Sex, explained

What’s going on when we get turned on?

Explained on Netflix is back. New year, new miniseries, new topics. For this one, we’re going back to the basics: Where do babies come from?

This isn’t the sex education you may have had to sit through in school. In five 20-minute episodes, we dig into why a third of women worldwide describe childbirth as traumatic, why we still don’t have male birth control, and why even your weirdest sexual fantasies are way more predictable than you think.

The series is narrated by Janelle Monáe. If you’re familiar with her music, you know there’s no one more qualified.

We chose five topics — sexual fantasies, attraction, birth control, fertility, and childbirth — where new research has raised new questions and offered up surprising new answers. Some of it’s uncomfortable, or even taboo, but they’re all topics that affect our health and well-being throughout our lives in more ways than we realize.

There’s a lot more to the birds and the bees than we can cover in a limited series. But we hope these five stories provide fresh insights and an open dialogue about a part of the human experience that’s too often shrouded in mystery, misinformation, and euphemism.

The whole series is available now on Netflix. If you don’t have a subscription, our episode on childbirth is streaming free on our YouTube channel.