Marnie Chesterton

Wow. Well, there is the astronaut training airplane where they go up and then free fall basically to simulate microgravity. And that is also known as the vomit comet. That says it all. Yeah, it kind of does say it all. I think I might stay on the couch in that case.

I think work on Antarctica. Yes, Richard, in conclusion, the moon being overhead does make you slightly lighter, but the effect is so small that it's negligible. Thank you to Claudia Duran for the answer. Do you have a question pulling on your curiosity? Do send it our way and we may have an answer on a future episode. You can email unexpected at bbc.co.uk.

Now each week I have the chance to join the dots from our theme to a story that grabs my fancy with the help of the extensive BBC audio archives. And since we've been talking in this episode about the price of condoms, I wanted to take us back to 2018 when inflation in Venezuela made a packet of condoms eye-wateringly expensive. Take a listen to this.

Yesterday I went to the shop and I found around seven boxes and the cost was more than one million and our minimum wage is three million. That was Mariana Zuniga, a journalist in Venezuela, calculating that a box of condoms was back in 2018 during that inflation going to cost a couple of weeks salary.

The condom has a long and fascinating history. My favorite character from its history is Dr. Fallopia, who gave his name to fallopian tubes, who also invented a prophylactic, but missed a crucial stage, so his condom was linen soaked in wine and herbs.

and it was applied to the penis after sex. And you can spot what he's done wrong there. The BBC does not recommend this as a way of preventing either pregnancies or STIs. But the current design hasn't changed much in a hundred years, which led Bill and Melinda Gates and their Gates Foundation to announce a grand challenge in 2013, to design a better condom.

Here's Melinda Gates on the BBC's Heart and Soul on why contraceptives of all sorts are key to her philanthropy strategy.

So, that was the challenge 2013. Make a condom that makes more people want to wear it. Back in 2015, the shortlisted science initiatives all received £100,000, and some of them are now in designs that you can buy today, like Manchester University's graphene department, who made a stronger, thinner condom.

And I remember speaking to a group in Cambridge who'd won a grant with this amazing sounding one size fits all condom that shrinks to better fit the user. But a couple of years on from that grant, the team had actually decided that what they found more interesting was not rejigging the design. It was looking at all of the behavioral patterns that were responsible for populations in particularly sub-Saharan Africa not wanting to wear a condom at all.

Leoni, kuten minun lukemiini, sanoivat, että oli isoja syyksiä, henkilökohtaisuutta ja myös suomalaisia myyttiä, jotka pysyivät ympäristöön käyttämään kondomia, joita minusta on haastavaa. Joten ei katsota tekniikkaa, vaan katsotaan tekniikan käytäntöä ja missä ne ovat. Onko jotain tietoja, joita voit lisätä?

You know, nothing that is specific to the region. What I have picked up is that a lot of the resistance to birth control, it's often quite universal. Men are concerned about lost pleasure. I have heard some myths about possibly leading to infertility. I don't know if that's just something guys make up so they don't have to use a condom. Many years ago I did a

Research program with an NGO that works in this area. And one of the stories that came up often was the fact that women lack bargaining power and negotiating power within the relationships around contraception in general. So I encountered women who would go off to the family planning clinic and get either the injection, because that would be something they could do in a hidden way,

Tai jos heillä oli tabletteja, he ottaisivat niitä kotiin ja kysyivät ystävää tai kaveria, jotta partneri ei näe, että hän ottaa niitä kotiin. Joten kyllä, minusta on paljon voimakkaampaa kontrolloida tämän aspektin ihmisten elämästä.

It's really interesting. We seem to have come full circle from the male contraceptive pill where the advantage is in a method where you can see that it has been taken to the female contraceptive pill where there's an advantage in hiding that you're taking it. Yeah, interesting.

So that's us almost out of time. What have we learnt from the price rise in prophylactics? Well, the first thing I learnt was that a product I've always thought of as made of latex was deeply dependent on oil derivatives, so affected by the Iran war.

But over the course of the show, we've learned why koalas and elephants also need contraceptives, whatever happens to the male pill for humans, and why eels have been encouraged to breed in captivity for the first time by Chinese scientists. Sandy, have you got a favourite fact that you've picked up over the course of the show? I think my favourite fact from today was learning that there's a COVID-like test for sperm levels.

Leoni? Olin yllättynyt kuulemaan, kuinka teknisesti vaikeaa on luoda henkilökohtaisuutta. Olin aina ajatellut, että syy, miksi emme etsineet enemmän, on se, että se oli vain henkilöpolitiikkaa, ja että henkilöt olivat seurattaneet sen, ja se oli yllättynyt tutkimuksia henkilökohtaisuuden ja vahvistunut naisen huolta. Tämä on saanut minulle muuttaa näkökulmani.

I really ought to thank my princesses of prophylactics who've joined me on the panel today. Esteemed journalist Sandy Ong in Singapore, thank you. Thank you Marnie, thank you for bestowing that honour upon me. And Leonie Joubert in South Africa, thank you. It's been a delight. Do we get crowns and hamburgers for all of you? Crowns for everyone.

I'm Marni Chesterton. The producer was Ella Hubber with Alice Lipscomb-Southwell, Robby Wojtahowski and Georgia Christie. Studio production was by Yasmin Karvaji. Do join us again next week for more Unexpected Elements.

Etuhintainen gynekologi käynti alle 27-vuotiaille nuorille naisille nyt vain 99 euroa. Terveystalossa olet gynekologin hyvissä käsissä.