Less than two weeks from now, some of the world’s greatest athletes will descend upon South Korea for the Winter Olympics. Also descending upon the host city: a fuck-ton of condoms.

“What if, just one time, I chose differently,” Charlie Sheen said, addressing 100 or so people standing in a Manhattan warehouse space amidst erotic dancers and a four foot penis ice sculpture at the launch of the LELO HEX condom. If we’re to believe the lofty claims from “pleasure object” manufacturer LELO, the lowly…

It’s no secret that Olympic athletes like to get it on. Recognizing this, the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) is adding an extra measure to help its prized athletes stay safe: antiviral condoms that help protect against the Zika virus.

Researchers at the University of Queensland have made a cool new discovery in the quest for better condoms. It turns out a component of spinifex, a coastal grass, could make condoms much, much thinner. Thinner is better.

Way back in September, our very own Esther Inglis-Arkell found a recipe for condoms from 1844. It was only two paragraphs long, so we thought, how hard can it be? Really hard, it turns out. Also gross and potentially dangerous.

Some of you who’ve been reading Throb might think I’m a bit condom-obsessed, but that’s not accurate. I’m actually obsessed with people enjoying sex while preventing unwanted pregnancy and the spread of disease. And let’s be honest: no one is truly thrilled by latex condoms. In a word, they suck. Leaving aside the…

Two decades after the “windsock” was nearly laughed off the market, a radical redesign has made the female condom more user-friendly. In a feature for Mosaic, Emily Anthes outlines the device’s history and how training in its use may help give women more choices for preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted…

Correctly used, condoms do a damn good job of preventing STDs (and pregnancy!). But nobody's gonna say no to an improvement that ups those odds. Say, a condom coated in antiviral gel that kills up t0 99.9% of HIV, genital herpes, and human papillomavirus. Australia just said yes, and hopefully the U.S. isn't far…

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently awarded a grant to an Australian research team trying to build a better condom. They're hardly the first to win such an award, but they have a novel approach. These polymer scientists are making condoms out of hydrogels, the same materials used in contact lenses.

There ain't nothing hotter right now than redesigning the necessary evil that is the modern condom. But while most pecker poncho redesigns tend to look at alternative materials (hello, graphene condom), this newest one goes for an approach so minimal—it's barely even there.

It's been almost a year since Bill Gates put out his $100,000 call for better, high-tech condoms, and we haven't found a new defacto standard yet. But Firaz Peer and Andrew Quitmeyer of Georgia Tech have a potential solution, if you're OK with putting electrodes on your manparts.

The broken condom is every couple's worst nightmare. Okay maybe not worst, but it is one of many legitimate concerns about the contraceptive that could save lives if people actually used them. So how do you convince people to use condoms more often? Make a better condom, of course.

So obviously this was going to happen eventually, but that doesn't mean we're ready for it. Durex just announced what it's calling "Fundawear", which ostensibly stands for "fun underwear" but which Durex believes will eventually come to mean "article of clothing that is fun like once ever until you realize what…