The Period Talk (For Adults)

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2023

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Every month, 1.8 billion people menstruate globally. For those people, managing periods is essential for strong reproductive and emotional health, social wellbeing and bodily autonomy. But a lot of people haven't been educated about periods or the menstrual cycle since they were kids — if at all.

This episode, a period manual in four parts: How periods work, the different stages of the menstrual cycle, how to know when something's wrong, and whether to have a period in the first place.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to shortwave from NPR.
0:06.0	Hey, I'm Lee Kwong, shortwave co-host.
0:09.0	Hey, Margaret Serrino, shortwave producer. What do you have for us?
0:13.0	Okay, I'm Lee today. I'm gonna give you the period talk.
0:18.0	But for adults, because I think for a lot of us,
0:21.0	the period talk kind of fell flat the first time around.
0:24.0	I was so embarrassed to talk about it and like learn about it.
0:29.0	I just felt so embarrassed.
0:32.0	I just sinkily remember her like taking a tampon and like putting it in a cup of water.
0:36.0	And it's just like, hoot.
0:38.0	And it was the weirdest thing in the world.
0:40.0	Like it was very clear that this is like a secret.
0:42.0	And so don't go home and ask about this.
0:48.0	I remember that feeling.
0:50.0	Yeah, and I think that's what a lot of my friends felt as well.
0:53.0	And also the period researchers that I've been talking to.
0:56.0	They had these like really, really different but all really weird experiences
1:02.0	learning about their periods.
1:04.0	Which is odd considering presumably half the planet gets it?
1:08.0	I know.
1:09.0	And yet we still haven't figured out how to talk about it at all.
1:11.0	Yeah, and I think it's because we learned in like all of these really strange ways.
	...

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