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How y'all doing?

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Good.

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I came here to give you a science lesson

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about animal mating systems

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and why defining monogamy
has been a challenge for scientists.

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But you won't need a textbook
or to download an online lecture.

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All you'll simply need to do
is revisit the song "OPP"

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by Naughty by Nature.

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(Laughter)

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It was released in 1991.

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Now, "OPP" is a call-and-response song.

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So throughout the talk,
I'm going to put lyrics up on the screen,

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and I'm going to recite some

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and I'm going to prompt you

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when it's your turn
to do the response, OK?

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(Cheers)

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Now, I know some people
in this audience know this song,

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so I need you to lead the way
with the tempo and the rhythm,

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if that's alright, OK?

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Right, y'all ready?

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You down with OPP?

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Audience: Yeah, you know me!

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DNL: You down with OPP?

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Audience: Yeah, you know me!

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DNL: You down with OPP?

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Audience: Yeah, you know me!

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DNL: That was perfect.

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Thank you.

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"OPP, how can I explain it?

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I'll take it frame by frame it.

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To have y'all jumping shout and singing it

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O is for other, P is for people.
scratch your temple.

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The last P, well, that's not that simple."

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Now, in the song, the MC hints
that it's a five-letter word,

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but to keep it rated PG,

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he simply refers to it as "property."

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(Laughter)

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The song is about cheating
on your significant other.

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Now, around the time that this song
was in heavy rotation,

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biologists were in deep discussion
about whether bird species,

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notably songbirds and waterfowl
were actually monogamous or not.

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See, for decades,
generations of science students

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were taught that well over 90 percent
of the bird species were monogamous.

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A male and female
mating faithfully for life.

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That was until the late 1980s,

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when a new laboratory technique
came on the scene,

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which could copy DNA
from a small tissue or fluid sample

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and decode the genetics of individuals.

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Now, before that technique,

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we were never ever certain about,

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100 percent, who the parents
of baby birds were.

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All we had were our field notes.

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And we would know
which adults lived in a nest

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and which ones fed the baby birds.

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Well, come to find out,
study after study kept coming in

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and we found so much
evidence of infidelity --

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(Laughter)

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among bird species,

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particularly these songbirds

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that we thought
were the pinnacle of monogamy.

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It would have made Maury Povich
jealous for the ratings.

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(Laughter)

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It rocked biology and ornithology so hard,

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we had to modify and expand
the entire definition of monogamy.

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Now, it was so bad
that this was the headline

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of the "New York Times" science section,

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August, 1990.

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"Mating for Life?
It's not for the Birds or the Bees."

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(Laughter)

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We had to come up with new definitions.

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The situation where an individual
would change partners,

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either between breeding seasons

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or just simply because
they didn't like their partner anymore?

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We now call this "serial monogamy."

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(Laughter)

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I didn't know it was
going to be this funny.

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(Laughter)

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The situation where we know
the male and female pair together

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and all the babies
belong to both partners?

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We call that "genetic monogamy."

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And we now recognize
that it only holds true

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for about 14 percent
of the songbird species,

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which we were very certain
were truly monogamous.

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And with this reclassification,

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we realized that in a lot
of those field observations

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where we saw a male and female
sharing a nest,

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comaintaining a territory,
even provisioning offspring together,

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often included a few baby birds
that did not belong to the male partner.

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We call this "social monogamy."

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(Laughter)

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And the mechanism responsible?

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Extra-pair copulation.

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"It's OPP, time for other people's
what you get it

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there's no room for relationship,
there's just room to ..."

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Audience: "Hit it!"

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"How many brothers out there
know just what I'm getting at?

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Who thinks it's wrong because I was
splitting and cohitting that.

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Well if you do, that's OPP"

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Actually, that's EPC

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Which is the abbreviation
for extra-pair copulation.

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(Laughter)

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Now, we define extra-pair copulation
as the mating outside of a pair bond.

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And just like we were
discovering via science,

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it can lead to babies
that don't belong to the male partner.

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Alright?

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Now, I first learned
about EPCs years later,

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after all the science news broke
while I was in graduate school.

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And as we were taking a class,

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talking about current discoveries
and mating systems,

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this topic comes up.

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And as my professor's
going through the definition

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and recounting all
the dramatic turns of events

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that lead to these new revelations,

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I'm sitting in class and a familiar song
starts bopping in my head.

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I'm like, "You down with OPP?

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Yeah, you know me!"

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(Laughter)

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I mean, that's exactly
what that song was about:

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EPCs.

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And what I recognized

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is that this gives us an opportunity
to revisit this song.

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Let's switch the lyrics up.

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So say EPC.

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Audience: EPC.

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DNL: Say it, EPC!

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Audience: EPC!

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"I like to say it with pride

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now, when you do it, do it well,
and make sure that it counts.

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You're not down with a discount."

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You down with EPC?

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Audience: Yeah, you know me!

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Now, I had always been
playing songs in my head

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while I was in science class,

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kind of tapping into this index
of pop culture and hip-hop songs.

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But when I would share my analogies
with my science professors,

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all of whom were older white men,

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I often got blank and confused
stares as responses.

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(Laughter)

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But when I would share this
with people from communities like mine,

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or other colleagues --
so, diverse communities --

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this hip-hop science remix was a hit.

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That's because I was either talking
to people who looked and sounded like me,

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or at the very least, you know,
listened to some of the same songs.

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We were sharing a common cultural lexicon.

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And with that lexicon, I was able
to bring new science terms to them,

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and together, we were sharing a new
comprehension of science for the culture.

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Now, hip-hop song references

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are a really good tool for teaching
content to students from hip-hop culture

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or urban communities.

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And I use it intentionally
to connect to those students,

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tapping into vocabulary
that they already know

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and systems that they already comprehend.

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And what it does in that process
is it ratifies them, us, our culture

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as knowledge purveyors.

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I use hip-hop to frame
and communicate science

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because I'm intentionally communicating
science to broader audiences

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that public science outreach
has traditionally overlooked.

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And in the process,

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I am affirming the genius

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that thrives in the young minds of people
from every hood everywhere.

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So let me ask you one last time,

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you down with EPC?

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Audience: Yeah, you know me!

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DNL: You down with EPC?

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Audience: Yeah, you know me!

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DNL: You down with EPC?

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Audience: Yeah, you know me!

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DNL: Who's down with EPC?

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Audience: All the homies!

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Thank you.

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(Applause and cheers)