Science Vs - Sex Drive: The Dirrrrrrty Science

Episode Date: June 29, 2023

Tons of people struggle to get revved up about sex. It can mess with their relationships and how they feel about themselves. So enter the multimillion-dollar supplement industry with miracle solutions. Even Big Pharma has joined the battle for our libido, with drugs that claim to work wonders. But what if our ideas about sex drive are completely wrong? What if a pill (or testosterone injection) isn't the answer? We dive into the groundbreaking science on libido — and what you can do if you can't get no satisfaction. With sex therapist Professor Heather Goltz, sexual health researcher Professor Caroline Pukall and endocrinologist Professor Waljit Dhilo. Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsSexDrive  In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Chapter 1: Our limping libidos (04:16) Chapter 2: Sex drive and testosterone (08:24) Chapter 3: Kisspeptin: The new kid on the block (17:13) Chapter 4: Libido-boosting supplements and medications (24:39) Chapter 5: When your libido takes work We're performing at Beaker St in Tasmania and Wendy Zukerman will be at Splendour in the Grass.  This episode was produced by Wendy Zukerman with help from Joel Werner, Rose Rimler, Michelle Dang, R.E. Natowicz, and Meryl Horn. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Emma Munger, Peter Leonard and Bobby Lord. Data Analysis by Sam Levang. Thanks to everyone we reached out to for this episode, including Professor Sari Van Anders, Dr Emily Harris, Dr Jennifer Power, Dr Simone Buzwell, Dr Alexandra James, Professor Sheryl Kingsberg, Professor Barbara Mintzes, Dr Leonor Tiefer, Dr Mats Holmberg, and Dr Alexander Comninos.  Special thanks to Jack Weinstein and Hunter, Katie Vines and Finn and Jules, Chris Suter, Elise and Dylan, the Natowicz family, the Zukerman Family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. And today is the last episode of the season. Yeah, we're going to have some fun stuff down the feed while we are working on new episodes for our next season. So absolutely stick around. You won't even notice we're gone. We'll be back in your ears before you know it. But today, let's jump into bed

because we are pitting facts against fanning those flames. As we dive into the science of sex drive. So let me tell you, Heather Galtz wants to tell you all about her great-grandparents. So her great-grandma was this petite little woman. She'd have little kitten heels and, you know, and she'd be like, would you like a sandwich? And, you know, I have some Coke or if you'd like some coffee. But don't be fooled by that sweet voice.

Heather's great-grandparents? They were very sexual. I'm not kidding. In fact, there was this rule if you were going to visit their house that all the family knew. Everybody had keys to the house because everybody was welcome, except they had a deadbolt lock in the chain. If the deadbolt was on and the chain was on the door, you should get back in your car and make the block. If you're not catching her drift, you have to kill some time, because if the deadbolt was on the door, then you know.

Oh, yeah, they're doing it. How many times did you drive there and the deadbolt was on the door with the chain? Believe it or not, it happened quite frequently. Was it like a little joke? Would you like text the cousins? Oh, there's like the eye rolling. And they're like, oh, yeah. Well, I mean, they were at it long enough last time.

I just gave up. How old were they at that point? Oh, my gosh. So they were solidly in their 70s. Amazing. And did you think like, how do I get that? Oh, of course I did. You know, I was like, wow.

The trouble is, it seems like a lot of us are struggling to get that wow. And we're not completely happy with our sex drive. Like, we did a survey of you all, our listeners, and more than half of you said that you'd been worried about your libido at some point in your lives, mostly because you thought it was too low. And you see this problem in the scientific literature too. Heather is actually a sex therapist and researcher at the University of Houston downtown. And she hears this kind of thing all the time. Yeah, I'm not aroused at all. And it is the Sahara Desert down there, and I'm not sure what to do with this thing.

It's broken. So let's fix this thing that's broken. Today on the show, we are sliding back the deadlock on our sex drive and bringing you some bed-rattling discoveries on our libido. We're also going to dive into the multi-million dollar libido boosting industry, which is packed with the hormones, supplements, and even FDA approved medication. And bottom line,

for those who would like to get more hanky in their panky, we are going to find out how to get you some horndog energy. When it comes to our sex drive, there's a lot of... I just gave up. But then there's science. And by the way, a lot of the research in this space is focused on cis people rather than trans folk. So unless we say otherwise,

the science we're discussing is about cis folks. Okay, Science vs Sex Drive 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 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, the show is all about sex drive. And in the land of science, sex drive isn't about how much bonking you're actually doing.

It's more about how much sexy stuff you're wanting. So you're looking at things with like a different layer. Your mind is kind of thinking sexual thoughts. This is Professor Carolyn Pucall at Queen's University in Canada. So it's like sometimes like someone might see a fig and just see a fig and someone else is looking straight out of a vagina. Exactly, exactly. So it's kind of this really like sort of feeling of alive

and really sort of like shiny and sparkly like in this sexual way. That's my scientific definition. And a lot of things in life can tarnish our sexual sheen, from medications like antidepressants to stress, whether it's from work or having a new baby. In fact, when we surveyed y'all about this, babies and young kids came up a lot as a stopper, if you know what I mean. So the big question is, how do we get back that shiny sex drive? Well, the first big thing

we're going to tackle is this idea of hacking our hormones, and particularly testosterone or T. There are ads all over the internet and videos all over TikTok for how men and women can boost their libido by somehow powering up their testosterone. And you can buy stuff with names like Testoblast, TestoJack100, and who could forget its jacked-up cousin, Testo Jack 300. Carolyn's like, it's as if after popping this stuff...

And suddenly, you know, like, all systems go... Yes, you're yummy, I want you, deliciousness, right? But Carolyn says that even if those pills do boost your testosterone, which she is very sceptical about, the idea that that will then help with your libido? That is more or less a myth. Yeah. The science says that for most of us,

getting a little more testosterone won't affect our grr, or as Carolyn puts it. It won't necessarily help people who have normal levels of testosterone. So there's some nuance here. If you're a man with clinically low levels of testosterone, then taking more of it might help your sex drive. But once you tip over into a normal testosterone range, having more of it doesn't seem to wet your willy. As one review paper wrote, quote, in healthy men, research is quite clear.

Tea is not significantly correlated with sexual desire. As for women, generally speaking, pumping yourself with testosterone also won't rev your engines. But there are a few exceptions, like postmenopausal women or trans women who are bothered by their low libido. Then taking a little more testosterone might help. So I think it's a lot more complex than a lot of people like really want it to be, right? Because, you see, testosterone is just one hormone that's involved in our complicated libido. For just another example, there's this very fun study that got about 20 women to fill out a sex diary. So think Bridget Jones meets Bridgerton.

The first season, obviously. Women wrote when they did stuff like fantasised about sex, initiated sex, masturbated. And by using cervical mucus and period tracking, the researchers uncovered that women were more likely to have a higher sex drive just before they were ovulating, which would have been when this hormone called luteinising hormone was going through the roof.

But a thing that kind of blew my mind when I was digging into the science of sex drive is that kind of amazingly, we're still discovering new pieces of the puzzle when it comes to understanding libido? So in 1996, as kids all over the world were grinding to pony, like genuine, scientists were discovering a hormone called kispeptin. And they were like, jump on it, let's do it, ride it, my pony, like ride it, like research it. So one of the researchers who wanted to ride Kispeptin scientifically was Walji Dillo, a professor of endocrinology at Imperial College London. He was stoked when he first heard that we'd discovered a new hormone. Completely new discovery, new kid on the block.

I mean, it's fun, right? Well, exactly. Normally, it's, you know, research is a bit of a tweak and an add-on from the last thing. But here you've got, you know, completely new football game or, you know, something really cool. By the early 2000s, scientists started realizing that if kisspeptin isn't working properly in your body, you don't get pubic hair or boobs or a deep voice. In other words... You will not go through puberty. You will remain essentially as a child.

So that's how vital it is. Yeah. Kisspeptin is a hormonal switch that when flipped triggers puberty. Soon, scientists wondered what else kisspeptin was up to. And they wanted to know whether it plays a role in our sex drive too. But to understand how they cracked this mystery, you first need to know how to screw a mouse.

So, when a female mouse or rat is ready for action, she'll do this pose with this amazing name, lordosis, where she'll arch her back and stick her butt way up in the air. It's pretty obvious. I mean, if you Google lordosis, I'm sure it comes up as a nice video you can watch. Oh, I just did Google it. There you go. Oh, it's a real Chinese all out, ready to go.

Exactly. Exactly. Okay, so I feel like I've just stepped into some rat porn there. And several years ago, researchers uncovered that if female mice don't make kisspeptin, then they're less likely to do that arched back, Chinese out lordosis thing. And so, well, Jeet and his colleagues wanted to know if kispeptin was important in humans too.

And so one of the first steps in their research was just to give kispeptin to people to see if that was even safe to do. Their first study got six healthy men and injected a tiny amount of kispeptin into their blood. And remember, as far as we know, this was the first time that any researcher had given kispeptin to a person. Were you a bit nervous giving kispeptin to humans for the first time? Yep. I didn't sleep very much. Anything could happen, yeah. Because it's never been given before and it might do something. And oh boy did it do something.

All of the men's penises fell off. No, I'm joking. The willies were fine. The men were fine. Kisspeptin was perfectly safe. So while Jeet and other researchers have kept studying it, found some hints that it

might affect our sex drive too. And to test this out, just recently, while Jeet and his team got about 30 women and 30 men who were feeling kind of bummed out about their sex drive. And they wanted to see if maybe Kiss Peptin could pep them up a little. Exactly, exactly. So, Waljeet and his team got everyone to come into the lab twice. Once they got Kispeptin, the other time a placebo, and they didn't know which one they were getting when. Now, Waljeet didn't want to know if Kispeptin made people more horny while they were just hanging around the lab. But rather, he wanted to see if he could ramp up people's arousal level while they were already feeling a little aroused. And so he got the participants to watch porn as well.

It sounds weird, but those are the really important things that you have to do in studies. Yes, I know this was for science and not just for fun. Yeah, yeah. Then, to objectively measure how aroused they got, for the men, they tracked their penile tumescence,

aka, willy stiffness. And to do that, they used a very special device. The device, I can send you a picture later. Yes, please. It's basically like, if you think of a condom and just the tip of it, the round tip of it. Oh, like a little, like a lasso for your penis.

Yeah, like a lasso, exactly. So then you can basically hook that up. It will expand when they're watching an erotic video. And the question is, is then does that make a difference when they're having cospepton on board compared to placebo? And there was no lasso for the women, because something we haven't mentioned yet, is that the researchers did this experiment with the people in an fMRI machine.

And the equivalent device in women that goes up the vagina has a metal piece in it that doesn't play well with the magnets in an fMRI machine. It can burn or it can fly around the room. Yikes. So they didn't use it. Okay. But after all of this science shenanigans,

what did Waljeet and his team find? Let's start with the fellas. When they were on Kispepton and watching the porn, All of this science shenanigans, what did Waljeet and his team find? Let's start with the fellas. When they were on Kispeptin and watching the porn, their dicks actually got harder. After eight minutes of porn, the penis lasso detected, on average, a 56% increase in penile tumescence compared to a placebo. So that's pretty good.

We didn't know whether that was going to work and all the rest of it, but that was obviously a pretty impressive result. And when Waljeet looked at the brain scans, he saw this curious pattern emerging in both the men and the women. You see, parts of the brain that have been linked to arousal, well, they look to be cranked up in these people. And then other parts of the brain that have been linked to inhibition, like kind of neural cock blockers, they looked like they were getting turned down.

So if you, like, you've got a brake and you've got an accelerator, so effectively you're taking off that brake a bit. Just shushing it, like saying shh. Yeah, exactly, yeah. So this was all very exciting. And after the study came out, there were all these headlines like, quote, how one injection can transform sex drive. But here's what's weird.

Before and after watching the porn in the fMRI machine, everyone filled out these surveys. How horny you feel, how happy you feel, how flushed you feel. And on the average, even though some of the men on Kispeptin had really been stretching out their penis lassoes, overall, the people in this study, neither the men nor the women, felt that different. Like, on average, the women said they felt a bit sexier, but nothing was mind-blowing. So where does this leave us? Well, we've definitely had fun, right? We know that our sex drive isn't just about pumping up our levels of testosterone or

cispeptin. There's a whole host of hormones and even brain regions that play a role in our libido. And we're still unpacking how it all works. Despite that, we still don't have the aphrodisiac of our dreams. So after the break, we're going to throw everything we have at this, from supplements to FDA-approved medications, heck, even the kitchen sink, until we find something to stoke your fires.

And I reckon soon you'll be coming up. Okay, I'm at the vitamins section. Uh-huh. Welcome back. Today we're looking into whether we can hack our sex drive. And I've headed to the drugstore to see if there's something on the shelves that can help us out. It's funny, it's like every major supplement company

has some kind of libido enhancer. Healthy sexual function, stamina, libido, helps increase physical performance. What is this? Goddess. Ancient wisdom. Wild women. Wild women. Wild men.

Despite the very exciting names, they all tended to have the same stuff in them. Ginkgo. Horny goat weed. Ginseng. Siberian ginseng. Rian ginseng. Macca.

Hmm. Which am I going to try? All right. Okay, let going to try? All right. Okay, let's try this organic Macca. It says Incan warrior strength. Legend has it that during the height of the Incan Empire, Incan warriors would consume Macca before entering into battle to make them fiercely strong.

Yeah, like fiercely sexy strong. It's also gluten-free. Can I just get that? Yeah, sure. $7.99. Thank straw. It's also gluten-free. Can I just get that? Yeah, sure. $7.99. Thank you. Let's see. Will we finish this episode?

Or will I be doing other things? Like sexy things. Oh, gosh. Oh, it's pungent. I'll give you that. Okay, so it says a teaspoon. Mix a teaspoon. I've got a tablespoon here.

Here goes nothing. All right. All right. I guess I'll let you know. So this maca that I'm trying is actually a root vegetable that grows in Peru, and it kind of looks a bit like shriveled up balls. And yes, the marketing is a little over the top, but kind of surprisingly, there is some research into it.

Like one study found that it turned male mice into horndogs. Other studies in women with low libido found that it kind of helped them. There's also some research suggesting that ginseng and L-arginine could help you get boners. But generally speaking, the researchers that I talked to about these kinds of supplements, they weren't that impressed. And a big reason for that is because there tends to be this huge placebo effect in libido boosters,

which might not be properly accounted for in these studies. I talked to Carolyn Pakal about this. If you were at the chemist and someone was like, I'm desperate, Carolyn, like which one should I buy? What would you say? I would say save your money at this point. We don't have enough. Maybe buy yourself some.

Oh, you know what? In high school for us, it was green M&Ms. If you ate green M&Ms, you were supposed to like somehow they had like this sexual property. So I'd say buy some green M&Ms and maybe. And really believe it and really believe it. Really believe it. Exactly. Not sponsored by green M&Ms. For me, if Macca did anything, it was subtle. Like, maybe a little later in the evening, I felt something a bit sparkly. But who knows?

According to my sex diary, I was ovulating. I did try it the next day, and I think it just made me farty. So maybe I would have been better off with a placebo. Perhaps some green M&Ms. But the thing is, if the supplement you're taking is reliably giving you, say, a big old boner, it could be something else going on. It could be that your all-natural libido boosters, they're not quite natural. Studies are finding that an alarming number of sexual enhancement supplements targeted for men

have actually been laced with stuff like Viagra. One study from France found 60% of the supplements they tested had Viagra or similar drugs in them. Another study from the US also found a ton of tainted supplements. And while we're on Viagra, which is kind of sitting like a matzo ball in the middle of this podcast, right? I asked Carolyn about it. I mean, obviously it's very good for boners, but is it good for sex drive? Nope. Yeah, nope. It's mainly about how hard is your penis and can you use it to engage in penetrative sex, right? Yeah, Viagra works by increasing blood flow to your willy, but that's

quite different from sexual desire, which lives in your brain. So while it might make you feel more confident about sex, if getting a boner isn't your issue, Viagra's not likely to help here. And by the way, if you don't have a willy and you're thinking of trying Viagra, don't bother. One study found it doesn't even help to bring blood to the cliti, something called clitoral engorgement, in the same way that it does with penises. And in that study, they actually weren't even sure that clitoral engorgement was a big issue for women with low libido in the first place. Which is why when two FDA-approved medications hit the market that were specifically for women with low libido, people started leaning in. But these drugs have actually been totally underwhelming too.

One is called flubanserin, and it's a bit of a pain in the ass to take. You have to take this medication every single day. You can't really take it with alcohol. There are tons of side effects. Side effects like fatigue and nausea. And after all that, one meta-analysis showed that on average, it led to one extra sexually satisfying event every two months. The second so-called female Viagra out there is an injection that makes 40% of the people who take it nauseated. Yeah, 40%. That is staggering and disappointing for sure. Great. So we have two really good nausea drugs

for when we want nausea. Yes, awesome. Let's take it to increase our desire and then feel like barfing. Away from the medicine cabinet and down to the dispensary. In our survey of you all, something that came up again and again

that you'd tried to boost your libido, was cannabis or CBD. And there actually is evidence, especially for women, that using pot before sex can make sex better. This could be because cannabis can relax you. And we're also learning that there are receptors in our genitals that cannabis can attach to, which could be doing something here. But pot doesn't butter everyone's biscuit. Some women say that it dries out their vag. And smoking a ton of pot has also been linked with sexual dysfunction in men.

So, we've looked high and low for a solution to our libido woes, and I'm still not feeling like an American bankster. But maybe that's because we've been thinking about this all wrong. Maybe this isn't about some pill or powder we can take, but maybe it's about something that we can do. New research into the science of low libidos, particularly in people who are coupled up, are finding that a big piece of this puzzle isn't about some chemical or hormone that's missing. It's about something in your relationship that's missing. Carolyn, who not only researches sex but does couples' counselling,

says she sees this all the time. Invariably, people come in and say, everything's fine in our relationship but our sex life, right? And then by about session six, we're like, OK, so not everything is OK. So what might not be OK? Well, Carolyn says that one thing that can bring a lot of tension into a relationship is when one person wants more sex than the other. It's so common that researchers have a name for it.

It's called desire discrepancy. And it came up in our survey of you all. For those who were worried about their libidos, 42% said that it was because their sex drive didn't match their partner's. 42%. And there's a lot of work being done in this field to untangle why desire discrepancy might crop up. Like recently, researchers got around 1,000 women

in relationships with men who had young kids, and they asked them all kinds of questions about their sexual desire. But also, who does the housework? And who organises the social calendar. And when the women said they were doing a larger chunk of the household labor, they were also less keen to want to work it in the bedroom. Other studies have found similar things.

Like one survey of almost 500 straight couples found that those who were more equal in household chores had sex more often. Professor Heather Galtz, who we met at the start of the show, told me that with this dishes thing, she totally gets it. Look, the sexiest thing is when I see my husband washing some dishes because I hate washing dishes. And when he washes those dishes, I'm like, oh yeah, I didn't have to do it and I'm ready. And I think at this point, he's washed dishes so much. The times I do wash dishes, he's like, oh yeah, this is good.

This is foreplay. When scientists try to work out exactly what is going on when our desire drops because we're doing too much of the household chores, they find that some women have started to see their partner as a dependent. That survey I just told you about of a thousand women also asked them to rate how much they agreed with sentences like,

quote, sometimes I feel as though my partner is like an extra child I need to look after. And what do you know? Women who said, uh-huh, to that, were less likely to agree with statements like, just thinking about having sex with my partner excites me.

Research suggests that same-sex couples, especially women, tend to divvy up the housework more equally. So perhaps this is less of an issue. But zooming out, Heather's like, no matter who you're in bed with, if things feel unfair and unequal, and you can't talk about it or you talk about it, but nothing changes, that can all build up. All of those things can make their way into the bedroom or the couch or the car, right? One of the partners has resentment about something. Something's bothering them about the relationship.

And it's not that they can't have sex. It's that they don't want to. In fact, one study found that it's not like women in this situation were totally over sexy stuff. They were still interested in a cheeky masty, you know, paddling their own pink canoe. They just weren't hot for their partner. And just like some crap in your relationship can crap all over your sex drive,

a great relationship can be the ultimate libido booster. So, for example, a group of researchers surveyed extraordinary lovers. That's actually what the researchers called them. These were older couples who were still bonking like bandits. And they discovered that a lot of that had to do with G-rated stuff, like being in sync, having great levels of communication. The authors wrote, quote, perhaps the most important lesson we learned from the extraordinary older lovers was that great lovers are made and not born. Here's Heather again.

The biggest misconception is that libido is something that just happens and that it doesn't take any work. You know, they think that I show up, I take my clothes off, you show up, you take your clothes off and whammo, fire, sparks, heavenly choir, it will come. And it's like, no, no, you actually have to pre-record that soundtrack and, you know, it takes work. Some of that work might be couples therapy and studies find that this can boost your sex life. Some of that work might also be being a little more creative and open about how you have sex and what might titillate you.

Because research has shown that this could also be helpful. Carolyn told me about one of her patients who thought they had a low libido until she got them to try different things like BDSM. And bam, fires lit. Those extraordinary older lovers that we interviewed, they also tended to be a little risque in their sex life. You know, they put a little cinnamon on their vanilla.

And Heather told me that getting creative like that, it actually starts to get super important the older we get because s*** happens to our body hips give way cancer strikes and in some cases that can mean certain kinds of sex are basically off the table maybe you can't have penetrative sex anymore or maybe you can't penetrate the vagina but hey there's you know your anus right there you know or your or your mouth. Certainly hands or feet. So you're learning about what might tease you, tantalize you, give you a sense of joy there.

To go back to Heather's great-grandparents, she thinks that their amazing sex life wasn't fueled by pills or powders or even great M&Ms, but the smaller stuff in their day-to-day lives. Yeah, it was, you know, a touch, a hug, a glance, a gentle way of talking with each other. There was a respect. They were equals.

They were very much equals. My great-grandmother was my great-grandfather's greatest counsel. And we know it translated then into the bedroom. And just before we cap off and send you off to bed, Heather's like, just because her great-grandparents were bonking like bonobos. That's totally fine if it's not what you want. In fact, in our survey of you all, while most people said that they wanted to have sex a few times a week, there was actually this happy rainbow of sexual desire, including people who didn't want sex at all. Having sex, Nat, is one of many ways

that you are obtaining pleasure out of this life. I'm wondering how much of low libido has been, like, medicalized or TikTokized. It really has. If you're truly happy, then why does it matter if the neighbors are doing it every night? You know, for people to explore and to learn their bodies and to own their own sexual power and their scripts.

That is almost heaven. That's science passes. That's Science Versus. Ring, ring, ring, ring. Ring, ring, ring, ring. Hi, Joel Werner, supervising producer at Science Versus. Hey, Wendy. Last Citations chat. Woo!

Woo! For this season, how many citations in this week's episode? There was, like, the sexiest number of citations, 133. Oh, I thought it was going to be 169. Can you explain your working there? I'm not sure. No, nope. If people want to see these citations, where should they go?

Wherever they're listening to the podcast, there's a link in the show notes to check out the transcript of the episode. Excellent. And while we are busily working on next season, Joel and I are going to be performing in Tasmania. It's for the Beaker Street Science Festival, which is this incredible boutique science festival that happens every year in Tasmania.

And I've been wanting to go for years and years and years, and we have an absolutely incredible live show that we're going to take to Beaker Street. So I'm super excited for that. Yes, if you want to get tickets, this is going to be quite an adventure for our American audience, but there's a link in the show notes. And also in July, I will be performing at this music festival

called Splendour in the Grass, which our Australian audience will know very well. No, I am not joining a band. I'll be talking science with some other awesome science people, including Dr. Carl. Tough gig, that one, Wendy. Really, really tough gig. I know.

Maybe I could sing our shark song. If you miss us while we're gone, you can follow our funsy stuff on Instagram. We're science underscore VS. You can follow me on TikTok and the silly videos I'm making at Wendy Zuckerman. To cap us off, we're going to play the team's favorite tape from this season.

Aw, this is really lovely tape. It got me all emotional. Enjoy, and there's going to be fun stuff down the feed while we're on a break in just a couple of weeks. So see you then. Bye. Bye. I honestly just wanted to cry because I was like,

I can't believe something's working this well on the first day. Yes. So that was amazing. That was amazing. I was like, I can't believe something's working this well on the first day. Yes! So that was amazing. That was amazing. I was ecstatic. I had hope for the first time in so long. It was like Christmas. I was just ecstatic. Oh, f***. She's like a combination of all the worst dogs.

You wouldn't just wipe your butt and just leave the crack untouched, right? It's disgusting. A bit bitchy. A little bit bitchy. No reports of little tails. Second E's. Oh, we've already got two E's. People seem to continue to be bilaterally symmetrical.

Why does greasy food work? Because it absorbs all the science terms that you guys are probably looking for. A hundred thousand willies? Uh, 64,000 willies. Oh my gosh, that is so many willies. Thank you. by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Emma Munger, Peter Leonard, So Wiley and Bobby Lord.

Thanks to everyone that we reached out to for this episode, including Professor Sari Van Anders, Dr. Emily Harris, Dr. Jennifer Power, Dr. Simone Buswell, Dr. Alexandra James, Professor Cheryl Kingsberg, Professor Barbara Minces,

Dr. Leonore Tifa, Dr Mats Holmberg and Dr Alexander Komnenos. Data analysis by Sam Levang. A special thanks to Jack Weinstein and Hunter, Katie Bynes, Finn and Jules, Chris Suter, Elise and Dylan, the Natapitch family, the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle-Wilson.

Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you do listen on Spotify, then follow us and press the bell icon so you get notifications when new episodes come out. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. I'll back to you next time.