The Long Loneliness

Undiscovered

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

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

4.6 • 768 Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2018

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Americans haven’t always loved whales and dolphins. In the 1950s, the average American thought of whales as the floating raw materials for margarine, animal feed, and fertilizer—if they thought about whales at all. But twenty-five years later, things had changed for cetaceans in a big way. Whales had become the poster-animal for a new environmental movement, and cries of “save the whales!” echoed from the halls of government to the whaling grounds of the Pacific. What happened? Annie and Elah meet the unconventional scientists who forever changed our view of whales by making the case that a series of surreal bleats and moans were “song.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Listener supported WNYC Studios.
0:07.0	This is undiscovered.
0:13.0	Wow, look at those things. Every year, 13 million people go out onto the water to watch whales and dolphins.
0:30.5	Just watch them.
0:32.0	Those are a few of those people.
0:33.5	That's a boat full of whale watchers in Baja.
0:36.4	And chances are they paid good money to do this.
0:38.2	We spend $2 billion a year to watch whales and dolphins, like $2 billion with a B, which
0:45.0	might seem a little excessive, like a little over the top, except it turns out everything
0:50.2	about our love for whales and dolphins is just a little bit over the top.
0:54.2	Like, you know, we've got the T-shirts with the leaping turquoise dolphins on the front.
0:59.7	The sunset in the background.
1:01.2	Exactly.
1:02.1	We listen to albums of whale song.
1:04.6	And if we get a chance to touch, you know, actually pet a whale's barnacle-encrusted snout, we just lose it.
1:12.3	Yes.
1:13.6	Oh, oh, boy.
1:16.6	Oh, boy.
1:18.3	Yeah, that guy did.
1:19.6	Yes.
1:20.3	I have to say, if I heard that sound out of context, not sure I would have figured out it was about a guy petting a whale. I did think about that.
1:29.6	Yeah. Anyway, we love whales and dolphins. Yes. So much. It's actually hard for us to imagine
	...

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