The Seagulls | Radiolab Podcast

From the Radiolab podcast: how a study about seagulls from the 1970s rocked our understanding of what’s natural in animals... and in us.

In the 1970s, as LGBTQ+ people in the United States faced conservatives whose top argument was that homosexuality is “unnatural,” a pair of young scientists discovered on a tiny island off the coast of California a colony of seagulls that included… a significant number of female homosexual couples making nests and raising chicks together. The article that followed upended the culture’s understanding of what’s natural and took the discourse on homosexuality in a whole new direction.

In this episode, our co-Host Lulu Miller grapples with the impact of this and several other studies about animal queerness on her life as a queer person.

Episode Segments:
0:00 Lesbian gulls
08:27 Queer animals
25:05 Lulu Miller learns a lesson

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Guests in this episode include: Dr. George Hunt, Molly Warner, Eliot Schrefer, Pamela Gray, Edgar Xochitl, Christine Wilkinson, John Megahan, Paul Smith, Lillian Faderman, Lulu's wife Grace.

Photo illustration Jared Bartman