The Science of Sex

This episode contains explicit content, so listener discretion advised. (shaker rattling) (mouse clicking) (bright music) Headspace Studios. (gentle music) (water flowing) Hey, everyone, I'm Emily Nagoski, your guest host for the week. Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Tuesday morning. If you listened yesterday, you know that I'm a sex educator, and this week is all about sex. Today, I'm going to break down the basics of human sexuality and desire, you'll leave with a better understanding of how our bodies actually work, and how all of this can make your life better. So let's get into some of the science behind sexuality and desire. The dual control model is my very favorite thing to talk about. It's a model of sexual response that was originally developed in the late '90s by Kinsey researchers, Erik Janssen and John Bancroft. So what it says is that a mammalian brain has a mechanism with two parts. The first is a sexual accelerator, or the excitatory impulse, that notices all the sex-related information in the environment, and it sends the turn-on signal that many of us are familiar with. And it's functioning all the time in our brains at a subconscious level. Here we are talking about sex, so you have just a tiny little bit of turn-on signal being sent. Fortunately, at the same time, in parallel, your brakes, the other part of the dual control model, are noticing all the good reasons not to be turned on right now. (laughing) So the process of becoming aroused is a dual process of turning on the ons and also turning off the offs. And what's so revelatory about this is that when you're struggling with any element of your sexuality, from desire, arousal, pleasure, orgasm, a lot of the advice has been to add stimulation to the accelerator, like try role play, add a vibrator, watch porn. And if you like those things, do you, go for it, great. And most of the time when people are struggling, it's not because there's not enough stimulation to the accelerator, it's more often because there is too much stimulation to the brake. So many things can hit the brakes, stress, obviously. If your thoughts will not let go of the last dish in the sink, you can say to your partner, "I'm sorry, my brakes are just caught on that last dish in the sink," they can go and do that last dish, and that will release your brakes. And it also increases your sense of connection with your partner because they just helped you out. Sometimes, the sexiest thing you can do is the dishes. If you're worried about being interrupted, either get childcare, get the kids out of the house, go somewhere that the kids aren't. You don't have to beat yourself up for like, "My brain shouldn't be worried about the dishes, or the laundry, or the kids," eh, solve the problem and then your brain won't be stuck on those things. Body image...