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The BrainFood Show

The Great Vibrator Myth

The BrainFood Show

Cloud10

Education, History

4.9 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Selfie stick. Electrical banana. Pocket pleaser. Magic wand. Divorce maker. Buzz Nightgear. Battery Operated Boyfriend. These are but a few colourful euphemisms for womankind’s best friend, found in millions of nightstand drawers across the globe: the vibrator. If you are a connoisseur of strange product origins then you’ve likely heard the quirky and unlikely story of the vibrator’s creation, which goes something like this: during the Victorian era, women were regularly diagnosed with female hysteria, a catch-all condition covering everything from fainting, insomnia, irritability, nervousness, or excessive sexual desire - really, any inconvenient symptom a woman could exhibit. The most popular treatment for female hysteria was the pelvic or clitoral massage, performed by a doctor in a clinical setting. Being completely ignorant of the female orgasm, doctors dismissed the resulting shudders and moans of ecstasy as mere “paroxysms”, maintaining that as no vaginal penetration was involved, pelvic massage had nothing to do with sex. As the popularity of this treatment exploded, doctors devised various mechanical vibrating machines to relieve their aching fingers and wrists, speed up the massage process, and allow them to service many more patients per day. And thus, an iconic sex toy was accidentally born. It’s an entertaining story, one which has been told and retold in countless books, documentaries, and even scientific papers, and inspired several works of popular entertainment including Sarah Ruhl’s award-winning 2009 stage play In the Next Room and the 2011 film Hysteria starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jonathan Pryce. It is also completely false without a shred of evidence backing any of it. Something only extremely recently revealed. That’s right: despite being widely reported as historical truth, the popular account of the vibrator’s creation is, in fact, a fantasy, concocted by a single historian based on dubious interpretations of historical records. Yet this narrative has remained largely unchallenged for more than two decades since, exposing worrying truths about how falsehoods can spread through popular culture and how academic research is fact-checked and published. This is the scandalous story of the great vibrator myth. Author: Gilles Messier Host: Simon Whistler Editor: Daven Hiskey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

If you're something of a coffee connoisseur, perhaps even wishing you could travel with your coffee maker for maximal caffeination while on vacation or a business trip, well, have we got a product for you. A couple years ago, I got recommended the AeroPress, and my wife and I have been using it regularly ever since, and coming full circle, they're now sponsoring us. If you've never seen one, AeroPress is a small, super portable, manual coffee press. Think French press, but with some key features in the design to give a much less bitter and incredibly smooth flavor, as well as to make it super fast to make a cup of coffee. To do this, it uses a unique 3-1 brew tech, sort of a mix of espresso, pour over, and French press, and as someone who normally finds coffee a bit too bitter, the results here are generally one of the best cups of coffee I've ever had. You can actually taste the flavors in the beans instead of just the bitter. And here's the kicker, it's super portable for travel, it weighs basically nothing, won't break in your bag, and brews a full cup in under two minutes. And cleanup takes approximately only 10 seconds, no more suffering through gross instant coffee on the road. And as for cost, the AeroPress is under 50 bucks. And on top of that, right now, AeroPress has an exclusive offer just for our listeners. Visit AeroPress.com slash brain food. That's A-E-R-O-P-R-E-S-S-S dot com slash brain food. And use promo code brain food to save 20% off your order.

1:12.9

Once again, that's AeroPress.com for slash brain food.

1:15.8

Use promo code brain food at checkout and finally ditch bad coffee.

1:19.1

You'll thank yourself every morning.

1:21.0

This episode is brought to you by Simpleysafe.

1:24.7

And this...

1:25.6

Simple safe on.

1:27.0

Is the sound of peace of mind. SimpliSafe. And this... SimplySafe on....is the sound of peace of mind.

1:29.9

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1:34.9

protect your home inside and out against break-ins, fires, water leaks and more.

1:40.8

So you can relax.

1:43.4

Visit Simplysafe.com.uk.org for an exclusive discount.

1:50.8

Selfie stick, electric banana, pocket pleaser, magic wand, divorce, make a buzz night,

1:54.6

your battery operator boyfriend. These are but a few colourful euphemisms for womankind's best friend,

1:59.3

found in millions of nightstand draws across the globe,

2:01.8

the Vibrator. If you are a connoisseur of strange product origins, then you've likely heard

2:06.4

the quirk and unlikely story of the Vibrator's creation, which goes something like this. During the

2:10.9

Victorian era, women were regularly diagnosed with female hysteria, a catch-all condition

2:15.5

covering everything from painting, insomnia, irritability,

2:18.3

nervousness, or excessive sexual desire, really any inconvenient symptom a women could exhibit.

2:23.2

The most popular treatment for female hysteria was the pelvic or clitoral massage performed by a doctor

2:28.8

in a clinical setting. The completely ignorance of the female orgasm doctors dismissed the resulting

...

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