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Apr 16, 2025 42 min

Conceiving Pregnancy

from The LRB Podcast Hosted by The London Review of Books

It's now possible to take a home pregnancy test eight days after ovulation, yet in the 16th century, women sometimes turned to astrologers for confirmation. And in the 1950s and 1960s, one might send a urine sample to an address in Sloane Street where they would inject it into a tropical frog that would lay eggs. In this episode of the LRB Podcast, Erin Maglaque joins Thomas Jones to discuss how the understanding of conception has changed over the centuries since the early modern period, what knowledge has been gained but also what may have been lost. Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/conceptionpod LRB Audio Discover audiobooks, Close Readings and more from the LRB: https://lrb.me/audiolrbpod

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Conceiving Pregnancy

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