The Waves: The Vagina Et. Al.

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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2022

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus is joined by science journalist, Rachel E. Gross to talk all about female anatomy. They discuss Rachel’s new book, Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage and how much science has to learn when it comes to diagnosing female maladies. Then they get into ovaries and all the misconceptions about these “egg baskets.” In Slate Plus, is the term “pussy” feminist? Articles discussed in this episode: The Word for Anatomy That Shouldn’t Be “Vulgar” by Zoe Mendelson Seventeen Years of Bad Sex by Allyson Rudolph Ovaries Are Prone to ‘Exhaustion’ and ‘Fatigue.’ Or Are They? By Rachel Gross Recommendations: Shannon: Wearing wide-legged jeans. Rachel: Showing yourself some, ah-hem, love. 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Waves, Slate's podcast about gender feminism and this week wrap poison
0:21.5	koalavaginas dolphin clitoris is a whole bunch of stuff all centering around the science
0:28.6	of the vagina every episode you get a new pair of women to talk about the thing we can't
0:34.4	get off of our minds and today you've got me Shannon Paulis a senior editor at Slate
0:39.8	covering science and health and me Rachel gross a science journalist and former slite
0:45.0	star and author of vagina of scurra and anatomical voyage so this week of course we're going
0:51.4	to be talking about vaginas so many of us have them and yet there are many ways in which
0:58.2	there are a mystery to science and ourselves this is a topic I'm always thinking about as
1:05.0	the owner of a vagina and all the other assorted parts that come with it and also a person who
1:11.4	is really interested in what science can tell us about the human body and also what science
1:17.7	cannot tell us Rachel briefly because we're going to get into the longer story soon
1:23.1	why did you decide to write a book about the science of vaginas yeah I mean like you I also
1:30.2	I love thinking and talking about my vagina and my vulva and my uterus when I got an IUD I got
1:37.2	an ultrasound picture and put it on my Instagram and said congratulations I'm pregnant with an
1:43.3	IUD now and I've also been a science reporter for many years and I love the weird wonderful
1:49.1	cool science of bodies and when I started combining these two things in my work and writing
1:54.4	about animal sex and reproductive science I started to realize that not everyone was as thrilled
2:00.6	about vagina science as I was so I was kind of interested in this disconnect like to me vagina
2:06.7	science was fascinating and amazing but when I worked at places like Smithsonian magazine I did get
2:13.2	reactions of disinterest and squeamishness and disgust and I found myself often having to explain
2:19.4	why it's important to write about things like endometriosis or the history of the IUD so there
2:24.5	is something not clicking so as I dug deeper into vaginas I've realized that the cool stuff we know
	...

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