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- Interview: Stan Lee talks about his career and the creation of Spider-Man Interview: Olivia Judson discusses the evolutionary biology of sex Review: HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm"
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- DATE November 15, 2002 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A NETWORK NPR PROGRAM Fresh Air Interview: Stan Lee talks about his career and the creation of Spider-Man BARBARA BOGAEV, host: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev, in for Terry Gross. (Soundbite from "Spider-Man") Unidentified Man: With great power comes great responsibility. Mr. TOBEY MAGUIRE (As Peter Parker): This is my gift. Unidentified Woman: Wow. Mr. MAGUIRE: It is my curse. Unidentified Woman: Who are you? Mr. MAGUIRE: Who am I? I'm Spider-Man. BOGAEV: That's Tobey Maguire from the film "Spider-Man," which is now out on video. It's based on the Marvel comic book character co-created by my guest, Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko. Starting in the 1940s, Lee served as head writer, editorial and art director, publisher and chairman of Marvel Comics. He's now chairman emeritus of the company and is currently suing Marvel over a percentage of the profits from the Spider-Man franchise and the film, which he executive produced. Throughout his career in comics, Lee's superheroes were distinguished by their psychological complexity. They were burdened with self-doubt and existential angst. They include The Fantastic Four, X-Men, Dr. Strange and The Incredible Hulk. Stanley's memoir, "Excelsior: The Amazing Life of Stan Lee," is out in paperback. When we spoke this summer, I asked Stan Lee about the original of Spider-Man, whether he first thought of creating a superhero who could crawl up walls or one that was a geeky teen. Mr. STAN LEE: Well, I think the geek part came first. I decided I wanted somebody who every one of the readers could identify with because I think every teen-ager thinks of himself or herself as somewhat geekish at some time or other. Most teen-agers are somewhat insecure and shy and inhibited and introverted. So I figured a hero like that would be very empathetic to the readers. BOGAEV: So how did the spider element come in? Mr. LEE: Well, with every new superhero, you have to have a new superpower because, as I'm sure you're aware, the superpower is what makes them superheroes, rather than regular heroes. And we, of course, specialized in superheroes. I had already done a book called The Fantastic Four, and in that book, I had a girl who was invisible, a man who could stretch any part of his body, a fellow who could burst into flame and fly, and somebody who was one of the strongest people on Earth at the time. And I was figuring, or I was trying to figure, `What other power can I give somebody?' And I saw a fly crawling on a wall. Now I've said this so often, it might even be true. I can't even remember anymore, but I saw this fly crawling on a wall and I said, `Gee, wouldn't it be something if a hero could stick to walls and move on them like an insect?' And that's how it happened. And lo, a legend was born. BOGAEV: But why wasn't he Insect-Man or ...(unintelligible)? Mr. LEE: As a matter of fact, he almost was because, having decided that was the superpower I wanted to give him, I next had to come up with a name. So I began to think--Insect-Man, Mosquito-Man, Gnat-Man. I mean, anything I could think of. None of them sounded right. I finally got to Spider-Man, and somehow it sounded dramatic, it sounded mysterious. So that was the name I chose. BOGAEV: Now why do superheroes all wear these spandex costumes? The question of the ages. Mr. LEE: That is a very interesting question. Remember I mentioned before Spider-Man, I had done a book called The Fantastic Four? Well, that was the first of the so-called Marvel Universe characters. And I wanted The Fantastic Four to be as different from other books as Spider-Man was. So one of the things I decided was I would give none of those characters costumes because I always felt if I suddenly developed a superpower, I don't think the first thing I would do would be run to a costume store and say, `Quick, give me a mask and some spandex.' So I just gave them regular clothes, and I published the issue. And we started to get a tremendous amount of fan mail, and most of the letters said something of this nature: `Stan, we love the book. The Fantastic Four is great, and, oh, man, are we excited about it. But if you don't give them costumes, we'll never buy another issue.' Now I don't know the reason for that. I have wracked my brain. I have tried to research it. I don't know why, but it just seems that the people who like superheroes like to see their superheroes in costumes. BOGAEV: Well, let's talk about the "Spider-Man" movie. There are a lot of poses directly out of the comic strip in the movie that re-create Spider-Man, for instance, hanging upside-down with his knees out. That's a classic silhouette for Spider-Man. Mr. LEE: Yeah. BOGAEV: And also swinging through the streets of New York with his arms straight, outstretched. Mr. LEE: Steve Ditko, the artist, did such a wonderful job of those shots in the beginning that he did of Spider-Man swinging and clinging to walls and hanging upside-down. Most people who've read those early books still remember those shots. BOGAEV: Yeah. What do you think that the movie got right in terms of the visual aesthetics? Mr. LEE: Oh, I think the movie got virtually everything right. It got the essence of Peter Parker, the shy young man who suddenly comes into his own once he gets the superpower. It got his ambivalence, his feeling that somehow this superpower he had gotten is as much a curse as a blessing. The only thing--there was one little thing about the movie that I felt could have been better. I never cared for the mask that the Green Goblin had. I think that Willem Dafoe is such a fine actor, I would have loved to have seen his face when he was the Green Goblin. I would have loved to have seen his expressions. Somehow, the mask, which was solid and unchanging, to me wasn't as dramatic as actually seeing his face would have been. But that is a small complaint, and I thought everything else was absolutely wonderful. BOGAEV: Now we have to get into the controversy that fans found troubling, that Spider-Man's web powers in the movie were made organic. It was something that grew from his genetically altered spider bite, as opposed to something that, as you had written into the strip, something that he created as a burgeoning young scientist. Mr. LEE: Yeah. How about that? They dared tamper with my creation. Well, let me tell you, if I had done the movie, I would have tried to keep it that he created this little web shooter himself. I remember when Jim Cameron thought that he would do the "Spider-Man" movie a few years ago, he did an outline, a treatment for the movie, a very detailed one that was more than 50 pages. And he sent it to me, and it was a wonderful story. But I noticed that he, too, made the web shooting organic. And I said to him, `Gee, why don't you keep it the way it was in the book?' And he said, `Well, I think it would be hard to make an audience believe that some kid could just create something like that himself.' And then we talked about other things, and I went home and I thought about it, and I thought the way I would have done it would be in the beginning to show that Peter had always been--he was a science scholarship student. I mean, that was a given. He was a very bright student and he was winning a scholarship in science. Now the one thing he was always trying to do--if he ever went for a doctorate, this would be his doctorate thesis--he was trying to find something that could be shot out of a tube and stick to walls and, you know, whatever. This web was the thing he was trying to work on, but he never could get it right. However, once he was stung by that radio--or bitten by that radioactive spider, suddenly he knew how to do it. It not only increased his strength and gave him spider power, but the bite and the radioactivity, whatever, made him aware of how he could create that web shooter. Now that's the way I would have done it. But after I thought about it a lot and after I saw the movie, I'm inclined to think that maybe Jim Cameron and Sam Raimi, who did such a wonderful job directing the movie, maybe they were right. Maybe somehow it's more dramatic to see him just do it the way he did, organically, and it also saved them a lot of time because it would have taken quite a few extra minutes of screen time to show it the way I had just mentioned. So it may upset the fans, and I'm sorry it does, and I love them for their loyalty, but it really doesn't upset me. BOGAEV: Now you grew up in New York during the Depression. Mr. LEE: Mm-hmm. BOGAEV: So how hard-hit was your family? Mr. LEE: Oh, we were very hard--well, my dad was just not a lucky man when it came to finance or to getting jobs. Unfortunately, most of my memories of him, he was unemployed and he spent most of his time reading the want ads. He had been a dress cutter, and I guess there were just no jobs for dress cutters in those days. And I always felt tremendous pity for him because it must be a terrible feeling to be a man and just not be bringing in the money that's needed for your family. BOGAEV: Did you feel that you had to rush through school to start work to help out the family? I know a lot of Depression kids felt that. Mr. LEE: Oh, absolutely. In fact, I worked while I was going to school. I had a lot of part-time jobs, yeah. BOGAEV: So how did you get your start in comics? Mr. LEE: Accidently. I heard there was a job open in a publishing company and I thought, `Well, maybe they publish books or magazines or'--I didn't know that they published comics. I didn't know that that's where the job opening was, in the comic book department of this little company. And I took the job as an assistant. I did a little proofreading. I helped erase the pages once they were inked. And I ran errands and did some copy reading. And after a while, they let me do a little writing, and then they let me do a little more writing. And that was really how it started. BOGAEV: And this was Timely. Mr. LEE: Yeah, it was called Timely Comics at the time. BOGAEV: Now radio was really big. Were you a radio fan? Mr. LEE: Oh, yeah. I loved radio. BOGAEV: It's interesting, because the wonderful thing about your writing was that it was so snappy. It seemed to speak to me of radio. And you loved lots of slogans and alliteration, the Green Goblin... Mr. LEE: Oh, yeah. BOGAEV: ...and Doc Oc, and Dr. Doom. And I remember some incantation--What was it Dr. Doom used to say? `By the hoary hosts of...' Mr. LEE: No, that was Dr. Strange. BOGAEV: Oh, I get the doctors confused. Mr. LEE: We had a number of doctors. Dr. Strange was a magician. I called him the master of the mystic arts. BOGAEV: That's right. Mr. LEE: And obviously, he would cast spells and he would do magical things. Well, I couldn't have him say `abracadabra' when he wanted to do something. I felt I had to create little expressions for him, little incantations that he could utter. So I'd have him say things like, `By the hoary hosts of Hogith(ph), let so-and-such happen,' or, `By the crimson rings of Sitirak(ph),' or--I just made up any silly thing that sounded the way I thought it should sound. Funny thing about it was in later years, I did a lot of college lecturing. And very often people in the audience, during the questions and answer period, would say, `Stan, we've been making a study of the incantations of Dr. Strange, and my friends and I have come to the conclusion that you were very heavily influenced by the ancient Druid writings, or by'--and, you know, they would mention something very obscure that I had never heard of. But it's funny how people will always read more into what you write than you ever put in there. BOGAEV: Stanley's memoir of his career with Marvel Comics is "Excelsior: The Amazing Life of Stan Lee." "Spider-Man," the film, is now out on video. We'll hear more of my conversation with Stan Lee after a break. This is FRESH AIR. (Soundbite of music) BOGAEV: Let's continue our interview with Stan Lee, who co-created the Marvel comic book superheroes Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, The X-Men and The Fantastic Four. What people most remember about The Fantastic Four, I think, is that they were so dysfunctional. It was kind of like a bickering, dysfunctional superhero family. Mr. LEE: Well, you're absolutely right. And again, I think that's one of the reasons that they were popular, because just like Spider-Man's Peter Parker being the kind of teen-ager that the readers could identify with, I think for the first time, The Fantastic Four was a group that readers could identify with. They were not dissimilar to their own families. And, see, I didn't have a girl, for example, who had no idea that the hero was really a--that the man she loved was really a superhero. She knew who he was. In fact, she was engaged to him and she was part of the team, and there was a... BOGAEV: This is Sue Storm, you're talking about... Mr. LEE: Sue Storm, the... BOGAEV: ...one of The Fantastic Four. Mr. LEE: That's right. BOGAEV: She was Mr. Fantastic's girlfriend, The Invisible Girl. Mr. LEE: Exactly. Mr. Fantastic, as he modestly called himself. It was his girlfriend. And then... BOGAEV: I mean, it really was a soap opera, right? Mr. LEE: It was. It was. But you see, to me, every story should be done like a soap opera because that's what people like. If you don't have the characters' personal problems, if you don't have people who are having difficulty relating to other people, if you don't have characters with problems that seem unsolvable and you wonder, `How will they ever get out of this?' then what have you got? You've just got a series of incidents and you don't care about those, because if you don't care about the characters, you can't care about the story. BOGAEV: Now The Fantastic Four was a big hit, and somewhere in this stretch of the '60s, you put out a series called Sergeant Fury and His Howling Commandos. Mr. LEE: Yeah. BOGAEV: Very different from The Fantastic Four, and I believe that that series started because of a bet? What was that all about? Mr. LEE: Well, what happened was we had been doing very well. We now had what we called the Marvel Universe. So one day, again, I was talking to my publisher, who's a great guy, but we often didn't agree on things, and he said, `Stan, what is it that's making these books sell so well?' You know, immodestly, I wanted to say, `It's because I'm writing most of them,' but I didn't. But he said, `I think it's the titles. I think they are great titles.' I said, `That has nothing to do with it. It's the style of the writing,' and I mentioned what we just said. Even though they're superhero stories, I'm trying to treat them like soap operas, where the characters' personal lives are important. He didn't see it that--he said, `No, I don't think that's it. I think it's the titles.' So I said, `OK. You know what I'm going to show you, what I'm going to do for you? I'll make you a bet. I'm going to put out a book with the worst title I can think of, and I'm going to put it out in a field, in a genre that nobody is interested in,' and at that time, nobody wanted war stories. I mean, people were sick of them, they were sick of war. I said, `I'm going to do a war book,' and I thought and I thought, and I came up with the title Sergeant Fury and His Howling Commandos, which is much too long a title and nobody... BOGAEV: Well, it doesn't alliterate. Mr. LEE: That's right, it wasn't... BOGAEV: That's another problem. Mr. LEE: ...alliterative, and nobody knew what a howling commando was. ' So we did it and luckily, sure enough, it sold, and he grudgingly admitted maybe I had a point there. But I've got to mention one other thing. It was also a book that had the first ethnic group of heroes. In Sergeant Fury's platoon, we had a Jewish soldier named Izzy Cohen, we had a black soldier, an Italian soldier, a Scandinavian soldier. We even had a gay soldier. And this was in the middle 1960s, and I think it took a little courage to do it then, and everybody said to me, `Oh, the book won't sell in the South, it won't sell in the East, it won't sell in the West.' It sold all over, proving that people are really more broad-minded and smarter than anybody gives them credit for. BOGAEV: So tell me about this gay character. What was the story with him? Mr. LEE: The gay character? Oh, well, he was just one of the members of the platoon. His name was Percy Pinkerton. He was English, and his weapon--he carried an umbrella. I mean, he also carried a gun, but he would use the umbrella also to confuse people. And, I mean, I didn't play up the gay part, but somehow, you could assume he was gay in reading the stories. But he was brave and nice and friendly and everybody liked him, and he was one of the platoon, one of the guys. BOGAEV: A lot of kids who grew up in the Depression felt very insecure financially and chose very stable careers. Did you ever feel that this just is not the career for a grown-up and just not stable and financially secure enough for you? Mr. LEE: Well, I think for the first 20 years, I felt this is definitely not the career for a grown-up, and very, very often I wanted to leave, to quit, but I would get a raise or I'd work with a new artist and get interested in what we were doing or something would happen to make me decide to stay a little longer. But my biggest regret was during those early years, nobody had any respect for what I was doing. Nobody cared about a fellow who wrote comic books. I mean, it just was the bottom of the cultural totem pole. BOGAEV: Did it make you nervous, though, and maybe accounts for the real drive that you seem to have had? I mean, you had a huge creative drive. Mr. LEE: Yeah. Well, you know what really made me that way perhaps? It was my father. I used to just wish that that poor man could find a job, and I was stupid. That's why I'm not a businessman. Instead of me wanting to maybe create comics for myself and form my own company, which I could have done, all I wanted was a steady job. To me, it seemed as if having a good job, a steady job, is the greatest success a person could attain, only because my father never had one. And I think that's another reason that kept me at Marvel, or at what was then Timely so long, because, `I felt at least I've got a job,' you know, and I really should have left and tried to start a little something of my own, but, well, I didn't know. BOGAEV: Stan Lee, I want to thank you so much for talking with me today. Mr. LEE: That's it? I'm just getting started. BOGAEV: Stan Lee's memoir is "Excelsior." "Spider-Man," the movie, is now out on video. I'm Barbara Bogaev, and this is FRESH AIR. (Soundbite of "Spider-Man" theme) Mr. STEVEN TYLER: (Singing) Spider-Man, does whatever the spider can. Spins a web, sweet surprise. Catches thieves just like flies. Look out, here come the Spider-Man. (Announcements) (Soundbite of music) BOGAEV: Coming up, seduction in the animal world. We talk with scientist Olivia Judson about her guide book to the biology of sex. Judson writes in the persona of Dr. Tatiana, a sex columnist for creatures as varied as the African elephant and slime mold. Also, TV critic David Bianculli reviews "Curb Your Enthusiasm," starring Larry David on HBO. (Soundbite of music) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Interview: Olivia Judson discusses the evolutionary biology of sex BARBARA BOGAEV, host: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev. Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. But very few of us know exactly how they do it, and that's where my guest, Olivia Judson, enters the picture. She's a biologist and journalist who specializes in the evolutionary biology of sex. Her articles have appeared in Science, Nature, The Economist and other publications. Judson says that we don't know the most basic things about this most basic of functions. Think about it, humans would say sex is copulation, but frogs and most fish would say it's the squirting of eggs and sperm during spawning. Then again, scorpions might tell you that sex is packets of sperm deposited on the ground for the female to sit on so they'll explode in her reproductive tract. To address the varied and colorful conflicts that arise in the process of reproducing, Olivia Judson has invented a helpful persona in her guide book to the evolutionary biology of sex, "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation." Ms. OLIVIA JUDSON (Author, "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation"): (Reading) `"Dear Dr. Tatiana, I'm a queen bee and I'm worried. All my lovers leave their genitals inside me and then drop dead. Is this normal? Perplexed in Cloverhill." For your lovers, this is the way the world ends, with a bang, not a whimper. When a male honey bee reaches his climax, he explodes, his genitals ripped from his body with a loud snap. I can see why you find it unnerving. Why does it happen? Alas, your majesty, your lovers explode on purpose. By leaving their genitals inside you, they block you up. In doing so, each male hopes you will not be able to mate with another. In other words, his mutilated member is intended as the honey bee version of a chastity belt.' BOGAEV: Olivia Judson, welcome to FRESH AIR. Ms. JUDSON: Thank you. BOGAEV: The queen bee's question really plunges one into the battle between the sexes right at the beginning of the book. Well, it's really a battle on all fronts... Ms. JUDSON: Yes. BOGAEV: ...every man and woman for himself and herself. Do you see this in the likely evolutionary scenario of the honey bee? Ms. JUDSON: I do. I think that the honey bee is a very good example of the sorts of conflicts that arise. The problem is that if a female benefits from mating with more than one male, and in most species we now know, although this is a recent finding--in most species it seems clear that females do benefit a great deal from mating with more than one male. This is a real problem for each of her lovers, because from her point of view, she benefits--she has more and healthier offspring. From his point of view, it's a catastrophe, because her mating with other males means that fewer of her offspring will be his. And in the case of the honey bee it's particularly dramatic because each male has, in the first place, a very small chance of mating at all. The fate of most male honey bees is to die virgins. And so those that do have, in fact, nothing to lose by exploding. And the advantage of exploding is that by leaving his member behind, he may be able to prevent the female from mating again. But it's a problem for other males, because, obviously, they would like to mate as well, and so you would expect to see that the queen does not want to be prevented from mating again, and that other males do not want to be prevented from mating with her. And so sure enough, the queen is able to clean herself up, if she is inclined to, and the males also have now evolved a structure on the tips of the phallus which allows them to remove the detritus from a previous lover. BOGAEV: Like a scoop? Ms. JUDSON: Yeah, kind of. It's very common. A lot of males have this feature. BOGAEV: This gets us into promiscuity among males and females in the animal world. And the cliche of human sexuality is that men are promiscuous and women are chaste. How does that play itself out in other species? Ms. JUDSON: I think that's complete nonsense. It used to be thought that that was generally true throughout the animal kingdom; that males were philanderers and females were very virtuous and would resist mating and, you know, after they'd mated once, particularly in species that store sperm, they would have enough sperm for their whole lives and that would be that, they would not be interested in sex anymore. But females are, in general, however, much, much more promiscuous than they need to be if fertilizing their eggs were the only aim. And that discovery was not made until the 1980s, and then it wasn't even realized. So it was realized in the 1980s that females were more promiscuous than people thought. And then it was realized that, in fact, promiscuous females benefit from promiscuity and benefit from their behavior. In other words, promiscuous females tend to have more and healthier offspring in pretty much every species that I could find data for. BOGAEV: And what's the correlation there? Why would that be so? Ms. JUDSON: Well, there's a large industry now. In the last even three or four years, this has been something that scientists have started looking at because it's been impossible to avoid anymore; this horrible truth that females gain from promiscuity. And I think that there are a number of possible reasons. There is no single explanation, but there are all sorts of possible reasons varying from the idea that females are trying to get higher quality mates, that they meet one guy and they have sex with him just to make sure their eggs are fertilized, and then they meet a better guy, so they have sex with him, too. That's one idea. Another idea is that having sex with different males allows them to have more help. There are some very obvious cases where this is true. In the Bronze-Winged Jecana, which is a water bird that lives in India, the females run a harem where each female will try to have several males to herself, and the males do all of the work of sitting on eggs and feeding the chicks and building the nests, and the female just sort of, you know, has a grand old time. BOGAEV: In other species, do females only mate with males bearing gifts, like the proverbial box of chocolates? Ms. JUDSON: It's very common. It's not always necessary, but it's very common, particularly in insects. And it can be extraordinarily expensive for the male to produce gifts. Males, in most species, obviously, can't just go down the street and buy whatever they think is appropriate. They have evolved to produce gifts of various sorts. For example, they may hunt and bring the female something that they've caught to show that they're good at hunting, or just, you know, to please her. They may secrete something to give her. For example, in many butterflies the male will secrete a large gift. And these can be very expensive. In the green-veined butterfly, it's 15 percent of his body weight, and basically a male can only do this once. Each subsequent gift will be smaller. And females prefer males with large gifts, so in this species virgins have an advantage. BOGAEV: Olivia Judson's book is "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation." We'll hear more after the break. This is FRESH AIR. (Soundbite of music) BOGAEV: Back now with evolutionary biologist and journalist Olivia Judson. One of my favorite letters is from an iguana in your book. And it goes like this, `"Dear Dr. Tatiana, I'm a marine iguana, and I'm appalled by the behavior of young iguanas today. I keep encountering groups of youths masturbating at me. It's revolting. I'm sure they didn't dare act this way in Darwin's time. How can I make them stop? Disgusted in the Galapagos."' Now I suppose masturbating serves some purpose, at least as far as iguanas go. What would that be? Ms. JUDSON: Well, the iguana story is very curious. It turns out that these marine iguanas, which live in the Galapagos, have a problem. Young males have a problem, which is that females prefer--well, females, whether they prefer to mate with big males or not, usually do mate with big males, because the big males are able to push the little males off. And so you don't have much time, if you're a young male iguana, and it turns out that a little bit of masturbation to get yourself ready for sex decreases the length of time you need to complete copulation before, so this prevents, or reduces the chance that you will be interrupted. As far as I know, no other species masturbates in order to reduce the chance of being interrupted. BOGAEV: Now one theme of your book is the collision of the sexes, which being so intense in so many species, sometimes generates horrific outcomes, such as rape and cannibalism. And I do like how your first chapter in this category starts, `Rule number one, never get eaten during foreplay.' What evolutionary purpose does the violence in sex then among many species serve? Ms. JUDSON: Well, cannibalism is a particularly curious example. Everybody knows that the praying mantis has a tendency to munch on her lover, but what everybody doesn't know is that quite often this happens even before he's had a chance to mate. From his point of view, this is a fiasco. Obviously, if he's dead, he cannot pass on any genes. And it's not just the praying mantis who is guilty of this. Cannibalism of this kind has been reported in spiders, more than 80 species. It's also been reported particularly graphically in some predacious midges, where the female plunges her proboscis into the male's head and her spittle turns his innards to soup. So from the male's point of view, being cannibalized is incredibly bad news, particularly if it happens before sex. If it happens during sex, he may still have a chance; he may be able to fertilize some eggs. And if it happens after sex, it may also not be too bad. It depends on his particular situation. For example, the Australian red-back spider is the only known species where the male actually would like to be cannibalized, and he jumps into the female's jaws and attempts to persuade her to eat him. All the while she is eating, he is copulating, because in spiders the male's genitalia are modified mouth parts, and so she munches on his belly and he reaches under and fits his mouth parts into the appropriate places on her belly. But this is very unusual. And it turns out that the reason that he doesn't mind being cannibalized--in fact, invites it--is that males who are being eaten are allowed to copulate for longer, and, therefore, they fertilize a high proportion of eggs. Males who are rejected will be rejected very quickly, and, therefore, will not actually be able to fertilize many eggs at all. But for most males, they do not wish to be eaten because being eaten, first of all, precludes reproducing with a given female, and it also, obviously, precludes reproducing again. But from the female's point of view, it may not necessarily be that bad. At first glance, it appears that for a female to eat a male before sex is idiotic, but, in fact, if a female is likely to meet many males during the course of her life, as indeed in many spiders she will do, then it doesn't matter if she eats most of them. As long as she doesn't remain a virgin, she's OK. And so sometimes it's not going to be too bad, and it may even occasionally be to her advantage. BOGAEV: Now here's a provocative quote from your book. "True monogamy is one of the most deviant behaviors in biology." So how rare is rare? Ms. JUDSON: It's seems to be pretty rare. I combed the literature for examples--proven examples of monogamy, and they are very, very scarce. And I think that the reason is that it's rarely in anybody's advantage to be monogamous, if you are discussing monogamy truly in terms of how many offspring you'll produce, which is how success is measured in evolutionary terms. Monogamy is rarely advantageous for either sex, and so the conditions under which it evolves are peculiar and unusual. BOGAEV: There are some species, though, that do mate for life. You cite vultures. Ms. JUDSON: The black vulture is one of my favorite examples. The black vulture, as far as we know at the moment, it does appear to be monogamous. They have an interesting social system. They nest in pairs and on territories, quite large territories, but it's not simply a lack of opportunity thing, because black vultures are dependent on carcasses and many vultures will convene at a single carcass, and so there are certainly opportunities for meeting other vultures and having a bit on the side. But it turns out that the black vulture's, well, prudish. They don't like to see sexual behavior in public. And if an inexperienced black vulture attempts to seduce somebody in public, everybody will attack him or her, and so this appears to reinforce the tendency for monogamous behavior. But there are also other species that seem to be monogamous. My guess is that many species of shrimp may turn out to be monogamous. There are certainly quite a few that live in stable pairs, but shrimp are less studied than birds, and so we don't know nearly so much about them. BOGAEV: Can we talk about homosexuality, then? If a majority of species do break down to male and female, what does evolutionary biology--how does it inform us on the question of human sexuality and homosexuality among our species? Ms. JUDSON: Well, it's often said, particularly among social conservatives, for example, that homosexuality is unnatural, that it occurs only in humans and it is some weird, deviant behavior. There are two things that I'd like to say about that. The first is that whether it's natural or not is irrelevant because I could find examples of all sorts of behavior that people would find abhorrent--for example, incest is very common in many organisms, but humans believe that close brother-sister incest is a bad idea. So whether it is natural or not is irrelevant. However, it turns out that, in fact, homosexual behavior is very common in the animal world--much more common than people have thought--and the range is extraordinary. The reason that many people assume that homosexuality cannot be something that occurs in nature is because homosexuals, particularly in the West now, homosexuals tend not to have children, and, therefore, any genes for homosexuality should disappear very quickly. Well, in other organisms, we know almost nothing about the extent to which homosexual behavior is exclusive. Certainly many individuals engage in bisexual behavior, but I would--for the sake of argument you can say, `Well, if the behavior is exclusive so homosexuals never reproduce and it is fairly common so you can't just dismiss it as a fluke, then is there any way that the genes could be maintained in the population?' And I think that there are ways that they can be maintained. For example, if a gene that leads to homosexuality in one sex leads to very great reproductive success in the other, then you would expect to see a certain proportion of individuals who are homosexual throughout their lives. BOGAEV: Well, one of the standard arguments against human homosexuality, at least a biological one, runs that if it doesn't lead to reproduction, how can it be a genetic trait? But in this case it leads to reproduction of others... Ms. JUDSON: That's right. BOGAEV: ...so you're lending a helping hand. Ms. JUDSON: Not necessarily lending a helping hand. It may be that the gene itself is just very beneficial when it is manifested in one sex. It's certainly true that genes are expressed differently in the different sexes very often. And in that case, you might expect to see that there are some genes that produce homosexuality in one sex, but produce some very beneficial trait in the other, a trait that leads to much greater reproductive success, either very great fecundity or very good looks or--I mean, this is speculation. We don't know for sure, but that would be one mechanism by which genes for exclusive homosexuality could be maintained. BOGAEV: Well, I have to say a lot of the information in the book makes human sex quite pallid in comparison. Did you come away with your own conclusions about deviancy or any species you particularly envy? Ms. JUDSON: Well, it certainly broadened my horizons. I think that I would like to be reincarnated as a number of species. I think, for example, it would be fascinating to be a dolphin, for all sorts of reasons but particularly because they seem to have such amazing sex drive. I think that would be fascinating. But I think that in general--I mean, human sex may be dull, and in many respects it is, but basically I'm pretty glad to be human. BOGAEV: Olivia Judson, I want to thank you very much for talking with me today. Ms. JUDSON: Thank you very much. BOGAEV: Olivia Judson's book is "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation." Coming up, a review of Larry David's series on HBO. This is FRESH AIR. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Review: HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm" BARBARA BOGAEV, host: This weekend, the Larry David series "Curb Your Enthusiasm" concludes its second season on HBO. TV critic David Bianculli has absolutely no complaints, not about the show, and not even about how few episodes it presents each year. DAVID BIANCULLI reporting: When "Seinfeld" was the most popular show on television and still going strong, Larry David walked away from it. He had created the show with Jerry Seinfeld, and was responsible for a lot of the show's tone and humor, but thought enough was enough. Eventually Seinfeld agreed with him, and ended the series while it was still the most popular comedy on TV. For that final episode, David returned to write the script. Then everybody went their separate ways. The supporting cast members of "Seinfeld," Jason Alexander, Michael Richards, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, went on to star in their own sitcoms. All of them flopped. Seinfeld retired his old comedy act, and just released a new movie called "Comedian." It's a documentary showing his return to the stand-up stage, writing and trying out new material while agonizing over every move. It's a wonderful film. It's also familiar if you've been following the post-"Seinfeld" career of Larry David. What David did after "Seinfeld" was go to HBO and propose a comedy special in which the subject would be him returning to the stand-up stage, something he hadn't done since his days as an angry young comic on the cast of the ABC late-night show "Fridays." Michael Richards, by the way, was on that show, too. As always with David, his TV vehicle would have a twist. With "Seinfeld," it was a show about doing nothing. With his special, which he called "Curb Your Enthusiasm," it would be a combination documentary and stand-up act. The first part, which showed David pitching the special to HBO, planning and rehearsing it and going about his everyday life. The second part would be the act itself. Except that in both parts, Larry David couldn't play it straight. For the behind-the-scenes segments he cast actors to play his manager, his wife and the HBO executives, and improvised a loose approximation of his everyday reality. And he liked that part of the special so much he didn't even include the stand-up part. The whole special was a buildup to him walking out on stage, but when he got there, the credits rolled. HBO and David were so happy with the result, they turned the special into a series. Larry would play himself, Cheryl Hines would play his wife and Jeff Garlin his manager. Real-life friends like Richard Lewis and Ted Danson would pop in, playing usually unflattering versions of themselves. And the trick this time was that each show would be carefully outlined, but not scripted, so the actors could improvise their way through each scene. There were 10 episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" last year. This season, the 10th and final one of the year arrives Sunday and will leave me hungry for more. When the first episode of the series was shown, I called it the best sitcom since "Seinfeld." Since then, it's only gotten better. On "Curb," Larry David is like John Cleese's character of Basil Fawlty in "Fawlty Towers." Everything around him seems to irritate him, or escalate into irritating someone else. David has gotten so good at this by now that, even with guest stars in small roles, he hits home runs with his conversational, confrontational, spur-of-the-moment dialogue. In one recent episode, Larry gets into trouble by losing the jacket he's supposed to be wearing in every scene of a Martin Scorsese film. He tracks down the store that made the jacket and finds a perfect replacement, the last one. Happy ending? Not on this show. Larry decides to keep shopping a little more, and checks out a sweater on sale. The salesman, played by Jason Sklar, is eager to help, but not for very long. Here's how the scene and the sweater unfolds. And remember, except for those broad outlines, it's being made up on the fly. (Soundbite of "Curb Your Enthusiasm") Mr. LARRY DAVID: Like what is this? Oh, this is an extra large. Let me see, it might not fit. Mr. JASON SKLAR: It's a great sweater, too. Mr. DAVID: Ah, way too big. Is that it? You don't have any more? Mr. SKLAR: No, it only comes in that size. I'm sorry. Mr. DAVID: Oh, OK. Mr. SKLAR: I'll tell you what, I'll fold that up for you, and we can get you rung up over there. Mr. DAVID: That's OK, I've got it. Mr. SKLAR: No, I can take care of it. Mr. DAVID: No problem. Mr. SKLAR: Actually, I kind of need to take care of it. We have a very specific way that we fold things here, so I'll take care of it, OK? Mr. DAVID: It's not that complicated. I can do it. Mr. SKLAR: It's not that complicated. Actually, it is kind of a little complicated. Mr. DAVID: This is complicated? Mr. SKLAR: Yeah, it's a little bit complicated. There's a specific way that we need to--can you let go of the--OK, thank you. You're stretching it out now. It's not a scoop neck, it's actually a V-neck, thank you. Mr. DAVID: Oh, OK. Mr. SKLAR: I've got it, OK? Mr. DAVID: All right. Well, I'm sorry for trying to help you out, folding your little sweater. Mr. SKLAR: Yeah, well, you weren't helping me you. You weren't helping me out. You were actually stretching out--you're damaging merchandise. Mr. DAVID: Oh, OK. Yeah. Oh, boy, look what you did. Boy, you really got it down. Mr. SKLAR: Yeah, I did get it down, OK? Mr. DAVID: Oh, I never could have done that. That's so hard to do. Mr. SKLAR: You know what? Actually, I'm going to ask you to leave. I don't need to be insulted in my own store. I'm going to ask you to leave, OK? Thanks a lot. Mr. DAVID: All right, I'll just take the jacket and then leave. Mr. SKLAR: No, you know what? Actually, I don't think you're going to take the jacket, OK? Have a nice day. BIANCULLI: It's a great scene, and it just sounds different from most comedy dialogue. On "Curb Your Enthusiasm," Larry David is playing with the old "Seinfeld" sensibility. Instead of double dipping, he does a show about double tipping, but in a way that's fresh. Doing so few shows is another way of keeping it fresh. And if you think that's not enough, remind yourself that when John Cleese made "Fawlty Towers" for the BBC back in the '70s, he only made six. Then two years later, he went back and made six more, and that was it. A generation later, we're still treasuring "Fawlty Towers," and a generation from now, I suspect, we'll still be treasuring "Seinfeld" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Curb my enthusiasm? Sorry, can't do it. BOGAEV: David Bianculli is TV critic for The New York Daily News. (Credits) BOGAEV: Jazz pianist and composer Sir Roland Hanna died this week at the age of 70. In 1985, The New York Times described him as being as much at home in turn-of-the-century ragtime as he is in the works of John Coltrane. Hanna worked with Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, and with the Fad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. He also led his own groups, and taught for years at music schools in New York. In 1960, he played on this version of "Take the A Train" with Charles Mingus. Roland Hanna is on the piano. For Terry Gross, I'm Barbara Bogaev. (Soundbite of "Take the A Train")
- Description
- HALF: Stan Lee (R) TEN: Olivia Judson (R) David (Curb Your Enthusiasm)
- Description
- Fresh Air with Terry Gross, the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, is one of public radio's most popular programs. Each week, nearly 4.5 million people listen to the show's intimate conversations broadcast on more than 450 National Public Radio (NPR) stations across the country, as well as in Europe on the World Radio Network. Though Fresh Air has been categorized as a "talk show," it hardly fits the mold. Its 1994 Peabody Award citation credits Fresh Air with "probing questions, revelatory interviews and unusual insights." And a variety of top publications count Gross among the country's leading interviewers. The show gives interviews as much time as needed, and complements them with comments from well-known critics and commentators. Fresh Air is produced at WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and broadcast nationally by NPR.
- Description
- (1.) Comic book writer STAN LEE. He was the leading creative force behind the rise of Marvel Comics and is responsible for many of the best-known comic book heroes. 40 years ago, he co-created the character Spider-Man. He also helped create The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, and The Incredible Hulk. He is Chairman Emeritus of Marvel Enterprises, and was Executive Producer of the recent film, Spider-Man, which is now out on video. LEEs new book is called Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee. (Fireside) (REBROADCAST from 6/4/02) (2.) Evolutionary biologist and journalist OLIVIA JUDSON. In her new guide to the evolutionary biology of sex, JUDSON, explores the sex lives of animals and insects. Posing as Dr. Tatiana, sex-advice columnist, she answers letters posted by such creatures as the fairy wren, the stalk-eyed fly, and the African elephant. Her new book is Dr. Tatianas Sex Advice to All Creation. (Metropolitan books). JUDSON has also written for The Economist, Nature, and Science. (REBROADCAST from 8/13/02). (3.) TV critic DAVID BIANCULLI reviews Curb Your Enthusiasm the Larry David series on HBO which just concluded its second season.
- Media type
- Sound
- Duration
- 00:59:29
- Credits
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: Stan Lee
: Olivia Judson
Distributor: NPR
Producing Organization: WHYY Public Media
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
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WHYY
Identifier: 2002 1115 Stan Lee_Olivia Judson.wav (File Name)
Format: audio/vnd.wave
Duration: 00:59:29
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WHYY
Identifier: FA20021115_GCD (WHYY)
Format: audio/vnd.wave
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- Citations
- Chicago: “Fresh Air,” WHYY, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed June 27, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-215-23vt4ft8.
- MLA: “Fresh Air.” WHYY, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. June 27, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-215-23vt4ft8>.
- APA: Fresh Air. Boston, MA: WHYY, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-215-23vt4ft8