Oh Dr Kinsey, Look What You've Done to Me!

Seventy years ago, Alfred Kinsey, a biologist working at Indiana University, published a book that raised the eyebrows of America. 'Sexual Behavior in the Human Male' - and its later companion volume, 'Sexual Behavior in the Human Female' - described for the first time, the vast topography of the American erotic.

Matthew Sweet looks at the impact of the publications which revealed a continent of kissing, canoodling and copulating, mapped out using data yielded willingly by thousands of interviewees. The result, he finds, was 'like a bomb going off' as the impact rippled into American public life.

The programme contains references to sexual activity and archive material reflecting the attitudes of the time.

Producer Mark Rickards.