So This American Life host Ira Glass made an eighteen-minute video about how to make balloon animals, contributing to Rookie Magazine. While making the balloon animals, Glass offers advice for teen girls on topics as diverse as short haircuts, crushes, and, um...intimate subjects. Rookie Magazine writes (emphasis added): Ira Glass is the creator of the public-radio show This American Life, but he used to have a really cool job. As a tweenager he performed at kids’ birthday parties as the... READ ON

While sexually transmitted diseases are certainly a serious problem, the taboo topic has led to some amazing Public Safety Announcements, particularly the vintage venereal disease posters. Here are a few classic posters designed to help keep the men and women of America safe. Post World War I When the Allies won the war, the U.S. government had one last task for its troops: help fight VD back home. Presumably, the last thing they wanted soldiers to do was to come home and celebrate with a bunch of easy... READ ON

This is going to be one of the posts where I ask you to share your stories in the comments, like back when you all shared your nerdiest moments in life. The idea for the post came to me while I was reading Hector Berlioz’s biography not too long ago. When he was young, he learned that the woman with whom he had been romantically involved had married someone else while he was away, studying music in Rome. Enraged, he set out with a pistol and the intention of a double murder suicide. Now that’s crazy... READ ON

Alfred Kinsey, biologist, pioneering sex researcher and founder of the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University*, once wrote that "a marked quiescence of the total body is the most widely recognized outcome of orgasm," more noticeably among males. Why is... READ ON