Selena Simmons-Duffin

Jan Kabatek and colleagues published a study on the fraternal birth order effect with a huge sample, more than 9 million people.

They found that people in same-sex marriages had lots of older brothers, with a twist.

In other words, women who were in same-sex marriages were also more likely to have older brothers than other types of siblings.

That really surprised a lot of people in the field and kind of threw into question the maternal immune hypothesis.

Is there another way to think about this besides statistical oddity?

Is there something more profound or deeper to think about it?

Okay, so how does all of this sound to Justin Torres, a queer person who actually fits this pattern?

Okay, so Justin, in one way, I'm like, this is kind of fun.

It's concrete and it's everywhere all over the world that this thing happens.

And there's this theory as to why it might be happening.

But then I feel like the reason why I wanted to talk to you is to kind of

wrap my arms around the other undercurrents.

So it sounds like you're...

initial thought is like, okay, this is bunk.

But then part of you is like, okay, it's kind of fun, but it's also really dangerous.

To summarize, it's 45 things at once.

Then again, how could scientists resist that mysterious, weird complexity, even if the joy and self-expression and community and so many other parts of queerness will always be more than statistics can explain?

This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez.

It was fact-checked by Britt Hansen.

Maggie Luthar was the audio engineer.