Ask the Sexpert (audio)

Maya, CC Liu, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Ameen Kader, Ashley Byrne (PRI.org)

Should I be touching my own breasts?

A retired doctor has become a popular figure in India after answering hundreds of questions a week about sex.

Dr. Mahinder Watsa, 90, gives males and females of all ages the chance to get answers to personal questions with his column in a popular Indian tabloid newspaper.
 
He practiced for many years as a gynaecologist and trained as a sex therapist in the United States. He first became an advice columnist for an Indian women’s magazine and then in 2005 began writing for Bombay's Mumbai Mirror.

 

Since then he’s answered tens of thousands of questions.

He doesn't need to know, and he'll still be happy

"People ask me, 'Are you making up the questions?' because some of them are really weird," says Dr. Watsa. "And I said, 'No, I don't. What comes in, I answer" [which is mostly about masturbation, rumors, naive ponderings, embarrassment, and unknown consequences].
 
The things people ask about range from questions around the practicalities of sex to issues around sexuality as well as relationships and physical looks.
 

Wait, Indians masturbate to my pornos?

It has caused some controversy in a country that still struggles with prudish attitudes towards sex, but Dr. Watsa’s no-nonsense approach and sense of humor have garnered him quite a following among readers of the paper and online.
 
"The column I think is popular because there are very few people who really attend to this area of their physiology or of their bodies," he adds.

He often finds himself dealing with myths and old wives tales about sex as well as questions relating specifically to the Indian way of life around things like arranged marriages [and the need for virginity or the appearance of it].
 
Dr. Watsa says people are becoming more open about sex, but the dissemination of information in India can be a barrier.

"Unfortunately, sex became a very political subject about four or five years ago, and suddenly there was a lot of hubbub about it, as a result of which sex education was banned in the schools, almost in all states in the country," says Dr. Watsa.

• AUDIO: LISTEN NOW (pri.org)

Don't think about sex, don't think about sex

At one time most of the questions that came in were from men, but more and more women are now writing to him.
 
"They talk about their breasts being small or big, or one recently thought her buttocks were very large," he says.
 
Many women get worried that their husband looking at porn means they’re not interested in sex with them.
 

Prefer the "good ol' days" of colonialism?

"The women are becoming more open and asking how to deal with these problems," he adds. India’s own "Dr. Ruth" answers questions that come in daily. And even though he’s just turned 90 he shows no sign of retiring.
 
"I tell people my head and feet are working and all the other parts are in order, so I suppose I will go on," he says. More

 

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What animals can teach us (audio)

Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Maria Armoudian (The Insighters, Scholars Circle, Pacifica, Jan. 26, 2014); Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, Kathryn Bowers (Goodreads.com)

Don't look at me! You're just anthropomorphizing (ktla.com)

 

I am looking at you (Tess_athey/flickr).

Do animals get depressed? Overeat? Laugh? Feel feelings?

Inspired by an eye-opening consultation at the Los Angeles Zoo, Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, M.D., a cardiologist, embarked upon a project that would reshape how she practiced medicine -- and how we all look at animals.
 

The consultation revealed that monkeys experience the same symptoms of heart failure as her human patients. Beginning with questions about what animals go through, Natterson-Horowitz began informally researching every affliction she encountered in humans to learn whether it happens in animals, too.

It does. Dinosaurs may have had brain cancer, koalas can catch chlamydia (the STD), reindeer seek mind expansion and/or escape by using hallucinogenic mushrooms, stallions self-mutilate, and gorillas experience clinical depression.

• LISTEN NOW: AUDIO (download)
  

Paying butchers is like paying hitmen to kill.

 

Natterson-Horowitz and science writer Kathryn Bowers have dubbed this pan-species approach to medicine zoobiquity (like ubiquity). Here, they present a revelatory understanding of what animals can teach us about the human body and mind, exploring how animal and human commonality can be used to diagnose, treat, and heal patients of all species.

What animals can teach us about being human

You don't buy bacon, do you? Don't tell me you buy bacon.

 

Concerns about the recent explosions of HIV, West Nile Virus, and other avian and swine flus that originate in animals have encouraged new efforts on a global scale to bridge the gap between animal and human medicine for the benefit of both. Zoobiquity is the first book to explore many of the overlapping human and animal health issues. It provides new insight into the treatment of diseases including diabetes (from the sugar and starch we eat), cancer (from the pollution), heart ailments (from stress), and mental illnesses (from all causes).

 

It is even bigger than health, however. It encompasses much more than our human diseases and how to cure them. It sheds light on the evolution of hierarchies and similarities between a tribe of apes and a Fortune 500 company. 

It suggests that the ways we run our political and justice systems may overlap with how animals protect and defend their territories -- and that examining this possibility in a scientifically credible way could help strengthen our institutions.

 

It dangles the possibility that human parenting could be informed by a greater knowledge and respect for how our animal cousins solve issues of childcare, sibling rivalry, and infertility. More