Most Recent Posts

Sitting in the empty auditorium, ten minutes before Yoram Bauman's set begins, I start feeling bad. Low turnout is hard on a stand-up comedian, but what was he expecting for a comedy gig at 6 p.m. on a Monday night ... at the Inter-American Development Bank, of all places?

When the event coordinator comes in to make an announcement to the six of us in the audience, I worry she's going to cancel the event.

"There's a bit of a hold-up at the entrance. The line's out the door, so we're going to wait a few minutes to get started."

Oh.

By the time Bauman takes the stage, the packed house — looks like at least 200 people — are cheering and clapping for the world's first stand-up economist. He grabs the mic and starts his set by admitting just how strange his profession is. When he told his dad that he wanted to use his Ph.D. in economics as the basis for a comedy career, his dad was unsure.

"He didn't think there would be enough demand."

On a Monday night, in the basement auditorium of a development bank, this is the kind of joke that kills. Bauman tries another.

"I told him not to worry. I'm a supply-side economist. I just stand up and let the jokes trickle down."

I'm not so sure about these economics puns myself, but the crowd is eating it up.

"I believe in the Laffer curve." Crickets. Bauman doesn't mind. He waves off the silence. "That's my test of how much economics you know. I give you guys a six."

Since that's roughly the grade I got on my Economics 101 final exam, I am understandably wary about a stand-up economist. But Bauman has managed to make a career out of economics-based humor, presenting at colleges, professional conferences and comedy clubs.

He's also the co-author of three cartoon textbooks: The Cartoon Introduction to Microeconomics, The Cartoon Introduction to Macroeconomics and, out this summer, The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change.

"I'm not going to say it's a semester's worth of economics, but it's not bad," says Bauman in an interview before the show. The books have been translated into a dozen languages. The latest is Mongolian.

The comic has a serious side as well. One minute, he's making fun of Libertarians ("left-wing Libertarians want the freedom to do drugs, right-wing Libertarians want the freedom to use guns and neither of them believe in social security. Although with those interests, who is going to make it to 65?"). The next he's pitching you his idea about environmental tax reform. In addition to being a comedian and an economist, Bauman has committed his life to "using the tools of economics and the power of capitalism to protect the environment."

In fact, Bauman works with a group, Carbon Washington, that has a measure on the ballot in 2016 to implement a carbon tax in Washington state.

"If we had higher taxes on carbon and other types of pollution, we could afford to have lower taxes on things like income and investment," he says backstage. "Higher taxes on bads, lower taxes on goods. When I first saw that idea as an undergrad, I thought it was intellectually beautiful. Now, I'm spending my life working on it."

Even if you don't quite understand environmental tax reform (shame on you!), you find yourself nodding along and agreeing like it's a cheesy infomercial: I do want lower taxes on income! I don't want the earth to burn!

Bauman spent five months studying global warming in China, where he got the t-shirt he often wears onstage: the word "Capitalism" written in the Coca-Cola brand font.

"The tag says 'made in China,'" Bauman reads. "It's 80 percent cotton, 20 percent irony."

Tall and gangly, Bauman doesn't do much to subvert the physical stereotype of an economist. He wears the same short-sleeve, checkered button-down shirt to most of his shows, which he can unsnap at a moment's notice to reveal his punch line t-shirt. He may be funnier than most who study the "dismal science," but his fashion sense fits the bill, which he acknowledges.

"You might be an economist if you're an expert on money, but you dress like a flood victim." Delivered with his self-deprecating shrug, even knock-off Jeff Foxworthy jokes get a laugh from the crowd.

A development bank is the perfect setting for Bauman, where he can make jokes like this one: When life gives you lemons, development economists take 50 Kenyan villages, split them into two random groups, see how one group responds to lemons, and then write an article for the Journal of Economic Development.

The woman sitting behind me had to leave the room to compose herself, she was laughing so hard.

But he doesn't always hit the mark. When he submitted an idea about hyperinflation in hell for the humor column he edits for the journal Economic Inquiry, his editor asked: "Are we to assume that the dead have lost their ability to innovate?"

stand-up comedy

Yoram Bauman

economics

In the 1950s, four people — the founder of the birth control movement, a controversial scientist, a Catholic obstetrician and a wealthy feminist — got together to create a revolutionary little pill the world had never seen before.

They were sneaky about what they were doing — skirting the law, lying to women about the tests they performed and fibbing to the public about their motivations.

"They absolutely could've been imprisoned for some of the work they were doing," journalist Jonathan Eig tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "These guys are like guerrilla warriors — they're always having to figure out ways to do this thing that will attract the least attention. ... They can never really say they're testing birth control."

The Birth of the Pill

How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution

by Jonathan Eig

Hardcover, 388 pages | purchase

Purchase Featured Book

TitleThe Birth of the PillSubtitleHow Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a RevolutionAuthorJonathan Eig

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?

Amazon

Independent Booksellers

Nonfiction

History & Society

Science & Health

More on this book:

NPR reviews, interviews and more

Read an excerpt

Eig tells the history in his new book The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution.

The four people who created this revolution were: Margaret Sanger, who believed that women could not enjoy sex or freedom until they could control when and whether they got pregnant; scientist Gregory Pincus, who was fired from Harvard for experimenting with in-vitro fertilization and bragging about it to the mainstream press; John Rock, who was a Catholic OB-GYN and worked with Pincus to conduct tests of the pill on women; and Katharine McCormick, who funded much of the research.

In the '50s, selling contraception was still officially illegal in many states.

But Sanger and McCormick, a feminist who had been active in the suffrage movement, wanted women to enjoy sex — without fear of getting pregnant.

After McCormick's husband died, McCormick got in touch with Sanger.

According to Eig, McCormick said, "What's the most important thing we could possibly work on?"

"Sanger said, 'The best thing we could possibly do is work on this pill, this miracle tablet ... something that would give women the right to control their bodies for the first time.' And McCormick said, 'I'm in: Whatever you need.' "

Interview Highlights

On why Eig wanted to write the book

I was listening to a rabbi's sermon — this was maybe five or six years ago — and he began by saying that the birth control pill may have been the most important invention of the 20th century. My immediate reaction was, "That's nuts. That can't possibly be. I can think of six things off the top of my head that seemed more important than that." But it stayed with me. I kept thinking about it.

A couple of years went by and I was still thinking about it. His case was that it had changed more than just science, more than just medicine. It had changed human dynamics. It had changed the way men and women get along in the world. It changed reproduction, obviously, but it also created all kinds of opportunities for women that weren't there before, it had spread democracy. ...

If it really was the most important invention of the 20th century, and maybe he was right, why don't I know how we got there? I don't know the inventor of the pill. I can tell you the inventor of the telephone and the telegraph and the light bulb, but I have no idea where the pill came from.

i i

Margaret Sanger was considered the founder of the birth control movement. General Photographic Agency/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption General Photographic Agency/Getty Images

Margaret Sanger was considered the founder of the birth control movement.

General Photographic Agency/Getty Images

On American Birth Control League founder Margaret Sanger seeking a "magical pill"

Sanger's story is personal in some respects. She had seen her own mother die after having given birth to what she felt like were far too many children and far too great a sexual drive on her father's part. She went to work in the slums of New York City where women were having eight, nine, 10 children with no idea how to stop it, other than having abortions, which were often poorly performed and very dangerous. So she saw this stuff very up close. ...

There had been this backlash against the control of fertility in the late 1800s and early 1900s, where it had been made illegal even though the fertility rates had been dropping over the course of the 18th century.

But by the time you get to Sanger and she's a young woman working in New York City, it's very hard for women to get any kind of education even about birth control, much less birth control products. She has this plan to improve education for women. But her dream, and it's really just a dream, is that there should be some kind of magical pill — something that would allow women to turn on and off their reproductive systems.

On scientist Gregory Pincus and his controversial work

Pincus was fired from Harvard. In fact, he was denied tenure because he was far too controversial. In the 1930s, he was not only experimenting with in-vitro fertilization, he was bragging about it to the mainstream press, which is something serious scientists weren't supposed to do.

“ The laws and the ethics of science were very different in the 1950s than they are today — you didn't have to give informed consent. ... So in a way, we do have women being treated like lab animals so that we may find a form of birth control that frees them.

Instead of just publishing his results in medical journals, he was taking them to popular magazines and saying, "This is the brave new world!" And people were scared of the Brave New World because of the Huxley book, but Pincus didn't mind the comparisons. He said, "Someday we will control [how] babies are born. We might not even need men in the process. We will be able to control the giving of life through science." This scared the hell out of people.

Harvard, which had once hailed Pincus' research as some of the most important research it had ever done, suddenly quit on him, cut ties completely and he was unable to find a job anywhere else in the world of academics. He ended up working out of a garage for a little while, out of a barn for a bit, and then founded his own scientific institution on really a wing and a prayer, going door-to-door in the community of Worcester, Mass., knocking on doors, asking people to contribute to his scientific foundation. So he was a real fringe character at the point that Margaret Sanger and Katharine McCormick found him.

On Pincus working with fertility gynecologist, John Rock, testing injections on unknowing women

There's a lot of lying in this process of creating the first oral contraceptive. That's what they have to do. You can really have a wonderful ethical discussion and debate about whether it was worth it, whether they were doing things that were beyond the bounds. The laws and the ethics of science were very different in the 1950s than they are today — you didn't have to give informed consent, you didn't have to have anybody sign forms giving away their rights, telling them about what these experiments are for. So in a way, we do have women being treated like lab animals so that we may find a form of birth control that frees them. There's a great irony there.

On how they sought Food and Drug Administration approval

This is the first pill ever created for healthy women to take every day. There's never been anything like this and the idea of seeking FDA approval for something women are going to take every day without studying it for years and years and checking out the long-term side effects, this is scary stuff! But Pincus also feels like he's racing the clock, that if the word gets out about this and the Catholic Church and the federal government realize what they're doing, the opposition will mount and he'll have no chance of getting it through. ...

i i

Author Jonathan Eig is a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and has written three other books about Al Capone, Lou Gehrig and Jackie Robinson. Steven E Gross/Courtesy of W.W. Norton hide caption

itoggle caption Steven E Gross/Courtesy of W.W. Norton

Author Jonathan Eig is a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and has written three other books about Al Capone, Lou Gehrig and Jackie Robinson.

Steven E Gross/Courtesy of W.W. Norton

In 1955, when they've really only tested the pill on maybe 60 women for more than say, six months or a year, Pincus goes to a conference and declares victory. He declares that we've invented the pill. The media picks up on this and it becomes this huge story. ... Thousands of women are writing to their doctors and writing directly to [Pincus and Rock] saying, "I've heard about this pill and I need it, I need it now!" ... There was this huge outpouring and it had a huge effect on Pincus and on the other scientist working on this because they began to see there was an enormous demand for this and they began to see they had to push harder, they had to go fast. When you go fast in science, you're taking great risks. ...

It's one of the great bluffs in scientific history. [Pincus] knows that he has the science. He's not sure that it's really ready; he hasn't tested it on nearly enough women. His partner John Rock is saying, "Don't you dare announce that we're ready to do this yet. If you do, I'm out." He's furious with Pincus. But Pincus does it anyway. He realizes that they've got some momentum and they need to keep it going, this whole thing could fall apart if too much opposition is raised.

On manufacturing the pill

As a result of all of the publicity, the G.D. Searle pharmaceutical company agreed to manufacture the pill and to apply to the FDA for approval, but Pincus and Searle come up with yet another sneaky but brilliant idea. They decide, "We're not going to ask the FDA to approve it as birth control because that will raise a whole bunch of other issues. ... Let's just ask them to approve it for menstrual disorders." ... Almost any woman can go into her doctor and say, "I've got an irregular cycle. I'd like to have this new pill." And that's exactly what happens. The pill has a label on it that says, "Warning: This pill will likely prevent pregnancy." And it's the greatest advertisement they could ever have — because this is what women want.

On McCormick realizing her accomplishment

One of the scenes in this book that I love is — Katharine McCormick, who is even older than Sanger, she's 80 now and the pill is approved, it's available, and she goes into the drugstore with a prescription from her doctor and asks for it. This 80-year-old woman is going in and asking for a prescription for the birth control pill and obviously she wasn't planning to use it — she just wanted to be able to buy it. It meant so much to her to know this was available now to women, 60 years too late for her, in many ways, but she had done it and that was an amazing accomplishment.

Read an excerpt of The Birth of the Pill

the pill

Birth Control

Women's Health

A man being treated in Dallas for Ebola remains in critical condition, but doctors say he is now receiving an experimental drug. Meanwhile, a nurse in Spain who cared for an Ebola patient there has tested positive for the disease – the first known instance of a transmission of the virus outside of West Africa.

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital announced Monday that Thomas Eric Duncan, who apparently contracted Ebola in Liberia before coming to the U.S., is in stable condition and being treated with brincidofovir, an oral medicine developed by Chimerix Inc. Earlier, officials had said Duncan was in critical condition.

In Madrid, the 40-year-old nurse, who has not been identified, assisted in the treatment of a 75-year-old Spanish priest who had been flown from Liberia. The priest died after being treated with the experimental Ebola medicine ZMapp, The Associated Press says.

The nurse's condition is described as stable and health officials said her life is not in immediate danger. Health officials said she had no symptoms besides a fever, the AP says.

NPR's Lauren Frayer reports that a few months ago, Spanish officials were touting the country's ability to handle Ebola patients.

"But last night, the tone abruptly changed," Lauren reports on Morning Edition.

Spain's Health Minister Ana Mato urged the country to remain calm.

"We followed the protocol and we don't know how she got infected," Mato told a news conference.

"We know she entered the infected priest's room twice – once to treat him and once after he died to collect some of his things," Dr. Antonio Alemany, a health officials from the regional government of Madrid, said. "As far as we know, she was wearing a protective suit the whole time and didn't have any accidental contact with him."

Alemany said after she treated the priest, the nurse went on vacation for a week, but he didn't say where. He said that all of her co-workers and were being monitored twice a day for fever.

The World Health Organization issued a statement saying: "Spanish authorities are conducting an intensive investigation of this case, in order to determine the mode of transmission and to trace those who have been in contact with the health care worker. WHO is ready to provide support to Spain, as and if required."

The Guardian reports that health officials in Madrid have blamed substandard equipment and "a failure to follow protocol" for the nurse's infection.

"Health authorities announced on Monday that a Spanish nurse at Madrid's Carlos III hospital who treated a patient repatriated from Sierra Leone had twice tested positive for Ebola.

"Her husband has also been admitted to hospital and is in isolation, and health authorities said they were testing a second nurse from the same team that treated both repatriated Ebola victims. In this case, the nurse contacted the authorities on Monday complaining of a fever. She has been place in isolation in the Carlos III Hospital while authorities wait for the results of the tests, said a spokesperson for the Madrid regional government."

On Monday, President Obama said Monday that the U.S. would step up screening for travelers with the disease at airports in the United States and West Africa.

The WHO estimates that Ebola has killed more than 3,400 people in West Africa, including 370 health-care workers in hardest-hit Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

ebola

Spain

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

In a twist fit for Hercule Poirot, a heavy traveling trunk once owned by Agatha Christie's mother was heavy for quite a good reason. Nested within it, a locked metal strongbox contained something other than old clothes: a diamond brooch, a diamond ring and a purse of gold coins — heirlooms intended for Christie and her sister, Madge.

Bought with the trunk at a 2006 estate sale by Christie fan Jennifer Grant, the lockbox lay untouched for years — until Grant finally asked for some help prying the lockbox open with a crowbar, according to the BBC. Looking at the uncovered jewels, Grant said, "I knew exactly what I was looking at." She had, after all, read Christie's autobiography.

The jewels are now going back on sale — this time, on purpose. USA Today reports that they'll be on the block Wednesday at Bonhams, a British auction house. The brooch and ring, bought accidentally with the trunk for $170, are expected to go for more than $15,000.

Finding A Balance: The public editor at The New York Times, Margaret Sullivan, responded to criticism over the paper's coverage of the pricing dispute between Amazon and Hachette. The complaint: The Times has sided with traditional publishers and the authors who support them, leaving little room for those sympathetic to the online retailer. Sullivan's verdict? "I would like to see more unemotional exploration of the economic issues; more critical questioning of the statements of big-name publishing players; and greater representation of those who think Amazon may be a boon to a book-loving culture, not its killer."

Trip The Lit Fantastic: In The Atlantic, Katie Kilkenny plays tour guide to Boston's newly inaugurated "Literary District" — where you can find not just the home of Henry David Thoreau, but also impromptu Writers Booths and, alarmingly, a "Poe-Boy Sandwich." As Kilkenny notes, it's just one instance of a blossoming, but somewhat controversial, nationwide trend toward literary tourism.

A Possible Potter Puzzle: J.K. Rowling dipped a toe in Twitter on Monday, apparently just to stir things up. When anything Harry Potter is remotely involved, that's not hard to do. After mentioning Sunday that she was working on a novel and editing a screenplay, she responded to fans' excited guesses at the novel's topic, tweeting, "See, now I'm tempted to post a riddle or an anagram." Hours afterward came this little riddle:

Cry, foe! Run amok! Fa awry! My wand won’t tolerate this nonsense.

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 6, 2014

Answers to the riddle have as yet proved inconclusive.

Agatha Christie

Hachette

Book News

J.K. Rowling

Amazon

books