The Truth About “Normal” Sex
The Waves: Gender, Relationships, Feminism
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 903 Ratings
🗓️ 16 June 2022
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate science writer and editor Shannon Palus is joined by Popular Science executive editor and author Rachel Feltman to talk about sex, baby. Rachel’s new book, “Been There, Done That” explores the quirky, wild, and often queer side of the history of sex. Shannon and Rachel talk about why animal sex is so relevant to human sex, the “loop-de-loop” of sexual evolution, and they ponder the age old question, “Why are even men?”
In Slate Plus, Rachel talks about why Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) may in some cases not be as terrible as you think.
Recommendations:
Shannon: Spindrift seltzer
Rachel: The horror anthology, Your Body is Not Your Body
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus and Alicia Montgomery.
Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the waves, a podcast about gender, feminism, and doing it. Each week you |
| 0:19.7 | get a pair of feminists to talk about the thing we can knock it off of our minds. |
| 0:24.2 | And this week you have meet Shannon Paulus, a senior editor at Slate covering Science |
| 0:29.6 | and Health. |
| 0:30.9 | And I'm speaking with Rachel Feltman, who is the executive editor of Popular Science, |
| 0:36.0 | and the author of the book, Been There, Done That, A Rousing History of Sex. |
| 0:47.9 | If you are feeling down about the world right now, Rachel's book offers an excellent escape. It taught me all about why bats go down on each other. |
| 0:55.0 | A funny myth about Cleopatra's alleged masturbation habits. |
| 1:00.0 | Rachel also answers the question, why are even men? |
| 1:05.0 | And she takes us through a thought experiment about how maybe all animal life started out very queer. One key thing this conversation gets at is how limited our idea of quote unquote normal sex is. |
| 1:31.0 | Flodd not just for cultural reasons, but also scientific ones. |
| 1:36.0 | I hope you'll stick with us. We also have a special announcement about an upcoming slate live event. |
| 1:50.0 | If you want to get up to date on everything happening with the Supreme Court right now, |
| 1:55.0 | come to the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York on Thursday, June 23rd. |
| 1:59.0 | Our colleagues from Slate will be unpacking all the news and there will be a special |
| 2:04.2 | slow burn taping. Head to sleet.com slash Supreme Court to get your tickets now. |
| 2:09.9 | AI might be the most important innovation ever. It's storming every industry with |
| 2:15.8 | literally billions being invested so buckle up. The problem is that AI needs |
| 2:20.4 | the right data and a lot of speed and processing power. |
| 2:23.4 | So how do you compete without costs spiraling out of control? |
| 2:26.7 | Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or |
| 2:31.5 | OCI. OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, and application development |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.