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Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?

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Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?

By: Jesse Bering
Narrated by: Jesse Bering
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About this listen

Jesse Bering - author, psychologist, academic - has what you might call an enquiring mind. He takes the kind of questions about sex and sexuality which many of us have idly wondered about and he applies his knowledge of experimental psychology and rigorous scientific analysis to them until he finds an actual answer. It may surprise you, but there are serious evolutionary reasons why the penis is shaped like that, and why human testicles dangle in such an apparently vulnerable manner.

If you would like to find out what human pubic hair has in common with a gorilla's fur, why girls are so cruel to one another, what happens if you swallow rather than spit, or why you should think twice about asking a gay man for directions, then this is the book for you.

Based on Jesse Bering's columns for Scientific American, this endlessly fascinating, hilarious, and downright gob-smacking book really does tell you everything you ever wanted to know about sex, but were afraid to ask....

©2012 Jesse Bering (P)2012 Random House Audiobooks Biological Sciences Science Witty Funny Mental Health Health
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Where does Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I enjoyed the way the tale was told, interesting, sometimes light sometimes insightful but always interesting

Who was your favorite character and why?

N/A

What about Jesse Bering’s performance did you like?

he reads well

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

there is nothing new under the sun

face pace, fast and loose material

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Jesse Bering is amazing, in South Africa we would say give that man a bells !!! Brilliantly writing thought provoking book, beautifully narrated by Jesse Bering :)

Brilliant !!!!!

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The first half of the book shows the results of several studies that are both interesting and funny, especially in the way the author tells about them. The second half is a bit less interesting and the data available more scarce or inconclusive. Overall, it is worth reading and some chapters are worth reading more than once.

Funny and interesting

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Jesse raises many interesting and unusual questions about sexuality and proposes different evolutionary explanations to this. The book is based on 8 essays about various topics which are all fascinating and well explored by the author. Due to difficult nature of the task (and definitively not due to author’s lack of research), the book is inherently based on often scarce amount of scientific research and relies quite a bit on conjecture and discussion. If you would like to explore interesting topics which you have probably never thought of before, combined with a range of very bizarre cases of human sexuality, then I would recommend this book.

My preference however is still with robust style of argument building of Darwin or Richard Dawkins and eventhough I appreciate that it is more difficult to do in discussion on this area, I still think that the author can develop his style in that direction.

Many interesting questions raised about sexuality

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