I promised you that this episode would be about periods and the menstrual cycle, but something urgent came up that I had to make an episode about. The Amy and Johnny storyline in Love is Blind season 6 where they decide not to have sex because Amy is not on birth control.

What the heck is the Coolidge Effect? Sex research nerds will be familiar with this term, but others might not. It is a specific sexual phenomenon named after an urban legend about U.S. President Calvin Coolidge. Sound odd? It is! And the researcher who named it that did it as a hoax.

Humans brains like to put things into neat mental boxes, but the world is not neat and doesn't fit easily into categories. Most people don't know that biological sex can be something other than male or female, but there are millions of people who are intersex. It's shocking that there is not more awareness about intersex, and in this episode, I aim to increase that awareness.

This episode of Do We Know Things? examines the things we are often taught about the biology of sex differences. It is definitely a science-nerd episode, but it focuses on biases in research that affect half the population! In particular, I wanted to address the oft repeated lore that ‘female is the default sex.’ I am joined by brilliant biologist and gender studies professor, Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling, one of my research heros!