Hannah Chinn
speaker
88 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard May 2025
Hannah Chinn’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
So today on the show, the science of biological sex in humans.
You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
OK, Han, so we were just talking about biological sex and how there's like a lot of variation in other animals. But what about humans? Like what's the determining factor for like sex in us?
I think we need to slow down and like break down each of them. Right. Like so the first one you said is chromosomal. Right. And I remember learning about this in like high school bio. All the genetic information in our bodies are packaged in 46 chromosomes and they're coupled up to make 23 pairs. The first 22 pairs tend to look similar, like, in all humans.
But the last one is usually either an XX or an XY pair. And XX is usually assigned to female. XY is assigned to male. Right.
Right. And you mentioned a second metric being chemical, right? Like, what do chemicals tell us about sex?
Wow. Yep. Yep. So when does this, like, first chemical change actually happen? Puberty?
Wow. I did not know any of this. It's like baby puberty. Okay.
And this brings us to the last criteria, physical. Okay. And I'm guessing that's like genitals.
Okay. So physical traits, hormones, chromosomes, we have all these different ways to determine sex. And I'm guessing like that most of the time they align, but not all the time.
So chances are, if you're listening to this episode and you're not intersex, you've probably at least encountered someone who is.
That's really horrible.
Right. Because like height is one of those physical characteristics you mentioned earlier.
Thank you, Han, for bringing us this story. Anytime, Gina. If you liked this episode, make sure you never miss a new one by following us on whatever podcasting platform you're listening from. And if you have a science question you'd like us to investigate, send us an email at shortwave at npr.org.
This episode was produced by Burleigh McCoy and edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Kweisi Lee was the audio engineer.
Thank you for listening to Shortwave from NPR.
I am not in a forest, but I did report this story from somewhere that is wet, which is my home state of Oregon.
We drove out on a rainy day to the U.S. Forest Service's Dorena Genetic Resource Center. It's located in Cottage Grove, which is this small town that's a couple hours' drive from Portland. And the day I visited, the crew was pretty busy...
Packing up hundreds of baby Douglas fir trees into plastic bags and then big cardboard boxes.
So this is Michelle Osgood. She's the assistant horticulturist here at Dorena Genetic Resource Center. And she and her crew are taking all of these seedlings out of the greenhouse.
Showing 21–40 of 88 · page 2 of 5
← Previous
Next →