Like Jerry Springer For Bluebirds

Undiscovered

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Wnyc, Society & Culture, 805813, Science, History, Friday, Studios

4.6 • 768 Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2019

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“Do men need to cheat on their women?” a Playboy headline asked in the summer of 1978. Their not-so-surprising conclusion: Yes! Science says so! The idea that men are promiscuous by nature, while women are chaste and monogamous, is an old and tenacious one. As far back as Darwin, scientists were churning out theory and evidence that backed this up. In this episode, Annie and Elah go back to the 1970s and 1980s, when feminism and science come face to face, and it becomes clear that a lot of animals—humans and bluebirds included—are not playing by the rules.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Listener supported WNYC Studios.
0:07.0	Hey, everyone.
0:09.0	Hey.
0:10.0	So it's been a little while and you might not have expected to hear from us again.
0:15.0	Some of you declared us dead prematurely.
0:18.0	But after two seasons, Undiscovered is unfortunately saying goodbye. It has been an honor
0:24.4	to play in your ears, to get your emails and reviews and tweets and see you sticking your
0:29.7	undiscovered stickers on things. That was really cool. Yeah, it's meant so much to us and we're going to
0:34.7	really miss sharing these stories with you. But the good
0:38.5	news is, before we go, we do have a few final episodes for you. So undiscovered, it's always been
0:46.3	about how science happens. And, you know, it's not a steady march toward truth and wisdom.
0:52.5	And it wouldn't be nearly as interesting if it was.
0:54.6	And some of our very favorite stories that we have discovered in the process of making this show
0:59.2	are about things that us humans, scientists included, got wrong and how we changed our minds.
1:06.5	And how we'll probably change them again. Inevitably. So this is Undiscovered.
1:11.9	We Were Wrong Edition.
1:13.4	First up, we have a story about sex.
1:17.1	I want you to imagine it's 1978, Florida State University.
1:22.9	There's a young woman.
1:24.5	She's standing in one of the quads on campus.
1:26.9	It's a weekday. I know that it was not raining. That is all I know about that day. And this woman, she's scanning the area for men that she finds attractive. This is what we female college students do. So he has to be not only attractive, but attractive enough that she would consider
1:45.7	sleeping with him. According to whose rule? I'm going to get to that. You'll find out who's
	...

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