61 episodes

A podcast about the ins and outs of the latest research about everyone’s favorite topic hosted by Dr. Zhana and Joe Pardavila.Looking to have your sex questions answered? Send them over to scienceofsexpodcast@gmail.com!

The Science of Sex Dr. Zhana & Joe Pardavila

    • Health & Fitness
    • 4.7 • 144 Ratings

A podcast about the ins and outs of the latest research about everyone’s favorite topic hosted by Dr. Zhana and Joe Pardavila.Looking to have your sex questions answered? Send them over to scienceofsexpodcast@gmail.com!

    #59 – Under the Influence of Horniness

    #59 – Under the Influence of Horniness

    Horniness (AKA being sexually aroused) is a special state of body and mind. It’s a state during which we are much more likely to make risky decisions, not just about our sexual health, but about other things too. What else can make us forgo condoms, or lead us to believe our partners are not as risky as they may be?

    Our guest this week, Dr. Shayna Sparling, has been getting people sexually aroused in the lab (for research only!) and then tracking how this affects their thinking and decision-making. It’s a fascinating episode with some good take-home messages about sexual health. (Also, a glimpse into Dr. Zhana’s personal life and how she navigates using or not using condoms with new partners.)

    About our Guest



    Dr. Shayna Sparling is a postdoctoral research fellow based at Ryerson University in Toronto and the National Team Manager for the Engage Study – a multi-site national study on the sexual health of gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men. She has a PhD in Applied Social Psychology, with a focus in Community Psychology and in Health Psychology. Her research focuses on sexual health decision making and condom negotiation and the factors that can affect these two processes, including sexual arousal, relationship motivation, interpersonal power, and partner familiarity.

    To read Dr. Sparling’s papers yourself, go here, here, here, and here. 

    Before Next Time…

    Remember to like The Science of Sex Podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

    Dr. Zhana and Episode #56 guest, Kenneth Play, recently put together the world’s largest and most comprehensive survey on squirting – head on to squirtingsurvey.com and take it! Anyone regardless of gender or squirting experience can take it!!

    Are you in Boston? Come see Dr. Zhana talk about building safe and healthy open relationships at the Good Vibrations store in Brookline on Wed, 3/27. More info and tickets here.

    Remember to submit comments, questions, and everything in between on our Get in Touch Page!

    Do you love The Science of Sex Podcast and all the work Dr. Zhana does? Support her by becoming a monthly Patreon Supporter!



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    • 1 hr 7 min
    #58 – Sex Work in America

    #58 – Sex Work in America

    Sex work is one of the most stigmatized and misunderstood aspects of human sexuality. There are many different types of sex work, including phone sex, camming, stripping, “happy ending” massages, professional domination, and porn, to name a few. But the greatest stigma is probably reserved for the “full service” type of sex work (i.e., penetration and all), like that done by the workers at the Nevada brothels. (There are many other ways of doing “full service” type of sex work, from street walkers to illegal brothels to independent or agency-run escorts, but the Nevada brothels are the only fully legal and transparent avenue for this work).

    So what does it look like to live and work in these brothels? Who are the people doing these jobs, why are they there, what kinds of services do they provide, how much do they like the job, how often do they have orgasms with their clients…?

    Our guest on episode #58, Christina Parreira, answers these questions (and more) from both personal and professional experience – she actually worked at a couple of these brothels so she could collect data for her doctoral thesis research on sex work!

    Don’t miss this fascinating interview!

    About our Guest

    Christina Parreira is a PhD candidate in the department of sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She obtained her Masters degree in clinical psychology in 2010 from University of Hartford. Parreira is currently conducting an ethnography of Nevada legal brothels; her areas of interest are emotional labor and stigma in sex work. Parreira also works at Trac-B needle exchange & harm reduction center in Las Vegas, doing STI testing, counseling, and outreach. In addition to studying the topic of sex work, Parreira is a 10 year veteran in the sex industry, currently doing phone & webcam work as well as BDSM in Las Vegas.

    You can read about more of Christina’s work here.

    Before Next Time…

    Remember to like The Science of Sex Podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

    Dr. Zhana and Episode #56 guest, Kenneth Play, recently put together the world’s largest and most comprehensive survey on squirting – head on to squirtingsurvey.com and take it! Anyone regardless of gender or squirting experience can take it!!

    If you live in Boston, Dr. Zhana is coming to you on Wed, March 27, to do a workshop at the Good Vibrations store in Brookline on the topic of navigating sexual health and difficult emotions in nonmonogamous relationships. More info and tickets here.

    Remember to submit comments, questions, and everything in between on our Get in Touch Page!

    Do you love The Science of Sex Podcast and all the work Dr. Zhana does? Support her by becoming a monthly Patreon Supporter!



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    • 1 hr 2 min
    #57 – Why People Make Out in Public

    #57 – Why People Make Out in Public

    I’m sure you’ve heard of straight women making out in public with other women in order to attract male attention? It’s a phenomenon called “performative making out” or making out for an audience, and in Episode #57, we invited one of the main researchers studying it, Dr. Kate Esterline, to tell us all about it.

    Are straight(ish) women the only ones who do it? How about gay women and men? How about straight(ish) guys? Why do you people do it? How is it different when people make out with someone of the gender that is congruent versus incongruent with their sexual orientation? Do people actually get what they were after with their makeouts? Listen on…

    About our Guest

    Dr. Kate Esterline earned her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of Kansas in 2018. She is now working as a post-doctoral therapist at Purdue University’s Counseling and Psychological Services. Her research has focused on gendered experiences of performing sexual behavior, such as making out, in front of others and on understanding how people conceptualize and experience outness about sexual orientation. The majority of her time currently is spent doing clinical work, but she continues to collaborate with colleagues at the University of Kansas.

    You can read up on Kate’s studies here and here.

     

    Before Next Time…

    Remember to like The Science of Sex Podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

    Dr. Zhana and Episode #56 guest, Kenneth Play, recently put together the world’s largest and most comprehensive survey on squirting – head on to squirtingsurvey.com and take it! Anyone regardless of gender or squirting experience can take it!!

    Are you in Boston March 27? Come see Dr. Zhana talk at the Good Vibrations store in Brookline on Playing It Safer: Navigating Sexual Health and Difficult Emotions in Open Relationships!

    Visit Adam & Eve and use promo code SCIENCE for 50% off just about any product. And if you order before 2/14, you get 10 FREE gifts (including FREE shipping)!

    Remember to submit comments, questions, and everything in between on our Get in Touch Page!

    Do you love The Science of Sex Podcast and all the work Dr. Zhana does? Support her by becoming a monthly Patreon Supporter!



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    • 49 min
    #56 – Squirting School

    #56 – Squirting School

    Every time Dr. Zhana teaches about almost any topic, someone asks a question about squirting, often referred to as female ejaculation. It seems like squirting is having a moment right now, with everyone and their mother wanting to know if all vagina-owners can squirt, what the ejaculate is made of, and how to make it happen.

    There is very limited science on this, which Dr. Zhana recently sifted through extensively while working on the online squirting course that her business partner, Kenneth Play, launched recently to teach people how to squirt. So in this episode, Dr. Zhana and Joe do something a little different. Instead of an academic researcher, we invite someone with an impressive amount of hands-on “research” when it comes to making vagina-owners squirt – Kenneth Play.

    Just how many vaginas has Kenneth had an opportunity to try and make them squirt? What’s his success rate? What’s the most reliable technique for making this happen?

    This and so much more in Episode 56 of the Science of Sex Podcast.

    Oh, and want to help us learn more about squirting? Dr. Zhana and Kenneth recently put together the world’s largest and most comprehensive survey on squirting – head on to squirtingsurvey.com and take it! Anyone regardless of gender or squirting experience can take it!!

    About our Guest



    Kenneth Play is an international sex hacking expert, sex educator and coach, and former celebrity fitness trainer. From a deeply sexually insecure Asian immigrant to becoming the most viewed sex hacking expert on PornHub and being named the World’s Greatest Sex Hacker by GQ, Kenneth develops and teaches sex hacks to help people learn new ways to play and overcome challenges in the bedroom. With his accelerated learning approach and playful style, he helps people gain sexual confidence, experience more pleasure, and cultivate deeper intimacy in record time. His teaching has been described as a mashup of Bruce Lee’s “knowing is not enough, we must apply” mantra, Martha Stewart’s step-by-step show-you-how, and Tim Ferriss’ personal experimenting-to-mastery.

    Meanwhile, he co-founded the globally-recognized sex-positive intentional community, Hacienda Villa; he teamed up with Dr. Zhana Vrangalova to work on The Casual Sex Project; and his projects have been featured in Vice, Thrillist, Elite Daily, Refinery 29, Time Out, The New York Times, Playboy, and Cosmopolitan. He has devoted his life to empowering people to experience incredible sex, and his mission is to make unapologetically explicit sex education mainstream.)

    Connect with Kenneth via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and his website. You can order his Kenneth’s Sex Hacker Bundle Course here.

    Before Next Time…

    Remember to like The Science of Sex Podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

    Visit Adam & Eve and use promo code SCIENCE for 50% off just about any product. And if you order before 2/14, you get 10 FREE gifts (including FREE shipping)!

    Remember to submit comments, questions, and everything in between on our Get in Touch Page!

    Do you love The Science of Sex Podcast and all the work Dr.

    • 1 hr 11 min
    #55 – Getting the T(estosterone)

    #55 – Getting the T(estosterone)

    Testosterone is having a moment these days. T-boosting has grown into a $2.5 billion industry, with guys of all ages trying to up their T levels in hopes of increasing everything from libido to mood to energy. But what does testosterone do how about our cognitive processes?

    Could testosterone increase how quickly and automatically we make decisions about sexual situations, and could that lack of deliberation have a dark side that contributes to sexual assault and harassment?

    These are some of the questions that our guest, Dr. Gideon Nave from the U Penn Business School, attempted to answer for us in episode #55, based on several of his studies on how testosterone affects men’s reasoning and decision making processes in areas relevant to the last of the 5 Fs of basic, instinctive behaviors: fight, flight, freeze, feed, and, um, fornicate 😉

    At the end of the episode we also briefly touch on yet another neurotransmitter that has received a lot of media attention over the past decade: oxytocin. Hailed as the “love hormone,” the “cuddle hormone,” or “liquid trust,” oxytocin is supposed to increase intimacy and trust, not just between romantic or sexual partners, but also among complete strangers. This story about oxytocin sounds awesome and we’d all love to believe in it, but does it stand up to scientific scrutiny? Dr. Nave’s recent review of the research suggests we should be a bit more skeptical.

    If you’d like to read the studies discussed in this episode, here they are: on T and cognitive reflection, on T and status goods, and on oxytocin & trust.

    About our Guest



    Gideon Nave is a marketing assistant professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He got his PhD in Computation and Neural Systems at Caltech, how the mind works. His research uses a medley of quantitative and experimental methods from the fields of Computational Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, Game Theory and Machine Learning for reverse-engineering the decision-making process in humans.

    You can visit his website here.

    You’ve Had the Same Number of “Romantic Partners” as Your Mom

    A 2018 study out of Ohio State University looked at more than 7,000 mothers and their children, and they found an unexpected connection:  The number of, quote, “romantic partners” you’ve had is probably right around the same number your mom had.  And that’s true even if you never witnessed her in most of those relationships.

    The researchers say it’s probably because our mothers pass on relationship skills to us, which influences how we interact with everyone . . . including people in our dating life.

    It could be genes, too, but then you’d expect dad’s romantic history to matter as well. Yet, oddly enough, the researchers found no connection between a father’s number of romantic partners and his kids’ number.

    You can read more about the study here.

    Monogamy: Is It for Everyone?

    Are you in NYC on Tuesday, Feb 12? Interested in learning more about the pros and cons of monogamy vs nonmonogamy, and which one might be right for you? Come grab some drinks and see Dr. Zhana discuss this (and more) for her first live Think & Drink NYC event of the year, at Bar Subject on the Lower East Side. More info and tickets here.

    Before Next Time…

    • 53 min
    #54 – Cocktails Vs. Consent

    #54 – Cocktails Vs. Consent

    Happy belated New Year! Given that the holiday season is a time when a lot of people consume significant amounts of alcohol AND get frisky while under its influence, we thought we’d kick off 2019 with an episode that ties drinking and sexual consent.

    Specifically, how does being intoxicated impact people’s perceptions of their own and their friends’ ability to consent to sex?

    In her unusual “naturalistic bar study” (more on that in the podcast), Dr. Michelle Drouin from Purdue University enlisted drunken bar goers and their friends to take a half-hour break from drinking so they can blow into breathalyzers and answer questions about sexual consent!

    Her findings and our conversation on just how much alcohol impedes people’s ability to consent, and how our society should deal with this issue is absolutely FASCINATING! Don’t miss it!

    About our Guest



    Dr. Michelle Drouin is a professor at Purdue University with a PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Oxford. She is an internationally-recognized speaker on sexuality, technology, and relationships, including online relationships, social media, and sexting.

    Dr. Drouin’s research on sexuality, social media, and mobile phone addiction has attracted international attention, and she regularly does interviews for television, radio, newspapers, and magazines. Her TEDx talk on “Online Love and Infidelity” has more than 150,000 views. Dr. Drouin also serves as an expert witness for sexuality, social media, and online relationship cases.

    You can follow Dr. Michelle Drouin on Twitter, here.

    You can read the full study discussed in the episode, here.

    Monogamy – Is It for Everyone?

    That’s the question Dr. Zhana will discuss in her first live event of 2019. Don’t miss it: February 12, 7:30pm, Bar Subject (188 Suffolk street). More info and tickets here.

    Before Next Time…

    Please consider supporting The Science of Sex Podcast and all the work Dr. Zhana does by becoming a monthly Patreon Supporter!

    Like The Science of Sex Podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

    Remember to submit comments, questions, and everything in between on our Get in Touch Page!



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    • 1 hr 12 min

Customer Reviews

4.7 out of 5
144 Ratings

144 Ratings

Luzzybintfall ,

Wow

Every episode teaches me something new about myself or what I can do to my lover. And I thought I was experienced! Nope.

gymnasticsgirl1096 ,

Love it!

I am a graduate student and I’m listening to this podcast from the beginning. It’s so informative, and being an academic myself, I love when Dr. Zhana corrects Joe’s misconceptions about what certain statistics mean and has things explained in layman’s terms.

doug_gxr ,

interesting topics with guests having solid qualifications

the male sidekick—the producer perhaps, not a sex researcher—is deeply annoying. His loud shrill voice is bad enough, worse though he has almost nothing of value to say

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