Shownotes Transcript
You're listening to the Savage Love Cast, Dan Savage's sex and relationship show for grown-ups. If you're under 18, get out of here, youngin'. If you're stuck in a relationship quandary, or if you're looking for sexual... Well, there's nothing you can't have on the Savage Love Cast.
A new sport came to Los Angeles on Friday, reports KTLA, LA's very own news station. An event that got kicked off with a literal bang, says the Daily Mail. Outsports reports that the event, the first of its kind, came off well. And the teenage crypto kid who came up with this nutty new sport plans to keep it coming. We are talking about, we are punning about, because it comes to a story like this, puns are mandatory. We are talking and punning about something
Sperm races. At the first ever sperm races, which took place in an arena in Los Angeles last Friday, tickets ranged in price from $20 to $2,500 for the VIP area. At the first ever sperm races, the sperm cells of two trash-talking college students, 19-year-old Ashton Proger from the University of California, Los Angeles, and 20-year-old Tristan Milker from the University of Southern California, took place.
were collected backstage and then put under the microscope where they ran around a teeny tiny microscopic obstacle course that recreated the twists and turns sperm cells might encounter on their race to the egg in the female reproductive system.
And the winner of the $10,000 cash prize, Tristan Milker from the University of Southern California. Milker. I don't know if that's his real last name and I am not going to fact check it because I don't want to find out it isn't. Milker claims to be a social media content creator. So why does he have to go to college? Do you have to go to college for that? Also hopes to become a pro, a pro sperm racer.
So sperm racing, how does it work? Milker offered this explainer on his Instagram account. - Answering the most asked questions I get as a professional sperm racer. How does any of this work? That's a good question. First things first, we get the sample. You know how we get that.
That's how you do it. We're going to take that sample and we need to separate the sperm count from the motile sperm, which means the sperm that's actually going to race. The motile sperm are the microfilps of the sperm academy. These ones are the ones that are formed right. They have the correct head shape and tail to actually be able to get to the finish line.
So to separate those two, we're gonna spin those around for about 20 minutes in this cool little machine. And it separates them and it also separates a bunch of other bacteria and other that. And we'll only take the motile sperm and we'll take those and put those on the microscopic racetrack. Once it's on the racetrack, we have super high resolution cameras to be able to track
each individual sperm cell. From there, we use a computer vision software called YOLO, and that's able to put a bounding box on each individual sperm cell. So how does the sperm know where to go? Well, sperm's attracted by three things: hormones, heat, and opposite of the flow. And we use the latter. Think how a salmon swims in the river.
We're exploiting the sperm riotaxis to swim upstream towards an egg, aka the finish line. We then take those bounding boxes and put it on a visually appealing UI system, and there you go, it's on the Jumbo Chomp. That's kind of the spark notes of how the whole race works. All right, that sounds legit. I have a theater degree, I don't know, but a fertility specialist, a doctor who was watching online in Los Angeles, Dr. Stephen Paltor, said,
Took one look at the video of what were supposed to be Milker and Proger sperm cells racing around that track and jumped onto his popular Instagram account to call bullshit on the sperm races. I'm a board certified fertility specialist. I look at sperm all day under the microscope and these are not human sperm. This is CGI. This is computer generated.
Here's how I can tell. The sperm tail is supposed to be 90% of its length. These are way too short. This is also not how sperm swim. Sperm, the head jiggles as they swim. It is not stationary with the tail beating. This is real human sperm in my lab. Every aspect of this is not a human sperm. I don't know what these guys are doing. This sperm race, what's the real story, guys? Why are you doing this? Why are you putting out fake videos? Busted by a fertility specialist. Dr.
Dr. Poulter goes on to point out that the sperm cells on the video that was shown in that arena in Los Angeles look nothing like actual sperm cells. Dr. Poulter points out also that sperm don't race off in one direction. Milker is wrong. Sperm do not swim upstream like salmon.
sperm cells blast out in all directions all at once. And Dr. Poulter shared an actual video clip of actual sperm cells under the actual microscope in his actual fertility clinic.
You could say Dr. Poulter came with the he seats and sperm cells do appear to blast off in all directions all at once, which would explain why it always seems to hit every taste bud in your mouth at the exact same time. So the founder of the sperm races, 17 year old crypto kid who raised millions of dollars from venture capitalists to stage this event was
He jumped on Instagram to respond to Dr. Paltor. Eric Zhu admitted that the video shown to the audience in Los Angeles and around the world watching online was, yes, CGI-generated animation and not a live video stream of Milker and Proger's actual sperm cells swimming around a track.
According to Zhu, the athletes' fastest sperm cells were tracked under the microscope. Their individual times were fed into a supercomputer, and that computer generated the video that was shown to the audience in LA and around the world, an audience that was being encouraged to place bets on the outcomes of the sperm races.
Which the organizers of the event, Eric and his crew, knew about in advance as River Page reported in the Free Press and Austin Jeffs broke on Instagram
It wasn't just a CGI video. It was a CGI video recorded well in advance of the race. So the race wasn't live. And the organizers, including the directors and video production crew, they knew who the winners were. They knew who the winner was in advance. You can watch the full clip of Jeff's report on his Instagram account, linked in our show notes. And in that report, you can see Jeff confront Zoo and Zoo admit that the game...
Well, wasn't rigged, Zhu claims. Just they knew as they were encouraging other people to place their bets on the supposedly unknown outcome. Zhu assures Jeff that despite leading the audience to believe the race was live and despite his crew knowing who won the race, no one involved with the event placed any bets on the outcome whatsoever.
Yeah, and it's not like we live in a golden age of scamming scammers and no one in a position of authority would ever abuse their power, so we can rest assured that the 17-year-old sperm race entrepreneur and his venture capitalist pals didn't do anything shady or opaque or milky. Jeff admits to having been swept up in the hype like so many other journalists by the glitz and glamour and the men in lab coats and all the easy puns. Oh my God, the puns, the headlines.
But if you lost money betting on the first sperm races, yeah, turns out you may have been played for a sucker.
All right, coming up on today's show are poppers for ladies and someone has to be the least hot person at the threesome. And I say that as someone who's been the least hot person at more than one threesome, but a caller isn't sure she wants to be the least hot person at her first threesome. And as someone who gave you an STI and then ghosted you, does that someone deserve a second chance? We tackle all those questions on the Micro Savage Lovecast. And our guest this week is Vandana.
the amazing, the resilient, and surprisingly hilarious Amanda Knox. Some of my interview with Amanda is on the micro Savage Love cast. The whole thing is on the Magnum. If you want to hear the whole thing, including Amanda's sex advice for a couple of my listeners, you're gonna have to become a Magnum subscriber at savage.love. Amanda's here to talk with me about her new book, Free My Search for
for meaning. I had a great time talking with Amanda, really enjoyed having her on the show, really excited for all of you to get to listen to our conversation. All right, Nancy, hit me with the first question.
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This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com slash savage and get on your way to being your best self. Hi, Dan. I'm a 32-year-old single girl in the western part of the United States, and I'm moving to a new city for a summer internship.
And I decided before I make the move that I will be taking a summer lover this summer. And so I basically put out the application on field. And I met somebody really awesome who it's been like immediate,
really good like sexual energy and intellectual energy and honestly write exactly what I was looking for and linked to his profile he does have a play partner and so this person the guy lives in one city on the west I'll be going to another one that he comes into frequently to work and
This gal is over on the East Coast. So they don't see each other too much, but they do get together to play. And I went into it knowing this, and I think it's like a hot component. I've done a little bit of that before.
And she's incredibly attractive and he's incredibly attractive. And it's just seeming like a really good situation. And so there's the possibility that all three of us will meet up and maybe go to a club or just play together. And I'm so excited.
So this is a great situation, but this is what I'm dealing with now. I am having some hangups, I guess, just about how I am physically and basically just like body image issues. And this situation of these two people are so hot, like intimidatingly hot. But the guy I'm talking to has totally blown my mind with just like
how he expresses his interest and all these things. And so I don't know, I'm wondering just if you and your listeners have any advice for like pre-play relationship jitters. Like this girl is so gorgeous and quite a lot different from me. And I am excited that she's in the picture, but I guess I'm just getting hung up on things of like self-worth, you know, of like
well, if she's here, there's no way he can find me very attractive. Or if she's this way, there's no way he can feel the same, you know, intensity for both of us. And yeah, does anybody have any advice? Because this is basically my dream situation and I'm trying to make it better for myself to enjoy. Every threesome, every threesome becomes at a certain point,
briefly, a twosome. Ideally, rolling twosomes, where there are three people together, they're playing, two people catch a groove, catch a vibe, they're fucking, and then the other person gets brought in, and then they become part of the little twosome that breaks out of the threesome. Almost all threesomes. A twosome happens. Usually more than one twosome, potentially three different combinations, three twosomes happen. And my concern for you going into this three-way is
is that even if you can, you know, even though I do the sex positive thing and I encourage you to take yes for an answer and you're obviously more attractive than your anxieties and body image issues are letting you perceive because this hot guy is into you and that hot woman is into you and they're into getting together with you together. And so take that yes for an answer. But my concern is sometimes we'd rather be right than fucked. Sometimes we would rather have our
anxieties confirmed for us and we will scan the room for evidence that what we thought might be true is true. And that evidence is going to, or something is going to happen during that threesome that you could interpret as evidence that yeah, he's more into her than you. And you know what that thing is, it's likely to happen is the breaking into the twosome. There will be project yourself into this moment. There will be a time during that threesome where
when the two of them are vibing and part of what they're vibing on is you're in the room with them and they're having the sexual adventure and you're a part of it. But there will be a moment when it becomes the two of them, when he is fucking the shit out of her or she is pegging the shit out of him, where there's something happening that really is just the two of them and you're on the periphery
What's going to happen at that moment? Are you going to be like, I'm happy to be here. This is so awesome. Even if there's a little devil on my shoulder telling me I'm the least attractive person at this threesome, these two hot people want me here. That means I'm attractive to hot people, which must mean I'm a hot person. Or are you going to tell yourself, I guess that was kind of half devil, half angel. Or are you going to tell yourself, yep, what I worried about is true. He's more into her than he's into me. And you're going to have at that moment,
the kind of all too common three-way derailing meltdown that people sometimes have when they don't game out in advance the likelihood that every threesome becomes a twosome every once in a while and sometimes when we're at the threesome and everybody wants us at the threesome we're not in the twosome briefly for a moment that breaks out will you go to pieces will your desire to be vindicated outweigh your desire to be desired or your thrill at
Just getting to watch these two people, these two hot people fuck each other. Look, just objectively by standard conventions of beauty, there's always someone who's the least attractive person at the threesome. It's never a three-way tie. And I don't know. There have been times I've been one of the top two most attractive persons at a threesome. There have been times when I've been just objectively attractive.
at a threesome and looked at the other two guys and been like, I am the least hot guy at this threesome. But there's a part of my brain that's like, and isn't that great? Like these hot people want to fuck in front of me and want to fuck with me. That's awesome. Like I like hot people. I like to get with hot people. And that's a yes for an answer I am prepared to take. And when a twosome breaks out in front of me and during a threesome where I'm not the hottest person or I am the hottest person and still that twosome breaks out in front of me,
I'm just psyched to be a part of it. I'm psyched to be there for the show. I enjoy that too. If you couldn't enjoy that, again, if you're conscious or subconscious, if your ego is going to latch onto that and you're going to be upset, don't have threesomes. Not just with these two, just don't have threesomes with anybody because you're not in the right place. Or don't have threesomes with people that you assess to be more conventionally attractive than you are.
If you want to have a threesome, if you want that experience, find some people that are by your standards of beauty, not as hot as you are, and be the hottest person at the threesome. And hopefully they'll be secure enough to be psyched to be the less hot people at the threesome with you. But I don't think you're in a good place to be in your own eyes. I haven't seen pictures of any. This could just be like...
shitty self-critical thinking. This could not be the case at all, but don't have a threesome with people that you think are hotter than you because it's not going to go well when the twosome that doesn't involve you inevitably breaks out.
Hi, Dan. I am a 49-year-old woman from San Francisco. And in October, after being single for about a year, I met a man about my age. He had told me that he wanted a relationship or a situationship with me, a very casual one. I was never really clear about what casual meant to him. Early on, he would come over about three to four days a week. And he would
And we would hang out and have sex. And it was really, really wonderful. I was being monogamous with him and I was okay with him potentially having other partners. I had just asked him that if he was...
Having new partners that he didn't have to tell me that in so many words, but we would just have to start using protection because we weren't because I had thought we were being monogamous with each other at that time. And I knew that could potentially change. It started coming by less and less. And then...
I had beginning signs of some STI. So I went to the doctor and in fact, I contracted an STI. When I had mentioned it to him, he said that he was coming over less and less because he felt really bad about his behavior towards me. And he really...
wanted to maintain a friendship with me because he really valued our friendship. My question is, is that after talking about it and he understands my perspective and I know where he was coming from, he's been holding himself accountable for what had happened.
My question is, is it worth maintaining a friendship with this person? And by him telling me that he values my friendship, is that a clear indication that he is not any longer sexually attracted to me and that I shouldn't ask him if we can have sex again? I'm really attracted to him. I really do love
Have a really wonderful time when we are together. And I know he is currently seeing someone else pretty regularly. So I don't want to get in the way of that either. And I also like don't want to be rejected again. So have I been friend zoned? All right. There's three things that he said here that we're going to pick apart. He said he wanted to keep it casual, but he was over at your place.
three, four days and nights a week over in you, three, four nights a week. That doesn't seem casual to me. That seems like a kind of non-casual amount of,
romantic and sexual contact. So you don't think he was being straight with you when he said he wanted to keep it casual. You told him because you weren't using condoms that if he started having sex with other people, which he was allowed to do, that he didn't need to tell you, didn't need your permission, didn't need to share the details, but because you weren't using protection with him, if he was having sex with other people, you wanted him to start using protection with you.
That might have put him in an awkward position where he felt that, you know, telling you there was somebody else might upset you and he didn't want to upset you. So he defaulted to still going bear with you to avoid an awkward conversation, probably with his fingers crossed, hoping nothing terrible would happen. But then the terrible thing happened. I mean,
terrible relative to other much more terrible things. You contracted a sexually transmitted infection from a non-exclusive sexual partner that you were having unprotected sex with. That is a risk that everybody with casual sex partners that they have unprotected sex with are running. You tried to control for that risk by telling this guy, you start fucking somebody else, just start using condoms with me. That's all I ask. Not asking you not to fuck anybody else.
And he prioritized, well, probably his own dick and his own pleasure, but also prioritized dodging an awkward and uncomfortable conversation in a cowardly way that put your health at risk. So when he said, I'll start using con was with you per your request. If I start fucking other people, that wasn't true either. You couldn't take that to the bank either. And now he says, I value your friendship. What does he mean by that? Does he mean he likes you as a friend? Maybe I value your friendship more.
is like, I'm a little too busy right now, or I'm not in the right place emotionally, or I just got out of a long-term relationship. It is often the thing that somebody says to be kind to someone that they're disengaging from romantically and sexually. The only way you're going to find out whether he meant that is
When he didn't mean, I want to keep things casual. When he didn't mean, I'll use condoms with you again if there's somebody else. The only way you're going to find out if third time's the charm and he actually meant that he wants to be your friend is that he keeps showing up for you as a friend. But is he going to show up for you as a friend with benefits?
You feel his remorse is sincere. I haven't had those conversations with him. I'm not in a position to assess that. You need to interrogate your motives in that moment and whether you're being a little delulu, as the kids say, whether you're engaged in thoughtful thinking because the dick is so good and he's playing you, which is a possibility considering he's played you a couple of times already and it wouldn't be safe for you to continue to have sex with him. But right now you don't even know if he wants to continue having sex with
him or he wants to continue having sex with you or he's doing the fade out here and saying hey I really value you as a friend which means not you know the not as a lover anymore is silent when somebody says that usually we have to fill that in and it sounds like you're afraid to ask the dread direct question because the answer might be no you're afraid to ask him whether he wants to keep having sex with you now with condoms whether he wants to keep having sex with you and
For fear of that, no. What are you going to do? What are you going to do to yourself? You're going to float around in limbo wondering for however long whether the rejection you fear came, actually came, whether it is over. Seems to me that, you know, just like he kind of wanted to avoid that awkward conversation around using condoms, you're wanting to avoid an awkward conversation now too because you might not like
what you're going to hear, which is highly likely like, no, no, I don't want to keep seeing you in that way, but I do want to keep being your friend. And then often when people say that you get text messages every once in a while for a little while, and then they go silent. I would ask the dread direct question. The longer you wait to ask the dread direct question, the longer, if this is a rejection, the rejection is going to play out. And the slow drip of that rejection of you having to gradually put the pieces together and,
is going to be more painful in the aggregate, more painful drawn out over time than just getting the no from him if it is a no because you asked the dread direct question, which in this case is you say you want to be friends, you say you value me as a friend, are we going to keep fucking? Are you still into the two of us being sexual? Because that's the kind of friend I would like you to be to me even after everything you put me through.
Yes or no? The yes or no question, I need a yes or no answer. That's what you need to risk saying to him. This episode is brought to you by Liberator, the best thing to happen to sex since the bed came along. Whether you want to have sex on the mattress or on the floor or some other surface, Liberator wedges and pillows make getting with and getting on and getting under and getting in your lover easier and more comfortable.
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Hey, Dan. I just finished listening to episode 963, and I enjoyed your discussion about poppers, but it led to a question. I've heard lots of women call you and ask for advice about, like...
Well, according to WebMD about his mainstream medical resource, as a result of his
As there is, straight people, straight women can, some do, use poppers. Quoting from WebMD, some people simply use them for the quick high, but it's more commonly used to stimulate arousal. Straight people do use them, though again, not as commonly as gay men. The drugs not only give you a brief high feeling, but can also relax the muscles in your anus, as we discussed with our guest on that show, Adam Smith.
and your vagina, which can make penetrative sex more comfortable and more pleasurable. So it would appear that I was remiss in not bringing women into the discussion of poppers, especially the women I've heard from recently that I'm thinking of with well-endowed, aka hung male partners, whose dicks they were having a hard time fully enjoying, not just anally, or not anally at all, but vaginally.
It's interesting, isn't it? Like poppers are so well embedded in gay male cultures that of course you think of poppers. And I've mentioned on the show that my first boyfriend basically trained me to have anal sex using poppers or he brought in poppers as an assist. We use them more as training wheels. That's why I say train me. My boyfriend then wasn't training me, but we used them as training wheels to get me over sex.
the hump and to a place where I was associating anal sex with positive sexual experiences, with pleasure and not discomfort or shame. And they worked. And then we pretty much stopped using them and I stopped using them. So I don't, my brain doesn't go there when I think of populations or communities where they're not already, um,
in wide use or as normalized as they are in gay male communities or men having sex with men communities. But apparently I should have and could have recommended poppers to women exploring anal thing is, uh, looking back at a couple of columns where I wrote to gay boys who were just beginning to explore anal and having some difficulties and challenges. I didn't recommend poppers to them because,
I think my generation of gay men, because of the strong association of poppers with the HIV AIDS crisis at the start, kind of got off poppers, stopped using poppers. They really roared back in a huge way in the last 10 or 15 years with younger gay men. And my feeling, even though I guess this makes me a terrible hypocrite, is if you can get to a place where you're enjoying anal penetration without...
using poppers, fingers crossed, as training wheels or I think problematically for some, using poppers in such a way where the association between the use of the poppers and the enjoyment of anal penetration is so strong that a person can't enjoy anal penetration without poppers. They can carve a really deep groove into somebody. Somebody can become, man or woman as we now know, really psychologically dependent on poppers in a way that
may not be sustainable or healthy, but yes, yes, caller, to answer your questions, we shouldn't just talk about poppers only for men when it comes to anal penetration, or as WebMD let me know just now, vaginal penetration, poppers are, if women can still get their hands on them, which is a question that gay men are facing all over the country as the FDA shuts down the popper supply, if you can get your hands on them,
Yeah, you might want to give them a shot. Got to say, though, I've been with some gay guys who basically can't have sex without poppers. And I think if that's your relationship with poppers, it's a drug. It's a recreational drug and it has a price. It has an impact. You can drink too much. You can smoke too much pot. You can use too many party drugs. And I think if every single time you have sex, you have to have poppers, you're
you may be hitting the poppers a little too hard. So enjoy responsibly. Use in moderation. All things in moderation, including moderation, which means go nuts every once in a while. But if you're going to bring poppers into your sex life, beware of poppers taking over your sex life, whether you're a man or a woman.
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That's F-O-R-I-A wellness.com slash savage for 20% off your first order. I recommend trying their new massage oil combined with their awaken arousal oil. You can and will thank me later. Again, early thirties, non-binary person calling in. I had a fling with someone that I was really into, uh,
About two years ago, they did not reciprocate those feelings. And I was really heartbroken by it. And
For the most part, I feel like I've really moved on. I've taken it in stride, but we're going to be at a birthday party, the same birthday party here coming up in a few weeks. I'm a little nervous about it. This will be the first time that I've seen this person since they rejected me basically. I'm a little nervous about that, but I'm also like now they're just popping back in my head a little bit more. Do you ever really get over somebody?
Or is it just kind of always like a little bit of weirdness in the back of your mind? Something about the unrequited nature of this one just really stung in a different and deeper way than I typically am used to. What can I do to get this person out of my head?
Joining me to help tackle this question, Amanda Knox, an exoneree journalist, public speaker, bestselling author who spent four years in an Italian prison and eight years on trial for a murder she did not commit. Amanda, welcome to the Savage Lovecast.
I'm so excited to be here. I'm such a huge fan. Oh, well, thank you. I just finished reading your new book, Free My Search for Meaning, and I was tremendously moved by it. Huge fan right back at you. Just so people understand what we're doing here, I sometimes like to invite people onto the show who are only ever allowed to talk about one thing, like when we had Stormy Daniels on so she could talk about something else.
To give that person, a person like you, a chance to talk about other people's sex problems, that's a pretty good something else for someone who's only allowed to ever talk about one thing like you.
Yes, yes. And I should probably mention what that one thing is. Yeah. Right? I was going to ask you if it's not too insulting to give us the elevator pitch, the Amanda Knox elevator pitch for the Amanda Knox story, if you can imagine a circumstance under which you would be giving that pitch. For anybody out there who's been living under a rock for nearly 20 years now...
Yeah. Who are you? What the hell happened to you? And how did you survive it? Right. Okay. So in a nutshell, when I was 20 years old, I'm, you know, Pacific Northwest Seattle girl. So I grew up, you know, reading your column in The Stranger, like on my way home from high school on the bus. So that's how deep of a fandom we have going on here. But yeah, so 20 years old, I go abroad to study in Perugia, Italy. I'm there for a few weeks before one of my roommates,
is raped and murdered in her own bedroom. Someone broke into our house and raped and murdered her when she was the only one home. But before that is realized by the detectives, the detectives assume that I had something to do with it, and so they...
Put me through 53 hours of interrogation. They have me make self-implicating statements. They throw me in prison and they put me on trial. And I was eventually convicted of my roommate's murder, despite the fact that I had absolutely nothing to do with it. And I spent four years in prison before I was acquitted.
of the charges in an appeals trial. But then I went and spent another four years on trial because in the Italian justice system, you can appeal acquittals. And so the prosecution appealed the acquittal. My acquittal was overturned. I was retried. I was reconvicted and eventually definitively exonerated by the highest court in Italy. And so it was a very big case in the media, especially locally, but honestly, just internationally, it was really,
a well-known case, and I became one of the most vilified women on the planet there for a good second as a 20-year-old. So I write about that in my new book, but it's less the story of this crazy woman
which I already wrote about in my first memoir, Waiting to be Heard. The second memoir, Free, My Search for Meaning, is about how do you come out of a really overwhelming and life-defining traumatic situation like that and have a life and rediscover freedom and your place in the world and your role in the world. And I feel like
I talk about a lot of my misadventures along the way, which is why I'm super excited to give advice to people when they're in the midst of their own misadventures. Because, yeah, like, I mean, one of the stories that I write about in the book is how I started hooking up with this guy that I thought was wrongly convicted. And then it turned out that he was actually a criminal and I had to escape him and
and he broke into my home. Like, it was horrifying. So of all the people who should be giving love advice, maybe it's not me, but or one can say I have learned from experience. Well, you know, the only, I get this all the time, people saying to me, well, what qualifies you to give advice? And if you look up advice in the dictionary, it's,
It defines the word as an opinion about what could or should be done, which means anybody and everybody is qualified to give advice. Fair enough. If somebody asks you for it, this person asked me for it, I'm kicking the question to you. So you are qualified to give advice to this person. Excellent.
Well, first of all, I want to really empathize with this person because I love how they're just being really honest with themselves about how awkward they're going to feel. And I think that that's so human because in a way that that rejection, that rejection stung them to the pit of their identity. And now they're they're empathizing.
approaching a social interaction where they have to be confronted with the rejection of themselves. And I don't know. I mean, I I'm really drawn to that kind of awkwardness. And I feel like the person should just own it. Like if it were me, if it were me in this situation, I would walk into that room and
hopefully with a friend, not just alone. Like, you know, like you're there with friends. You're not just rejected by the world and like infiltrating someone else's party. But I would like go up to them and be like, oh, my God, I'm like so nervous to be around you right now. Is that ridiculous? And just sort of like confront it. I'm always like a confront the thing that scares you and just kind of like put it out there and be like, you know, I'm sorry if this is so awkward, but I just feel so awkward. And like, can we just be awkward together? Yeah.
I've said forever that nothing makes something that's awkward feel less awkward than just saying out loud, this is awkward. I feel awkward. Yeah. And like 80% of the awkwardness immediately disappears because often what makes something awkward 10 times more awkward is everyone pretending it doesn't feel awkward. That it's not. Exactly. It's a weird elephant in the room then. So just treat your awkwardness like a guest at the party and introduce it to everyone is basically my... But then also... But then also...
Also, buy it a drink and then leave it alone. All right. Sorry to be a tease, but you know you like it. And hey, if you don't like it, if you don't want to be teased, if you want to hear my entire conversation with the amazing Amanda Knox and hear all of Amanda's advice for this caller and another caller,
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Hi, Dan. I appreciated your conversation with Dr. Jen Gunter. And I had a question that came up out of that. I've heard you say before that you and Terry had gotten yourselves the abortion pills just to have on hand in case anybody you know needed them. And I did the same thing after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
I got myself the M&Ms, as you refer to them. And I don't need them myself. I'm not fertile anymore, but I have adult children and I let them know and I let their friends know that I would make them available to anybody who needs them, no questions asked and free of charge.
and nobody has needed them, which is great. I'm not complaining about that. But I feel like it's a little bit wasteful to just let them sit on my shelf and not be used. And also, eventually they're going to expire. And I'm wondering if anybody happens to know of a way to make them more widely available. Is there a network or something where I could just give them to somebody? I think the best place for those medications is where they are right now. You see them sitting on the shelf,
No one in your informal network has had cause to need them. And that's good. That's great. Hopefully everybody is using birth control and outer course and managing their fertility and their risks in such a way, whereas they don't need an abortion, medication, abortion or otherwise. But the best place for those meds to sit is right where you've got them. You haven't failed or they haven't failed because you haven't had to share them with anybody yet. And if you,
There were some informal online network where you could get them to somebody who needed them, somebody who could just as easily get them from one of the existing abortion medication providers online. But if there was some informal network, I wouldn't advise you to trust it.
We live in a world where Texas is fining and threatening to prosecute and imprison doctors in other states who have prescribed abortion medications. The possibility of a malicious actor or some anti-choice asshole worming their way into some
Online informal network where people are sharing their abortion medications, their M&Ms, before they expire and then suing or bringing charges or taking it to some rogue prosecutor in a red state seemed to me maybe low probability but high consequence event. And yeah, these aren't hypothetical risks anymore of abortion.
Rogue prosecutors are not rogue. Mainstream for Texas prosecutors going after people who prescribed abortion medications. And that's them going after a doctor who prescribed them. I could certainly see them going after some nice woman who shared them.
So leave them there. And if they expire, you can dispose of them and get more. And they serve their purpose, even if they expired on your shelf, because their purpose was for them to be there for you to share with someone that you knew personally, if they should need them. And they can't serve that purpose if they're
They're not there anymore because you gave them away. Of course, you can share them or give them away and replace them with a fresh round that isn't near expiration date anymore. But I wouldn't advise you to do that if the kind of sharing you're talking about is sharing them with someone that you have no idea who they are or what their motives are. Yeah, we live in a world where...
They're trying to throw people in prison where they're actually throwing people in prison. People have been thrown in prison for obtaining, sharing M&Ms, abortion, medication, abortion pills with people who actually needed them. And so let them sit on the shelf. That's what I plan to do. Let them sit on the shelf when they expire, dispose of them, get more, put them on the shelf and let them sit there. And hopefully it'll just be an endless cycle of you, uh,
Remaining stocked up on these M&Ms that no one in your life ever needs, but you're still doing the right thing by having them at hand in case someone in your life that you know personally, that you can trust, or that one of your kids has vouched for to you, in case one of those people should need them. You're doing a good thing. You're fighting the good fight.
All right, time for a little listener feedback. First up, a few comments about last week's show from the very lively comment threads at savage.love. I took a call last week from a woman wondering if it was a good idea to tell the guy she's seeing now how much she misses her ex-boyfriend. I told her to keep her mouth shut. Says by Dan Fan, hang on a minute there, Dan. Aren't you polyamorous? Doesn't being polyamorous mean not just accepting but embracing that your partner may have feelings for other people besides you?
I am Polly. It's true. But most people are not. And for most people, not being over your ex is kind of a deal breaker. No person interested in an exclusive relationship wants to hear that. And I'm going to climb out on a limb here and say most people open to non-monogamy, even polyamory, don't really want to hear that either. Miss your ex? Tell your friend. Don't tell your date.
Also took a call last week from a Canadian woman living it up in Europe who is a little miffed that her sexy European pals sometimes spoke to each other in their native tongues, a language she doesn't understand during group sex sessions. And to be clear, the complaint wasn't that people were speaking the language she didn't understand while having sex with her, but that they would sometimes speak to each other in a language she didn't understand when they were having sex with each other in front of her.
Says Joanie to my fellow Canadian living overseas, having group sex. You are living the dream girl. We'll trade places. Chill the fuck out. Think of it as a really great way to learn another language. Says Dutch lady. Great answer, Dan, to the language barrier question. No notes, just an addition.
Learning the language of the place you live is not as magical as expats sometimes make it out to be, especially English monolinguals. If one takes the twice a week class and spends 30 to 60 minutes on homework and practice every day, one will be fluent within a year. Dutch lady, shh.
I finally managed to convince my boyfriend that I'm too old and too stupid and too American to learn another language. Don't ruin it for me. And finally, says Julia to the Canadian caller in Europe, you're not excluded sometimes. You're included most of the time.
Try to practice gratefulness. Also, your friends speaking a language that is not their native one is in a way exclusion of themselves, at least parts of themselves. They're doing this most of the time with you and for you. Give them a break. Allow them to reenter their full selves sometimes.
They deserve it. Also, speaking a second language, I hear from people who actually speak second languages, including someone very important to me who speaks a second language with me all the time, requires sustained mental effort. And it can be a little tiring after a while. And yeah, sometimes you just got to let go.
your person or in the case of that caller, your persons relax and speak their native languages in front of you. All right. To read more listener comments, go to savage.love. Click on the latest LoveCast or column or struggle session. Scroll down to the bottom where my readers and listeners share their thoughtful comments. And sometimes every once in a while, even have better advice for a caller or a reader than I do. Check out the comments. Join the convo now at savage.love.
And now some of the voicemails, some of the comments, savage love listeners left on our answering machine this week.
Hey Dan, I'm just calling up to respond to the caller in 965 with the harem issue. I just wanted to say that I had a similar situation in my mid-twenties with a man who the sexual attraction was very high, but I knew he was a bit of a man about town and he clearly kind of said to me that I was the matriarch of his harem, so that's
It's kind of concerning when I think about it now. But I entered into it knowing that we had some freaking hot sex. But I started to get a little emotional and I also started seeing maybe the side of him that wasn't
that great but I did have lots of fun so I say go for it I say get it done but just check yourself if I had known then what I know now about my sexual being and what I the power I possess and all these things then maybe I would have handled the situation slightly differently and gotten less emotionally entangled but I had some fun and I definitely have little in the spank bank from it
Hi Dan and everybody. Calling with a response to episode 965 when the mom mentioned her 11-year-old son looking through her phone and seeing a bunch of pictures that made him upset. I noticed one thing that you and Dr. Herbenik missed, and mom also didn't seem to flag when she was talking about what happened, is that this kid, this 11-year-old, is the child of divorce.
And, you know, I don't presume to understand everybody's situation at all, but as somebody who's provided counseling to a lot of young people, especially in the like sort of delicate 11 to 17 age range,
A lot of those folks are quietly harboring a big, big, big, big, big hope that their parents will reunite. And so I just, you know, posit that that might be part of what's going on for this kid, too, is some sadness over mom having a relationship that is, you know, demarcated in this way is pretty serious with this other person. So it's just...
You know, something to consider too when talking to your son, you know, is this part of what's upsetting you, not just seeing mom and not just seeing her in a sexual way in this moment, but also, you know, knowing that this means something about her relationship with his bio parent.
Hi Dan, I'm commenting about episode 965, the woman who participated in group sex activities with folks who were from another country where she was staying and she didn't speak the language. Obviously, it's very difficult in the throes of passion to start speaking in a language that isn't your native language. And I'm just thinking that for all of us, maybe we should take the time to learn a sentence such as
Fuck me harder, baby, in at least three different languages. All right. Before we leave it this week, I just want to tell a certain listener of 15 years that we are so sorry for your loss. And we are really glad and we're really touched to hear that some of the things we've talked about on the show over the years have come back to you and been a comfort to you at this time. You are very much in our thoughts.
All right, we're going to leave it there. Got a question for me? Go to savage.love slash ask Dan to record and upload your question directly onto our website. Or you can make a voice memo on your very own phone and email us your question or your comment at q at savage.love. Or you can call our landline 206-302-2064 and leave us a message on our answering machine.
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right now. Follow me at blueskyatdansavage. Follow me on Instagram and threads at dansavage. Follow the amazing Amanda Knox on bluesky and Twitter at amandanox and on Instagram and threads at amamanox. You can order a signed copy of her new book, Free, My Search for Meaning at amandanox.com and her podcast, Labyrinths, which she co-hosts with her husband, Christopher Robinson, is available on all podcasting platforms.
The Savage Lovecast is produced every week by Nancy Hartunian and me and the tech savvy at-risk youth and Nancy. We will all be back at you next week for installment of the Savage Lovecast. Thank you for doing it.