The 6th Floor Blog: When Is a Chimp Not a Chimp?

Up there on my totally mundane list of repeat New Year's resolutions each year, right after "drink more water," is "listen to more podcasts." I know there's great stuff happening out there in podcastland — I just haven't succeeded in carving out a regular place in my schedule for exploring it. The subway is too loud and my headphones are too weak for podcasts to join me on my commute, and if I took podcasts on my runs, they'd prevent me from enjoying shouted snippets of conversations from passing cyclists in fancy spandex.

So it took me many weeks to get around to listening to an episode of Radiolab that came up in conversation the other day — a mention either triggered by or triggering a heated discussion about whether, were you to inhabit an island with only one other creature, you'd rather that creature be a human or a chimp. (Human, obviously. But apparently not everyone agrees.)

In this episode, Charles Siebert, a contributing writer for the magazine, tells the story of Lucy, a chimpanzee who was raised by the psychologist Dr. Maurice K. Temerlin and his wife in their home and taught to be in many ways more human than chimp. There are powerful images (Temerlin's stumbling upon Lucy masturbating), creepy decisions (Temerlin's buying Lucy a Playgirl to look at while masturbating) and wrenching twists.

I had heard the portion of this episode that appeared on "This American Life" a couple of years ago, but it's worth listening to the whole hourlong version. If you weren't already inclined to share your deserted island with a human rather than a chimp (which, I mean, duh), this may sway you.