In October 2016, a group gathered in San Francisco for the TEDWomen 2016 conference, this year themed around the idea of time. One talk was given by Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger, who took the stage to share a story that took place in 1996, when Stranger raped Elva, then his girlfriend. The talk had […]
Alice Miller was born in a body that didn’t feel like hers. Every day, Yee Won Chong has to debate whether to use the men’s restroom or the women’s. Geena Rocero found success as a fashion model — but kept her birth gender a secret for nearly a decade, fearing what others would think. All […]
It is Dead Duck Day 2015 — the 20th anniversary of the day in 1995 when a mallard duck flew into a glass window outside the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, fell to the ground dead, and then became part of the first scientifically observed instance of homosexual necrophilia in mallard ducks. Now, each June 5, curator Kees Moeliker […]
There’s wild sex. And then there’s sex in the wild — a topic that biologist and animal sex expert Carin Bondar has been talking about for years, spawning not only a book, The Nature of Human Nature, but also a popular web series, “Wild Sex,” all about the evolution of sexual behavior. In her funny and […]
The standard narrative of human sexual evolution says: men provide women with goods and services in exchange for women’s sexual fidelity. But is that really true or relevant today? Christopher Ryan, the co-author of Sex at Dawn with Cacilda Jethá, takes a deeper look and has quite a few bones to pick with this idea. Ryan […]
“The political and the sexual are intimate bedfellows,” says Shereen El Feki in yesterday’s talk. “That is true for all of us, no matter where we live and love.” For five years, El Feki talked to people across Middle East about their bedroom behavior, and what she found over and over was a seemingly deep-rooted […]
Today’s talk, which posits a fascinating metaphor for sex beyond baseball, comes from a passionate and dedicated sexuality educator. Al Vernacchio teaches his students that it’s not just getting the facts right that counts, but understanding the nuances of human sexuality and its place in society. Inspired by the teaching philosophy that Vernacchio brings to […]
TEDGlobal Fellow, and author of Sex and the Citadel, Shereen El Feki comes on stage to tell us about Faiza, a woman she met on a recent trip to Casablanca. Unmarried, and a new mother, Faiza proudly told El Feki her story as she showed off her young son. “It was a remarkable tale, but Faiza saved […]
When humans think about sex, we tend to categorise into male and female forms, says biologist and animal sex expert Carin Bondar. But for millions of years, it used to be a fusion of bodies, a “trickle of DNA shared between two or more beings,” she says. It wasn’t until about 500 million years ago […]
Journalist Mary Roach has investigated the nitty gritty of space travel, cadaver research and the afterlife. But at TED2009, she shared some of her most fascinating research yet … into the orgasm. In her talk “10 things you didn’t know about orgasm,” Roach digs deep into scientific research in sexuality — much of it recent, […]
Here, some staff picks of smart, funny, bizarre and cool stuff on the interwebs this week, with a light Valentine’s Day theme: Suleika Jaouad, who writes about being young with cancer, talks about the embarrassing but very real prospect of being a sexually active cancer patient. [The NYTimes Well Blog] For other unconventional responses to […]
Esther Perel begins today’s talk with an intriguing question: “Why does good sex so often fade even for couples who continue to love each other as much as ever?” It’s a question that’s highly appropriate to think about on Valentine’s Day. Perel, the author of the book Mating in Captivity, offers a compelling theory for […]
Some people go over-the-top for Valentine’s Day, showering their loved ones with candy and roses. Others bemoan Valentine’s Day as the ultimate Hallmark holiday. Wherever you stand on this spectrum — as Cupid pulls back his bow this week — it’s hard not to think about your own relationship or lack thereof. It’s a question […]
“The birds and the bees” and “the facts of life.” These are the terms adults have come up with when it comes to talking to kids about sex. At TED2012, writer John Bohannon showed dismay at the fact that adults don’t feel comfortable talking to kids about sex, or drugs for that matter, without resorting […]
The wonderful Cindy Gallop — whose TEDTalk “Make Love Not Porn” offers a frank look at our online-porn-obsessed culture and what we can do about it — today launches MakeLoveNotPorn.tv. What’s the new site for? Gallop writes: “… to make #realworldsex socially acceptable and socially shareable; to build a platform and tools for sexual social […]
ALERT: This talk contains graphic sexual language. At TED2009, audience member Cindy Gallop gave a 4-minute presentation that became one of the event’s most talked about. Speaking from her personal experience, she argued that hardcore pornography had distorted the way a generation of young men think about sex, and talked about how she was fighting […]