Heather Radke, a writer and contributing editor/reporter at Radiolab, chats with Trey Elling about BUTTS: A BACKSTORY. Topics include:

  • Heather’s goal with Butts (0:00)
  • The gluteal cleft (2:13)
  • Why humans evolved to have butts (3:31)
  • How the butt is a Swiss Army Knife (5:26)
  • Male peacocks and the female human butt (7:07)
  • Sarah Baartman and the modern objectification of the female butt (10:56)
  • Scientists’ creating racial hierarchy with butts (and more) in the 1800s (14:44)
  • The bustle in the late 1800s (17:16)
  • The flapper of the 1920s (20:20)
  • Josephine Baker’s butt nearly ending European civilization (23:50)
  • Attempting to define “normal” in the mid-1900s (26:08)
  • The model responsible for how many clothing companies determine the fit for women’s pants (29:23)
  • Buns of Steel (32:29)
  • ‘Fat fitness’ beginning in the 1980s (35:53)
  • Sir Mix-A-Lot and Baby Got Back (38:13)
  • Why women’s butts being more openly discussed since 2000 (42:59)
  • Beyonce and “Bootylicious” (46:30)
  • The ‘Year of the Butt’ in 2014 (49:20)
  • The next big thing in butts (51:22)