Dr Ann Jones

On ABC Radio National, I'm Anne Jones and I produced this whole series along with Patria Ladgrove and Rebecca McLaren.

Thank you to everyone who agreed to talk with me, knowing full well that I was going to make at least one duck joke.

Ah, nature, you saucy old thing.

Look, as far as sexual reproduction without any sex goes, the most famous of all products of misconception is Jesus.

And this is Dr Meredith Lake, the host of Soul Search on ABC Radio National, a historian who has looked in-depth at the Bible and all its ins and outs.

So that's Matthew's gospel.

And the Christian Bible isn't the only place chock-a-block full of interesting stories about immaculate conceptions and special extracurricular circumstances.

There's Romulus and Remus, Krishna, Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec sun god, Huan Di, the yellow emperor, and even the wizard Merlin, whose mum was a nun and whose father was apparently an incubus.

Or the Islamic tradition either.

But I hear that and I think to myself, it's like nature took one look at humanity's paltry efforts at virgin births as symbols of promise, dreamt up from the depths of hopelessness and said, hold my beer.

Sex is weird.

And look, Jesus hung out with a couple of representatives of the adult entertainment industry, so I'm pretty sure he knew all about it as well.

And look, I heard he was all about sharing the love, right?

So I'm sure he'd subscribe to this series if he had a smartphone.

Do pray for me.

I'm Anne Jones and this is Sex is Weird, a series by What The Duck.

We, and I mean almost everything on Earth really, have come to be on this planet is through a whole heap of really weird activities.

Boners, orgasms, stamens, cloacal winking and seasonal dance-offs.

Which is sort of why I find it fascinating that humans have an interest in virgin births at all.

Because surely being conceived in the Himalayas by a mummy and a daddy snow leopard with dazzling white fur and tails longer than history is actually pretty amazing all in itself.