In the Vox podcast In a Nutshell, hosts Jara Majerus and Antonia Leise take a deep dive into the university's most interesting, strange, and exciting research. Every two weeks, they invite Radboud researchers to talk about their favourite topics – explained in bite-sized episodes. In today's episode, Antonia talks about a topic that is usually not talked about enough: sex.

Sex should be about having fun and pornography usually gets it wrong – at least according to Maerten Prins, long-time lecturer of the popular course Psychology of Sexuality.

In today’s episode of In a Nutshell, Antonia and Maerten talk about why the Netherlands might have the best sex education in the world but still falls short for many students. But what makes for good sex – and good sex education – in the first place? How has the way we talk about sex changed over the last decades? And why should we all masturbate more?

Maerten Prins is a cultural psychologist and lecturer in the Psychology department. His course Psychology of Sexuality is attended by more than 700 students every year and covers everything from coitus to consent, including Maerten’s favourite topic: pornography, which encompasses a whole range of things that need to be talked about when talking about sex.

To learn more about sex, follow Maerten’s tips and have a look at Justin Lehmiller’s book The Psychology of Human Sexuality, Lehmiller’s website and his Sex and Psychology Podcast. For Dutch readers, Maerten recommends the books De waarheid over seks: plezier en gendergelijkheid op planeet Aarde and Seks!: een leven lang leren by Ellen Laan and Rik van Lunsen. And for English readers, Emily Nagoski’s book Come As You Are.