SEX AT DAWN: Interview with Chris Ryan

Explicit content warning

06/12/20 • 44 min

Was Charles Darwin a player? Christopher Ryan, author of the New York Times bestseller Sex At Dawn, discusses the Victorian triumph of views on sexual evolution and what they mean for us today. Discussed: Can new research on prehistory help explain modern scandals? What do we know about Darwin's erotic life? Who invented "key parties"? What is an "anaphrodisiac"? And -- are Republicans stuck in the Agricultural Revolution?

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Footnote: the Pages of Sin

Prostitute guidebooks flourished in Renaissance Venice, Georgian London, belle époque Paris -- and early 1900s Kansas City. What can historians learn from studying their well-thumbed pages?

Next Episode

Footnote: the Curse of Self-Abuse

How an obscure 1712 pamphlet called Onania began the war on masturbation in Georgian London. Over the next 200 years, the campaign against self-pleasure became an international phenomenon, and led to such oddities as the creation of Corn Flakes and Graham crackers in the US.