 We have an egg. We have a secondary oocyte. My secondary oocyte is chilling in the fallopian tube and it's slowly making its way toward the uterus. But guess what? It isn't going to matter, doodly doodly doos, because that egg needs to combine with a sperm if it wants to finish and become a baby. Aw. So let's go back and remind ourselves. We have to have the boy half of the scene come back into the mix. So let's remind ourselves about what we already know about the fellops. We know that in seminiferous tubules, in the testes, sperm were being produced. We also know that the sperm produced in the seminiferous tubules travel through efferent ductuoles to the vast, to the epididymis, where they learn how to swim. It's important. If you're going to swim all the way into the fallopian tubes, you better know what you're doing, otherwise you'll drown. Actually, you'll just get stuck like swimming in circles or something. And functionally, that's not a big deal because there's so many sperm, only 500 million heading out. You can choose one or two along the way, whatever. So they're waiting in the epididymis for go time. So things start getting all fun, exciting. They're starting to think it's go time. The parasympathetic nervous system's doing its thing. We have a erect penis. Everything's ready. Sympathetic nervous system starts getting into the mix. Things are getting really exciting here. The loopholes are in the epididymis going, okay, we're ready. Put us in, coach. Put us in. And sympathetic nervous system says, okay, let's go. And all of them get dumped into the vast efferents. The vast efferents is headed up through the spermatic cord. We're going to shift views because we need to take a closer look at, okay, the big picture. Where is all this happening? It's totally cool because, come on, there we go. Here was our epididymis. It's okay. I don't ever have to do that anymore. Here's my epididymis and it turns into my vast efferents. Are you cool? My vast efferents is traveling up, goes through the inguinal canal with the spermatic cord and then it separates out. Now this right here is my bladder just for perspective, which means that is my ureter heading into the bladder. So that just kind of gives you a perspective and I'm looking at this whole thing from the side. So the vast efferents, and maybe I'll try making it yellow to see if you could actually see that, the vast efferents travels all the way around and from the posterior aspect comes back anteriorly and is going to ultimately head for the penis. So along the way we have some players who are going to contribute some stuff. The first player who's going to, you know, I mean this is kind of a big deal. You've got your 500 million sperm, they're going for it and everybody in this area is like we want to help. Like let's, you guys are going in, we want to make sure that you have everything you need to make it happen. So the first person who gets to contribute is this little glandular structure called the seminal vesicle. And if you notice this, the seminal vesicle actually empties in and I mean you could say it actually kind of joins with the vast efferents although we become a new thing when the seminal vesicles dump in. So first of all, we'll get to all of that. The seminal vesicles, like life is good, you know, we want to pack you a lunch. So they donate sugar. They also donate bicarb, baking soda. Think back on your bio one days. Why would they be throwing baking soda? Sugar and baking soda? What, are the seminal vesicles going to like make a cake or something? No, they're not going to make a cake because most of the time they don't do stuff like that. The bicarb, the baking soda is there because vaginas can be kind of acidic. And sperm are like, we don't roll in acid, man. We don't like that stuff. So the seminal vesicles are like, we got you. Let's throw in some bicarb, this is easy. And then the seminal vesicles also throw in a hormone-like substance called prostaglandin. Prostaglandin. And I tell you prostaglandin because you might see that someday in the future. For some reason I've heard of prostaglandins before. Guess what the prostaglandins do? We packed your lunch, we've battled the acid. The prostaglandins soften the cervix. What? Now there's all sorts of interesting applications that we can think of here. What's the cervix? We didn't even talk about a cervix yet. Check out, let's go back to, I mean, we're going into the vagina. If these guys are lucky, they're headed into the vagina. And the vagina kind of maintains an acidic environment most of the month, most of the month. And it maintains an acidic environment to combat bacteria and like get out of there. Like we want to keep this place kind of inhospitable. But besides, for only 24 hours, that's the only time when we might possibly make a baby and the vagina would like to help make a baby regardless of what you think. So the cervix is this like, it's basically the opening to the uterus. So it's the, it is a hole. And it looks like a little donut hole almost. Like the uterus kind of sits down in the vagina and the tip of the uterus, the cervix, you can actually see it. If you look into a vagina through like a speculum, you can actually see the cervix in there. And the little hole is a true hole. So sperm, in order to get into the fallopian tubes where the secondary oocyte is hanging out, you have to get in there and you go through the cervix. And then once that secondary oocyte gets fertilized by sperm and embeds in the uterus and makes your uterus about the size of this room, then that little cute little parasite that just embedded in your uterus will come out through the cervix. The prostaglandins soften the cervix. They kind of open it up a little bit. They make it more like, come in guys, come in. One of the reasons why a suggested activity if you are trying to bring on labor is to get a little action on and throw some semen into your vagina and all over your cervix because it has prostaglandin in it which will soften your cervix. And if your cervix gets softened, you are more likely to get ready to push your baby out. All right, let's go back and see where we are now because that was just one guy. We have two more people who are going to contribute materials to this scene. We were in the vas deferens. The seminal vesicles dumped their stuff in. The tube is no longer called the vas deferens. It's called the ejaculatory duct. It's called the ejaculatory duct. As soon as seminal vesicles dump in their goods, we are now the ejaculatory duct. The ejaculatory duct is passing through the prostate. Does that work for you? Can you see? I mean, this is my prostate gland which means, what is this right here? I'll make it this color. What is this whole thing right here? That's my urethra. This is prostatic urethra, membranous urethra, spongy urethra. So this whole thing is urethra and the ejaculatory duct is next in line after the vas deferens and the ejaculatory duct is going to dump into prostatic urethra. Prostate. We're going through the prostate. We might as well add some stuff here too. Thanks, guys. So the prostate adds in some goods. First of all, the prostate adds in more food, and later, the prostate is like, I want to be super proactive and it adds in antibiotics. And then, this whole thing is so phenomenal, the prostate adds in semen liquefier. What? The semen liquefier is called PSA, prostate stimulating antigen, something like that. And this is something that they test for to find out the health of your prostate, the fellow's prostate, because the ladies don't have a prostate, because we don't need to have semen liquefier produced for us. But when the semen comes out, it's kind of in a little blob. It's kind of in a, like, it's not super gelatinous, it's like, it kind of holds its shape. And so, that's hard for sperm to swim through. They're like, dude, just melt the stuff, and then we can swim better. Prostate's like, I got you. We'll throw in the semen liquefier, plus some antibiotics and some extra snacks for the big, long trip. And we got one more person, because now, now the sperm entered into the urethra. Prostate's added all that stuff. It goes through the membranous urethra, so all the sperm and all their juices are coming through. Travels into the penile urethra, I mean, the spongy urethra. Somebody else says, don't forget my gift. It's like, they're going off and they get gifts from all the special wise men. So this guy right here is called the bulbo urethral gland. Bulbo urethral gland. And this guy is the clown of the team. This guy's like, yeah, you're going off on your big adventure, sure you need antibiotics, sure you need food, but really, let's throw in some fun stuff. You got to have some fun while you're at it. This guy throws in the mucus to make for extra slip-slidey fun. So now my 500 million fellas are busting a move. They've got their snacks, they're super excited, and they're headed out with their mucus slipping all around and swimming like madmen. And if they're lucky, they get to go into a vagina and up the tube they go and into the cervix and they're like fighting their way through and the cervix is looking all soft and lovely. Thank you, prostate, and they swim up through and they swim in through the uterus. Now it's like a choose your own adventure. Which side do you pick? Nobody knows, half of them go one way, half of them go the other way. Who's going to get lucky? Someone gets lucky, maybe they get lucky if they got there in 24 hours before that egg died and they make a baby. Well, first of all, they fertilize that egg and then the egg gets to finish. That secondary oocyte gets to finally finish and actually be an ovum. And now I finally get to call it an ovum. Yes. And then for like two seconds it's an ovum because what happens next? It already got fertilized. So the two nuclei, sperm nucleus and eggy nucleus combine and now we have a zygote. And that little zygote's going to bounce its way down the fallopian tubes and into the uterus. And then it becomes a true parasite of, like it's totally a parasite. It burrows into your uterine wall. It like starts eating the wall of the uterus. It takes over your immune system. It like hijacks your whole system. And then it makes you have to dilate your cervix to 10 centimeters in order to get it out. But we love them. They're so cute. Okay. After all that, you now know why we're doing this whole thing. You've got all the anatomy to go with it. Now the next time you're like, what is he thinking? Or why are men so weird? Or think things like that. I'm going to tell you how actually we are really, really similar to the fellas. The fellas are really, really similar to us. All right. I'll be right back to enlighten you on that whole phenomenon.