A word if you're listening.
With small children.
This episode is about sex and sexuality.
This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
In the summer of 2017, Kate Devlin flew from London to southern California, rented a Mustang convertible, and drove to an industrial park in San Marcos, a city south of Los Angeles.
Her destination, Abyss Creations, a company that makes life size sex dolls.
In her new book, turned on science, Sex and Robots, Kate describes the moment she first gazed up close at a life size silicone woman.
The detail is incredible.
My hand skims the ankle, the toes are perfect.
Little wrinkles on the joints, tiny ridges on the toenails.
The soul is crisscrossed with the fine skin lines of a human foot.
It's beautiful.
Today, we explore the long history of the artificial lover.
From stone statues to silicone works of art, we have long sought solace and sex from inanimate objects.
As the gap between humans and machines narrows, the possibility of deeper relationships seems ever more plausible, especially if those machines are beautifully designed to look like human beings and have the faint glow of empathy and intelligence.
I like the way you take care of me.
She could, you know, do anything from telling you a joke, singing a song for you, or, you know, propositioning you.
Hi, baby.
What are you doing right now?