Showing results by publisher "Breasts Unbound, Audible Original"

Join the award-winning series Breasts Unbound for a revealing journey into everyone’s favorite organ. Host Florence Williams travels from Houston to Hollywood to the boob-shaped hills of Northern England to share the big and small story of breasts - why we have them, how we view them, and why they sometimes do weird things. Turns out, breasts have a lot to teach us.

In this episode, we talk to Chelsea Handler about her relationship with her large and well-publicized rack, and find out what chemicals she has coursing through her bloodstream that might endanger her (and everyone’s) prized organs.

Breasts have been bared, flaunted, measured, inflated, suckled, pierced, tassled -- and in every way fetishized by our society. Host and science journalist Florence Williams delves deeper into the mysteries of the human breast with funny and enlightening reporting. She tackles the big questions of why they evolved in the first place, how jet fuel ended up in breast milk, why they are arriving earlier and bigger in teen-aged girls, man boobs, and how breast cancer in men can help female breast cancer patients.

Retailers are now selling bras with princess characters on them. Girls are reaching puberty earlier than ever before. In this episode, we talk to some families and experts at the center of the quest to understand how modern life is changing breasts, and what it means for our future.

[Contains explicit content] Mike Partain was born on a storied Marine Corps base in North Carolina. Thirty-nine years later, he was diagnosed with breast cancer. Then he started finding old neighbors who had been diagnosed, too. Thanks to these rare male outliers, scientists are learning more about what causes one of the deadliest women's diseases in the world.

[Contains explicit content] Every mammal has mammary glands, but only humans have permanent, rounded, full-on breasts. Why? What are breasts really for, anyway? The answers matter, because they influence how we see each other and see ourselves. In this episode, Florence Williams climbs the largest breasts in the world (they’re in England) and talks to Oxford’s Desmond Morris, author of the classic book, The Naked Ape.

[Contains explicit content] It can save babies’ lives and supply rarified fatty acids, antibodies and proteins. But breastmilk also contains tons of mysterious sugars not digestible by babies. So what are they for? And what can the answer teach us about the future of health and medicine, even for adults?

Even though we still live in a big-boob bubble, many women are voluntarily reducing their breast size. Others are happily deciding to “go flat” after cancer, while transgender parents are coaxing milk out of transformed breasts. Are we entering a post-boob universe, one in which women are taking more control over what their breasts look like? Can women ever really take back their breasts?

In modern-day America, we’re constantly bombarded with images of perfectly round, big, pneumatic knockers. Where did this ideal come from, and is it really everyone’s favorite boob type? Florence Williams administers the “Swami test” to find out which breast size most men prefer, and tries to get to the bottom of some of our most cherished and misguided myths.