Julia Shaw

And so Alfred Kinsey was asked, do you want to do a class on human sexual behavior?

And he was like, I know nothing about this.

And so he spent about a year listening to students' questions about what they want to know about sex.

And he realized that he...

was looking for research to try and build up this course that he was probably going to teach.

And he realized that he couldn't answer most of their questions because the research hadn't been done.

And so a lot of the questions were around, what is normal?

You know, if I feel this during sex, is that normal?

How often do people have sex?

Should I want these?

What about these fantasies?

What does it mean?

What if I have homosexual fantasies?

What if I engage in this kind of... And so he was looking at all of these questions and collating them.

And then he went out and did these huge studies

And he interviewed thousands of people himself, but also had all these research assistants who were out there interviewing people in America about their sexual behavior, which, I mean, just picture the time.

It's the 1940s.

This is quite a conservative time.

I mean, certainly more than we might expect now.

And here's this researcher asking incredibly personal questions about thousands and thousands and thousands of people.