On Demand
Sperm Tales
By Radiolab
October 7, 2008
Our new season is just a little over a month away, so we decided to give everyone a teaser of what’s to come. This season, we devote a whole hour to the topic of “Sperm” … And if you think you learned all there is to know about sperm from that junior high school filmstrip, think again.
In today’s podcast, we give you two short pieces that hint at the new ideas and amazing stories we came across once we started following the trail of this wriggly little cell. First, in a twisted tale of twisted tails, fertility specialist Joanna Ellington, cofounder of ING Fertility, gives Robert a guided tour of all the sperm that are doomed to fail. Then Tim Birkhead, a biologist at the University of Sheffield, tells Jad and Robert how a dead wood mouse completely upended the idea that it’s “every sperm for himself.”
And there are more amazing sperm tales to come! The full show will be released in November.
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Comments
Comment from Kitty
Date: October 7, 2008, 1:39 pm
Sperm! Yay! I’m so glad we’re talking about this. Sperm is so interesting, it’s like a little life form, right? What I want to know is, how do those reptiles and rabbits make babies with just a man or just a woman? Could a sperm ever turn into a whole baby ever ever? ever? in the lab? Do all animal’s sperm look the same? basically?
Comment from arkonbey
Date: October 7, 2008, 1:43 pm
Ok. I’m not a statistician, so correct me if I’m wrong. Doesn’t ‘normal’ usually imply a majority? If 86% of human sperm is not shaped like the ‘classic’ sperm, shouldn’t that make the single-tailed, single-headed sperm abnormal?
Comment from Zina
Date: October 8, 2008, 1:27 am
Your shows rock, guys, I can’t wait to hear the new one!
Your treatment of the topics is original and fascinating, your presentation fresh and entertaining.
I keep recommending your show to all my friends.
Thank you for an absolutely marvelous show!
Comment from Dave Kliman
Date: October 8, 2008, 8:07 am
It’s funny how you’re talking about this. just a month ago, or so, i was having a conversation with a botanist type, and he was explaining to me that many species of plants have sperm that are indistinguishable from animal sperm.
“with all the flagella etc?”
“yep.”
i hope you will be touching on that, as you probably will, since you guys seem to leave no stone unturned in your cool shows!
-Dave
Comment from Sarah Williams
Date: October 8, 2008, 3:06 pm
I’m so glad the new season is starting!
arkonbey – one supposes that the majority all are abnormal in very different ways.
Comment from BlackAndy
Date: October 12, 2008, 12:34 pm
I think you guys interviewed a friend of mine, Leisha, for this show…if she told you the story that she told me then this is going to be another fantastic episode.
The same night she told that she had been interviewed for Radiolab she blew my mind a second time when she told me about taking her pet fish in for her (the fish) to have surgery done. I had never considered whether there were even people who did emergency surgery on fish, but she has photos to prove it.
Comment from dboyne@aol.com
Date: December 4, 2008, 12:14 pm
Interesting!
Comment from Z
Date: December 23, 2008, 1:56 pm
i love radiolab so much, but this show really bothered me. the bits and pieces were interesting, but using biological properties of sperm to explain human action is a gross over-simplification. while most of it was done jokingly in the program, it was worth noting that the societal influences are probably much stronger in terms of reproductive choices in humans. of course this is not the first time that biology has been used to describe the differences between male and female choices, and certainly not the most insulting, but i thought radiolab would do a better job of pointing this out.
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