I like to think of Mary Roach as Queen of All Things Awkward. Her publications include Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, in which she addressed practicing cosmetic surgery on cadavers, crucifixion experiments and human head transplant. She also wrote the book Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, whose chapters included “Big Gulp: How to survive being swallowed alive” and “Stuffed: The science of eating yourself to death.” Clearly, Roach is not one to shy away from those deliciously embarrassing topics that cause many people to abruptly dissolve a conversation into uncomfortable silence.
Her TED Talk, “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Orgasm,” fits happily into that same genre of awkwardness. Based on her 2008 book, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, the talk covers everything you didn’t know you wanted to learn (but would definitely have been too embarrassed to ask) about orgasm. This video is kinda NSFW…
Yeah, that was super awkward, but now you’ve got a bunch of fabulous tidbits for your day-to-day awkward-ification! Plus, what lady doesn’t want to know more about her own sexuality?So when you sit down to dinner tonight, why not pull up the video of pig farmers in Denmark? Sounds like the start of a beautiful conversation.
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