Episode Transcript
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0:02
A quick warning, there are curse words that are
0:04
unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If
0:06
you prefer a beeped version, you can
0:08
find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. From
0:13
WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm
0:15
Tobin Lowe in for Ira Glass. You
0:19
may have heard of comedian Tig Notaro, but if
0:21
you're a gay person like me, you have really
0:23
heard of Tig Notaro. She
0:26
is what I would call gay famous, which
0:28
makes the story of what happened to her so
0:30
surprising. She and her wife
0:33
Stephanie have two kids, twin boys. And
0:35
after seven years of living in the same
0:37
house with Stephanie and Tig, having their two
0:40
moms tend to every meal and butt wipe,
0:42
seven years of the boys telling their
0:45
teachers and random whomever's that they have
0:47
two moms, they're all in the car
0:49
on the way to first grade one morning. Stephanie
0:51
and I were just in the front seat talking and they
0:53
were in the back seat talking like we
0:56
always do. And
0:58
then Stephanie said something
1:00
about us being gay and our
1:03
son Finn leans forward and
1:07
pokes his head between us and he
1:09
says, you're gay? We
1:16
were like, obviously
1:20
just as shocked as he was. We
1:23
were like, yeah. And
1:26
he said, what's gay? And
1:29
that was a whole other level of stunned.
1:32
Oh, my gosh. How
1:36
is this information only
1:38
just now coming out? Tig's
1:41
been with her wife for over a decade. And
1:43
as far as they knew, they've been gay for
1:45
the entirety of their children's lives. But
1:48
apparently it was news to Max and Finn. And
1:51
I started to feel insecure thinking,
1:53
oh, my gosh, here he's lived
1:55
over seven years not
1:59
knowing. He had gay parents. What
2:02
if he's upset
2:04
now? What if he doesn't
2:06
like his life or his family or he's
2:09
disappointed in some way or... What's
2:11
the first thing you say back to him when
2:13
he asked that question? I was saying,
2:15
okay, so gay is when a boy
2:18
likes a boy or
2:23
a girl likes a girl, and
2:26
that would be specific
2:28
to being gay. Mm-hmm,
2:31
mm-hmm. And they
2:33
were just like, oh, okay. Before
2:35
Tae can say more, they're pulling up in front
2:37
of the school. The car ride is only a
2:39
couple minutes long. And then the
2:41
kids are running out of the car and Tae and
2:44
her wife are left to wonder how their sons had
2:46
possibly not seen something right in front of their faces.
2:49
And we drove away
2:51
maybe going half a mile an hour.
2:53
We were so stunned. Stephanie
2:55
and I glanced at each other like,
2:57
what in the hell just happened?
3:00
Do you have a moment
3:02
after this comes out where
3:09
you're like, oh no, what kind of parent am
3:11
I that this hasn't been discussed? Is there like
3:14
a part of your brain doing that? Oh,
3:17
a million percent. I mean, when... When
3:23
there's any sort of moment,
3:26
I was gonna say moment like this, but
3:28
I don't know how many moments like this
3:30
I've had. I mean, I did have a
3:32
similar one when they were five and I
3:35
was reading them a story before bed and
3:37
Finn interrupted me and
3:39
said, they call me
3:41
mare, which is for mother, French. And
3:46
Finn said, mare, are
3:48
you a boy or a girl? And
3:50
that was when he was five and
3:53
I just stopped and I laughed and
3:55
I said, well, what do you think I am? And
3:58
he said, I think you're a boy. boy. And
4:01
I said, OK, I said, well, I
4:04
am a girl. And he
4:06
said, huh, OK. Well, but you
4:08
look like a boy. Right. And
4:10
I said, yeah, yeah. And
4:13
and then we just kept
4:15
reading the book and I was
4:17
just laughing to myself like, oh, my gosh, my son
4:19
didn't know I was a girl. One
4:23
reason all of this was especially mystifying was
4:25
that the boys, like I said, definitely knew
4:27
they had two moms. We're kind of proud
4:29
of it. Not like in a oh,
4:33
yeah, we have two moms. There's like we have
4:35
two moms. We have two. Also,
4:37
the school they go to is very
4:39
progressive and celebrates pride every year. And
4:42
we everyone drops
4:44
their kids off in rainbows. And
4:48
it's like, I guess they didn't
4:50
know. I guess
4:52
they didn't know what the pride was. You
4:54
know, they're just running around with rainbows on
4:56
them. They're like, sure, happy pride. Tegan
5:03
Stephanie eventually figured out what happened. Sure,
5:06
Max and Finn knew they had two moms, but
5:09
Tegan Stephanie had never sat down with them to
5:11
say two moms who are married.
5:13
That's what gay is. And
5:15
more importantly, they never said the
5:17
words, we're gay. Took a while
5:19
for me to sort that out and understand
5:22
that a wedding
5:24
picture and two moms doesn't
5:26
equal gay. Right. Right. And
5:29
I was thinking about how,
5:31
like, when you first come out, there's like
5:33
a moment where you like have to do
5:35
the spiel a bunch to people.
5:39
And then it's sort of like tapers off and you
5:41
just start living your life. Like, I can't remember the
5:43
last time I had to sit down and have a
5:45
coming out conversation with somebody. It has
5:48
been so long since I had
5:50
to come out to anybody, anybody.
5:52
Right. And I would never have
5:54
guessed in my own
5:57
house, there were two people. It
6:00
didn't. We have three cats. I feel like
6:02
they probably know we're gay. This
6:08
stuff happens all the time. The people close
6:10
to you miss something about you that seems
6:12
so obvious. The truth is right
6:14
in front of their face, and they don't see it.
6:18
Today on the show, we have stories of people
6:20
trying to end this misunderstanding once and for all.
6:23
In one, they build an actual machine to try
6:25
to convince the other person. In another,
6:27
they call a scientist for help. One
6:30
person even tries reaching out to the federal government,
6:33
which kind of works. Actually, in every
6:35
case, they get a certain kind of satisfaction.
6:38
Stay with us. Support
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netsuite.com/T-A-L. It's
7:23
This American Life. Act one, there
7:25
will be blood. Okay,
7:28
so in this first story, a person gets so
7:30
fed up with other people dismissing a thing that
7:32
was happening to them that they
7:34
devise a way for the other person
7:37
to actually experience it firsthand. They
7:40
build a machine that simulates period
7:42
pain. Maybe you've seen
7:45
these videos on TikTok of people, mostly
7:47
men, getting hooked up to one of these
7:49
things, getting to feel for the
7:51
first time what a person with a uterus goes
7:53
through regularly. Aviva
7:55
DeCornfeld, one of the producers on our
7:58
show, got curious if this social... experiment
8:00
really changes anything. If
8:02
men who didn't really believe their partners about
8:05
what happened during their periods would be convinced
8:07
by this experience. So
8:09
she went to see it in the wild at
8:11
a rodeo in Calgary known as the Stampede, where
8:13
the machine was set up for anyone who might
8:16
be a doubter. Here's Aviva. I'll
8:18
admit, I came into this pretty
8:20
skeptical. The idea that
8:23
five minutes of manufactured cramping could
8:25
somehow make men understand women better.
8:27
It seemed optimistic, especially
8:30
when their starting point seemed to be so
8:32
basic. I asked men
8:34
standing in line for the machine the question, what
8:36
does a period cramp feel like? Their
8:39
guesses included food poisoning,
8:41
bone pain, getting kicked in
8:44
the balls, a pinch, and
8:46
being really full. More
8:48
often than not, they made these guesses
8:50
while standing next to their partner, who
8:52
was off mic, silently shaking her head,
8:54
no. Either
8:56
more women than I thought avoid talking
8:58
about their periods with their partners, or
9:01
most of these boyfriends have extremely
9:04
selective hearing. How was
9:06
your period pain? Really bad.
9:08
Really? I didn't know they hurt.
9:10
What? You didn't know? No. You're
9:13
learning right now that your girlfriend has
9:15
terrible period pain? Yeah. How long have
9:17
you been together? Five years. His
9:20
girlfriend asks, what did you think was going on when
9:23
I was in bed? I don't know. I
9:25
thought you just went to sleep. Once
9:27
a month? Yeah. I knew it happened.
9:29
I never really asked much about it. This
9:33
kind of ignorance is the exact motivation
9:35
for Lux Perry, the person running the
9:37
simulator. Lux is 31.
9:40
They're sharp and funny. They first
9:42
started running the simulator a couple years ago
9:44
and have since taken it all over the
9:46
world. Lux is doing
9:49
all of this because period pain has been
9:51
the defining factor of their life. They
9:53
have severe endometriosis, which is a
9:55
chronic disease where tissue that's supposed
9:57
to grow inside the uterus grows
10:00
outside of it, which causes all
10:02
sorts of problems, including extreme pain.
10:05
Lux has been to the hospital with complications
10:07
over 75 times, and it took over 20
10:10
years for them to even get a diagnosis.
10:13
And when everyone around
10:15
you is telling you that the
10:17
pain that you experience is completely
10:19
not real and it's ruined your
10:21
entire life, it's kind
10:25
of how you end up building a simulator. Lux
10:29
isn't the only one who's done this. There
10:31
are lots of period simulator videos online, but
10:34
the machine people are using in those other videos
10:37
only triggers a very superficial cramp, nothing
10:39
like a real period. Whereas
10:41
Lux had their machine modified to make the
10:44
cramps more intense, with the goal of getting
10:46
people to understand what period pain actually feels
10:48
like. So you're going to peel them
10:50
off this plastic thing, and you're going to apply them
10:52
directly to your skin where your ovaries would be. The
10:55
way Lux's machine works, you place
10:57
two sticky pads where your ovaries are, or would
10:59
be, which is lower than you think. Those
11:04
pads are connected by wires to a
11:07
handheld machine, which then triggers a cramp.
11:10
The machine goes from 1 to 10. Lux
11:12
says most women who have tried the machine
11:14
say their normal period pain is around level
11:17
7, some a little lower, some much, much higher.
11:21
I watched 100 people get hooked up to the machine
11:23
over the course of two days. When
11:26
Lux cranks the simulator up, women tend
11:28
to be stoic. They calmly
11:30
describe the pain they're feeling. I
11:33
watched one woman on a level 10 say, thoughtfully,
11:35
huh, this
11:37
is what it felt like when my sister ruptured. Whereas
11:40
men tend to sound more like this. Oh
11:43
my god, Jesus Christ, okay enough,
11:45
enough. Fuck me,
11:47
oh my god. Fuck, sorry. I'm
11:49
sorry, I'm sorry that happens to you.
11:52
Whenever a guy was hooked up to the machine, women
11:55
would crowd around the booth to watch. They
11:57
would shout questions at the man. Would you
11:59
still be? be able to go to work, go out with
12:02
friends. Having that thing, would you go to the
12:04
gym? No, no, I wouldn't wanna. I mean, I
12:06
probably could, but it wouldn't be a good day. Another
12:09
woman jumps in. I have to pick
12:11
up kids all day. Would you
12:13
think you could do that? Probably
12:16
not. I don't know. Like, it
12:18
wouldn't be fun for sure. I'd probably just, like,
12:20
wanna sit, watch TV, and not really do much.
12:25
The women badgered and heckled from the sidelines,
12:27
good-naturedly, but still. Oftentimes,
12:30
they would lament to one another that
12:33
the simulator could only simulate cramps, wishing
12:36
it could somehow also trigger
12:38
the headaches, back pain, hormones,
12:40
acne, nausea, depression, everything
12:42
else that comes with menstruation. There
12:45
seemed to be a real pleasure in watching the men
12:47
writhe, a tiny bit of justice, if
12:49
only for a minute. Let
12:58
me just say, I know how all
13:00
this sounds. So binary.
13:03
I don't mean to drag us back to a time
13:05
when we thought of men and women as two totally
13:07
different species. And I'm not
13:09
saying all men acted this way and all
13:11
women acted this other way. There
13:13
are obviously exceptions. Though, honestly,
13:15
as far as I saw, not
13:18
many. To be clear,
13:20
most of the men I met were nice
13:22
and pathetic. They clearly knew what they
13:24
were supposed to say. Of course they believed
13:26
women. Even if other
13:28
feelings slip out sometimes. Why
13:30
do you think your girlfriend wants you to do this? I
13:34
don't know how it feels, so she
13:36
always whines about it. So I gotta test
13:38
it out and see what she's whining about.
13:42
Does wine feel like the right verb
13:44
to you? No. No. They
13:46
actually hurt. Just wait. At
13:49
least half the men who tried the
13:51
simulator did so because their girlfriend or
13:53
wife was dragging them, sometimes literally, over
13:55
to the booth and forcing them to
13:57
try it. And Lexus had a
13:59
number. of couples storm off afterwards. They
14:02
like to guess which couples are gonna break up.
14:04
Yeah, like we had this couple last year. They
14:07
were young-ish, maybe in their mid-20s, and
14:11
she really wanted him to experience it
14:13
because she had endo. Endo, short for
14:15
endometriosis. He was completely dismissive, leading up
14:17
to, and then when he was on
14:19
the simulator, he like pushed through
14:21
it. Like you can see when
14:23
people are like really trying to suppress the experience,
14:26
and so he was really like wouldn't say
14:28
that he was in pain, and they stormed
14:30
off like completely pissed at each
14:32
other. She was like why would you, like why do you have
14:34
to say all those things in front of people, like we could
14:36
hear her. Like what was he saying?
14:38
Well he was saying that she exaggerates, that it's
14:40
not that bad. You know, like if this is
14:42
what you're going through, like there's no reason that
14:44
you can't like do the dishes,
14:47
or like it was like really offensive
14:49
stuff, and it's just sometimes
14:53
you just, you wanna say something?
14:56
Like to the girl you're like, this
14:59
guy is such an ass. So,
15:11
can this humble machine change a man's
15:13
mind? Ewan and
15:15
Kasia are a great test case for this
15:17
question, because they do not
15:19
see eye to eye about her periods at
15:21
all. Ewan's from
15:23
South Africa, Kasia's from Poland. They're
15:26
both in their early 40s, and they're
15:28
the kind of couple that is always talking past
15:30
one another, constantly disagreeing.
15:33
We've been married for 14 years, we
15:35
have two big kids. Well not big, they're 10
15:37
and 7, but yes. Even
15:40
so, there was a real affection between
15:42
them, in a sort of old-timey, the
15:44
old ball and chain, isn't my spouse a real
15:46
pain in the ass kind of way. She
15:49
wants me to stop complaining. Yeah, I think he thinks
15:51
it's a choice we have as women when
15:53
we get really cranky, and I'm like, and
15:55
the choice, it's what it is, and that's
15:57
what it feels like. As long as it's a real...
18:00
It's not going through my stomach. I
18:02
don't think that's how it can feel. Is
18:04
that really how it feels? Is that how it feels?
18:06
This is period pain right now. I'm feeling
18:08
it really crying here. Yeah. Oh
18:11
yeah, this is a period pain. Like, it's really
18:13
deep into you. That's it. Kasia
18:15
eventually convinces you in to get back on the
18:17
machine. Number nine. But quick if I
18:19
say off you off it, huh? No. Yay!
18:28
Yeah. It's
18:30
like giving birth. Is this like giving birth? No.
18:33
All right. You're doing ten now? Ah! That's
18:36
ten. Is that ten? Is that ten? Is
18:41
that on ten now? Yes. Yeah.
18:43
That's a deep pain. Hold on one more and then you'll be done. You're
18:47
squeezing her armour. Yeah, now he's hurting
18:49
me. Yes. You
18:52
know when the pain goes all the way to your back? That
18:55
deep muscle pain that goes into your
18:57
back? That's the period pain. The whole
18:59
time? The whole time continuously, yeah. That's
19:01
not my song. But is that
19:04
how it feels the whole time? That
19:06
really deep pain and it literally feels like... Why
19:08
don't you make a scene about that? Do
19:11
you think this will change the way that you interact with your
19:13
partner? Really? In what way? Well now I will ask
19:15
her, are you having the same
19:18
vibrations as you were? It's
19:21
so tough. So do you feel like you believe her more now?
19:23
Definitely. How come you think
19:26
that you had to experience the pain yourself to believe
19:28
her? To be honest, I just
19:30
feel like mood changes. You
19:32
thought she was just being whiny? Whiny. Ewan
19:36
went from, my wife complains too much about
19:38
period pain, to asking why she didn't make
19:40
more of a scene during her period, over
19:43
the course of five minutes. So
19:46
theoretically, mission success. A
19:49
few days later, the longevity of
19:51
Ewan's transformation was tested. He
19:53
and Kasia were back at home in England and
19:56
Kasia had her period. Two sitting
19:58
on the couch and told Ewan. I'm
20:00
at a level 8 right now." He
20:02
said okay. He understood. Kasia
20:04
told me, if you think he then
20:06
got me a glass of water or a pillow or
20:08
took care of me in some way, that's
20:11
not the husband I have. But he
20:13
acknowledged my pain. And that was new.
20:16
And I appreciated it. I'd
20:25
flown to Calgary to watch men get hooked up to
20:27
the simulator to see what they'd learned about period pain.
20:30
I hadn't planned on learning anything about periods
20:32
myself. I already have one. The figure
20:35
I know about them. But I was
20:37
shocked by how many women offhandedly mentioned going
20:39
to the hospital for their period pain. At
20:43
first, I wasn't sure if I was just way more
20:45
ignorant about period pain than I'd realized, or
20:48
if I was just in Canada, where regular people can actually afford
20:50
to go to the hospital with some
20:52
regularity. It was probably both.
20:55
But there were just so many women in
20:57
so much pain, so much of the time.
21:00
Like this woman Gabby with endometriosis.
21:03
She's 27, just to walk
21:05
with a cane. And she's applied for disabilities since
21:07
the pain is so debilitating. And when
21:10
I met her, she was about to fly to the
21:12
U.S. to pay for her second surgery, which costs about
21:14
$40,000 out of pocket. Lux
21:17
walked Gabby all the way up the scale in the simulator.
21:20
She got to a 9, didn't blink. Okay, do you
21:22
want to try a 10? Yeah. Okay,
21:25
so this is a 10. Yeah,
21:28
it's like, it feels, then you
21:30
can feel a little bit more of the almost stabby's.
21:33
I'm trying to figure out what this is on my pain scale.
21:35
Yeah. I mean, since
21:38
I'm still standing, I would say this
21:40
is probably like a, this is probably
21:42
like my everyday, like a 6. Yeah,
21:44
no, I could definitely function with
21:46
this. When
21:49
I tried the machine, my level was 7, average.
21:53
At levels 8, 9, and 10, I couldn't even speak. I
21:57
was just silently breathing through the pain. so
22:00
much worse than my cramps. And
22:03
watching Gabi casually hold a conversation at
22:05
level 10, I felt
22:07
like I finally emotionally understood the whole
22:09
point of the machine. It's
22:12
easy to think that because you've experienced a piece
22:14
of a thing, that you understand
22:17
the entirety of it. But
22:19
on the spectrum of period pain, Gabi's
22:21
experience is as far from mine as
22:24
mine is from the men. I
22:27
felt angry that I somehow didn't know any
22:29
of this before. And
22:31
when I got home from Calgary, I couldn't stop
22:33
talking about what I'd seen, asking everyone with
22:36
the fervor of a college freshman who just
22:38
learned about feminism, do you
22:40
have any idea how much pain women are asked
22:42
to endure? Before
22:45
this, I think a part of
22:47
me felt like these guys were being kind
22:49
of insensitive dummies, totally unaware of the pain
22:51
of the people around them. But
22:55
I guess I was basically as clueless as
22:57
they were. Aviva
23:05
DeCornfeld is a producer on our show. Act
23:15
Two, Face Your Demons. This
23:19
next story is about a man who wants more
23:21
than anything in the world to be able
23:23
to see people around him accurately, which
23:25
is not an easy thing to do. Our
23:28
producer, Elise Beagle, has the story. Love
23:31
was always important to Jason Wuerbeloff, probably
23:34
the most important thing. As
23:36
a kid growing up in South Africa, he
23:38
often imagined his future partner, what
23:41
the man might look like, how close the two
23:43
of them would be. Jason
23:45
was crossing his fingers for the standard version
23:47
of the love story, the one in all
23:50
the movies. I was looking for
23:52
a soulmate, the one, the
23:54
person who would understand me
23:56
and complete my life and
23:58
allow me to fully... connect with them
24:01
on every level and share
24:03
every detail of ourselves. I
24:06
guess a very Disney way of thinking about
24:08
life. So it felt like good news
24:10
when at the age of 24, Jason met Marius, an
24:14
artist with thick black glasses who proudly
24:16
held Jason's hand in public. This
24:19
was 2008, and Jason
24:21
had recently graduated from university with a
24:24
degree in philosophy. He
24:26
was out on his own trying to get a life
24:28
and he was a small software business up and running.
24:31
And Marius was incredibly supportive, confident
24:33
that Jason would succeed at whatever it is
24:35
that he tried. He looked
24:37
at me like I mattered. And
24:42
I remember him laughing a lot, and
24:44
he had a good laugh, very warm. But
24:47
then one night, pretty early in the relationship,
24:50
Jason had an experience that left him
24:52
deeply shaken. So I remember
24:54
we were sitting at a table
24:57
at a restaurant. It was outside the movies.
24:59
We were gonna go see a movie that
25:01
night. And I remember
25:03
looking at him and I thought
25:05
he was snarling at me. The
25:08
expression on his boyfriend's face. For
25:11
a moment, Jason thought he saw a look
25:13
of pure hatred. It was
25:15
just a flash, but it was unnerving. It
25:18
felt like Jason had seen a glimpse of something
25:20
deeper, like the expression revealed
25:22
some buried inner truth. Jason
25:25
didn't think he'd said anything to offend
25:27
his boyfriend. And there was nothing
25:30
in his boyfriend's voice that was nasty or
25:32
malicious. But the expression, Marius
25:35
looked like someone who clearly meant him
25:38
ill. I
25:40
remember looking at his face and thinking, I
25:42
don't want to be anywhere near this person. He
25:45
feels like a stranger and like he wants to
25:47
harm me, to hurt me. Did
25:50
you say anything to him? Like, why are
25:52
you looking at me like that? No,
25:55
because I thought I must be
25:58
misunderstanding. And I... I
26:01
must just ask him enough questions to find
26:03
out what he's feeling in
26:05
order to understand him differently. And I started to
26:07
ask him questions about how he felt about us,
26:09
about what he wanted from the relationship. And
26:12
he reacted in a very confused way.
26:15
And that was our first fight. Jason
26:18
eventually let it go, and the rest of the
26:20
night was normal. Unfortunately, in
26:22
the days and weeks that
26:24
followed, those brief, menacing expressions,
26:27
they continued. Jason
26:29
kept catching Marius with a malicious look
26:31
on his face, a kind of ghoulish
26:34
snarl. Every time he
26:36
saw it, he felt his heart race. The
26:38
look was almost demonic. It
26:41
wasn't all the time. And usually,
26:43
the look would emerge and then disappear just
26:45
as quickly. So Jason was never
26:47
absolutely certain that what he thought he saw
26:49
was what he saw. But
26:51
still, it upset him almost every
26:53
time. No matter how many
26:55
times Marius told him that he was just
26:58
imagining it, that Marius loved Jason and only
27:00
wanted the best for him, Jason
27:02
found the expressions impossible to
27:05
ignore. We used to fight a lot.
27:08
And it always felt like we had two relationships.
27:12
There was the relationship I had with
27:14
him when he looked
27:16
like someone I could trust and love, and
27:19
the relationship I had with him when
27:21
he looked awful. And
27:24
the relationship felt very chaotic.
27:27
It was good and it was bad and it was good
27:30
and it was bad and it was good and
27:32
it was bad.
27:37
I started to research
27:39
facial expressions obsessively. So
27:43
I read every book I could
27:45
in my university's library. There were
27:47
a few. About facial expressions? Yes.
27:50
That's so interesting. Why?
27:53
And what were you looking for in those books? I
27:56
basically wanted to be able to see
27:58
a facial expression. and
28:00
be able to recognize what emotion
28:03
was underlying it, what the person was feeling. I
28:06
became obsessed with that because what
28:09
I thought he was feeling and what he
28:11
said he was feeling didn't match. So
28:14
I became obsessed with working it out.
28:16
What is it that's on this guy's
28:18
face? ["The Chariots
28:24
of the Sea"] Marius and Jason were
28:26
together for four years until eventually the
28:28
expression problem came to a head. Jason
28:31
says he remembers the exact moment.
28:34
He'd come into a room where Marius
28:36
was working on an art project. I
28:39
just hated the way he looked at me. It
28:42
looked like he was looking at me with contempt. And
28:46
then a few months later, we broke up. It
28:49
was just that particular look.
28:53
It stayed with me. And
28:55
it wasn't only with Marius. This happened with
28:57
other people too, these
28:59
flashes of apparent malice. It
29:02
happened with his mother, some though
29:04
not all of his friends, random
29:07
strangers he encountered in the world. It
29:10
wasn't everyone. It wasn't all the time, but
29:13
it kept happening. So Jason
29:15
started to change his patterns. He
29:17
went out with friends and family much less,
29:20
even created a work life where he could spend
29:22
most of his time alone. He
29:24
just couldn't stand to see the terrible expressions.
29:27
And they bothered him most in the
29:29
context of his romantic relationships, that part
29:31
of his life where he had so
29:33
hoped to find unconditional love and support.
29:37
Jason desperately wanted a healthy
29:39
relationship. And so he did
29:41
the typical thing that people do when they're having trouble
29:43
in love. He consulted experts,
29:46
went to see therapists, one
29:48
after another. I put
29:50
myself into therapy. And what
29:52
did you say to the therapists and what
29:54
did they say to you about what the
29:56
issue could be? I
29:59
said... The person I'm
30:01
dating or this friend isn't
30:04
someone that I can trust isn't someone
30:06
that I can feel close to and
30:09
then the second thing I would say is What
30:12
is wrong with me for feeling like that? Is
30:15
it them or is it me but something's very
30:17
wrong here and I don't know what it is But is it them
30:19
or is it me? And
30:21
what did the therapist tend to say was
30:23
it them or was it you? They
30:27
would find some story to
30:29
tell about that like there
30:31
either was something very wrong with them Or
30:33
there was something very wrong with me wanting someone
30:36
who I had such discomfort
30:38
around This went
30:40
on for 13 years and Jason withdrew
30:42
more and more Every
30:44
romantic relationship ended the same way
30:47
with a look so terrifying Jason
30:49
could no longer stand it in
30:52
fact in one case the look on his
30:54
boyfriend's face was so disturbing Jason
30:56
made him leave that instant literally went
30:58
online paid for an Airbnb and told
31:01
him to pack But
31:04
then about three years ago Jason
31:06
stumbled on the source of this
31:08
problem and Understanding
31:10
what it was made him think about his
31:13
whole life differently It
31:15
started one day when he was on
31:17
this online forum and got into a
31:19
conversation with a woman named Catherine Jason
31:22
described to Catherine his experience with
31:24
faces the strange flashes He saw
31:26
that haunted him for days afterwards
31:29
and Catherine told him that she thought she knew
31:31
what his problem was She said
31:33
the name of a disorder that he'd never heard of
31:35
then told him that to figure out if he had
31:37
it He should purchase this special
31:40
light which allows the user to change
31:42
the color of the light through the
31:44
full color spectrum. I Thought
31:47
she was a bit of a quack to be
31:49
honest. I Thought
31:52
she doesn't know what she's talking about But
31:56
I'll humor her and get these colored bulbs
31:59
for my lights And she said,
32:01
sit in a perfectly dark room with
32:04
no other light sources and put a lamp
32:06
on either side of you so there's no shadows. And
32:09
look in a mirror and change the
32:11
colors on the spectrum and see what
32:13
you see. Now when
32:16
Jason was a kid, and really all through high school,
32:18
he told me he'd felt pretty good about the way
32:20
that he looked. He considered himself
32:23
reasonably attractive. But when
32:25
he was in his mid 20s, that started to
32:27
change. What Jason saw when he
32:29
looked in the mirror was someone whose right eye
32:32
kind of looked at a place and
32:34
was much smaller than the other one. And
32:37
he decided he wasn't very attractive. He was
32:39
kind of a strange looking guy. So
32:42
anyway, Jason sits down in his bedroom and
32:44
arranges the light just like the woman said,
32:46
and then he looks in the mirror.
32:49
And I sort of went around the
32:52
colored aisle. And
32:55
when the color was green,
32:59
my eye was not smaller and to
33:02
the side and higher than
33:04
the other eye. It was where it
33:07
should be on a symmetrical face. How
33:09
did that make you feel? I was
33:11
amazed. I was like I was truly amazed by
33:13
how I looked. And suddenly
33:16
things started to pop into place all of a sudden
33:18
in my head. Because I've always
33:20
had, I don't want to sound
33:22
arrogant, but I've always had a lot of attention from
33:24
other men and I could never understand
33:26
why. Because I thought,
33:29
I don't know what these people are seeing in me,
33:31
but I'm not a pretty person. I
33:33
have a really ugly face. Why are they
33:35
doing this? Which would
33:37
feed into sort of a paranoia about like,
33:39
are they trying to use me in some
33:42
way they can't possibly be attracted to me.
33:44
But suddenly under the green lights, my
33:48
face was not distorted. I
33:50
didn't see the face as it was before
33:52
as a distortion. I thought there was reality and
33:55
I was really shocked.
33:58
I felt thrilled. And I
34:01
couldn't stop staring. But then Jason
34:04
turned to the dial. And
34:06
the opposite color to green on the color wheel is red.
34:08
And I
34:10
took the dial all the way to red, and I
34:13
stared at my face in the mirror. And
34:15
my face became truly
34:18
demonic. I remember it
34:21
was so intense. It
34:24
felt like everything around my face went
34:26
completely black. And
34:28
the change
34:31
that I'd seen in so many
34:33
people over years and
34:35
years and years was concentrated
34:37
and magnified and crystallized on
34:40
my face. And
34:43
I looked so terrible. And
34:47
the difference between myself and the
34:49
green light and the red light
34:52
was so massive. It
34:54
was like a terrifying
34:56
experience. And I switched the
34:58
light off. I couldn't look at
35:00
myself for long. And I cried. I
35:05
sobbed. It
35:12
turned out that Jason had an actual
35:14
neurological condition. There was a name
35:16
for what was going on. It's
35:18
this condition called PMO, Prozo-po-metamorphopsia.
35:24
Say it again? Prozo-po-metamorphopsia.
35:29
That's a lot of, a lot of vowels.
35:34
And it's actually worse than that because
35:36
the particular kind I have is called
35:38
hemmy. Prozo-po-metamorphopsia.
35:42
Not much is known about PMO. It's
35:45
extremely rare. But for
35:47
people with that disorder, facial features distort,
35:49
melting and swelling, until the expression of
35:51
the person is so twisted it looks
35:54
demonic. An exaggerated snarl
35:57
that for Jason was impossible
35:59
to tell. wasn't real. And
36:02
sitting in that dark room, looking at his face
36:04
in the mirror, suddenly the
36:06
last 13 years made
36:08
a certain morbid sense to Jason. So
36:12
that was the very first time that you
36:14
realized that none of this was real, that
36:16
it was all just a projection? Yeah.
36:20
It gives me goosebumps now to think
36:23
about it. It
36:25
felt like the biggest thing of my whole life, bigger
36:28
than anything. Since
36:36
he found out, Jason's been working with
36:39
a researcher at Dartmouth who studies this
36:41
condition, a man named Brad Duchain. And
36:44
looking back, they realized that
36:46
all of his symptoms started after he'd
36:48
had this really bad case of mono
36:50
in his early 20s, right
36:52
before he started dating Marius, actually. So
36:55
they think that that's what caused it. PMO
36:58
seems like it can come on after an
37:00
illness or trauma to the brain. And
37:03
here's another quirk of the disorder. For
37:06
some people, including Jason, the
37:08
distortions are harder to notice if the person
37:10
he's looking at is wearing glasses, because
37:13
apparently glasses interrupt the typical
37:15
way that a face is processed by
37:18
the brain. It's an obstruction
37:20
that kind of resets things. So
37:22
if you wear glasses, you can look
37:24
perfectly fine. But
37:26
even knowing all this, it's
37:28
obvious that it's still surprisingly hard
37:31
for Jason to put aside
37:33
something that he's seeing with his own eyes.
37:36
Jason has literally spent months
37:38
working with researchers, building a
37:40
detailed understanding of his disorder
37:42
and how it changes his
37:44
visual experience. But still,
37:47
emotionally, it's just so hard
37:49
to ignore. Like
37:51
one time, Jason and I were talking over
37:53
Zoom, which is typically a little bit tough
37:55
for Jason, because if he has to look
37:57
directly at a face for too long, then
37:59
he's it'll distort. But
38:01
fortunately, I was wearing glasses. So
38:05
if your face is totally fine now, there's zero changes.
38:07
Because I have glasses on? Yeah.
38:10
So if I took off my glasses, then
38:12
what happens? So
38:15
now your right eye is moving up and
38:17
it's starting to move across. Okay,
38:20
so now this part of your nose is
38:22
getting dark and pushing in. The
38:24
bridge is my nose. This top part of your nose, yeah,
38:26
it like flattens into your face. And
38:29
then this part of your cheek drifts
38:31
out, like bulges out. And
38:34
do I look angry at you? Yeah.
38:41
Yeah. And does it affect the
38:43
way that you feel about me right
38:45
now? Yeah.
38:49
I try not to let it, because
38:52
I know, my conscious
38:55
mind knows that that's not real. But
38:59
my unconscious feels the threat. And
39:02
when I look at a face front on
39:05
intensely for a while, my heart
39:07
rate goes up. My
39:09
voice catches in my throat, it just feels uncomfortable.
39:12
It's not a nice experience. And I just
39:15
instinctively keep looking away and back so that
39:17
I don't have to see it. Here,
39:21
let me put on my glasses. Now I'm
39:23
perfectly fine, right? Totally
39:25
fine, yeah. In fact,
39:27
for me, you're not a different person. So
39:30
like, I feel quite warm towards this person,
39:32
but the other person I didn't really like.
39:41
For all those years, all
39:43
those relationships, Jason had been
39:45
seeing the world through a distorted lens and
39:48
didn't know it. Now that
39:50
he knows, Jason has developed
39:52
workarounds that he didn't have before. Like,
39:55
when he goes out to dinner, he sits
39:57
next to a person, not across from them.
40:00
He also has green lights for his home. All
40:03
of that has eased things, even
40:06
as a partner now. They've been together for a
40:08
while. Do you think
40:10
he's somebody that you could have the
40:12
kind of relationship with that you imagined
40:14
as a child, like? No.
40:18
Because it's hard to live with somebody or? Yeah.
40:22
We did live together for
40:25
a while, for about six months, and it was
40:27
very hard. It's not
40:29
just that faces change, it's that I've built
40:31
up a whole lifestyle
40:34
around that, where
40:36
I go to sleep very late, that I'm
40:38
not around people, that I can spend a
40:41
lot of time by myself. I've
40:43
built up a whole way of coping with
40:45
this, and living with someone
40:48
really undermines a lot of that. And
40:51
it was very hard for me. Do
40:53
you think that you'll ever be able to
40:55
really, really, really trust a romantic partner? Not
41:01
so long as I have eyes. Yeah.
41:05
For the rest of his life, Jason will
41:07
be surrounded by the faces of demons,
41:09
and he says his heart will always
41:11
jump when he sees them, because
41:13
it always, always does. But
41:17
he knows he doesn't have to listen to those warnings,
41:19
that the ghouls that he sees are only projections.
41:23
They mean him no harm. Elise
41:31
Beagle is a producer on our show. Coming
41:37
up, a person finds a way
41:39
to create an almost unlimited quantity of gold.
41:42
What could go wrong? That's
41:45
in a minute from Chicago Public Radio,
41:47
when our program continues. For
41:52
This American Life, I'm Tobin Lowe, in for Ira
41:54
Glass. Today's show, how
41:57
are you not seeing this? Stories
41:59
of people struggling. to agree about what's right in
42:01
front of their faces. We're
42:03
at act three, act three, pump
42:05
it up. So
42:08
in this next story, the fate of
42:10
the entire world is at stake, and
42:12
one person finds himself completely alone, surrounded
42:14
by people who just do not get what has
42:16
to happen. The person
42:18
is our very own David Kestenbaum. And
42:21
the thing that he was trying to do was to
42:23
replace the furnace in his house with a heat pump.
42:26
The furnace he was replacing ran off
42:28
natural gas, a fossil fuel. The
42:31
heat pump, much greener, runs off
42:33
electricity, and can miraculously both
42:35
heat and cool. When
42:38
David saw the federal government was offering
42:40
people $2,000 tax credits to switch to
42:42
heat pumps, he figured it would
42:44
be easy. It was not. David
42:48
here has this guide as to how
42:50
to get your heat pump and tax
42:52
credit. If you want to
42:54
get a heat pump, you'll start with the usual thing of
42:56
asking a bunch of HVAC companies to come out and give
42:58
you estimates. They'll pull up in their
43:01
little vans with the company's names on the side, poke
43:03
around your house, measure some things. You'll
43:05
tell them you want a heat pump. They'll say
43:07
they usually install gas furnaces, and why don't you stick
43:09
with that? You'll tell them you're
43:11
worried about climate change. And you point out
43:13
the heat pump is actually a little cheaper when you
43:15
include the new tax credit. You just
43:18
need to make sure the one they install qualifies for the
43:20
tax credit, which is when they'll tell
43:22
you they've never heard of the tax credit, even
43:24
though it's been around for a year. Undeterred,
43:27
after they leave, you'll go to the IRS
43:29
website because you want to make sure you get
43:31
a heat pump that qualifies. On
43:33
the IRS website, you will find this. Heat
43:36
pumps with a thermal efficiency rating of
43:38
at least 75% qualify. That
43:42
seems simple, except you won't know what
43:45
thermal efficiency rating is, no matter, because
43:47
it turns out this is wrong. You'll
43:50
find out this is wrong from a second IRS
43:52
document, which is very clear. It
43:54
says, in order to get your $2,000, the
43:57
heat pump must satisfy, quote, the energy
43:59
efficiency. requirements in Q1. You
44:02
may wonder if Q1 refers to the first financial
44:04
quarter. It does not. It
44:07
refers to question one for the down in
44:09
the document which says the heat pumps must
44:11
quote, meet or exceed the
44:13
highest efficiency tier, not including any
44:15
advanced tier, established by the
44:17
Consortium for Energy Efficiency that
44:20
is in effect as of the beginning of the
44:22
year in which the property is placed in service.
44:25
This will fill you with despair
44:27
until you see that there is a
44:30
searchable database of equipment that will meet
44:32
the qualifications. That sounds great, but
44:35
there is no link. So you
44:37
google around and find a government website that
44:39
has a link with instructions for how to
44:41
use the database. But the
44:43
link does not load. You will
44:46
wait five minutes for it to load because you figure
44:48
it'll sort itself out. But it does
44:50
not. You try back the next day. And no,
44:53
it really does not seem to exist.
45:00
The only way forward seems to be to look up
45:02
the actual requirements for you to get your $2,000 tax
45:05
credit. You go to the
45:07
Consortium for Energy Efficiency website where
45:09
you will finally find it spelled out. And
45:12
I am gonna have to spell here because these are not words.
45:15
The heat pumps SEER2, EER2, HSPF2, and COP measured
45:22
at five degrees Fahrenheit all have to
45:24
be above certain values. You
45:26
will also learn here, a fact skipped over
45:29
elsewhere, if you are
45:31
in the northern US there are different requirements.
45:33
You'll need a cold climate rated one. At
45:37
this point you will cry because
45:39
how are we ever gonna solve climate change if
45:41
this is what it takes to get one heat
45:43
pump installed in one house? At
45:51
some point in your searches you will find something hopeful. A
45:55
government web page that seems designed for simple
45:57
people like you. It's
46:00
run by the EPA, and it's friendly. With
46:03
iStock-type photos of parents playing happily with
46:05
children on couches, this is where
46:07
you should have been all along. It's
46:09
basically a database with a nice clean design.
46:12
It shows you a giant list of heat pumps. There
46:14
are search filters on the left-hand side. There
46:17
is even a box for tax credit eligible,
46:19
so you check that. And now it's showing
46:22
only heat pumps it says are tax credit eligible. But
46:25
you soon realize there is a problem. It's
46:28
not taking into account the fact that the requirements
46:30
are different if you live in northern states. This
46:33
seems really bad. It should say,
46:35
if you live in the north, only these ones. There
46:38
is a box to check for cold climate certified for
46:40
people who live in the north. But
46:42
if you click that for some reason, it doesn't
46:44
change the search results. You
46:47
will puzzle over this for a long time, and
46:49
finally realize, even though you are
46:51
asking it to show you things that are tax
46:53
credit eligible and cold climate certified, it is
46:56
showing you things that qualify for either, not
46:59
both. Because you
47:01
are a journalist, you will reach out to the EPA
47:03
about this. There will be a
47:05
very awkward 20 minute interview with a public
47:07
affairs specialist named Denise, who will seem
47:09
surprised by this fact that when you click
47:11
on cold climate certified, it still shows
47:14
you things that are not cold climate certified. Denise
47:17
will click and see this for herself. Then,
47:20
another press person on the call will interrupt to ask
47:22
if the whole interview can instead be on background, if
47:24
they can get you someone else to talk to. They
47:27
will not get you someone else to talk to. They
47:30
will not fix the website. Two
47:32
months will pass. They will send
47:34
an update saying they are waiting for a
47:36
possible update from the IRS about which heat
47:38
pumps qualify. You
47:40
do, eventually, buy what you hope is a
47:42
heat pump that qualifies. A
47:44
nice man named Algernon will come over with a crew
47:47
and install it in a few hours. This
47:50
is really nice, he will say. I
47:52
think I might get one for myself. David
48:00
Kestenbaum is our senior editor. Months
48:03
after David talked to the EPA just
48:05
recently, the government did finally fix
48:07
the website. The URL
48:09
is www.energiestar.gov slash
48:12
productfinder slash product slash
48:14
certified dash heat dash
48:17
pump slash results. Then
48:20
you gotta click a couple more times on the right
48:22
things. And then at the end, select the data tab.
48:24
Anyway, good luck. Act
48:30
four, I'm great. Thanks for not
48:32
asking. So
48:34
I swear in every friend group, there
48:36
is that one person who just kind
48:38
of refuses to really internalize anything going
48:41
on in anyone else's life. You
48:43
tell them what's going on, and they're too absorbed in
48:45
their own stuff to see it. You know how it
48:48
goes. Oh, right. It was
48:50
your birthday. You had a kid. When
48:52
did that happen? Oh my
48:54
God, you're in a full body cast. How
48:56
did I miss that? Writer
48:58
Marie Phillips put together a fictional piece for
49:01
us about someone with this very problem. Here's
49:04
Marie. We meet at the
49:06
bar that you chose, 20 minutes from
49:08
your place and an hour from mine. I'm
49:10
five minutes early. You're 25 minutes late. You
49:14
text me that you're on your way and ask me to order you a
49:16
gin and tonic. The ice is
49:18
already half melted when you flop down in your
49:20
seat and say, my God, it's
49:22
been forever. How are you? But
49:25
I can see in your eyes that how are you
49:27
is not a genuine question. It's
49:30
just a piece of perfunctory politeness, a
49:32
chance to give me a sentence or two before we get
49:34
down to the real business of the evening, which
49:37
is talking about you. I
49:40
don't know how this happened. We used
49:42
to share everything. But lately,
49:44
I feel like you've been slipping away from me
49:46
and taking less and less interest in my life.
49:49
So I know that you don't want me to tell you
49:51
about what it's like to still be living with my mom
49:53
in a sketchy suburb of South London that
49:55
you've never visited because you can't reach it on
49:57
the underground. want
50:00
to know about how broke we got, how
50:02
we resorted to selling our possessions on eBay,
50:05
or rather how I resorted to selling
50:07
my mum's possessions with her permission because
50:10
she still finds the internet confusing and
50:12
asks me what her passwords are 50
50:14
times per day. I don't
50:16
know mum, they're not my passwords, why don't
50:18
you write them down? You
50:21
don't want to hear about how I got catfished
50:23
by some guy into selling him our beloved cow
50:25
for some beans. The cow who
50:28
lived in our garden, which contrary to
50:30
what our neighbours say is completely legal, it's
50:32
just that most people don't have one. Anyway,
50:35
I sold her for beans. And
50:40
what would happen if I told you how my
50:42
mum yelled and yelled at me about these stupid
50:44
beans and how I threw them
50:46
in the compost heap and then the next
50:48
day there was a bean stalk that went
50:50
all the way up to the sky? You'd
50:52
probably just hijack the conversation to say that
50:54
you're growing tomatoes this year. If you
50:57
cared, you'd know that my
50:59
garden is north facing and tomatoes won't grow
51:01
there. And I love
51:03
tomatoes, I really do. I'm not
51:07
going to tell you about how I climbed that
51:09
bean stalk because I don't want
51:11
to hear about your triathlon training actually. As it
51:15
happens, there was a land up
51:17
there and a house with a giant living
51:20
in it. But
51:22
I'm going to keep that to myself. You'd
51:24
only ask about what the property values are up in the
51:27
sky and bean stalk land and would
51:29
it be a nice place to have a second home? If
51:33
you really cared how I am,
51:35
you'd read my newsletter and you'd
51:38
already know that when I got to the house,
51:40
the giant said, fee, fi,
51:42
fo, fum, I smell the
51:44
blood of an Englishman. Be
51:46
he alive or be he dead, I'll grind
51:49
his bones to make my bread. You
51:52
obviously didn't read my essay on
51:54
what it was like to be
51:56
misgendered by cannibal. If
51:59
we were still true friends, maybe
52:02
I would trust you enough to tell you how I had
52:04
to hide in the oven, an oven
52:06
that other humans had literally been cooked
52:08
in until the giant
52:10
fell asleep and then
52:12
I stole a bag of gold from him on
52:14
the way out. I don't want a lecture. In
52:17
my opinion it's restorative justice, but
52:21
whatever. Anyway it
52:24
doesn't matter because as you
52:26
were so fond of reminding me I'm terrible at budgeting
52:28
and I came the lot on the real real. Yes
52:32
the gold is all gone so
52:35
I had to go back up the beanstalk. I
52:39
can just picture you stifling
52:41
a yawn as I tell you how I
52:43
went through the whole fee-fi-fo thing again and
52:45
that this time there wasn't a bag of
52:47
gold just a goose that lays
52:49
golden eggs and how I took her instead.
52:52
Do you want to know how she is too? Pretty
52:56
discombobulated at living in South London.
52:58
She doesn't like the traffic noise. Plus
53:01
as it turns out it's quite hard to
53:03
find someone who'll cash a golden egg for
53:05
you and not ask too many questions about
53:07
where you got it. No
53:09
I do not want to hear that
53:11
you have a guy. I still
53:14
remember what it was like when I called the
53:16
accountant you recommended and she told me
53:18
that she doesn't do jobs that small. Geese
53:22
don't lay eggs forever and
53:24
ours has already started to slow down fewer and
53:26
fewer all the time. I doubt
53:29
you care that once a goose has lost
53:31
her fertility she's considered worthless but
53:33
for me hard identify.
53:36
I'm not going to tell you about that
53:38
though because you have no idea how it
53:41
feels to be approaching midlife while childless otherwise
53:44
you would not keep going on at me about
53:46
how you were transformed by parenthood and only now
53:48
do you know the true meaning of love. You
53:52
will never know the beauty of becoming
53:54
close to a bird though
53:57
having said that because
53:59
of the no No more eggs thing, which could happen
54:01
any day now. She will
54:03
not solve our financial woes indefinitely. Plus,
54:07
can you imagine what it's like to be
54:09
financially dependent on a menopausal goose? No,
54:12
I don't think you can. Oh
54:15
by the way, does your husband still run
54:17
that hedge fund? Well
54:19
anyway, I discussed it with my
54:21
mum and we decided that I had to go back
54:23
up the beanstalk. She couldn't do
54:26
it because she has problems with her knees, not
54:28
that you asked how she is. So
54:31
V5 Pho Pham again. That
54:34
little sting of being misgendered for the third time,
54:36
but don't worry about it. And the
54:38
longer the short of it is that I stole
54:40
a talking harp who kept yelling out, Master, Master,
54:42
because he has Stockholm Syndrome or something and the
54:45
giant heard it and chased us down the beanstalk
54:47
and I was freaking out like, this is it.
54:49
I am literally toast, but I got to the
54:51
bottom first and I chopped down the beanstalk with
54:53
my mother's axe and it came crashing to the
54:56
ground and the giant died. But
54:59
why would I tell you that? You
55:02
just missed the point completely and ask some
55:04
irrelevant question like, why does my mother have
55:06
an axe? The
55:08
thing is though, I miss you. We
55:11
used to have so much in common before
55:13
you met your husband and started hanging out
55:15
with his North London friends. I
55:18
remember when we were teenagers and you
55:20
ran away from home. You
55:22
were living in a house share and working as
55:24
a cleaner after school. You
55:27
knew what it was like to go through tough times. Back
55:30
then, you would ask me how I am and
55:32
mean it. I wish
55:34
I could find the right words, the right
55:36
question to remind you of that time, to bring
55:38
you back to me. But
55:41
instead, I take
55:43
a sip from my warm white wine and
55:46
say, I'm fine. How
55:49
are you? Do you
55:51
ever hear from those seven dwarves? Marie
56:00
Phillips. She's the author
56:02
of multiple books, including God's Behaving Badly.
56:05
This piece was produced by Bim Adewunmi. God's
56:09
Behaving Badly Today's
56:45
program was produced by Emanuel Jochi and
56:47
edited by David Kestenbaum. The
56:49
people who put together today's show
56:52
include Sean Cole, Thea Benen, Zoe
56:54
Chase, Michael Komete, Henry Larson, Catherine
56:56
Raimondo, Stone Nelson, Nadia Raymond, Ryan
56:59
Remory, Alyssa Shipp, Frances Swanson, Christopher
57:01
Suatala, Matt Chierni, and Diane Wu.
57:04
Our Managing Editor is Sara Abdurrahman. Our
57:06
Executive Editor is Emanuel Berry. Special
57:09
thanks today to Brad Duchesne. By
57:11
the way, Tig Notaro, who you heard at the top
57:13
of today's show, has a very funny podcast. It's
57:15
called Handsome, and you can listen wherever you get
57:18
your podcasts. You can also check
57:20
out the tour dates at tignotaro.com. Our
57:23
website, thisamericanlife.org, you can stream our archive
57:25
of over 800 episodes for absolutely
57:28
free. This American Life
57:30
is delivered to public radio stations by
57:32
PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks
57:35
as always to my boss Ira Glass. You
57:37
know, we're always talking about the election,
57:39
which voting block might sway the vote.
57:42
Whenever it comes up, he runs into the
57:44
room yelling, Jen! I'm
57:50
Tobin Lowe, back next week with more
57:53
stories of This American Life.
58:01
I said, do you remember?
58:04
Do you remember? Do you remember?
58:19
Next week on the podcast of This American Life, ever
58:22
since she was 11, Marge wanted one thing,
58:24
study abroad in America. Judge
58:27
from all these older kids, you have to do it. You're
58:29
partying every day. You're getting
58:32
five domino pizza foxes every
58:35
day. So she
58:37
begins school in the US, and then a
58:40
war starts back home. And a
58:42
normal year of American high school is
58:44
impossible. This next week on
58:46
the podcast, our new local public radio station.
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