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Episode 92—Ellen Stokken Dahl and "The Wonder Down Under"
134 Plays7 years ago
"Lack of information can ruin people's lives in a profound way," says Norwegian medical student and co-author of "The Wonder Down Under," Ellen Stokken Dahl. So I had oral surgery this week so my capacity to speak with my face mouth is greatly hampered. Welcome to the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to the best artists about telling true stories, teasing out their origins, habits, and routines, so that you can apply some of those tools of mastery to your own work. What’s goin’ on CNFers! CNFbuddies! I recorded this interview with Ellen prior to the surgery so I sound like a human person through the interview. She along with Nina Brochmann wrote "The Wonder Down Under: The Insider’s Guide to the Anatomy, Biology, and Reality of the Vagina." It’s quite a fun read. Both Ellen and Nina are touring the U.S. as we speak since the book caught fire after their TEDxOslo talk about “The Virginity Fraud," breaking myths about the hymen and such got over 2 million views. It's up near 3 million now. Go take a look in the show notes. I spoke only with Ellen for this episode because Nina got sick at the last minute. Only one brilliant Scandanavian for you this week... Ellen hits on: How her curiosity led her to women’s health Co-authoring a book and co-writing a TED Talk How the lack of information can ruin lives And processing a new sense of global visability Yeah, a little house keeping, I’d love for you subscribe to the show so you can get one of these nifty little podcasts every Friday. Also, if you leave an honest review on iTunes I’ll edit/coach up a piece of your work up to 2,000 words. You give me one minute of your review time, I’ll give you a couple hours of mine. Not a bad deal for you. Okay, now it’s time to hear the brilliant … for episode 92, wow.
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Transcript
Host's Oral Surgery
00:00:00
Speaker
So I had oral surgery this week, so my capacity to speak with my face mouth is greatly hampered.
Podcast Introduction
00:00:09
Speaker
Hey, welcome to the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to the best artist about telling true stories, teasing out origins, habits, and routines so that you can apply some of those tools of mastery to improve your own work.
00:00:30
Speaker
What's going on CNF-ers?
Interview with Elle Steckendahl
00:00:33
Speaker
My CNF buddies, I recorded this interview prior to the surgery with Elle Steckendahl, our Norwegian medical student and sexual health educator. So I sound like a human person through the interview. She along with Tanya Brokman.
00:00:50
Speaker
wrote the Wonder Down Under, the insider's guide to the anatomy, biology, and reality of the vagina. It's quite a fun read, both and
00:01:03
Speaker
are touring the U.S. as we speak since the book caught fire after their TEDx Oslo talk about the virginity fraud, breaking myths about the Hymen and such, got nearly, oh it's up around 3 million views about now, so go take a look in the shoutouts.
Curiosity and Women's Health
00:01:21
Speaker
I spoke only with Elnestekindal for this episode because
00:01:27
Speaker
Got sick of the last minute. So with Ellen, we head on how her curiosity led her to women's health. Co-authoring a book and co-writing a TED talk. How the lack of information can ruin lives.
00:01:42
Speaker
and processing a new sense of global visibility. So now a little housekeeping. I'd love for you to subscribe to the show so you can get one of these nifty little podcasts every Friday. Also, if you leave an honest review on iTunes, I'll edit or coach up a piece of your work of up to 2,000 words. You give me one minute of your review time, I'll give you a couple hours of mine. Not a bad deal.
Episode 92 Introduction
00:02:08
Speaker
Okay, now it's time to hear the brilliant Ellen Steckendahl for episode 92. Wow. Today, so then we're going to Chicago and then San Francisco, then Seattle and then Los Angeles.
00:02:29
Speaker
That's amazing. So are you surprised with how the book has caught fire?
Book's International Success
00:02:37
Speaker
It really ignited so quickly. What's been the experience like of really just writing this momentum on this book? It must be pretty exciting.
00:02:50
Speaker
Well, it has been not really, we never imagined to sell the book to any country outside of Norway. And we didn't really imagine that it would go that well in Norway either. So this is still kind of a big shock for us, and especially the fact that we can travel. I mean, we never thought that we would go to the US with our book and have a translation in English. So
Need for Women's Health Information
00:03:16
Speaker
It has been great, it's like a fun adventure but still I think both of us are a bit sad that this book is still needed and wanted that much in 2018 because it's like basic information about women's health and it is so popular because people don't have any sources to go to when looking for answers to their questions about
00:03:45
Speaker
sex, bodies, health. So I mean, these are topics we don't talk enough about. Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right.
Book's Educational Impact
00:03:54
Speaker
And but in the way you guys write about it is so, you know, frank and light and fun that it is extremely accessible. I finished the book earlier this weekend, and it was as someone who studied a lot of biology myself, it was
00:04:11
Speaker
It was just a really fun fun and deeply informative read and I learned just a ton and I came in with a Somewhat maybe a higher baseline of knowledge just based on some of my biology studies and it was still amazing me how little I knew so I mean it must have been like you said it was kind of sad in a way that that the book is needed in 2018 and
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, but so I mean, most people that we talk to even with medical backgrounds, learn a lot because medicine isn't really, you know, prioritizing everyday women's ailments. So facts about, I don't know, discharge and menstrual pains, things that women have to deal with every day, it's not really considered disease. So it's not talked about that much in
00:05:04
Speaker
in medicine either. So we kind of, everyday women's health kind of falls between two chairs.
00:05:13
Speaker
Yeah. And so like, let's back up a little bit. I'd love to get a sense of kind of like where you grew up, what kind of kid you were and how you ultimately became interested in biology and female reproductive system and how this became really sort of galvanized as a
00:05:36
Speaker
as a life's passion and work for you. So when you were growing up, at what point did your curiosity turn into something that grew into something much deeper?
Elle's Science Curiosity
00:05:48
Speaker
Well, I've always been curious in topics of science and biology. I remember that I got this toy microscope from my parents when I was maybe six years old and looked at
00:06:05
Speaker
you know, wings of insects and plants and just, I was curious and wanted to study the things that were around me. And when I went to school, I always liked the science class. I come from a family with, my father is a geophysicist and my mother is a teacher in chemistry. So I really came from a background where
00:06:34
Speaker
sign was talked a lot about at home and we always had discussions about, I don't know, biology, mathematics. So that was kind of a natural interest for me and also I always read a lot as a kid.
00:06:56
Speaker
both fiction and non-fiction and I don't know that also build up a wish to write for me so from a very very young age I wanted to write so this project has kind of
00:07:14
Speaker
merged several of my passions, like my passion for medicine and science, and also my passion to write and to make information accessible for every reader, something I had a lot of. I always liked to read popular science as a kid, to read simplified scientific
00:07:41
Speaker
materials. So yeah, this is kind of a...
00:07:45
Speaker
combination of these passions for me. Yeah, that's that's wonderful. What were some some books and some writers that really inspired you to at some point or in some point in your future to pick up the pen and do your own writing and try to convey the some of the esoteric messages of science into more like layman's terms like who are some of those authors that really they kind of almost gave you permission to do it yourself.
Inspiration from Julia Enders
00:08:15
Speaker
Well, I didn't read any, you know, good popular science as a kid. So that was when I was older in my late teens and early twenties. That must have been well, the best example of that must be Julia Enders. And her book got came out a few years ago in the US also. She's a German. Oh, she was a German medical student and wrote her her book about
00:08:47
Speaker
about the taboo topic as a medical student. Both Nina and I thought that that was very brave. Since medicine is really a hierarchical structure, you are not really supposed to talk that much about what you know when you're a student or a junior doctor.
00:09:10
Speaker
So we just thought she was very brave to kind of write a book like that to the public without being an expert. I mean, she is now much deeper into the science behind that, but she wrote GUT as a medical student.
00:09:34
Speaker
So I think that gave us permission to try as well because we wrote The Wonder Down Under as medical students. I'm still in my last year at medical school. So we are in no way like experts in this field. We're not specialized in gynecology or virology. So there are a lot of people who know a lot more about single topics in our book than we do. But we had the opportunity to
00:10:04
Speaker
simplify and popularize it for a broader audience. And Julia Anders really showed that that was possible for us. And also, from an American writer, I really like Mary Roach, her book, Stiff, about cadavers. That is one of my popular science reads.
00:10:30
Speaker
How did you get your start in, you know, specifically with, you know, you had the broader interest in just science and biology, and then at what point did you start to get really specific towards, you know, towards women's health, which ultimately leads to the blog and then the TEDx talk and then the book, but let's kind of like work our way through that.
Journey into Women's Health
00:10:52
Speaker
So at what point did you really start to hone in your focus on women's health?
00:10:57
Speaker
Well in 2011 when I started medical school at the same time as Nina I volunteered to do this sexual education program for youths in Norway and also refugees and sex workers and I realized when I started working with sexual education that the lack of information can really ruin people's lives in
00:11:27
Speaker
very profound way. I mean, by giving people the knowledge or by making people understand that they are normal and good enough the way they are, that can really change how they feel about themselves. Because when it comes to taboo topics, the insecurities and questions that people have, they don't really know where to turn to get
Myths about the Hymen
00:11:54
Speaker
the answers. They don't really know where to turn to
00:11:57
Speaker
be told that they are normal and when it comes to female sexual health, especially, there has been so much shame, insecurities and also misconceptions that makes it hard to be, I think, a woman who is interested in her own sexuality, especially if
00:12:21
Speaker
you are a woman who experienced some physiological process that you don't understand and may think that something is wrong with you. There are several, well, our TEDx talk about the hymen is I think the most important example on how, you know, female anatomy is the story we tell about female anatomy is distorted to serve some purpose because
00:12:51
Speaker
We have always been told that the hymen is kind of a virginity seal that's supposed to break and you're supposed to bleed the first time you have sex. And this is very useful for societies who want to control female sexuality and women in their everyday lives. When we started with the sexual education classes, we saw how
00:13:16
Speaker
parents of young immigrant children in Norway were afraid to let their young girls participate in normal everyday activities like bicycling, maybe using tampons because they were afraid that they would ruin themselves and their honor from doing these activities.
00:13:38
Speaker
The control that you get from creating myths about things like the hymen, it's broader than just controlling women's sexual life. It's also controlling their everyday lives. And we had a lot of examples where we understood in our sexual education classes that by giving certain pieces of information, you could really change how
00:14:07
Speaker
people were thinking about themselves. And that's when I started to think that this work is really worthwhile and important and not a lot of people are working in this field. So I thought we could do a lot of good by focusing on sexual health.
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah and you say that the lack of information can ruin lives and what was your experience with or what has been some of the experience you've had with the refugees and maybe the fear that they feel based on the information that they've been given versus what's you know what's real like the stuff that
00:14:54
Speaker
you're trying to educate people on and the stuff that they probably inherently feel scared of or shameful of. What has been your experience with that?
Misinformation and Refugees
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, young women who tell us stories about how they or friends have experienced the hard situations with their families because of
00:15:19
Speaker
their hymen, for example, lack of bleeding. Also, we have been approached by women who have turned to the healthcare system to get help, for example, by getting, you know, virginity certificates or surgical procedures to change the look of their hymen.
00:15:44
Speaker
Those are common stories that we got all the time and that we still get through feedback on our TED Talk. And yeah, these are examples that when we know that the hymen doesn't work that way, it's very hard to know that this is still happening. There are of course also different
00:16:13
Speaker
aspects of sexual health that's especially important to immigrant societies in Norway and other countries, for example, female genital mutilation. Well, we had, we spoke to one woman once who was trying to get pregnant with her husband and they didn't make it.
00:16:40
Speaker
then we realized that they had been having anal sex because she had been subjected to a gentle mutilation. She had been infibulated, which is the process when the outer labia is sewn together. So there's only like a little hole left for urine menstrual fluid. And of course, unless you are opened again, it's impossible to become
00:17:09
Speaker
it's impossible to
Empowering Women
00:17:10
Speaker
have normal vaginal sex and it sounds maybe absurd that someone wouldn't know that you couldn't get pregnant from anal sex but if no one told you then how would you know and again this shows how education is so important in in every culture and just to underline that
00:17:35
Speaker
The myths about the Hymen have consequences for women from more conservative cultures, but the same myths still exists in the West and also in Norway. I mean, a lot of young girls that are Norwegian, that are white, are also scared that it will hurt, that they will bleed too much.
00:17:58
Speaker
We still look differently at female virginity than we do at male virginity. So this is a problem that's everywhere in all cultures, even if the consequences are worse in the more conservative ones.
00:18:15
Speaker
You're alluding to education and knowledge here is power and often a lot of powerful people don't want to have certain people educated because it will give them knowledge that will empower them.
00:18:32
Speaker
in your giving lots of people empowerment and education and with your work and your writing. Have you experienced any pushback from people who don't want women to know everything about their bodies and their biology? Have you experienced any pushback from people from more conservative cultures?
00:18:56
Speaker
Luckily, very little yet. But I mean, the book is just recently out in the US. So currently we have only been subjected to critique in Scandinavia and parts of Europe. So and the culture, I mean, in Europe is also different from the culture in the US. So we'll wait and see if someone reacts.
00:19:26
Speaker
We have gotten some critique from actually a Danish conservative politician, but that wasn't necessarily about how it's bad to empower people. It was more the fact, well, she, she compared us to children who are fascinated by their feces. Yeah, it's kind of a, you know, control technique, very common sounding. She,
00:19:56
Speaker
Her reaction was, should nothing be hidden anymore? Should nothing be secret? And what about the mystery? Shouldn't anything be a mystery? And that's a common reaction that we get. Also, a lot of men may feel that if we talk very openly about normal physiological female processes, then some of the magic disappears.
00:20:23
Speaker
The fact that something is secret, that hurts people because if it's secret, then you won't know if you're normal. Or you'll try to get pregnant by having anal sex if you don't get fully educated. We need to be open about these issues in an objective way. It's not about
00:20:50
Speaker
It's not about, well, every person doesn't necessarily have to talk about their own discharge or their own periods. I mean, Nina and I certainly are not talking about ourselves, but we are talking about medicine in a general way. And we're trying to be open about sexuality in a general way. And I think that's very important.
00:21:12
Speaker
I'd love to hear your take on the differences in culture too, like from Europe to the United States and maybe for people who aren't as familiar with Scandinavian and Europe at large in terms of the sex education culture and how it is in the States. What have you noticed as a difference between cultures in your experience?
00:21:36
Speaker
Well, my impression is that in the US, some people are very open and eager for education. But you have a lot of strong conservative forces. And the way I understand it, like every child in the US does not get sexual education.
Sex Education in US vs Europe
00:21:59
Speaker
That's true, right?
00:22:01
Speaker
Yeah, I believe it depends where you are in the country. There are definitely very conservative states and like say in the far south that sometimes definitely stay away from that. And some of the places up north are more progressive like that. But yeah, by and large, you're right. Yeah, so it's difficult, of course, to talk about the US as a country because you're more of a like a continent with such different peoples. Yeah.
00:22:29
Speaker
So, but one concrete example that we have noticed is that whenever we're giving talks in the US or having lectures, we are asked, is this suitable for teenagers? And we have never been asked those questions in Europe, because most people assume that sexual education is for teenagers only. So, yeah, I think that's one strange difference that a lot of
00:23:00
Speaker
A lot of the people that are arranging these lectures that we have are scared that we would, I don't know, teach the teenagers something that they shouldn't know, which that has never been the case in Europe.
00:23:19
Speaker
And with so much of what you write about in the book from the very sensitive, polarizing topics, the virgin fraud of the myths surrounding the hymen, abortion, the very detailed, elucidating stuff about menstruation, everything,
00:23:45
Speaker
And then you guys ultimately decided to talk about the virginity fraud for your TEDx talk. And so what was the discussions that you and Nina were having when you decided to focus on that as your talk? Well, it came very natural to us because I think that is the most important topic that we work with.
TEDx Talk on Hymen Myths
00:24:13
Speaker
these myths still have such extreme consequences for women. And it's so strange to us that information has been known for so long, but that it hasn't reached even the educated population.
00:24:31
Speaker
I mean, I watched an episode of Girls the other day. And there is a scene where Hannah's editor tells her that or is trying to tell her that she wrote a very dull article. And he uses the phrase, Hannah, did your hymen grow back? So I mean, even in Girls, even in Yeah, we have a lot of we've been looking at a lot of television series to find examples on where the
00:24:59
Speaker
Hyman is misrepresented. And when you do that, I mean, it's everywhere. Popular culture is making this myth stay alive. And so our doctors, when they keep writing virginity certificates, they keep doing these surgical procedures. So it's so absurd. We've known for more than 100 years that the Hyman doesn't necessarily change.
00:25:26
Speaker
during intercourse and that a lot of women doesn't bleed. In our TED talk, we mentioned an article from 1906 by Norwegian doctor in which she is present where a forensic doctor is comparing the hymen of a sex worker to that of, or he's trying to determine whether a woman is a sex worker or not. And he thinks she's a virgin.
00:25:56
Speaker
but she's an experienced sex worker, so you can't tell the difference. And that is a 1906 paper and still we are replicating this myth, so it's so absurd. And so it was a lot of fun to do the research and we felt that also the work has been very worthwhile.
00:26:16
Speaker
and you and Nina both share the stage for the talk and so how did you guys go about structuring that talk so you weren't in competition with one another but complimenting each other? How did you guys workshop that and then ultimately bring it to the stage?
Collaboration on TEDx Talk
00:26:36
Speaker
We had to quarrel a bit with Ted's team to make that happen because usually they only take single speakers. But we've done everything together and we really thought that it would be better if we were two. They didn't believe us but now I think we were right.
00:26:56
Speaker
So what we did, we just, we wrote together, we practiced a lot. We even stood up on chairs in Nina's kitchen and sung our manuscripts to different melodies, shouted it. I mean, we tried it out until we thought it was good enough. And for us who aren't, you know, English native speakers, it took a lot of practice to feel secure, but
00:27:26
Speaker
I think we did a good job with it just to split the information evenly and it was good to work with the props together as two people that couldn't have worked as one person I think.
00:27:42
Speaker
So yeah. Yeah. And what was the experience like, um, co-authoring a book to say the book has like a nice sort of uniform voice to it. So you don't say like, Oh, that's clearly Nina writing. And that's clearly Ellen writing. And you know, it does have this kind of a uniform feel to it. So how did you guys achieve that in the book?
00:28:04
Speaker
Well, we did, we split the topics in two and did half the research for each part. And then we wrote the first draft and then we swapped and then we edited each other's texts so much that the tone in the end became somewhere in the middle of the two of us. So that was also very, it came very natural to us to do it that way.
00:28:33
Speaker
None of us had ever written a book before, so that's how we did it.
00:28:53
Speaker
Was there any reluctance or a fear of approaching it as a book project or were you guys just kind of like fearless and you're just like, yeah, let's just let it rip and go. What was that experience like? Well, I remember especially not a lot of fear, but in a different way it was more like
00:29:20
Speaker
Are we good enough in the medical field to spread this knowledge? But I mean, we did that and we tried it out. So that was the scary part. I think both of us have always been very passionate about writing and done a lot of writing for ourselves. So we weren't scared about that. I think also, yeah, I think we are both confident in our writing skills. So that wasn't the problem for us.
00:29:50
Speaker
yeah a lot of people uh... you know that listen to the show and that i've spoken to you as a writer myself is that there is a people have this vision of what their book is in their head and then when they start to actually maybe write some of it down it's not it's not uh... congruent or matching the vision they have in their head so they stop and they get blocked and they get fearful than they just
00:30:16
Speaker
Stop doing the work like did you guys? Experience any of that kind of hiccup be like alright. We've got this blog. We've got the the book we want in our head But it's it's just not manifesting itself, but but it appears like you guys just muscled through so maybe how did you? approach the the writing and empower through your drafts to get to your final product and
Overcoming Writing Challenges
00:30:39
Speaker
Well, we each of us had a lot of periods during the writing process in which we felt that we sucked at writing, even if we were from when we started. But the funny thing was that whenever I felt like I'd done shit work, Nina could take over and say that, oh, no, these parts are really good. And if we change this and this, then this is a great text.
00:31:05
Speaker
And then when she had similar feelings of fear and, I don't know, imposter syndrome, then I could take over and do the same for her. So we were strangely matched in the fact that we never had a block at the same time. So that was lucky for us.
00:31:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's incredible that you could kind of offset some of the creative burden on the other person. If you were just like in a rut, the other person could pick up the slack. Yeah. And I think a lot of writers, well, most of writers write alone, right? So, uh, this is not an experience that most people have had. So I think that's, uh, that's the great and interesting thing about writing together.
00:31:52
Speaker
And also Nina and I share the same background. We have the same opinions on this topic. We have a certain, we have a different approach to style, I think, in some aspect. But that was, I think, these differences that we had and sacrifices I had to make to change it the way she liked. Sometimes that was worth it when
00:32:21
Speaker
I'm thinking about the times when I just didn't feel like I could write. So if I'd done this alone, it would have been so much more difficult. So this was a good project to be on. And when you guys were writing the book, did you guys like share an office while you did it or were you kind of like you would write something and then email it to her or were you guys always in the same room?
00:32:50
Speaker
No, we wrote the first drafts and did the research separately. And then we met up and had like one weekend a month where we ruined each other's texts to try to make them better. So yeah, we did the first drafts alone. Nina had just given birth to her son. So she wrote in the evenings after he
00:33:18
Speaker
was asleep and I wrote at school a lot as I was taking classes at medical school at that time.
00:33:26
Speaker
I see it in between. Yeah, that's incredible. Because a lot of people, sometimes they make excuses that they don't have the time. And really what it is is that people have a hard time prioritizing the time to write the book they want to write, do the research they
Balancing Writing and Life
00:33:42
Speaker
want to do. And it's like, geez, you're in medical school and you've prioritized the time to write the book, to write the blog, to make the TEDx talk.
00:33:52
Speaker
Nina, new mother, doc, you know, going through medical schools, doctor now, I believe, and, and it's just in yet you guys still found the time on your calendar, like, how are you able to organize your life so you did get the work done amidst your very full plate of activities and responsibilities?
00:34:21
Speaker
Well, we are both very hard workers, but whenever I try to do something alone for myself, it's much harder to find the time because I feel like whenever I take time to write on a personal project, then I should be reading medicine instead or similar problems.
00:34:44
Speaker
I knew that Nina was at home writing, so I couldn't not do the same. I could not write. And she had the same feeling with me. So we kind of, we competed against each other and we were each other's motivators, I think. So whenever she had finished something, I got the text. And if I was behind on my part, I had to speed up. So yeah, that's another great thing about being two. I mean, um,
00:35:11
Speaker
We are very competitive people. I just couldn't let her beat me, I think. So how did you guys meet and become friends? We became friends through this process really when we realized that we were so similar in our work ethics and of course also the important things when it comes to friendship like humor and
00:35:38
Speaker
I don't know, tasting movies, that's important too. But we weren't friends when we started working together. We were in the same class for a while, so we knew each other. But we were placed together because we were the two people who cared the most about female sexual health. So we were the biggest nerds. So we were placed together against our will
00:36:06
Speaker
Actually we were asked to start the blog by Norwegian newspaper after having doing, after we did some work together for this, um, for this sexual education organization. So I don't think, uh, I would ever have picked Nina to work with. And I definitely don't think she would have picked me either. Uh, but it was, it was this drive of luck really, uh, because she's great to work with and, um, uh,
00:36:36
Speaker
I think this book became great because we have similar approaches and work very well together. So we were lucky. And now we're traveling the world together and have a lot of fun.
00:36:53
Speaker
Wow. Do you think this is a book you could have say, just say the timeline was different, say like five years from now, you're a bit more entrenched in the medical community.
Writing Outside Medical System
00:37:06
Speaker
Is this a book you could have, if you can think of it that way, is this a book you think you could write from within the system or do you guys still feel like you needed to be outside the system still to have accomplished what you accomplished with this book?
00:37:22
Speaker
Well, I think part of our tone and the perspective, the way we can speak directly to a reader that's kind of on our level when it comes to education. I think it was a strength to be from the outside of the system because then it was also easier to get that certain tone
00:37:52
Speaker
A lot of readers tell us that it's like reading advice from a friend, which is nice, I think. And also it's much easier to be critical towards the medical system while you're outside of it as a medical student and kind of an outsider, because of course we are critical towards how medicine has not prioritized female problems in a way.
00:38:22
Speaker
kind of maybe we got a better view from where we were.
00:38:28
Speaker
Is there any, have you guys worried that maybe the, like you said, the tone you've struck with this book and maybe the way you've been somewhat critical of some of the medical culture, that it couldn't sort of negatively impact your career as someone, as a medical professional, or is that something you didn't care about so much?
00:38:56
Speaker
Well, I think we would have cared if that was an option that we thought lightly. But I mean, the way we are critical towards medicine, it's more like an historical critique. And also we're trying to change how it is now. And a lot of doctors are doing that. A lot of people are trying to change how we work with women or female patients.
Support from Medical Professionals
00:39:25
Speaker
And no, we weren't afraid of that. Actually, we've gotten a lot of support and good feedback from doctors, our professors at school, and we've gotten a lot of help, actually. So I'm good reviews from doctors as well. So we feel that they have accepted these two non-experts writing about the
00:39:51
Speaker
things they like, so yeah. Lots of writers toil away and sort of obscurity and don't really strike a huge audience and so forth. And you guys through the blog and the TED Talk and now the book being, you know, translated into, well, available in 30 some odd countries and translated into dozens of languages.
00:40:16
Speaker
you know you guys have gone from relative anonymity to very visible and how have you processed that going from you know the Ellen who is you know just doing her thing sex educator in Norway to now almost being like a sort of global person in a global voice for this cause so like how do you process that bigger visibility
Global Visibility
00:40:44
Speaker
I'm not finished processing it yet. I still think it's insane, but I'm very happy that since this project is what it is, no one is really asking me questions about my private life or about me. I think this is the first interview where I have discussed my
00:41:09
Speaker
childhood and also my opinions and feelings about the writing process. So I think this is one of the occasions that I've been sharing more of myself, even if this is not a very, you know, private interview or an interview that's focusing on private subjects. So we have been lucky and I think we have been lucky because we have been able to have a great success
00:41:38
Speaker
without sharing our private lives because a lot of people who have success in writing today are also or at least bloggers and Instagram stars and celebrities and you have to have a
00:41:57
Speaker
persona to have a success, I think. And it's very hard for writers who just want to write a good book and be a private person. I think that's becoming harder and harder also how people are journalists. It's more about the journalist sharing his or her opinion on a case than actually covering the case.
00:42:25
Speaker
So we are lucky in the aspect that we are still private people. And also, of course, this is great because I always wanted to write, I always wanted to publish books, and I never imagined that anything could ever go this well. So I think I'm living my dream life right now. So of course, I'm happy about that.
00:42:55
Speaker
Yeah, popular science is fun. Yeah, of course. And where can people find out more about like follow you guys online and if they want to learn a little bit more about your work, where can people find out more about you guys and what you're doing?
Follow and Purchase Information
00:43:16
Speaker
Well, they can follow us at Facebook and Instagram. Our Instagram account is wonderdownunder and on Facebook we are the wonderdownunder. And there you can find information about what we're doing and where we're at and new releases and so on. And also, of course, our book can be bought online on Amazon.
00:43:45
Speaker
Fantastic. And before I let you get out of here, I just want to make sure I, um, pronounce your, you and Nina's, um, names correctly. So could you, um, could you like pronounce your, your full name and Nina's full name for me? Uh, yeah. My name is Ellen. Okay. And, uh, Nina's name is, uh, Nina Brockman.
00:44:08
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, Ellen, thank you so much for carving out some time of your morning here and as your US tour gets started. This is a lot of fun for me and elucidating and very informative. So it was a pleasure to get to know you a little bit and hear about your work. And I wish you the best of luck with what you're doing. It's great work. And I can't wait to hear more from you in the future. Well, thank you so much for having me here. You're very welcome. Take care. Bye.
Episode Wrap-Up
00:44:40
Speaker
All right, we've come to the end of yet another episode of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Show notes and fun stuff are all over at brendanomera.com. There you can subscribe to my monthly reading list newsletter, four books, and what you might have missed from the world of the podcast once a month. No spam. You can't beat that.
00:45:04
Speaker
yeah subscribe to the podcast share with a friend this is our little corner of the internet where we uh talk true stories got someone who you think might be interested in it why not just uh forward it along i produced and conducted this show at brendan o'mer on twitter and instagram say hi that's gonna do it well we'll do this whole thing again next week sound good all right have a cnf and great week bye