How To Say No: A Three-Part Series

"Now" is one little word that plagues so many of us. Whether out of fear, insecurity, or for any number of other reasons, so many people struggle to say no when we want or need to.


It goes without saying that women are particularly prone to this problem. When it comes to work, social obligations or sexual encounters, women have been taught from birth that pleasing others is paramount. 

Radiolab recently completed a three-part series exploring the concept of "No" (it’s called “In the No”), and the first episode is borrowed from a podcast series by Kaitlin Prest. Hers is some of the most intimate and vulnerable radio producing I've heard. In exploring her difficulty with saying no—particularly when it comes to sex with men—she records herself talking to friends and lovers, re-enacts romantic scenarios from memory, and one point even records herself having a sexual encounter.

Listening back to the way she expresses herself allows Prest to analyze her own inability to say no, even while it allows the men that she talks with to express their own feelings about why they pressure women to have sex, and their views of the same situations. It’s tense, awkward, heartrending, and enlightening.