The World and Everything in It: August 19, 2025

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

World leaders cycled through the White House—each pressing a vision for peace in Russia and Ukraine.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today, the push for organ donation, and whether we’re declaring some people dead before they are.

OTT: I would rather not take a few more donors than cross the line over who’s a person and who’s not.

And later: for believers in contested parts of the world, practicing faith publicly has potential costs.

VIKTORIA: If you live under Russian occupation, you need to realize that, concerning your Christian faith, you will return, like, to Soviet Union.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, August 19th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Up next, Mark Mellinger with today’s news.

MARK MELLINGER, NEWS ANCHOR: Trump meets with Zelenskyy, European leaders » President Trump says he’s called Russian leader Vladimir Putin to arrange a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Germany’s chancellor says that meeting is slated to happen within the next two weeks, though there’s no agreement yet on where they’ll meet.

This development comes after Trump met with Zelenskyy and leaders from a handful of European countries at the White House Monday seeking a path to end Russia’s war on Ukraine.

TRUMP: I believe a peace agreement at the end of all of this is something that’s very attainable.

Zelenskyy left the meeting saying he’s ready to meet with Putin one on one. A three-way meeting with Trump could reportedly follow.

Zelenskyy says he and Trump discussed deterring future Russian attacks, with U.S. and European allies providing protections similar to those NATO gives its member nations.

ZELENSKYY: This is very important that United States gives such strong signal and is ready for security guarantees.

Trump says Ukraine will ultimately have to accept a peace deal that doesn’t involve regaining Crimea, a region Ukraine says Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

Much more on this story, a little later in the program.

Hamas accepts Arab ceasefire proposal » The terror group Hamas says it’s agreed to a new ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, a proposal brokered by Qatar and Egypt.

Hamas says the proposed deal calls for the release of 10 living hostages in Hamas captivity, as well as 18 dead hostages.

Israel says it’s received Hamas’s response, but its position isn’t changing: It’s calling for the release of all hostages and the total disarmament of Hamas. as the Israeli military plans to take control of Gaza City, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls Hamas’s last bastion.

Thousands of people in the area -like this man, interpreted through a translator- have left their homes amid the Israeli bombardment.

GAZAN: Our situation is tough… We have no money, no income, no work… I do not want to keep moving left and right endlessly.

The U.N. says more than 1.3 million Gazans need emergency shelter items. Israel’s military says it’s helping meet those needs while preparing to relocate residents out of the combat zone.

Texas Democrats end walkout » Texas Democrats have ended their walkout.

AUDIO: [Gavel bang] A quorum is present.

The state lawmakers who left to break quorum returned Monday.

The Republican-controlled state legislature is now in position to pass redrawn congressional maps, creating up to five new GOP-friendly seats for next year’s midterm elections.

From there, Democrat State Rep Jon Rosenthal -interviewed at a rally- says to expect a court fight.

ROSENTHAL: We may not have the numbers, but we will set up the court battle. These maps were already -the previous maps- are already in court, and so the new maps are clearly, boldly unconstitutional and illegal.

Texas lawmakers did not take action on any bills Monday. They get back to work tomorrow.

Leaders of several Democrat-run states are now pledging to redraw their district lines, too. Several more GOP-led states are also considering or moving forward with similar efforts.

Justice Department to start giving Epstein files to Congress » The Justice Department will start sharing documents from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation with Congress Friday.

Democrats have called for the Trump administration to come clean about the president’s relationship with Epstein, a disgraced financier who committed suicide in federal custody while awaiting a criminal trial six years ago.

Democratic Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett is criticizing the White House’s delay of its promise to release the Epstein files.

CROCK: This is a promise that I will tell you that was not made by Kamala Harris. It was not a promise that was made by Joe Biden. It was a promise that was made by Donald Trump.

But House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer says, according to testimony from former Attorney General Bill Barr Monday, President Trump has nothing to hide.

COMER: He believed that if there had been anything pertaining to President Trump with respect to the Epstein list that he felt like the Biden administration would have leaked it out.

The DOJ says it’ll take time to release all of the Epstein documents. That’s because they contain lewd material, and victims’ names must be redacted.

Trump seeks mail-in ballot ban » President Trump says he’s working to end mail-in voting before next year’s midterm elections.

TRUMP: We’re going to start with an executive order that’s being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots, because they’re corrupt.

In a social media post, Trump says his executive order will -quote- “bring honesty to the 2026 Midterm elections.”

Under the Constitution, though, Trump can’t do anything on his own when it comes to this issue. The Constitution gives states the right to administer elections in the manner of their choosing, though Congress can make or change voting regulations involving federal offices.

Business owners in North Carolina wrestling with Erin implications » In North Carolina’s Outer Banks region, business owners are deciding when to shutter their shops as Hurricane Erin churns off the East Coast.

TUCKER: There’s no reason to close. Is there? People need coffee.

Andrew Tucker owns Uglie Mugs in Avon. He tells WORLD he probably won’t close until Wednesday, when forecasters predict tidal flooding will start in earnest.

It’s the first hurricane of the season, and there’s a mandatory evacuation order in place. But one employee, Dawn, has never left the island for a hurricane. She says it’s too expensive to pay for several weeks of lodging if the roads are washed out.

DAWN: They just cannot predict Mother Nature. I'm sorry they could come close. But it's gonna do what it wants to.

Tucker says it’ll hurt to have the last good week of tourist season cut short, but people need to be safe.

I’m Mark Mellinger.

Straight ahead: what’s next for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Plus, supporting Ukrainian Christians caught in the crosshairs.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 19th of August.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up: high-level diplomacy. President Trump spent the day in Washington meeting first with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, followed by talks with leaders from the European Union and NATO.

President Trump signaled cautious optimism heading into a new round of talks.

TRUMP: We're gonna have a meeting. I think if everything works out well today, we'll have a trilat. And I think there will be a reasonable chance of ending the war when we do that.

EICHER: The president was referring to a possible three-way meeting with himself, Zelenskyy, and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

This latest diplomatic push comes on the heels of last week’s summit in Alaska, where the administration reported progress toward a peace deal.

To talk about what could happen next, we’re joined by George Barros, lead Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. He’s also a former adviser to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Russia and Ukraine.

REICHARD: George, good morning.

GEORGE BARROS: Hey, Mary, good morning. Thank you so much for having me.

REICHARD: How would you characterize the summit in Alaska on Friday and conversations yesterday at the White House?

BARROS: So last Friday's summit in Alaska was a big success for Russian President Vladimir Putin. He had an opportunity to legitimize himself, unisolate himself from the international community. And President Trump walked away from that meeting, I think, with some Russian amenable talking points and I think a misunderstanding of the Russian position.

For example, President Trump left last Friday—discussing about how the Russians were open to potentially Ukraine receiving some security guarantees, which candidly I found a little bewildering given that the Russians have been very clear that they are not open to Ukraine receiving any kinds of security guarantees. Now as for this most recent meeting in Washington yesterday, that one went quite well, I think. President Zelensky did not engage in any faux pas, he didn't step in any landmines. The meetings appeared to have gone well. The European leaders had some very strong statements about being unified against Russian aggression. And that most importantly, the White House and the Europeans agreed that they're not going to make any decisions without Ukraine and that they're going to have to go to the Russians and try to work out some sort of deal. But what we're seeing now is he appears to be a united Western front against Russia. And we will see how the Russians are going to react and, my assessment, likely reject the contours of this conflict termination agreement.

REICHARD: All right, let's talk more about that. Something that did come out of the Alaska meeting between Trump and Putin is a proposal to swap land. The details, as I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong, is Ukraine would give Russia control of about 2,500 square miles. That's about 12 % of the Donbass in eastern Ukraine. And that includes land that Russia does not currently occupy. And so that would leave Russia about 440 square miles of territory in Sumi and Kharkiv.

Sounds uneven to my ears, and I understand you do think that's a bad idea for other reasons. Why so?

BARROS: Yeah, absolutely. So we have to be very clear here about what the Russians are asking for. This is not the land swap for conflict termination. The war doesn't end because of the land swap. This land swap is simply the prerequisite to get into the final negotiations so that we can then have conflict termination. So effectively, the Russians are asking for the Ukrainians to cede a tremendous amount of militarily strategically important territory to not even have a guarantee that the war will be over, just to talk about potentially ending the war. So this is a huge non-starter on that principle because it's a surrender of a lot of territory.

Number two, the territory in particular… really, really matters. When you're talking about specifically Ukraine's Eastern Donetsk province. It's where the Ukrainians have fortified and built a series of fortress cities, which are a series of four important cities which the Russians are very unlikely to seize militarily. Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhivka, Konstantinovka. These are massive cities that have been part of the 2014 defensive line, and it will take the Russian military in our assessment many years to actually fight their way and slog through all the war fighting and campaigns necessary to seize that land.

Now the territory further beyond those fortified cities further to the west, they're not nearly as defensible as those four fortress cities. The terrain is not as defensible. And so really, if you were going to give the Russians a launching point for where they can get into Ukraine's weak underbelly, getting beyond those fortress cities would be a massive concession.

And so for those reasons, the land swap is a bad deal, it's a bad idea, especially when it's not connected to some sort of robust security guarantee to ensure that wherever you draw the line, the line won't stop any further.

REICHARD: I think I know your answer to this next question, but what's the likelihood for a ceasefire in the near future from your perspective?

BARROS: Very low. I would be astonished if we get a ceasefire anytime in the next six months. Look, the Russians are making some tactical progress on the battlefield. They're advancing albeit quite slowly. They have no reason to want to stop right now. Stopping right now forgoes the additional battlefield gains so the Russians can continue to eke out with brute force. Stopping now also will create a series of problems for the Russian domestic economy which has been transitioned to a wartime economy. There are no jobs waiting for all the Russian soldiers at home that would be demobilized in the event of the war stopping. And for those reasons, I think it's very unlikely that Putin is uninterested in doing something that's going to really cause a lot of problems for him, and especially before he achieves his war goals. He defines them in terms of regime change in Kiev, in the maximalist sense. He also defines it in terms of an ultimatum on what the NATO alliance is allowed to do with its own countries, deploying certain kinds of forces within NATO itself near Russia.

At the lowest most end he demands that Ukraine cede over territory the Russians have not achieved. And it would be a massive blow to Putin's credibility if he doesn't at least walk away with some of those things.

REICHARD: George, you study war, history of war. How do these two nations move forward after such a costly conflict in terms of lives lost, resources spent, and so forth?

BARROS: So Russia and Ukraine are going to have generational enmity as a result of this war. This generation of Ukrainians and the next generation of Ukrainians are going to hate the Russians forever. This generation of Russians are going to hate the Ukrainians forever. This is not going to be something that they're going to be able to just get along with. It will take centuries for this to repair itself, and it might never will. Russia and Ukraine have always had a tenuous history going back to the 1700s, 1800s. This is probably one of the most difficult periods of the two nations' history, and it will continue to be going forward.

REICHARD: That's sobering. Last question: is there anything about this story that you think the general public may not understand or some aspect that isn't being talked about?

BARROS: I think a huge part of this has to do with the perception about the sustainability of Russia's war machine. It is not true that the Russians are the Soviet Union redux. It is not true that the contemporary Russian military is the Soviet Red Army. That is to say, it doesn't matter if you kill or wound a million Russians, they come back with two million more and you really cannot impose a military defeat on the Russian Federation. That's not true. Like all things, every resource is finite. People are finite. The Russians certainly have a lot more resources and more people, but that doesn't mean that you cannot defeat a numerically or conventionally more superior military with fewer people. Just because one side has more doesn't mean that it's just positive the outcome. And for those reasons, it's important to keep backing Ukraine. If we agree with the Russian premise that Russian victory is prima facie inevitable, then yes, the Ukrainians will lose.

REICHARD: George Barros is Russia team and Geospatial Intelligence Team Lead for the Institute for the Study of war. George, thanks so much!

BARROS: Of course, thank you for having me. Real pleasure.

NICK EICHER, HOST:Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: what if the person whose life saved yours wasn’t actually gone?

Doctors, lawmakers, and ethicists are asking hard questions about how, and when, we decide to pronounce someone dead.

WORLD’s Lauren Canterberry reports.

THOMAS CAINES: My 20th birthday present was my new heart.

LAUREN CANTERBERRY: Thomas Caines was a freshman at Covenant College in Tennessee when he returned home in January 2022. His mother, Sarah says he had been battling chronic fatigue, cold-like symptoms, and a persistent cough for weeks.

SARAH CAINES: That cough just kept progressing and we kept going back to the doctor.

Weeks later, an echocardiogram showed his heart was failing. Thomas was just 19 years old.

Doctors placed Caines on the transplant waiting list.

SARAH: For us, it was kind of a fast and uncertain process. There wasn’t a lot of waiting time, there wasn’t a lot of time to ask questions.

A new heart became available about three weeks later.

SARAH: There is a bit of a guilt feeling that for my son to live, someone else’s son will have to die.

Four days after he turned 20, Caines received his new heart. Months later, as Caines was beginning the recovery process, the donor’s mother wrote them a letter about her son.

THOMAS: He was 37, he had a kid, he was a construction worker, I remember that.

More than 100,000 people in the United States are on the national transplant waiting list. While living donors can donate some organs, like a kidney, most come from someone who has recently died. 90% of U.S. adults support organ donation, yet only about 60% are registered organ donors.

The Department of Health and Human Services released a report last month that showed some hospitals began the organ harvesting process even though patients still showed signs of life.

Days later, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing about alleged safety lapses in organ donation.

Here’s Chairman John Joyce—a Republican from Pennsylvania.

JOYCE: For every doctor, one of the most important tenets in the patient-physician relationship is above all, do no harm, but what happened in these cases fractured the doctor-patient relationship and saw patients subjected to pain and suffering that never should have occurred.

The report included the case of a 36-year-old Kentucky man who in 2021 was declared dead. But as doctors were preparing his body to remove his organs, he woke up on the operating table. He went on to make a full recovery.

The HHS report did not include any documented cases of inappropriate organ removal, though it suggested it has likely happened.

Doctors use two primary criteria for determining when a patient has died. The most common method is circulatory death—when the heart stops beating.

In 1968 a Harvard Medical School committee published a report outlining a new way to determine death—brain death.

According to the study, doctors could declare a patient brain-dead if the patient did not respond to external stimuli, did not display spontaneous muscle movement, had no reflexes, and had a flat reading on a brain scan.

Dr. Heidi Klessig is a retired anesthesiologist who now advocates for organ donors’ rights.

KLESSIG: They thought they could redefine them as being dead on utilitarian grounds. They said that it would help free up ICU beds and it would remove the controversy in using them as organ donors.

After a patient is declared brain-dead, they are often supported on a ventilator and their heart is still beating when organ procurement begins. The sooner organs are harvested after death, the more likely they are to be transferred successfully.

In 1980, a commission created the Uniform Determination of Death Act to standardize legal definitions. More than two-thirds of all states have adopted the model law, which recognizes either circulatory or brain death as criteria.

Scott Henderson is an associate professor of philosophy at Luther Rice College and Seminary.

HENDERSON: We are not just our brains. There is no theory of consciousness out there today that is acceptable by people who study it.

Henderson is concerned that some patients who are declared brain dead may be alive but unable to communicate. He points to cases where a patient was declared brain dead but lived for years after the diagnosis.

Other doctors believe brain death is an accurate determination of death. Dr. Gary Ott is a heart surgeon in Oregon and has performed heart transplants for decades.

OTT: To me, as someone who believes we are created in the image of God and a precious gift of life, that spirit has fled.

While Ott does not have issues with using circulatory or brain death criteria for organ donation, he expressed concerns about a relatively new practice called normothermic regional perfusion. That’s when doctors temporarily restore blood flow to organs after circulatory death while they are still inside the donor’s body in an attempt to increase the chances of a successful transplant. But doctors block the blood vessels that go to the brain. Ott says that if someone's heart is restarted and their brain begins functioning, they were never dead.

OTT: I would rather not take a few more donors than cross the line over who’s a person and who’s not. I think that those of us who have that line are a minority.

As a doctor, Ott wants all of his patients to trust that he will do his best to save their lives instead of pushing for organ donation. But he also believes organ donation is a picture of Christ’s sacrifice of His own life so we can live.

OTT: Out of this tragedy, God can bring good and change your life. That’s a powerful message, and we get to participate in that.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lauren Canterberry.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Eleven years ago at a Ford plant in Michigan, automaker Richard Guilford lost his wallet. Apparently, it’d slipped from his shirt pocket and vanished somewhere on the line. Audio from CBS News:

GUILFORD: I checked, and I'm like, Smitty, I lost my wallet. So we all went out, tried to look, you know, there was two thousand cars out there.

EICHER: Yeah, needle in a haystack.

Well, more than a decade and 150,000 miles later? A mechanic in Minnesota was working on a certain Ford Edge. He pulled out the cooling fan, and guess what he found! Wallet, cash, gift cards, all intact.

And instead of putting it in his own pocket, Chad Volk tracked down Richard Guilford.

VOLK: It’s the way I was raised.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Makes a momma proud!

EICHER: Yep, a wallet lost on the assembly line, and a man raised on where to draw the ethical one.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, August 19th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: persecution in Ukraine.

Russia’s partial occupation of Ukraine has taken a toll on the entire country. But it’s been especially hard for Christians not aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church.

REICHARD: Ukrainian evangelicals share Western values of free speech, freedom of assembly, and obedience to God before government. In Russia’s eyes, that makes them a threat to state control. And in the parts of the country Russia now occupies, they face targeted persecution.

EICHER: Many evangelical Christians who once lived near the Russian border have found refuge in western Ukraine. WORLD Correspondent Will Fleeson recently met with one pastor and his wife who fled Kharkiv as Russian tanks rolled toward the city.

AUDIO: [Sound of air raid siren]

WILL FLEESON: Around 4 a.m. on February 27th, 2022, Vasyl Agarkov and his wife Viktoria woke up to the sound of explosions.

VASYL: So and we walk out because, like, we have, like, red sky, because Russians start bombing our city, and they bombing, like near to our house and our windows and all building was shaken, yeah.

Like many other Kharkiv residents, the couple had made plans to evacuate. No one wanted to live under Russia’s thumb. But the Agarkovs had even more reason to fear.

VIKTORIA: In Ukraine we have freedom of speech, we have freedom of religion, and we have freedom of faith like but when Russia comes and when Russia occupies, they kill the pastors, especially the Protestant.

According to a report from the Christian advocacy group Mission Eurasia, Russia has killed nearly four dozen Ukrainian religious leaders since the start of the war.

Nearly half of the victims were evangelical or other Protestant believers. That’s a big number, since only two and a half percent of Ukrainians are Protestant.

Viktoria had lived through one Russian invasion already—in Crimea.

VIKTORIA: I lived there under occupation for two months, and then I decided to evacuate.

That was in 2014. What happened then taught Ukrainian Christians valuable lessons about what was to come.

VIKTORIA: If you live under Russian occupation, you need to realize that, concerning your Christian faith, you will return, like, to Soviet Union. If we stay there, we will be persecuted, like we would need to hide and we would need to decrease our ministry to minimum, because it's almost impossible.

That’s what happened in Donetsk, where Vasyl has a friend in ministry.

VASYL: And what he said, he said, Like almost all churches for now, the pastors were killed or persecuted because of the their Christianity, faith, and couple of them for now, they exist like in the early churches. They try to hide in where they meet, yeah, underground.

Even if they survived the invasion, the Agarkovs knew they probably wouldn’t be allowed to continue their ministry to university students in Kharkiv.

So the couple fled west to Lviv—along with thousands of others. A drive that normally took 13 hours stretched to 36.

VASYL: We have planned why we going to Lviv, because in Lviv we have our Presbyterian Church. So we decide to be going to the city, the farthest from the Russian border and that city, which has our church, Presbyterian Church.

Once they settled into their new home, Viktoria transitioned from student ministry to what she calls “war ministry.”

VIKTORIA: So we've been helping a lot of soldiers and people who live either close to the war zones or like at the front lines.

Vasyl began preaching and teaching.

VASYL: So I started to do this Bible study, and we have dinner together and study Psalms together, and psalms of lament and psalms of grace. And it's really helped to understand our emotional stuff and to understand how God see this war, this unjust and unfair war. So it's helped, yeah.

But the war put everything else on hold, including their plans to start a family.

VIKTORIA: For three years we've been living kind of like, oh, I wake up today. Oh, thank god. I'm gonna live this day and I'm not gonna, yeah, I'm not gonna think about tomorrow.

Finally they decided they didn’t want to wait any more.

VIKTORIA: In the beginning we were like, oh, maybe we're gonna have kids when the war is over, and now we're like, nobody knows when the war is over. Maybe it's gonna go on for 10 years, for 20.

And the number of children who need homes keeps growing.

VIKTORIA: So we were told that within these three years, the number of orphans in Ukraine doubled. And we were thinking that, you know, it's a good time to start the process.

So at the beginning of this year, they applied to adopt.

SOUND: [Agkarov children]

Five months later, the family’s apartment is full of life. Four rambunctious boys clamor for attention—and dinner.

VASYL: We believe in God who is care for orphans and widows, uh, and, we saw this evil on this war. And we think about how, what is our answer? How, how we can answer to this evil in in Ukraine?

VIKTORIA: How we can reduce people's suffering, yeah, like that was the biggest issue for us, yeah, because it's really heartbreaking.

Starting a family is one way to fight back against the evils of war. Starting churches is another.

VIKTORIA: We really want Ukraine, you know, have more churches. So people can go not only Orthodox or Catholic church, but also can go to church where they can hear the gospel and hear what the Bible says.

Right now, Ukraine has just two Reformed Presbyterian churches. Vasyl dreams of having many, all over the country.

VASYL: They try to kill and destroy Christians and destroy churches. And we think about planting churches, so it's like our response to this evil. And we believe like when gospel is proclaimed and when people became a Christian, our nations can and will be resurrected because of Jesus, Christ, and we will have hope even in dark times.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Will Fleeson in Lviv, Ukraine.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, August 19th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

LYRIC POST: ♪ Let me tell you ’bout the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees, the moon up above … and a thing called love. ♪

REICHARD: When a science podcast uses seagull behavior to make a point about human sexuality, it might sound like a remix of “the birds and the bees.” But WORLD Opinions contributor Maria Baer says it’s less biology, more ideology, and it just doesn’t fly.

MARIA BAER: The recent Radiolab episode about seagulls isn’t really about seagulls.

RADIOLAB : All thanks to…gulls. Gulls like seagulls? Mm-hmm.

Radiolab is a popular science podcast. But sometimes, ideology gets in its way. This particular episode begins with the story of two scientists — George Hunt and Molly Warner — and their visit to a seagull colony on an uninhabited rock island off the coast of Santa Barbara.

RADIOLAB: And on top of that rock, Molly’s gonna spot something that will change the lives of millions of people.

Researchers documented a strange phenomenon: pairs of female seagulls were living together in one out of ten nests on the island. They were even going through the motions of mating. According to the paper the couple later published in the journal Science, this was the first ‘official discovery’ of ‘homosexuality’ in the animal kingdom. This was personally significant for the hosts of Radiolab.

RADIOLAB: Alright, bias alert. Latif, my friend, you may recall that I too and a female-female paired vertebrate… I am a lady married to a lady.

Host Lulu Miller goes on to say this blockbuster report on the lesbian seagulls threw cold water on the ‘anti-gay tactic’ of calling homosexuality “unnatural.” Like a dogged investigator on a cold case, she then set out to find just where this conspiracy of bigotry originated.

RADIOLAB: And that is a belief that, as best I can tell, was born back in the 1200s.

She tells us it was Thomas Aquinas, that anti-gay PR strategist (and philosopher and priest) who came up with the idea to call homosexuality a “crime against nature.” Maybe the seagulls could finally put that nonsense to rest!

Except they didn’t. After further study, researchers discovered there’d been a crisis amid the male population of seagulls on Santa Barbara Island. They theorized that a chemical in the air or water was killing them off. For a brief period, that meant the female birds struggled to find a mate, prompting them to “playact” mating with each other. When the government regulated the harmful chemicals and the male seagull population rebounded, the “female-female pairings” disappeared. Much to host Lulu Miller’s dismay.

RADIOLAB: Sorry to interrupt, but couldn’t it be happening without us realizing? It could be happening without us realizing, but the eggs are big and obvious… I don’t think it’s going on now. Sorry… I know! I was like, as a queer person… I can hear you. ‘Please tell me they still like doing that!’

I empathize with Miller’s internal struggle. As much as I’d caution against building moral foundations on the exhibited behavior of animals, I, too, recognize the intense pull to rationalize my own sin. That’s why I don’t think Miller was really asking “do animals do this, too?” I think she was actually asking “is this good?”

Only she couldn’t ask that. Because she is hamstrung by a worldview which sees humans as no more valuable than animals already. It sees no meaningful order or higher purpose to the universe. Everything is “natural” in a world that exists by accident. Everything is “permissible” if nothing matters.

The great irony of this episode of Radiolab is that if the seagull story ‘proved’ anything, it was that nature is ordered toward reproduction, and when animals cannot achieve it, they descend into crisis. The female seagulls were not exploring a ‘new’ desire; they were miming an urgent craving for an unmet one. This isn’t a story about the ‘naturalness’ of homosexuality; it’s a story about the irrepressible impulse of creation toward heterosexuality.

Thomas Aquinas didn’t “invent” the idea that homosexuality is fundamentally opposed to human flourishing. That was God, who designed reproduction to only happen one very specific, and life-giving, way.

I’m Maria Baer.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: more states consider mid-term redistricting…we’ll talk about it with Hunter Baker on Washington Wednesday. And, how churches are connecting with Little League families during playoff travel. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible records that while the disciples were all marveling at everything [Jesus] was doing, [He] said to [them], “‘Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.’ But they did not understand this saying, and it was concealed from them, so that they might not perceive it. And they were afraid to ask him about this saying.” —Luke 9:44, 45

Go now in grace and peace.

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