Mini: Cats, Villains At Heart

Undiscovered

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

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

4.6 • 768 Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2018

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Undiscovered is back between seasons with a listener question: What saved the cats? If you rewind to the Middle Ages, cats and humans were on bad terms. Cat roundups, cat torture, and even cat murder were common occurrences throughout Europe. But a series of historic events steadily delivered the tiny felines into public favor. In a story that spans centuries and continents, the Catholic Church and the Rosetta Stone, Elah and Annie investigate how the cat’s reputation shifted from devil’s minion to adored companion.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Listener supported WNYC Studios.
0:10.2	This is Undiscovered.
0:15.4	Hey, Annie Annette here.
0:17.2	We are, of course, between seasons of Undiscovered right now, but we are popping back for a hot second because recently we got an intriguing question from a listener on Twitter.
0:26.8	So this past season, we had an episode about what saved the whales. Yep. So how we went from thinking of whales as these scary beasts of the sea to completely going bananas for them.
0:39.8	And it turns out a key turning point was figuring out that whales sing.
0:53.3	So that episode got one of our listeners, his name is Bob Collum, thinking, okay, if Whale Song saved the whales, what saved the cats?
1:03.5	Because we didn't always love cats either.
1:05.7	And cats do not have a haunting or mystical song, I would hazard.
1:14.5	Definitely a glimpse of the divine in that.
1:21.0	So the question is, where did this love of cats come from? We dug into it. We talked to a cat history buff. Fascinating conversation. Turns out not a lot of science to it, but I undiscovered we love a good history saga.
1:29.6	And we have that answer. So we called up Bob.
1:35.9	Hello.
1:37.0	Hey, Bob. Yep. And Bob, side note, has a completely fascinating job. So wait, so do you work for NASA?
1:44.9	Is that right?
1:45.5	I do.
1:46.5	I'm at NASA headquarters in the Mars Exploration Program.
1:50.0	I work on the human landing site study.
1:53.9	Basically, we're trying to pick what the best and most interesting place to put humans on Mars is.
2:00.0	What are the contenders? Well, right now
2:03.9	it's the whole planet. I am personally interested in the Aeolus-Monds area. The closest site
2:11.2	that was submitted would be a huge ancient volcano. It's actually the largest volcano by aerial extent in the solar system.
	...

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