Molly Webster

So a little while back, I had a conversation with one of Radiolab's favorite science writers.

All right, Lucy.

We do love Lucy.

She's like this globe-trotting tracker of amazing animal stories.

She's been to Panama to meet stoned dwarf sloths.

She went to Sweden to track drunken moose.

All right.

And then a little while back, while she was working on her latest book... I was...

It was a discovery that directly speaks to something that lots of humans are actually going to have to contend with at some point in their lives, including Lucy herself and me and you.

Me.

You, Molly.

Okay.

So yeah.

So Lucy hopped on a plane.

And then to get to the patch of the ocean north of Seattle where the whales actually live.

But the actual reason Lucy was there was to get on a boat.

with a woman named Deborah Giles.

Apparently you can learn a lot about whales by looking at their poop.

Hormones, microbes, environmental chemicals.

So what they do is they go out in the boat until they spot this group of killer whales.