The Skeptical Pervert – Details, episodes & analysis

We’re back, after an extended absence. In November of 2022, Franklin’s mom was diagnosed with cancer, so he spant the next year flying back and forth between Portland and Florida to help his dad care for her. Toward the end of her life, she required round-the-clock care, so this podcast ended up being put on hold. She died last December.

We have several episodes nearly ready to go, so we're trying to get back on track. In this episode, part 2 of our two-part series on pervertibles, we talk some more about repurposing normal, everyday items for sex.

As usual, you can find a transcript for this episode at skepticalpervert.com

In part 1 of another 2-parter, we explore the wide whacky world of pervertibles!

What are pervertibles? They’re anything with an ordinary, innocuous purpose that can be pressed into service as sex toys. Wooden spoons? Great for paddling! Chip clips? They reseal plastic bags to keep your potato chips (crisps for you Brits) fresh, but also make excellent nipple clamps!

Humans are ingenious. Given enough time and creativity, there’s little that can’t be used as a sex toy.

In this episode, we bring you the first part of a two-part interview with sex educator and sex-positive activist Ms. Ashley, as we talk about the value of evidence-based, scientifically accurate sexual education.

Ms. Ashley is a sex educator who teaches an adaptation of the Our Whole Lives curriculum. In part 1 of our interview, we discuss the various types of sex education, what the evidence shows about the effects of fact-based sex ed, and how continuing sex education can help not just students but everyone.

You can find Ms. Ashley on Facebook here, here, and here, and on Instagram here.

In this episode, we look at the book Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski, and discuss the idea that libido isn't a simple drive toward sex, but rather a combination of "accelerators" and "brakes" that either drive us toward sexual engagement or inhibit sexual desire.

We also take the accelerators and brakes test, talk about how the idea is interesting but the book has weaknesses in its exploration of accelerators and brakes, and discuss our own complicated sex drives.

In this episode, part of our mini-series of sex during a global plague, we take a skeptical look at a paper published in the journal Leisure Sciences called “Less Sex, but More Sexual Diversity: Changes in Sexual Behavior during the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic.”

Along the way, we talk about the null hypothesis, the scientific method, and evaluating a research paper.

In part 2 of our Sex in a Pandemic miniseries, we take a look at...sex tech! How does it change sexual connections in an era of social distancing? What does it mean going forward?

So you may have noticed there's a global plague happening right now. In the first part of a series on sex in the time of a pandemic, we look at how the age of COVID can affect people's sex lives.

Aphrodisiacs! What are they? Are they real? Is there, in fact, something you can take to make you horny? In this episode, we explore aphrodisiacs, the mythology around them, the scientific evidence (spoiler: every food or supplement that's been tested in double-blind studies has failed), and the new class of melanocortin-agonist aphrodisiac drugs.

Good day, and welcome to our show, eh? In this episode, we introduce the Skeptical Pervert podcast. Who are we, and what is this all about? What do we mean when we say we take a rational approach to human sexuality?

In this episode, meet your hosts Franklin, Joreth, and Eunice, and find out a little bit about what we're trying to do!

It's been a while, but we're back, with a new episode about asexuality!

Well, a sort of new episode. This episode was up briefly, but the audio was garbled, so we've fixed the problem and it's back.

Anyway, in this episode, we talk about the many flavors of asexuality. We chat with Kitty about the broad range of attitudes, drives, and behaviors that fall under the asexuality spectrum, which, when you get down into the weeds, is really more a three-dimensional graph than anything else. Turns out asexuality is complicated; who knew?