The Long Loneliness

Americans haven’t always loved whales and dolphins. In the 1950s, the average American thought of whales as the floating raw materials for margarine, animal feed, and fertilizer—if they thought about whales at all. But twenty-five years later, things had changed for cetaceans in a big way. Whales had become the poster-animal for a new environmental movement, and cries of “save the whales!” echoed from the halls of government to the whaling grounds of the Pacific. What happened? Annie and Elah meet the unconventional scientists who forever changed our view of whales by making the case that a series of surreal bleats and moans were “song.”

You can listen to The Long Loneliness online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The Long Loneliness is an episode from Undiscovered by Science Friday and WNYC Studios.

This episode is 00:34:24 long.

This episode was published on Oct 23, 2018.

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