Dr. Ruth Westheimer has died. As the host of numerous radio shows and television programs focused on giving sex advice—starting with Sexually Speaking on New York radio in 1980, and spreading to empire proportions from there—Westheimer helped lead a revolution in the ways sex was talked about in the media, bringing a mixture of sensible advice, expertise, and humor to conversations surrounding consent, orgasms, abortion, and more. Rising to media superstar status across the 1980s, Westheimer became culturally ubiquitous over the next several decades, achieving numerous honors—including, we feel moved to note, the ultimate privilege of being leapt into by Dr. Sam Beckett in an episode of Quantum Leap. Per The New York Times, Westheimer died on Friday in her home in New York. She was 96.
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Born Jewish in Germany in 1928, Westheimer’s early life was shaped by the rise of the Nazi regime. In 1939—just a few weeks after her father was swept up and sent to a concentration camp during anti-Jewish purges in the wake of Kristallnacht—her mother sent her to Switzerland, where she lived in an orphanage and, like almost every other resident there, inevitably became an orphan. At 16, she immigrated to the region then known as Mandatory Palestine, where she worked on a kibbutz and eventually joined Zionist paramilitary organization Haganah, where she was trained as a scout and a sniper. After sustaining a serious injury in the 1947-1949 Palestine war, Westheimer left what was, by then, the State Of Israel, first for France, where she first studied psychology, and then to the United States, where she worked as a maid to put herself through graduate school.
Westheimer spent the next 30-odd years learning and studying her craft, teaching sociology and sex education in numerous universities in the New York region, and operating a sex therapy practice in Manhattan. Her media career didn’t begin until she was 56 years old, when a speech given to New York media professionals convinced broadcasters at WYNY-FM to take a shot on the diminutive, funny, and frank therapist, launching Sexually Speaking as a 15-minute show on some of the network’s deadest air. Powered almost entirely by word of mouth—drawn in by Westheimer’s joyfully fun persona and expertise—the show grew massively in a short period of time, expanding out to an hour in length and becoming, in just a few short years, the most successful radio show in the New York market.
From there, Westheimer’s reputation exploded: She got her first TV series, on Lifetime, in 1984, and became a regular on the talk show circuit, appearing frequently with Johnny Carson, where her sense of humor and willingness to talk about supposedly taboo topics made her a fan favorite. Advocating for the use of contraception, the legality of abortion, the importance of consent, and research into HIV/AIDS, Westheimer helped popularize many of the standards of what we now recognize as good sexual practice in a way that was accessible to the masses, acknowledging in myriad ways the fun, silliness, and seriousness of sex. She became, at the same time, a media phenomenon, producing numerous books, multiple board games and computer games, and several other syndicated shows on both radio and TV.
The 1980s were the heyday for Dr. Ruth, pretty undeniably—you could argue that, by grabbing America by the collar and dragging it forward on these topics, she rendered her own brand a little less potent—but she continued to be a major media figure for the remainder of her life. (Including, yes, that Quantum Leap episode, in 1993—notably, the only time in the show’s history that the “leapee” played themselves, with Westheimer giving Dean Stockwell’s character Al advice on intimacy.) She continued to appear regularly on TV shows well into the 2020s—including a memorable stint in the early 2000s on PBS Kids show Between The Lions, where she played “Dr. Ruth Wordheimer,” an expert on helping kids get over their anxieties over too-long words. She was an inductee of the Radio Hall Of Fame, a winner of Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award, and the recipient of numerous other honors. Her death was confirmed today by her publicist.