Hello and welcome to Conflicted, the history podcast where we talk about the struggles that shaped us, the tough questions that they pose, and why we should care about any of it.

Conflicted is a member of the Evergreen Podcast Network. And as always, I'm your host, Zach Cornwell.

You are listening to the first episode in a three-part series about a topic that has been on my list since I started

conflicted four years ago. In fact, I think it'll probably be one of the more challenging

series we've ever done because it concerns one of the most controversial and contested subjects

in modern life, sex. Today, we're going to be exploring the work, life, and cultural impact

of Dr. Alfred Kinsey.

Often described as the father of the sexual revolution,

Alfred Kinsey was an American biologist who authored a pioneering study

on human sexuality in the late 1940s.

Released in the form of two massive books, each focusing on male and female behavior,

respectively, the study became known as the Kinsey

Report. And few scientific books have caused a bigger cultural stir than the Kinsey Report. In its

time, it triggered a cyclone of controversy, uproar, and even a few congressional inquiries. But it also

forever changed the way that Americans thought, talked, and legislated about sex.

Drawing on data from 18,000 interview subjects, Kinsey compiled an exhaustive report

on the sex lives of ordinary Americans.

In black and white, with tables and graphs and annotations, he showed that people were having

more sex and different kinds of sex than what traditional Christian morality dictated.

He shocked the nation, and he did it by simply holding up a mirror. But arguably, the Kinsey

reports most important contribution to sexology, or the study of sex, is the idea that our

sexual orientations fall onto a spectrum, or a continuum. Rather than being exclusively heterosexual or exclusively homosexual,

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