Wendy Zuckerman

My pleasure.

I have heard you say that in high school you thought science was a drag.

Yes.

What changed for you?

When did you start to kind of fall in love with science?

So then what made you want to write a book about sex?

Or really, this is the science of sex.

What made it, I mean, it's a delightful and awkward and fabulous scene.

What made it Mary Roach?

Yeah, for sure.

And particularly all these very important areas, but that we just don't probe or talk about that much, all the more the dark side of the moon or whatnot.

Now, there's this wonderful quote that comes from your book.

It's from the psychologist John B. Watson, writing in the early 20th century.

And basically, he was a bit miffed at science's reluctance to study human sexuality, which I would say still exists today.

And he says that we should have our questions answered not by our mothers and grandmothers, not by priests and clergymen in the interests of middle class moors, nor by general practitioners, not even by Freudians.

We want them answered by scientifically trained students of sex.

And I love this.

It's true and it's even more true today.

We don't have so many Freudians, but we have influences in our own version of this.

Why did you sort of open with this?