Stuff You Should Know - How Asexuality Works

Episode Date: September 12, 2012

When Alfred Kinsey conducted his sex surveys he turned up, but ignored, a fourth sexual orientation: people who don't experience sexual attraction. It took 60 years for Group X to gain a name and recognition, but with that has come increased scrutiny. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and he is, I can't really say what he's doing right now, but he's having a fine time. I'm playing with my little, what is this? Triceratops. Triceratops.

We have dinosaurs in a jar in here. I don't know who brought these in, but I think them, because it's kind of fun. It is fun. It looks really uncomfortable for the dinosaurs. I've seen too many of the Toy Story movies to just leave these things. That's why I've secured the Triceratops by my side today. That's nice. He'll be with us through asexuality. Yes, he will. We're going to go on a little journey through asexuality today. This is, I guess, new to me. I've heard the term before, asexual, but I never really realized that it's becoming, and there's a group of people who claim this as their sexual orientation. Yeah, you hear the word thrown around like, you know, they never really had a girlfriend or

boyfriend that I've seen. They're just sort of asexual. Right. But it's a real thing. It's often put alongside androgyny. Sure. You know, so asexual meaning genderless, but that's not at all what it means. And improperly tied to abstinence. Celibacy. Celibacy. Tim Tebow. Yeah. If you believe the lies. I don't know. I think he's for real. Do you? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Or Morrissey. Yeah, he's legendarily celibate. Celibate, right, but not necessarily asexual. There's a big difference. So I looked into this a little more before even proposing this, and I was just fascinated with it, not in like a prurient sense. I was just interested. Sure. And what kicked it all off was I was in line at the bank, and there was this woman reading a book

while she was going through like the Teller Transaction, and she had this this t-shirt on, and it said AVEN, A-V-E-N. And I looked a little closer, and it said asexuality, visibility, and education network. Right. It's not off the top of my head. Did it have a logo or anything? It did. I didn't recognize it until now, and I still can't conjure it up in my mind's eye, but it was a triangle, and I took it to mean like a like a pink triangle for homosexuality. It is not. It's just a triangle. Had I looked a little closer, had I looked now, I would see that I think it's a slice of cake. Oh, okay, sure, which is their their symbol. Right. Supposedly from a quote from someone an asexual who said, between a slice of cake and sex, I'd take the

cake. Right. So I think everyone feels that way at once over another, though. Right. Okay. So that's an excellent point. Yeah. The difference is if you're asexual, you feel that way virtually all the time. That is quite literally your orientation. Right. You're oriented toward no sexual attraction, no sexual preferences. Although you may still, if you do feel any kind of romantic feelings, yeah, it would still possibly go along homosexual or heterosexual lines. Right. Right. Yes. Let's get into this. Okay. I guess Alfred Kinsey is a pretty good place to start whenever you're talking about people doing it or not doing it. Man, I don't know how he got into these people's how he got people to talk like this back then. Have you seen the movie?

No, I haven't. It's good. Ray Fiennes? No, Liam Neeson. Liam Neeson. He beat everybody up. He did a bunch of polls and then whipped everyone's butt. Yeah. He's like, I have a very specific data set. So in his Kinsey scale, the famous Kinsey scale, he rates very inclusively a scale from, I think in here, they say from fleeting attraction to longer term, longer term compulsions. Like he tries to include everyone in the scale, but it's still generally not inclusive of asexuals. They were group X. It's like completely not inclusive. It goes from zero to six and it's straight up hetero to straight up homosexual. That's right. Right. And then there's stuff in between and you can fall somewhere in on the spectrum. But it was pretty

groundbreaking at the time because first of all, people weren't really talking about homosexuality much. So to make a scale that was inclusive of them, that was pretty revolutionary. Yeah, but he did identify group X. He just didn't include it on the scale. Group X to him was the 1.5% of men and 15% of women who said, I don't have sexual relations. I'm not interested in it. Right. But he just kind of disregarded that. As an anomaly group. Or maybe he thought he would come back to it at some later date and never did. Right. And but out of this, he said something that's kind of a famous quote. He said, the world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. Yeah. Which means like you're not, there's more than just straight and there's more than

just gay. There's some stuff in between. There's a range. But he still left out group X. He still left out group X. What's weird and Kristin Conger who wrote this article. Yeah, good job too. Yeah, she did a good job tying this all together. There was a study in 2002 of rams that produced another group X in its sample. Interestingly, also rams and sheep. Right. Because apparently there's a guy named Charles Roselli and he was looking to find if there's a biological basis for homosexuality. So we turn to the animal kingdom, right? Sure. Apparently rams can be gay. They, yeah, rams can party down with other rams for like, and when there's females around, they'll still just say, hey, that guy looks pretty good to me. Right. So he also found that

there's some that don't go for either. Yeah. And this group X among rams started to, this formed the basis of the idea of asexuality as an orientation as far as like, academia is concerned. Right. And the flip side of this, which we haven't really mentioned is, as opposed to a physiological problem, an issue or a mental illness, which up until, was it 1973? Yeah. Homosexuality is considered a mental illness. So until 73 and then in 1986, they finally took out the secondary, basically being stressed out from being gay. Oh, yeah. Was it was a diagnosis until 1986. And finally, there's like no homosexuality in the DSM any longer. But essentially until 86. And in 73, that was when the straight up, like if you're gay,

you're mentally ill was taken out. And the DSM is, we've talked about it before, the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. Yeah. Basically where they classify everything. And it's important, Chuck, we should say, what goes in there? Because it's basically the book that says, here's what society thinks is normal. Yeah. And here's what society thinks is abnormal. And if you, who considers yourself normal, is in there, then society has a lot of leverage against you to tell you that there's something wrong with you. Yeah. Or at the very least, it's doctors' opinions, right? It's not like they took polls from society, right? No, but I mean, like, that's based on a lot. It's not all of it's based on empirical evidence. It's basically saying like,

like, you act this way and society thinks there's something wrong with you. That's mental illness. Right. You know, good point. So we've mentioned is not like celibacy, because that is a choice to remain sexually inactive. Morrissey battles that every day. I'm sure he does. I mean, look at him. He dresses sexy. Oh, Morrissey's a sexy guy. Look at him. So he's a pop star. Right. You have anyone he wants. Exactly. On either side. Right. But he chooses not to. Celibate. That's right. Is he still? I think he is, isn't he? Oh, I think he's like lifetime celibate. Really? Yeah. Yeah, but you never know. I, that's, I mean, I don't know Morrissey personally. He's never told me this, but I mean, this is just from being a fan. This is one. Yeah,

yeah. And he's come out very hard lining, you know, for his celibacy. So it's not like he's, it's been a secret or anything like that. Oh, no, he touts. Well, it's like Tim Tebow. And we'll mention this even more, but the, it's the same with asexuals. They, the, what is it, 1% roughly of the population? In these samples. In these samples. It was 1.5 in this big survey. So there's, this is all very, very, very new. Like think about it. That Ram study was from 2002. Right. In 2004, that Ram study, I think piqued somebody's interest enough to start looking into this. So it's real new. Like this is a 21st century sexual orientation and people are, at least the people who study it are just now starting to look into it. Well,

I've already figured out how to discriminate against Anthony Bogart. Bogart, I don't know how you say it. Bogart. We'll just say Bogart. Bogua. He is the one in 2004. He's a psychologist at Brock University in Canada. I don't think they have any kind of a football team in Brock University. Brock, what is probably wrong though? Brock, but he is the one who did publish a journal in Journal of Sex Research in August of 2004. That, you know, one of the first people to do a lot of studying on this in recent times, he examined data from a survey in the UK from 1994 and basically out of the 19,000 sample size, which isn't too bad. No, it's huge. Yeah. He found 1.5% said, I have never, never felt sexual attraction to anyone

at all. And that wasn't like part of, that was, it was a huge survey with a huge sample of a bunch of questions and that was just one of the, one group was lumped into a little data set based on that response. And this guy went back and found that and really started to look at it. Well, and he's the first one in 2006 to say, you know what, this is a sexual orientation and that's how it should be treated. And asexuals were, you know, they're, they're proud to be who they are. I mean, the ones that come out in the support groups, at least I'm sure there's a lot more that, you know, wrestle with it and are quiet about it. But at least with the, what is it, the AV Eaton? Yeah, the asexuality, visibility and education network. They're all, all about being

proud to call it a sexual orientation. Right. Like we don't need to be treated for any kind of dysfunction. Yeah. Leave us alone. Right. We're happy with the, basically how we're born. The thing is, is like leave us alone. It's not just that. It's also take us seriously. Yeah, sure. Because there's, there's a lot of accusations that are leveled against them. Like, you know, you guys are all victims of trauma. So, you know, that's probably what it is, or you're being willful or, you know, and to not be taken seriously as a human being. That's a big deal. Yeah. David J would agree with that. Not to be confused with David J from Bauhaus. No. No. And there's another David J too. Yeah. I think he was some of their kind of writer,

unless the Bauhaus guy's a writer now. David J from Bauhaus, this goes by David Capital J period. Oh, okay. No, not the same guy. This is David J. A. Y. J. A. Y. Founder of the AV Eaton. And there's a site, asexuality.org that he founded in 2001, where you can find out all kinds of information and get support if you find yourself in this 1.5%. And he made a lot of news because, you know, he's a young, handsome dude. And everybody's like, why don't you want to do it with anybody? Exactly. And he's just like, because my orientation is asexual. Yeah. And start wrapping your heads around that, people. I think Matt Lauer actually like poked him in the stomach. Like, man, what's going on during an interview? Really? No. Okay. But there is a range of, you know,

not asexuals are the same. Kristen points out that some are virgins, some are not. And it's not even just necessarily from a past experience before they kind of figured out where they were. Some still have sex to satisfy their partner. Right. Only to satisfy their partner. And if you like want to get a first person firsthand view of, you know, what it's like to be asexual in a very hypersexual world. Yeah. They have a lot of essays and tips and guides for interacting with asexual people. I'm sure. And one of them that I read was like having sex with an asexual person and like, right, how you get to that point. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's not, it's like, that's a gift, as I understand it. Yeah, you know, like that means they, that person

really cares about you because they are not into this really at all. Or if they are into it, it's not, it's sexual. It's romantic. Right. Well, and that's the other point Conner goes on to make. Like some are virgins, some are not. Some masturbate. Some do not. Some pursue romantic, long-term committed relationships. And some don't pursue that like anything beyond platonic relationships. Right. So it kind of runs the gamut on how they choose to integrate and live their life or not integrate and just still live their life. Yeah. Which I guess is still integration. Uh, are you thinking of that rough song for you? Well, okay. The war on drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug

abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app,

Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is what it sounds like inside the box car. I'm journalist in Elm Morton in my podcast City of the Rails. I plunge into the dark world of America's railroads searching for my daughter Ruby who ran off to hop trains. I'm just like stuck on this train. God knows where I'm gonna end up. And I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters living outside society off the grid and on the edge. I was in love with a lifestyle and the freedom this community, no one understands who we truly are. The rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history, and the thing we call the American dream. It's the last vestige of American

freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die or you could have this incredible rebirth and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the City of the Rails. Listen to City of the Rails on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts, or cityoftherails.com. And I think we should also say Chuck, there's, even while we're trying not to pigeonhole anyone, we're still managing to still, I'm sure, like leave some people out. This is a very broad swath of people and that was a good point to say like a lot of different ways to live as an asexual person. We haven't figured them all out. Just as there are a lot of ways to live as a sexual person. Exactly. The tie that binds

asexually oriented people is that they literally don't feel sexual arousal or sexual attraction. That's right. That's just not part of it. And this Indiana University study, you didn't talk about that, right? No. So these researchers sat down at Indiana University with four self-identified asexuals and basically said, tell us about it. And most of them, I think basically the consensus was was that, yeah, it's kind of tough, especially when you're attracted romantically to people like you want to have a relationship. But most people aren't asexual. This is 1.5% of that sample. So you're going to have to have, there's going to be some sort of conflict or problems or no matter how understanding your partner is. This is going to be tough, not just for you,

but for them. So they said that's tough. But on the flip side, you have a lot more free time. And your chances of getting an STD or an unwanted pregnancy are like virtually nil. Well, I kind of laughed at the free time thing like, you know, how many hours a day are people spending having sex. But if you totally are devoid of sex, that means as a single person, you're not spending any time going looking for it or pursuing people. So a lot of time, theoretically, goes into people, you know, out there trying to hook up, you know what I'm saying? Exactly. Like there's, if you step back and think about it, especially, especially if you're like a single person, yeah, like there's a lot of time and energy that goes into all that goes into

getting to the sexual act, right? It's not just the time that you spend. I remember those days. Yeah, it was a long time ago. I remember what that's like. But the point is like, that's a lot of time and energy and like, what else could you have done with that? I often spent my time doing other things. Actually, I was never that guy. Yeah, cruising the bars, you know, I was always just hanging out with my friends, which probably explains a lot. So interestingly, in these polls as well, women make up generally across two different polls. They both made up 75 or I'm sorry, 71% of the population of asexual individuals. Yeah, that 1994 British survey of the households. And then later, the an avan poll

that just last year. No, that was 2008. That was 71%. And then it went down the ratio of men to women changed in the last year's poll. It went to like 67% women. Yeah. And then but the other 33% wasn't all men. A lot of them identify themselves as gender neutral. Yeah. 22%. That's a lot. That is a lot. So this suddenly now you have a subset of a subset of as far as sexual orientation goes. That's right. And I was reading on avan today about how to use. Remember when we did our executive order podcast? Yeah. The flawless one on executive orders. Yeah. We were trying to figure out what you would call a gender neutral president. All right. It's not out there. No one has any idea. Like even people who are gender neutral

don't really know there's not a standard way to address somebody like that with a gender neutral pronoun. So you got to figure that one out. Yeah. Well, somebody smarter than us and more sensitive than us should do that. Okay. Yeah. So the AVN has grown since 2001 from 19,000 to 30,000 members, which is pretty great. These people are getting some pretty good community support. They, Conger points out that disinterest in sex is usually regarded as a symptom, a problematic symptom rather than like a sexual identity. So that's the battle they're kind of facing now is again, don't treat us. We don't need, we're not dysfunctional. Like we were born this way. The guy that founded the network said that, you know, I remember being a kid and once

people started talking about like hot movie stars, I was just like, what? Like I don't get it. What does that mean? Right. And, you know, from a very young age, are you making humping motions in the air? Little kids are dirty. They're so dirty. I don't even know. They're innocent. Yeah. What's going on? What's going on with my hips? Yeah. It's all very sweet. They're just trying to figure it all out, you know? Yeah. Poor kids. And then comes the hairspray. So we mentioned the diagnostic manual of mental disorders. There are two disorders that look like they could cover this as far as sexuality goes. Yeah. And one of them is SAD, sexual aversion disorder. And the other is hypoactive sexual desire disorder. You can throw out SAD because that's an actual phobia of sex.

Yeah. It's like you, you get real anxiety from the, even the idea of having sex. Right. That's not what asexuality is. No, it's not. So go ahead and toss that out. HSDD is a little closer because it's undescribed as persistently or recurrently deficient or absent of sexual fantasies and desire for sexual activity. The difference there, though, is, as Conger calls it, a critical footnote. It must be inciting marked distress or interpersonal difficulty, which I'm sure can happen, but asexual is also a lot of more saying, you know what? I'm fine. Well, as part of what Avon is all about is kind of like accepting and celebrating and saying like, dude, you're okay. You don't have to, you don't have to feel bad about this. This is

just who you are. So yeah, that last little, that last one, what is it? HSDD? Yeah. That's, I feel so bad because it's like, okay, guys are starting to make their way through the civil rights discrimination road. Yeah. And they're starting to come out on the other end. And okay, who else is there to discriminate against? We're almost out of people. Who can we go to next? Oh, good. Here's a group called asexuals and here they come. So let's run them through the pike because that's what's about to happen. It looks like. Well, I could see them being more accepted, but you know, the people that don't accept homosexuality, I could see them being more lenient with asexuality because it doesn't threaten anything in their life. I agree. It's

tough to discriminate against somebody based on the lack of sexuality. It's more like taking it seriously and treating it not as a mental illness. Right. Exactly. Those are, you know, that's got to be big. Sure. Because think about it like the whole Chick-fil-A thing that's going on, right? Yeah. So let's say that still to this day, the field of psychology considered homosexuality a mental illness. Right. Now consider, you know, those donations, what they're going to, are they going like to discriminate? Are they going to treat mental illness? Right. That's a big deal to be in there. It's a lot of power that little book wields. Totally. And if for no other reason than just respect and self-respect, like you were talking

about. Yeah. I mean, what's our motto, Chuck? Live and let live. That's one of them. To each his own. That's right. It's kind of the same thing. Yeah. So they have petitioned the board, though, to have that removed much like they did in 1973 with homosexuality. So we'll see what happens there. You think the DSM-5 comes out in 2015, maybe? How often does it publish, you know? Like 73 to 86. Oh, wow. Those were in between. Yeah. So when you're in there, it's a big deal. I wonder if it's a set republish or if it's every time they need to like have some changes stacked up. They release different editions of different versions. Gotcha. Like revised ones. But like I mean, they've been working on this for years. Yeah. There's so much controversy around it.

Because it's saying, here's what's normal. Yeah. Hot off the press. On one hand, it's like it's great to be able to diagnose people with problems. But the other hand, there's something about just taking a book and seeing like, let's see what you are. Yeah. Let me look it up. Yeah. It's kind of like, I'm a person. Well, it's like, there's a checklist. It's like, if this person, here's the set of symptoms. Yeah. We say are associated with this disease. Right. Based on probably a lot of study. And if they have eight of 20, then they're that. They're that thing. Yeah. They have that mental illness. Like what about the other 12? It's good on the list. Yeah. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public

enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. This is what it sounds like inside the box car. I'm journalist in El Morton in my podcast city of the rails. I plunge into the dark world of America's railroads searching for my daughter Ruby who ran off to hop trains. I'm just like stuck on this train. God knows where I'm going to end up. And I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters living outside society off the grid and on the edge. I was in love with the lifestyle on the freedom this community. No one understands who we truly are. The rails made me question

everything I knew about motherhood, history and the thing we call the American dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die or you could have this incredible rebirth and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to city of the rails on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts or cityoftherails.com. So there are some supposed notable asexuals throughout history. Yeah. I found a few lists that were pretty hinky. Nikola Tesla and one of them had fictional characters and they were like Dexter. Dexter is not asexual. Yeah, no, he's not. Not at all. He's weird. He's a serial killer,

but he had affairs like girlfriends, livens. Well, those were mostly to mask his homicides. No, I mean, he goes at it pretty good. Okay. In the first couple of seasons, like he's, I could see him being considered asexual, especially the first season. Plus Michael C. Hall was just coming off six feet under. Yeah. He's like, I went from homosexual to asexual when I really just want to be a serial killer. Right. But he was straight in real life because he was married to what his ghost are. Yeah, I think they're reconciling. Oh, they reconcile? I believe so. Oh, isn't that nice? Yeah. All right. So back to the supposed list. These are the ones that I kind of weeded out to potentially be correct off of the bunk

list. What about Nikola Tesla made you think it was hinky? I don't know. It didn't come from like his cousin, the report. I think it was just from the website where I got it and I didn't see him on any other websites. Oh, I get you. Okay. Paula Poundstone, the comedian. Perfect. She supposedly is asexual. Tim Gunn. He's a fashion guy, right? Edward Gory, the illustrator. I did not know that. And J. M. Berry, the creator of Peter Pan. Although it's hard to substantiate that one because I've seen some works where he was called a pedophile without a whole lot of backup aside from rumors has it that he and his wife like never consummated the marriage and he sure did like to hang around kids. But that's kind of unfair too. But see, that's the other thing too.

It's like that's really unfair, actually. Think about it. If he is asexual, then how would you rectify that? I mean, if this were 20 years from now, 30, 40, 50 years from now, and asexuality were normal, you could look back at that set of behaviors and be like, oh, he was obviously asexual. Exactly. But we have to drag these poor people's lives out into the spotlight for the rest of us to observe and examine. So then we can say, okay, all right, we will agree that this is normal and it can come out of the DSM. Agreed. Like he might have been straight up asexual and they just didn't know what that was. So we love not having sex with his wife. So that means he's a pedophile. Exactly. Because he writes children's books. Exactly. Because we understand. Man. So

that was the list of asexuals, huh? Yeah, there were others, but I didn't feel great about. There were two in this article that thought were pretty good. So apparently among asexuals, like the asexual TV character is Dr. Who. I'm not a Dr. Who guy, but I know that a lot of our army is. Yeah. So Dr. Who is supposedly asexual. He exhibits a lot of the behavior, but he's also not very judgmental and he has satisfying substantial relationships with others. Right. Those are great points. And who else was in there? Sheldon from Big Bang. Oh, yeah, I don't watch that. I don't either, but I know who they're talking about. And I could see him being asexual. Gotcha. Because that's more rumor. Apparently Dr. Who is like,

that's an asexual hero. I saw Dr. House listed too. No way. Yeah. He was like all about that. His ex-wife and he was all about what's that? There's another doctor. He was like an administrator. Yeah, he's not asexual. That's crazy. I think that was the same list that had Tesla and Dexter on it. That's what I was thinking. That's a poo poo list. You watch House? I mean, from time to time, if it's on, I'm like jogging or whatever. And there's no law and order on. I'll watch House. You watch TV when you jog? Yeah. Nice. Yeah, it's nice. That's great. Yeah. If I ever go outside and run, I'll be like, what's on?

If you want to learn more about asexuality, we strongly encourage you to go check it out. There was another podcast, Stuff Mom Never Told You Did This. Oh, did they? Like years back. Okay. Maybe go give that one a listen too. Yeah, get their pick on it. Yeah. And then you can also go check out the asexuality visibility and education network. And it's avan. I think it's asexuality.org. That's right. You can check them out. Or you can type in asexuality in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And it'll bring this up. I said search bar. So it's time for Administering Details. All right. This is maybe our last installment. This is what we do when folks have sent in

little tokens and chachis and gifts and cards and letters. We like to give them their due on the air because a lot of times they're small businesses and they're Etsy sites and talented people. So did you grab the one from yesterday that I didn't finish? I did finish it, didn't I? Okay, good. All right. So we're all set. All right. So we got a postcard from Claire Henders in New Zealand. It's very nice. Yeah, Kiwis. Yep. You want to go ahead? Oh, is that it? I thought you were going to say thanks, Claire, or something. Oh, thanks, Claire. From etsy.com slash shop slash bf4e Emily and Yumi got some charms. Yeah. Thank you very much for those. That was very sweet. Yes, it was.

Coffee. We got coffee. I imagine you got that from Corey who was living in Haiti at the time. Uh-huh. Do you remember that? Yes, I do. Was it good? Oh, yes, it was. Nice. I drank the heck out of that. Good. And I had many sleepless nights because of that. We got some Real Men Way 2 bills t-shirts. That's right. We said that offhandedly in a podcast a long time ago. Yeah. And apparently it was on a t-shirt. So we got that from customink.com. Thanks for that. We have received several books that I'm going to list here. Seven Deadly Women by Jamie Hale. The official 2012 Doomsday Survival Handbook. This one was really good. W.H. Mumfrey. I've been perusing that in my breaks here at work. Do you have breaks? I do. The Savvy Converts Guide to Choosing Religion.

Really good book. Knockknock.biz is where you can find that. And then this one is really cool. Wine to Water, a bartender's quest to bring clean water to the world. I followed up with this guy. His name is Doc Henley. And he was a bartender that founded an organization called WineToWater.org. And they're doing awesome, awesome work. That's a great name for it. Yeah. Very, very cool. That was a long one. Yeah. That's my last book. So Glenn and Sonia, who we thank for the champagne. Of course. We also want to thank their Kiva captains, by the way. We want to thank them for these t-shirts from the Princeton Library, I think. Yeah. Of Einstein. And it says Einstein Simplified. And it's three drawings. And they just get simpler and simpler. Yeah. It's awesome.

I wear that shirt all the time. While I'm jogging and watching television. That's right. Russian candy. Remember the Russian candy? Yeah. You were all over that. We got some Russian candy from Audrey. It was like, it had pop rocks in the middle. And I couldn't stop eating. It was crazy. Yeah. It was pretty funny. Yeah. Go ahead. We got a postcard from Margaret and Chile, Joanne and Stephen in Columbia, from the Amazon Institute. Oh, yeah. That's right. Those are our friends. That's who nominated us for the Grammy. That's right. Thank you very much. That we were Grammy nominated, nominated podcast. That's right. Dan Burtwell from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and some graphic novels just as alike. Here, dudes, I heard your comic book thing

and just hear some graphic novels that I've enjoyed in my life. Maybe get it right next time. No, no, no. He was very cool. Watchmen, which I've already read. I want to see that one. Yeah. I think I have it over there. Awesome. Coward, which I have not read yet. Okay. The Punisher Max, which I've not gotten to yet. I definitely want to see that one. Yeah. And Why the Last Man, which I did read. And I want to thank Dan because Why the Last Man was Awesome. And I also want to punch Dan because now I have to buy the other nine volumes to see where the story goes. But I'm going to get them actually went to Amazon the other day. Oh, you got to go to Oxford Comics and get them, man. What? You got to like stand around in the comic book shop and buy them then. You

can't just order them. Yeah, you can. It's pretty easy, actually. So let's see. Remember our Roller Derby episode? Oh, yeah. Well, the Deutschland Rollers sent us a sticker. Thank you for that. That's right. Kick butt. And my last one is Maureen from the Therapy Sisters at Therapysisters.com. They sent us their music CD and it's like funny stuff. Yes, it is. Yeah. Thank you for it. I've got more. Do you want to split these? No, go ahead. All right. So Emily from Idaho sent us a cool photo, fold out postcard from Maui. That's right. Thank you. Jennifer from Nature's Classroom in New England sent us a handwritten letter. Again, very rare. It's nice to see those. Leah from Halifax sent you a birthday card. Yeah, that was very nice. That was nice. And then

Kenneth Crowder sent us a $1 bill, which I still have yet to get any of. It's over there on my desk. I have it framed a little like our first dollar earned like businesses do. Do you really? Yeah, that's my first dollar earned. It's actually not framed, but it's still over there. Okay. I leave it out just daring somebody to be brave enough to steal a dollar. Well, if it's replaced by 50 cents soon, that's me. Okay. And then Aaron Spivey sent us an Atlantic Corvettes drum and bugle core patch. That's right. Thank you very much to all of you for awesome free stuff. Yeah, that's really cool when you guys think us and send us things like that. Very sweet. So that was it, huh? Yep. Administrative details is over. Yeah, I'm going to start my new list. We need

some emails then, right? For listener mail, which will start up next. That's right. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can also send us an email to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs

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