The Sunday Story: All The Only Ones
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Am I shara? go. And this is a sunday story. So here is in pr. There's always a lack going on, breaking news, investigative reporting, tiny diss concerts and deeply reported podcast series.

I've been listening to this three part series that finds meaning by weaving together the past in the present. It's out of invent tt, our long form documentation unit, and i'm so excited for you to hear some of IT. So i'll handed over to embedded host Kelly mic evs and let her take IT from me.

Hey, i'm callie covers and I am here with reporter lane caplin levenson. They are the host of our new series, all the only ones. Hey, hey, Kelly, how's IT going? good. How are you good? I am so excited about this series.

That's really, really nice to hear and um so happy to be be talking to you today and .

yeah the coco may do so for a long time. You were uh reporter and producer with our friends over at the npr history podcast relying right the show that looks at things that are happening in the news and goes into history for context. And for the past year, you've been digging into a topic that has been in the headlines a lot these days.

Trans youth yeah you might have heard about bills that state lawmakers across the country have been rushing to pass. They've gone a lot of coverage this week.

A whole new slate of anty transplants passed in states across .

the country this year. Twenty twenty three broke a record for the number of these bills, and that's the fourth year in a row. A lot of them target trans kids, in particular bending them from bathrooms or sports teams or gender affirming healthcare. There will be a ban on gender affirming care for kids in the visit. A texas will stop at nothing to continue to protect womens sports for women.

That sounds like a lot of bills and a lot of states. Are you seeing similarities, ties in these bills? Any patterns?

definitely. So much of this anti transgender ment town's kids is based on this idea that gender transition for them is new. You might have hurt some headlines like this.

We are in a new dawn of gender and sex complexity.

How Young is too Young for a child to transition on a daily basis. We're reading new headlines about gender, about gender non conform. People of transgender kids has moved into the mainstream.

IT does feel like something we've been hearing way more about in the last few years, right? Like more than we used to.

right? But as someone who's been obsessed with history since I are no middle school, and as someone who's non binary, my immediate question was, how new is gender transition for Young people? I mean, I was kind of familiar with that going into this project, but that history isn't so widely out there. And when I started digging into a deeper, I realized that if more people knew this history, IT could really reframe our understanding of how trans youth are being treated. Now.

how far back in history did .

you go a hundred years? Oh yeah.

okay, good. But this is a podcast like, how do you tell a story that's one hundred years old?

That's a good question. Uh, so we interviewed a few historians who've done ground breaking research on this stuff and who helped us access medical records and letters from people who were alive back then. And then we hire voice actors to read from those documents.

Heads up about that. Actually the real names of these people from history were rejected in the medical records. So we call them by the student names given to them by the main historian that we interview in this series.

okay. So then how do you bring this history into the present.

into the now? Well, I go to the source I talk to transfuse today. Just like history is basically missing from the political debate, I also noticed that in so much of the current coverage about trans kids, we often don't hear from trans kids themselves.

Yeah, what's in this first episode then? Of all the only ones.

So in this first episode will hear from two people who force us to step back and ask what that even means to be trans. These two people were born a century apart, but they're connected across time in space, because they've wrestled with the same question, how do you define your own identity when the world is trying to define IT for you and just say, you know, there is some profit along the way?

okay. Well, take you away. name.

Thanks, Kelly.

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You can begin trans history as far back as you want anywhere in the world. We're going to start a century ago in the us. That's when ideas about sex and gender dramatically changed within american medicine. It's also the time when Young people start to appear in medical archives questioning and redefining .

gender and sex already by this era, if you go to any major city in the united states, there are whole neighbor od that full of people that we would recognize today's trends.

This is jews. Gill Peterson.

I am a historian of trans people, trans medicine and translation.

SHE teaches that john hopkinson university.

So by the twenty years and thirties, there is this really viBrant world of its set of rules that has been functioning for many, many, many decades. Some might call themselves inverts, some people might have identified as homosexual still a relatively new term, or a few might have even called themselves gay.

So even though people wouldn't use the term trend gender in a widespread way, until the one thousand nineties, trans people were very much around living full trans lives. More than one hundred years ago.

there are whole sections of american cities, but they're also often segregated in chicago. The north loop is an notorious queer kind of neighborhood in the early twenty years century, but the south side has its own black clear and black trans neighbor od as well. In new york city, you can see a similar thing happening. Granny village is the heart of a viBrant, has been gain trans social world .

for White people, whether the heart of the black, queer and trans world was. And if you're a part of that scene, you could probably be found at the hamilton lodge ball IT was an annual social event that drew huge crowds.

The body was located at the rock and palace in harm and began in the late, but then kind of came into itself really in of the holland renaissance a during the thousand nine hundred and twenties and thirties.

This is markey spay, professor of african american studies, black feminist theory and trend gender studies at northwestern university.

IT was an event that drew thousands of people to dance, to perform and to spectate. And IT was characterized by what many would call drag balls. And IT wasn't .

just the hamilton large balls. You could go to the u. Bengie club and see glad is bently, who performed in full tuxedos backed by a course of men in drag. Here SHE is .

singing budgie in my hoggy.

These a sense of what was possible for black life, and in particular, black queer life, there was a kind of third for freely and freeze in expression, included gender expression. And in fact, to express myself in this way is, quite seriously, me living to my full less.

So gender nonconformity fully existed back in the one thousand twenties and thirties. But one thing was very different medical care.

We didn't need medicine to exist. Trans people have existed in different forms, in different cultures, everywhere, for thousands of years, for as long as there is recorded human history.

But going to the doctor about your gender to try to get hormones or surgery, that wasn't initially on most people's radar. IT wasn't an option. But it's at this moment, the twenties and thirties between the two world wars, that science and medicine make IT possible to medically transition.

And so it's a profound moment of change for trans people. And IT becomes really fascinating to see which people will become interested in that. Bernard is one of those first people.

Bernard is one of the first transparent ents on record that john hopkins trying to get what today we would call gender affirmation surgery. We don't know bear's real name because I was reacted from his .

medical records. So bernard is a suit him that I invented. For him, you have to treat people's medical records like you would treat them today. And so you can use any personally identifying information even to conduct abortion research by the time .

the science roll out. Bernard was in his twenties, and he was ready to take advantage of medical treatments to transition. But he had been living as himself way before that since he was a kid.

I have always liked boy's things, such as games, books and clothes. I wear my hair cut short and tailored close all the time.

I feel much. This is from a letter burnt route. As a Young man, I discovered IT while reading joel gill Peterson's book, histories of the trends, and child jules dug through archives and found all sorts of records.

SHE used them to tell the stories of trans youth in the U. S. Over the last century.

including the arts.

So bernard is this remarkable little boy growing up in small town alabama in the nineteen teams. As a Young child, he is just so obsess with his dad, looks up to him so, so, so, so much. He wants nothing, nothing more than to be like his dad who was a doctor.

And so from a Young age, for largest, has its stuck in his mind. He is going to grow up and be just like his dad. He's gonna AR suits like his dad.

He's going to become doctor like his dad. He's going to become outstanding, well respected man. Only wrinkles that everyone thinks sees a girl.

As his parents had explained him, sce, he was a child, that he was a girl, not a boy. So it's gotto figure that out. Someone told him, joking me, that you know, well, if you kissed your elbow, you'll turn into a boy.

It's basically impossible to kiss your elbow. That's what makes the chAllenge so cruel. But every day, burner tries and tries .

hundreds of times, hoping that I would finally come true. And really, from a very Young age, he's transgressing that line between gender. He is figuring out how to steal his Younger brothers overall trousers, put them on, dressed up as a boy. And as he starting to grow up, people in his family community are starting to mistake him for his father sometimes. And you know, this really, really, really made or not very happy IT seems like some of his dream was sort of coming true.

By the time is in his twenties, but large dreams have only gotten him so far. He has privileges, he identifies as White, and he comes from a well respected family with money. His father's a doctor, and he wants to be on himself. But society doesn't recognize him as a man. So it's really hard to go to medical school instead barn's a textile le worker .

and he sort of feeling pretty kind of frustrated or like his life is sort of stalled out where he would want you to be.

He's got something going for him though. He's in love.

He wants to marry her. He really wants to marry her. But he's .

worried because recently an adventure alist came to town and basically told her .

to leave banner saying, you are women, you not going to be marrying him. Another woman.

So he's determined to find a way for others to see him for who he is a man.

And it's, you know, around this time in the one hundred and thirty that he first starts to hear about people who are like him prior to this air, when he was growing up, he really feel like he was the only person in the role with this issue, or he felt himself to be a man, but didn't have the body to match IT.

For years, I have thought I was the only person in the world like that, and I have only lately heard that there are other people with the same feelings.

But then suddenly he starts to hear about sex changes.

He reads a story about an english track and field athlete who was declared a man after two surgeries. Bard's mind is blown, and he writes to the editor of sexologists gazing, asking for more info. The editor writes back and says.

y'ought to go to john's hopkins hospital. And so that plans the idea in bern's had. And he's like, OK fine. I've got to get myself to john's hogans. And i've gotto find this surgeon who hamper and Young, because if I go there, either he can confirm that i'm a man and give me the kind of certification that I need to get married to my sweet heart, or maybe he can make me physically into the man that I know myself to be. And then I can come back .

and marry her.

We'll get back to bernard story, but first I want to introduced to do another Young person trying to navigate their transmits about one hundred years .

after bernard. I look so much like, i'm sorry, but I just I just love money across so much because I think you like what you costuming like IT feels like you feel so free. Like, could just like, really be yourself.

This is then castro. I'm in their living room in north and seventh world, and they're showing me something super .

coveted in this city, a issue, an issue during my grass, kind like one of the holy girl throws. So if you're .

not familiar with marty gra, amuses. Shoe is like a bazzard high heeled pump. They're thrown from floats.

Parades is not a really cool one. Yeah, I really like IT. Very colorful, very fun. Yes, very glitter tudes getting all over my hands. So i'm going to put IT away away.

Getting glitter .

all over your hands and really all all over your body is very new orland. It's pretty much unavoidable, especially during martigues. I used to live there and you really never rid your yourself of glitter year around.

It's in your bed. It's on your sink. There's always a little flex stuck on your cheek. You can see that as a nuisance or as a constant reminder of celebration. That's what new orleans is often known for, a place famous for letting people be viBrant and full of life, proud of who they are and loud about IT. But even in this place that should feel freeing then has had a hard time figuring out what that means to be themself. They're now in their twice, but they've been struggling with the gender binary since they were a kid, partly because traditional generals were so enforced at home, they were expected to take care of their Younger siblings and help their mom with the cooking and .

cleaning over my brother. Like if we did not do that stuff, then IT was like, whatever, he's a boy.

But then then .

discovered the social media site tumble, which was the portal to a lots of things, including grunge fashion.

I wear like an, and I had these like a rib dreams that always where crop tops were trying to be a thing.

And trans ness.

after I see these words like gender, flew ID on tom. I'm searching them up. And IT feels so like me there. Just like, word like this makes sense. This is amazing piece of the puzzle.

The missing piece of the puzzle that they kept themselves then spent a lot of middle school hiding. They kept expLoring their transmitters on the internet.

but not out in the world. I got bully a lot. So what I don't know, I guess just .

being me and .

kids are really good at picking up energy. So I felt that discomfort they were able to pick up on and use IT against me. That really was the start of when I started to like not feel comfortable with expressing myself and my thoughts.

They thought they might be able to come out once they got to high school, especially when they got into their dream school, Benjamin Franklin.

which here is like a pretty big deal, because people see IT is like the smart school, whatever. And in my head I thought, oh, there's gonna be other people like me. It's gonna OK for me to express myself into talk to are the people because they will know what I have. Experience, I guess.

which may have been true. They're probably were there are transit non binary students at Franklin, but when then got there, they had trouble fitting in.

A lot of the demographics have been Franklin are people who are upper class, middle class people who have always had, like this, supportive people around them in resources.

then had a much different upbringing. When they were ten years old, their dad was deported to mexico. Sense dad managed to get back into the U. S. And to sense family, but a few years later, he was deported a second time.

I knew that you'd probably never .

see him again, then was right. They haven't seen their dad since. Their mom quickly remarried.

and they moved around a lot. So who's even hard to, like, relate to most people in a school that I initially thought I would fit in. That's when I started to kind of be like over feminine.

I didn't feel right. But because of just those expectations, IT felt like I had to like, learn how to do makeup and learn how to, like, look good in a feminine way. I think because of how I grew up in the experiences i've had, I turned into a real people, please, here. So I felt scared to kind of be a different person that what other people wanted to be, because if I were to be this other person, people didn't want me to be, then i'd feel even more alone than I already was. So IT was kind of .

heart breaking.

After the break, we learned how, then started to live as then out in the world beyond their tumblr feed, but first will return to bernards, who's trying to transition a century before then was born.

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I have always liked boy's things, such as games, books and clothes. I wear my hair cut short and tailor closed all the time. I feel much more at ease in men's close than in womens, as I understand that a person may have secondary sexual organs which control his mental and emotional life, while the primary organ.

After bernard read about a quote on, quote, sex change and later learned about john's hopkins s hospital in voltige, he wrote another letter, this time to the top surgeon at hopkins known for doing cutting edge surgeries in the field. He hampton in Young.

He knows how to change socks through surgery. He's done IT before.

but he wasn't doing surgeries for trans people at their request.

He wasn't doing IT in a gender of ferme way.

He was working with a different .

group of people with intersex patients to force them into a binary sex.

There are a range of intersex conditions which essentially produce bodies that don't coherence as far as biological sex in the ways traditionally .

when top bodies do. This is hill malta.

This is the professor of women's gender and sexuality studies and philosophy, a pensa university.

As hill was saying, inner sex is an umbrella term used to describe a variety of conditions where a person's reproductive or sexual anatomy doesn't align perfectly with what is traditionally thought of as female or male. We don't know exactly how many people live within our sex conditions. Some estimates say IT maybe as common as having red hair or Green eyes, but parents often don't see IT that way. And definitely in bard's time, parents treated IT as a crisis.

The fact that their kid wasn't sort of Normal, timely, male, female, and is not in the strict conception that we have of biological sex medicine.

was coming to solve what was supposedly a problem.

this sort of Normalize intersex bodies. I use scared quotes.

I say that, which is exactly what huyton ton Young was doing at hopkins.

These first surgeries forced on children who are born with genitals that didn't look obviously male, female. A lot of these kids are too Young, content, couldn't talk yet. So there is just a lot of incredible medical abuse being done in the name of social conformity and the techniques .

that those doctors were developing with the same technical that are being used to treat trans adults. And most instances that's why trans kids and sex kids traveled to other through other twenty century. And I think you can understand the history of transients without understanding sex history, and vice versa. They're totally.

totally in her twin. Trans in inner six kids in this period were treated in completely opposite ways. Young and other surgeons Operated on inner sex kids, but refuse to Operate on trans kids and adults who asked for the very same procedures. In both cases, the power was in the doctor's hands, not the kids.

When bernard writes his letter to you, hampton Young, he's not exactly a kid. He's in his late twice, but he's chasing something he's known about himself since he was a kid. And suddenly the person holding the key to his self actualization, is some doctor in volt. More bernard needs to stand out.

as I understand that a person may have secondary sexual organs which control his mental and emotional life, while the primary organza of the opposite sex. What I want to know is, can these secondary organs really be developed in such a way that a person who has been known as a female becomes a mail?

So burner is down to write this letter to Young over and ball tomorrow and says that he's s writing to him, quote, concerning what is, to me, the most vital subject.

If this can be done, I would like to know about what the cost would be and the time required. I have read that most of these Operations, who you got in the experimental stage, but I am perfectly willing to become a part of any experiment that might be of any aid to the thousands of other persons affected as I am. I hope that the slider does not seem to foolish to you and that he will not regard IT as a mere win. I think that you can understand, I need help badly, and if I can be attained in this country, that you can give in.

This letter must have been pretty convincing as he hampton Young replies and says, come to bolt more for an appointment. And just imagining how thrilled burnt must have felt to get that letter from bottom or telling him command a moc M.

So bernard taxes bags and .

makes this trip all the way up to baltimore. He shows up, meets you. hampton. Young Young was very charmed by him.

Bernard may have been charming. He was also well read and had done his homework. He came to hopkins with a strategy he .

presents himself to you, hampton Young, as six, which was a very smart choice to make at the time, because Young was treating international patients at hopkins, and intersex medicine was understood to be a lot more al legitimate.

So bartis up says, I know i'm a man. My body just has these female body parts, but I have male body parts too.

He says, you know, I can feel that I have a penis, but I think that might be sort of submerged or lodged inside my body is somehow. So IT needs to be freed. I know I have testicles, but I think they're internal. I think that they failed to, you know, to send from inside the body.

Young is apparently convinced. After just two meetings, he's basically prepared to give bernard the surgery he wants.

but is a little nervous about IT nervous because .

of what happened. After Young's colleague examined burner, this physician issued a report .

that said this person is not intersex. And so already there's been a sort of objection rates to the story that bernard was telling. What Young really needed was some sort of professional endorsement to justify him being willing to work with bernard and give him surgery.

And he thinks, i'll just send bernard over to a site high just for a quick asset.

So now bernard has to go through one more gate to get his medical transition. A gate named doctor Thomas rani.

he goes through and interviews burnt about his childhood, hears about this long standing wish to be a boy feeling himself to be a boy, dressing as a boy, being mistaken for his father.

Doctor R. N. I took detailed notes during the interview and heads up. He uses female pronounced for bernard SHE .

is a very interesting problem. SHE has come to john hopkins because he feels that he is really a man in spite of her female body build and because he wishes to have an Operation to give her male organs .

runny isn't really buying IT SHE says SHE must .

have this done because he has been in love with the Young lady in her home town for the past five years and now wishes to marry her.

Rani basically is like, you're a homosexual. You are a woman in a relationship with a woman, and that's a psychiatric illness.

IT was merely suggesting to the patient that in view of her own history, there might have been strong psychological influences which LED her to wish to be a man.

It's really hard to me from reading the larger body of his work as a psychic st to think that he sincerely believed this IT was more than he was alarmed that bernard wasn't intersex and so he was just grasping for a psychological explanation to block his request for medical transition. And homosexuality was really the only one in circulation in the united states at that time.

This was a time when medicine conflated sexual orientation and gender identity, even though in society, a clear distinction of those two things were starting to emerge, which makes IT hard to claim that bernard was a lesbian, an we're .

talking here about the late nineteen thirties. And pretty clear distinctions between butch lesbians and transmitted between lesbians who want to be known as butchers because they want to be known as masculine in the context of a lesson bian social world that has its own bars and has its own court ship, rich als, and then groups of people who were a science feminine birth but live al time as men and didn't necessarily socialize in that gay world. But we're more likely to be found at the bar with all the other workers in an industrial plant. And there they passed for a men so we can place or nod in that context.

Andrew says there's burn's life, as he tells IT the .

fact that he's always felt himself to be a boy, the fact that he works, you do, in a manual labor setting and really resented being kept out of medical school. These aren't really the kinds of life narratives that butch lesbians would be presenting about themselves in the nineteen thirties.

But despite what bernard was saying, doctor renny concluded that he was a lesbian because of the fact that .

the patient wanted to return home at once and because he was not interested at all in any psychotherapy, but merely in the matter of surgical intervention, not much could be undertaken.

And that was IT. That's the end of bernard's medical record. No doubt, after hearing that he wasn't going to get what he wanted, he decided to get up, turn around and walk out that door, returning to alama and disappearing ultimately from the historical record.

Bern's medical record may have ended there, but jeel says the response bernard got from his doctors was among the first of its kind in the united states.

Young is actually one of the first people to use the pretense of there's nothing different about your body from a so called Normal person. You're not intersex. So if there's nothing wrong with your body, then the only way I could imagine say that your disordered is to find something wrong with your mind. Berna is kind of this faithful person who shows a lot of what is going to come and what is going to define trans people's experiences with medicine decades later.

When we come back, then meets bernard.

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It's just before sunset on sense front porch .

IT was kind of like a serve. The moment thing .

we're talking about, the time they dug up the confidence to do something they weren't sure they'd ever do come out to their mom.

There was one point where I was like, I don't think I would ever tell her because I just had this expectation that he would not understand worse, that you would say that my identies use in real, or just like react negatively, like ano, I was kind of preparing for the worst.

So the strategy was to have a little distance, a phone call.

I told her in english, i'm not vinery, and my brother was on speaker. And at first my brother was trying to explain to her what that meant. He did understand all SHE thought I was trying to say I was lesbian.

Then i'm like, OK, this is onna. Get lost in translation. Then I told her the spanish version of non binaries. Hannah, no. benadir.

But then needed back up. They needed spanish c nm.

I saw this like new segment, and I looked over and my, oh my god, is perfect.

I sent IT to her I think he watched IT and you know, he was like very accepting, maybe for like a couple days but then you reverted back to, I did name the .

name he gave them when and was .

born and to see her pronounce, the only person who's really on top of that stuff is my brother who are closest to, and my family. And I really appreciative that because I feel like I have some support, but IT always does make me cringe when I do end up calling her.

Or SHE messages mean SHE uses my death name cause IT sounds like on so numbly you're trying to justify IT if that makes sense, like justify your existence as a transgender queer person. I don't want to have to do that with my mom, especially with other people, less my mom. So I just really complicated.

Thens out to everyone in their life today, at home, at school, at work. But they still deal with insecurity around claiming their transmits.

because mainstream ideas float around about what that means.

around what transmit means. And in sense case, what non binary means to .

IT feels like that pressure to represent myself as gender neutral is there. Otherwise being as gendered is a common. And so it's kind of a lose lose situation. I know I haven't really reached a point where I feel like I could .

go outside and .

be OK with how I look.

Professor hill melo writes about what sends experiencing. He and others say these feelings are a product of something called trans, nor matif ity.

The idea that there is a one right way to be a trans guy, a transplant, a unbinding person. I think that so is violent and so is limiting. I certainly experience that is a transfer. And I too didn't entirely know where those messages came from. I hate to see his grapple with that now.

I really wanted them to meet bernard as best they could. So one day, while we were driving around the world together, I told them his story about trying to kissed his elbow, about falling in love, about his letters to doctors and about how, after being denied surgery, he just completely disappears from the historical record.

I like the history about the erna so much, but like also makes me so sad. I just feel so disappointing that we don't know. Like the conclusion, I guess, yeah.

what do you like to think was the rest of his life?

Then he found another way to cope with his bari, not matching his gender identity. I like, maybe he found another clinic that was more receptive to what he had to say. But I feel like that's wishful thinking.

But he and his wife definitely got married. They had to married, even if IT wasn't like official, like marriage doesn't have to be official on paper. What he think key like to wear.

he love wearing overall he loved wearing like trowsers .

or pants very unbranded .

yeah with being clear.

I don't know what happened to bernard after he left john hawkins, because the only reason I could reconstruct all of this about his life is because I was able to read his medical files. But I like to imagine that bernard kind of got the last laugh, gave up on that nonsense from psych AI australia and went back home and with the life that he wanted to.

Back ends house, I see their high school diploma on the wall, something they're really proud of.

Does her, my dad name on IT. But this was before I came out entirely. So I mean, it's a moment .

in time now then thinking about their future.

Jealous is because i'm sure they have IT all figured out.

Describe the future then that you're jealous.

you worry you. I don't know who am I. I just, I, I can't.

It's a thought .

experiment. Someone who is confidence, able to express themselves, comfortable being vulnerable, is so kind to themselves, so page with themselves, and is able to take care themselves, how they take care others. And they definitely have their wardrobe together. um. I guess finally, what I will says the way approach my density might take a lot of work to like undo those thoughts of help me to look a certain way or be a certain way when reality there is no certain way to be trans, other than like saying that you are, like I said, suspire my journey. Sorry, I went to cry for .

you saying stuff about future.

On the next two episodes, of all the only ones we hear from trans youth who need gender affirming care to feel fully themselves, we learn what happens when trands kids trying to get this care are told they have to wait.

I can't wait six years. If I have to wait that long, i'll go crazy.

And what happens when they get the care they want?

The end goal isn't to be a girl. Being a girl is where I feel like I can finally begin.

That's coming up on all the only ones from npr.

If you want to hear the next episode of all the only ones now before everyone else sign up for embedded plus at plus dot N P R dot org slash embedded or find the emitted channel in apple, it's a great way to show your support for work like this, em P R. And you will get to listen to every episode embedded without any sponsors had to plus that N P R dot org slash embedded to find out more.

All the only ones is written and hosted by me, lane cathos levenson. Our producers are max fridman, sklar, swenson, wandle and me, editing by rain, a coin run a feral below kasi, kd, Simon, leona, symptoms, m and sensitivity editing by cashes a dair. Our engineers, our josh newman and gilly moon, our senior supervising producer, is a vince.

In our in turn is hose sand of all special things to neopa attic. Sam j leads lorn gazelles and garry dong also thanks to e iconic Austin sively are in read cam oggi hanckel kes yob on caller g burns, maria pogue areas e vb lual caskey and the folks at the trend gender resource center of new mexico. And a huge thanks to jules gill Peterson for being our historical guide and lending her scholarship to this entire series.

Our voice server actors are due batter men who played bernard and max fried men who played doctor Thomas rony. Special things to trench under talent, our fact checkers, our cabin vocal and will chase the N P R X ex are eland's sandwich. I read a gucci and on your grudman our thee music is by kyle kid and sound on tape. Additional music in this episode is by shame iver. I'm laying captain levenson, and this is all the only ones from npr.

This is our glass on this american life will make stories that surprise you. For instance, imagine finding a new hobby.

realizing to do this hobby right according to the ways of the masters. There's a pretty good chance that you're gonna have to bend the law to get the materials that you need, if not break IT, to break international laws.

Your life stories, really good ones, this american life.

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