Bonk Insights

The must-read analysis of the key insights from "Bonk" by Mary Roach — presented by Athena.

Centuries of scientific research into human sexuality has involved great minds, good intentions and ghastly experiments — and yet our desire to demystify sex and solve all our sexual problems remains unsatisfied.

Best-selling author Mary Roach turns her insatiably curious eye toward one of the most elusive subjects in science: sex. She asks both outrageous and practical questions and addresses topics as varied as the mental/physical arousal divide and the link between pleasure and fertility.

From the enlightening to the outrageous, Mary Roach’s "Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex" uses scientific research as her spotlight on human sexuality. She investigates what a pig’s orgasms might teach us about fertility and asks questions about the practice of grafting tissue from monkey testicles onto humans to improve male virility. With these examinations and more, Roach — whom the New Yorker called the “funniest science writer in the country” — gives readers a behind-the-scenes look into how sex researchers do their work.

Roach makes clear from the start that the pairing of science with sex is limited, acknowledging that there’s so much about sex that science will never be able to explain. After all, sex involves a unique mix of hormones, emotions and passions that no lab could ever capture exactly. And yet, as she shows in this New York Times bestseller, scientists haven’t stopped trying.