You're listening to a stranger podcast.

www.

The Stranger.com.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome to the podcast.

I'm Dan Savage.

This is the once-a-week out loud version of my sex advice column, Savage Love.

We call this the Savage Love cast because we have no imagination.

And we're happy you're here.

And we're happy you're downloading.

206, 201, 2720 is the number if you want to record a question for future podcast.

And you download this smutty tripe every week at the stranger.com slash savage.

So joining us today is science.

Jonathan Gallup, who writes the column Dear Science twice a week or twice a month in The Stranger

and has his own science podcast here on The Stranger.com. So you are, we just call you science around here. What are your goddamn qualifications for assuming that mantle? So I'm an MD and PhD student at the University of Washington. I'm kind of getting to the end of my PhD. So I'll be a doctor twice over twice over. You're already a doctor? Well, not quite yet. But in about a year I'll hopefully get my PhD and so I'll be a doctor twice over before I... Twice over. You're already a doctor? Well, not quite yet, but in about a year, I'll hopefully get my PhD, and then I'll have my MD two years after that. Wow. And then I've been working in labs for about 10 years or so, starting back in Baltimore, and then now here in Seattle. But you don't have a little string of letters after your name yet. You're on your way there. No, no. But you do have that most cherished and valuable scientific thing on your CV, which is columnist for the strange. Yeah, exactly. I suspect this is going to be the key to my future success. And maybe the pinnacle. This may be the top. Maybe as far as you go. This may be the highlight of my academic career. Jonathan's here because he wrote a column about sex. We thought it would be fun to have him on the show to talk about sex. And I'm going to ask the first question,

because it comes up all the time. Women fake orgasms. I have a problem with this, as I'm sure you do. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You're a fag too, right? No. No, you're straight. Yeah. Okay, I didn't know that. Just looking at you, I thought you were fagging. Jonathan Bakes, so every time he drops

by the offices, it's homemade bagels and cookies and chala. And that's just so gay that all this time I assumed you were like taking it in the ass, making bagels and running to work. Yeah, yeah, I'm just open-minded. But not open-orified. No. Okay. So I get questions all the time from straight women who've painted themselves into a corner, orgasmically speaking, because they've been faking orgasms. And it's led their partners to believe that whatever they're doing works. And, you know, people start doing that at the outset because they don't expect a relationship to last. And then five years later, they're stuck with a guy. And they don't want to go to him and say, all those times, you know, that the five years of sexual performance, you thought you were just fucking nailing it for me. You suck. I didn't come once. Then these women are looking at faking orgasms for the rest of their lives. Now, this whole process could be short-circuited if guys knew how to spot a faked orgasm. And they went, eh. Most guys wouldn't give shit, I fear most straight guys. They're happy with a fake. They're happy with a real as long as they're having their orgasm. But the sensitive guys could say, you're faking if they could only tell the fake from a real. How do you tell? I'm not going to let you get a word in edgewise because we's recording this very early in the morning and I feel really aggrieved.

So how the fuck, if you're a straight guy, and you're a straight guy, just learned this. Yeah. If you're a straight guy, how can you tell when your lady friend is faking it? I'm going to lean back in my chair and I'll let you talk. Sweaty feet are a good bed. Anything that sort of sympathetic nervous system is going to be a good way to tell.

What's the sympathetic nervous system?

All right, all right.

So you got your kind of like subconscious. Anything that sort of sympathetic nervous system is going to be a good way to tell.

What's a sympathetic nervous system?

...