you a cure for blue balls is coming and, and blue balls comes and it goes and it goes as it comes. It goes as it comes. That's right. It's a, it's poetry and truth. Yes.