How queer identity shapes Nat Geo Explorers

Overheard at National Geographic

National Geographic

Science, Society & Culture

4.5 • 10.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Why would a scientist brave the stench of a car full of rotting meat on a 120-degree day? What can a unique whistling language teach us about humans’ connection to the natural world? And how does queer identity shape the research of National Geographic Explorers? In this episode celebrating Pride, we hand the mic to two Explorers: Christine Wilkinson, who studies hyenas and other large carnivores and created the TikTok series “Queer is Natural,” and Rüdiger Ortiz-Álvarez, whose soundscapes from the Canary Islands encourage us to slow down and listen to the world around us. For more information on this episode, visit natgeo.com/overheard. Want more? Why do some people prefer LGBTQIA+ instead of LGBT? See how society’s understanding of diverse sexual identities and gender expressions has grown more inclusive—and so has the acronym used to describe them. Before the Nazis rose to power, a German institute cemented itself as gay liberation’s epicenter. Discover the great hunt for the world's first LGBTQ archive. Although a large group of LGBTQ people celebrating their sexual orientation in public had been unthinkable just a few years before, the first Pride parades began in 1970 as marches commemorating the 1969 Stonewall uprising. See more National Geographic coverage of Pride at natgeo.com/Pride. Also explore: Learn more about spotted hyenas, which live in female-led clans of up to 80 individuals. Practice your whistling and head to La Gomera in the Canary Islands, home to the Silbo Gomero whistling language and Garajonay National Park. Find Christine Wilkinson’s “Queer is Natural” series on her TikTok, @scrappynaturalist. And follow along with Rüdiger Ortiz-Álvarez on his Instagram, @rudigerortiz. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Dominie Kildebrand. I'm a photo editor here at National Geographic, and I'm a co-lead
0:10.7	of our LGBTQ Employee Resource Group. To celebrate pride, we're doing something special
0:15.8	and overheard. We're handing the mic over to two National Geographic explorers who really
0:21.1	love nature. I'm not going to say that I hug trees, but sometimes I just like to be embedded
0:25.7	in nature. If you were going to hug trees, nobody here would judge you. I know. National
0:30.8	Geographic. I feel like there's a lot of tree huggers in the building. Thank you. Thank you.
0:35.6	Today we're meeting Rudiger or T's Alparez. My pronouns are he, him. Most people call me Rudi.
0:41.8	I'm a majoloist and I'm a doctorate in ecology by his name is Paine. And Christine Wilkinson.
0:47.0	I am a postdoc at UC Berkeley and at the California Academy of Sciences. My pronouns are she,
0:53.0	they. And I use social likeological frameworks to understand the interactions between people
0:59.7	and wildlife and to share that science through story. Rudi and Christine have totally different
1:05.1	research interests. Rudi is a microbiologist who also records soundscapes in a fascinating
1:10.8	rainforest in the Canary Islands. And Christine studies large carnivores including spotted hyenas
1:16.8	in Kenya and coyotes in California. They're each working toward a deeper understanding of how
1:22.5	nature and humans interact. Rudi and Christine are also both members of the National Geographic
1:28.1	Queer and Allies Explorer Group. We'll learn more about their research and how their identity
1:33.1	makes them the scientists they are today. A lot of us who may have come from this
1:38.0	advantage backgrounds or backgrounds where we weren't accepted by our families because of some
1:42.2	part of our identity queer or otherwise basically built our relationships with nature because we
1:47.8	were escaping that. And we ended up becoming these maybe protectors of the earth because of our
1:55.9	identity and because of our relationship with that. This is ever heard at National Geographic,
2:02.0	a show where we use drop on the wild conversations we have at NatGew and follow them to the edges of
	...

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