Kendra Little Is Becoming More: Broadening The Gender Identity Conversation

Growing up in the late 1970's there was no conversation around gender identity. You were either male or female. Period, end of discussion. Times have changed. The way we currently think about gender has evolved. Each day brings greater mainstream awareness to its non-binary nature -- and the innate fluidity of gender roles and identity. Take a moment to imagine the experience of being intersex -- a condition in which an individual is born with genetic variations on conventional sex characteristics. Now imagine trying to navigate the world from this non-binary biological disposition. This is the story of Kendra Little. Raised as a girl, at age 12 Kendra learned that she was born with something called androgen insensitivity syndrome, a variation of intersex that affects between 2 to 5 out of 100,000 people. The news prompted Kendra to isolate. Adopting a hormone protocol on the advice of her doctors, she remained a ‘girl’, proceeded to never discuss her condition with anybody and dove headlong into sports -- a place where she excelled and felt at home. But eventually the emotional dissonance between her true self and that which she held out to the world became too much to bear, prompting her to walk away from a promising career as a professional golfer. But that disconnect ultimately catalyzed an amazing journey of self-discovery -- and eventually wholeness. Now able to fully embrace her own unique identity (very recently I might add), Kendra is publicly sharing her story -- with both courage and pride. The intention isn't self-serving, but motivated by a genuine desire to change the way we think about non-binary gender constructs. To bring comfort to those ashamed of how they were born. And to openly permit sharing the many forms of loneliness, pain and shame so many of us keep hidden. This past July, Kendra tweeted me a video entitled Becoming More -- her story in mini-doc form created by Uninterrupted, LeBron James’ production company. I click play. Instantly, I’m captivated by Kendra’s appearance. Her facial features present as simultaneously male and female. She's both, but also neither. Kendra is truly her own unique form of humanity. But her appearance is quickly eclipsed by her strength and vulnerability -- and the compelling narrative that unfolds. I knew immediately this was a special person I wanted to know better. A fascinating story I wanted to help tell. And quite honestly, a subject matter of social importance and cultural relevance I wanted to better understand. So here we are. Kendra, I honor you for your courage in trusting me with this conversation, a privilege I don't take lightly. You can watch it all go down on YouTube (seeing Kendra helps contextualize the exchange). This one is special. May it be as enjoyable and enlightening as it was for me. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  I did everything in my power just to block it out and not think about it. And I got really good at it, which probably not a good thing, to block things out that are clearly impacting your life and need to be addressed. You know, I'd have moments, or I'd see things in the news, or hear about other people that were somewhat related to gender or whatever, and it would kind of bring me back to a self-realization moment, and it was like a great cause of anxiety. I think that's an important thing to say. This is something that I've been trying to kind of tiptoe around, like, in talking about this, because one thing I don't want to do is alienate the trans community and delegitimize what they're feeling, just because it's not, from a genetic standpoint.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  I was genetically born both, but that doesn't mean that someone that wasn't genetically born as they were born, or who they were born as, that doesn't take away from how they feel, just because they don't have a genetic thing to back it up. It goes back to, it's never about what anyone else thinks or anyone else feels about you, it's about how you feel about yourself.

• 2:10Rich Roll?

  That's Kendra Little, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:25Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host here on this podcast thing. Welcome or welcome back. So here's the thing. I'm kind of old. I recently turned 53. My formative years were in the late 70s and the early 80s. And that was a time when I think I can safely say gender, for the most part, was basically considered binary: male, female. You were born a boy, or you were born a girl. Fixed, that's that. End of discussion. Well, times have changed, in lots of ways, of course. And one of those ways is the way that we

• 3:09Rich Roll?

  think about and understand gender. This rising increased awareness that's developing around the non-binary nature, the fluidity of gender roles, of gender identity, the very nature of gender and sexual identity itself. And given that, indulge me for a moment, I want you to imagine what it would be like to be born both male and female genetically, intersex, which essentially means being born with certain variations in sex characteristics. Now I want you to imagine trying to navigate the world from this non-binary biological disposition.

• 3:52Rich Roll?

  Well, this is the story of Kendra Little. Kendra is somebody who was raised as a girl, and at age 12, she learned for the very first time that she was born with something called androgen insensitivity syndrome, which is a variation on intersex that affects between 2 to 5 out of 100,000 people.

• 4:13Rich Roll?

  Upon receiving this news, Kendra proceeded to isolate herself emotionally. As a girl, quote unquote girl, she never discussed it with anyone and basically dove headlong into sports, a place where she excelled and felt at home. But eventually, the dissonance, this disconnect, this dichotomy between her true self and that which she held out to the world, became just too much to bear. And it prompted her to walk away from a promising career as a professional golfer, but it also led her on this kind of amazing journey of self-discovery and ultimately wholeness. Now able to fully embrace her own identity, very recently, I might add.

• 4:58Rich Roll?

  Kendra is sharing her story with the intention of helping to change the way that we think about and talk about gender constructs, and also to bring comfort to anyone who may feel alone or ashamed of how they were born. I really love this conversation. It's incredible, but before we dig in, let's do some housekeeping.

• 5:27Rich Roll?

  Okay, Kendra. So, out of the blue, back in mid-July, I think, Kendra tweeted me, or maybe I was just tagged in a tweet, I don't recall exactly, with a link to a video about her story, a mini-doc produced by LeBron James's production company, Uninterrupted, called Becoming More. I click play, and instantly, I'm captivated by Kendra's appearance. Clearly, both male and female, but also kind of neither. She truly is her own unique thing. And then I'm compelled by the incredible story that unfolds. It's a story quite unlike...

• 6:09Rich Roll?

  I had personally previously ever come across and I knew right away, this was a story I wanted to help tell, a person I wanted to know better and frankly, a subject matter of social importance and relevance that I wanted to better understand. So here we are and I gotta say, it's indeed fascinating, top to bottom. I would encourage all of you to check out the Becoming More video. I'll put a link up in the show notes to that and the YouTube version of this show, as I think actually seeing Kendra really helps contextualize everything. So here we go. This is me and Kendra Little. Kendra, delighted to meet you. Thank you for doing this today.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me, Rich. It's a pleasure to be here.

• 6:55Rich Roll?

  I get hit up pretty regularly with people, you know, pitching this person or that person or pitching themselves. And I would say 99.9% of those I just dismiss. But you emailed me sometime ago and you shared the link to the uninterrupted video, which I watched right away. And I was like, wow, like, this is definitely a person I wanna, I wanna know more about. I knew immediately that you'd be a great guest for the show. And I think your story is amazing and powerful and courageous and I'm honored to be able to help you share it here today.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you so much. I, like I said, you know, kinda came into awareness of yourself about four or five years ago and, you know, an avid listener of the podcast and just with this whole story coming out, just thinking about, you know, how I want to share the story and kind of the corners of, you know, society I wanted to reach and, and just sort of the type of, you know, content that you put out. I was like, yeah, reach out to Rich. What's, what's the worst he's gonna say? No? Or just not, not replies? I was like, you know, shooters gotta shoot, right? So I was like, I'll just see what happens. And then you emailed me back and actually first you were like, hey, I emailed you back on Twitter. And I was like, oh God, I didn't see an email. There wasn't like, it didn't show up or whatever. There was like a glitch. And I was like, oh no. And then I was like,

• 8:12Rich Roll?

  Oh yeah, I think something happened.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So I was like having a panic moment.

• 8:16Rich Roll?

  No, I'm glad that like I tweeted you as well, because I wouldn't have known that that email didn't go through. And I was like, well, I guess Kendra changed her mind.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  But yeah, I was like, yeah, just, yeah, just super honored and grateful to be here.

• 8:28Rich Roll?

  Well, cool.

• 8:31Rich Roll?

  In the beginning of the video, I think the first thing you say is like, I'm not sure where to begin with this story. And I feel like I'm in the same place. Like, I'm not sure where to begin with it. But I guess we can begin at the beginning. I mean, or maybe just explain a little bit about who you are and kind of provide a little context for the subject matter.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, you know, former professional golfer, been an athlete my whole life. My dad played basketball at the University of Oregon. He got drafted in the NBA. So

• 9:02Rich Roll?

  What was his nickname?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Cowboy. Yeah, yeah. Doug Cowboy Little. So he got that. He got that nickname because so back in late 60s, early 70s, they didn't have a three point line. So and he would always be shooting like these long shots. And his coach at the time was like, you know, in practice, like, hey, cowboy, take that shot back to the rodeo. So because it's like, you know, why are you shooting from so far out if there's no three point line? So

• 9:24Rich Roll?

  Right. He was ahead of his time.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. He was a maverick. So yeah, just, you know, athletics is sort of my blood. And I have an older brother and older sister who are both athletes. And so athletics really played, you know, a big part of my life, you know, growing up, I always, you know, growing up, figured, you know, I, you know, every, not every kid, but most kids grow up, you know, oh, yeah, I want to be a professional athlete, or whatever the case is. And fortunately, had two older siblings that kind of, you know, pushed me around and kind of, I think, you know, brought my athleticism to a different level. So sports always, you know, been a big part of my life. And so I, you know, played basketball and golf all throughout high school and was gonna play basketball in college as well, but ended

• 10:08Speaker 01

  up just playing golf and played golf in college at the University of Oregon and then turned pro. And my life is, you know, just kind of revolved around athletics, you know, basically since I was five or six years old. So

• 10:20Rich Roll?

  Well, with a dad named Cowboy.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 10:23Rich Roll?

  I don't know if there was too much choice.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  No, exactly. That's exactly right. I, you know, I, and what's funny is actually none of my family really played golf. So my brother did a little bit, but

• 10:34Speaker 01

  They never, yeah, they never, my dad never pushed basketball on me. That was something that was always, you know, I really enjoyed and um but golf ended up being, you know, kind of what I stuck with. So, yeah.

• 10:44Rich Roll?

  So you grow up as a girl, raised as a girl, identify as female today as well, right? So I want to get all of this correct and straight.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:57Rich Roll?

  And as somebody who, you know, was born in 1966, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to fall down the rabbit hole of like old man syndrome. And I realize there's a lot of nuance and complexity to this. So I very, I very much want to like get this correct. So if I misstate something, please let me know.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  So first thing, first thing you need to know is like for me personally, I'm super lucky about all of that. Like I, and throughout this whole process and kind of like self-discovery. Um, I like just growing up, I'd get mistaken for, you know, a guy like, you know, not all the time, but it would happen. And it was something that was like so mortifying, so just, you know, I would avoid like, you know, social, you know, interactions or um events to avoid, you know, that happening. And since this whole thing is, you know, transpired, it's like, I'm, I don't, it doesn't, I don't care anymore. It's like, I don't, you know, it's like I, I've owned who I am and I, you know, I love myself for who I am. And it was never about anyone else or anything else. It was always, you know, on the inside.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  And once I kind of figured that out, it was like, oh, okay. If someone mistakes me for a guy, cool, whatever.

• 12:01Rich Roll?

  But it's been a journey to get to that point.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 12:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:04Rich Roll?

  It is very interesting just sitting across from you, looking at you because you are the manifestation of both female and male. Like there's aspects of your face and your physique that are very feminine and also aspects that are masculine. And it's fascinating just to like, look at you, you know what I mean?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 12:27Rich Roll?

  I hope that's not like, I say that with love.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  No, absolutely. I love it.

• 12:31Rich Roll?

  Like, you're a beautiful person.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 12:33Rich Roll?

  It's a very compelling, interesting

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:35Rich Roll?

  look that you have.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you.

• 12:37Rich Roll?

  And pose that you strike.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you so much. And that's like, I think, growing up, because I found out, you know, at kind of a weird age, at like 12, 13, right when like puberty's puberty's hitting, like, they, you know, back then, what was it, like, 2000? Yeah, about 2000, 2001. And like, a lot of knowledge has like come, you know, into the fray, you know, like, in the last 10 or 15 years, but, and this is still a common practice. It's like, oh, well, just, you know, we're just gonna raise her as a girl. And that's that, you know, and that's, you know, we're gonna put her on, you know, estrogen treatment and gonna raise her as a girl. And so, for my, you know, when I found this out, my entire life, I just tried to throw myself in the female box so hard and just

• 13:21Speaker 01

  like, and that's why, you know, getting mistaken for a guy was always so painful or whatever, is because I was, in my own head, forcibly trying to put myself in that female box. And rather than embracing my, you know, diverse genetic makeup, you know?

• 13:36Rich Roll?

  So the first real pivotal moment, though, comes at 12 or 13, when you have this doctor's appointment. So walk me up to that point. Like, prior to that, was there some gender confusion? Or were you convicted in being a girl? Was there some sense that there, I mean, what was the reason that you went to go see this doctor and what happened?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Right. So, I mean, you know, kind of when your, your earliest memories, you know, as, as when you're, you're a kid, you know, six, seven years old, you know, that's kind of, for me at least, like, my first, you know, things when I look back on and think about like how you feel, that's when I first remember knowing or feeling that something was different. But at that age, you're, you're just so, like, your idea of the world is so basic and so, you know, minimal. You don't really like know what to make of it. So I always knew something was different about myself, even before, you know, I found out that I was born intersex. And I could never, you know, put my, you know, finger on it. I could never You know, figure out what it was, I would, you know, I'd be in school and

• 14:40Speaker 01

  you know, I'd have my friends that were guys and friends that were girls and I could, you know, relate to, to, you know, both of them in, in different ways, but also kind of feel like not really like fully be able to relate. Um, and so that was always something I, you know, I felt from a young age and didn't know what it meant.

• 14:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  So, um, you know, um, yeah, it's like twelve or thirteen, you know, you're going into middle school, you have to have your, you know, physical uh for sports or whatever the case was. So going for a physical and the, the nurse, um, you know, you do the, the whole, you know, body examination and she could tell that my body wasn't developing, you know, as a typical female would and she's like, okay, we need to, we need to check this out. We need to see what's going on. And um, so go up to OHSU, which is a very reputable hospital up in Portland. Um, and yeah, that's when I, that's when I discovered, or they discovered through

• 15:40Speaker 01

  um ultrasound and blood tests and all that stuff that I was born uh with androgen insensitivity syndrome.

• 15:46Rich Roll?

  Right. So explain what AIS is.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  So AIS is a condition, there's, there's like three different conditions. Um, and it's, intersex is like a big like umbrella term for people that are not born within, you know, the typical gender binary, depending on, you know, what's inside their body.

• 16:04Rich Roll?

  Right. It can mean a lot of different things.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  It can. That's a huge. Yeah. And they say it's like one in two thousand, which is true, but AIS is more like, I don't want to misquote this, but it's something like one in two hundred thousand. Um, so it's, it's pretty rare. Um.

• 16:19Rich Roll?

  But that still means there's tens of thousands of people walking around.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Exactly. So, um, and so it can mean different things. So for me, I was born without any female reproductive parts, any, you know, female internally, you know, sexual reproductive parts. Uh, I was born with male reproductive ports, reproductive parts in internally. So that's essentially.

• 16:42Rich Roll?

  But it was not evident when you were born.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Exactly. So that's where it can kind of, um, it can kind of. You know, differ. So sometimes it's detectable at birth, sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's not detected until puberty, which was the case for me. And what's really not a good thing, and the doctors are still doing this, is these babies that they detect, you know, are born intersex, are assigning genders to these babies before, you know, they grow up and are able to decide for themselves who they want to be. And so you have these kids who are growing up and sometimes, you know, the parents won't even let them know that this happened. Um, and so they'll grow up and be like, I, I don't feel right. Something's, you know, something's different. I don't identify with, you know, my gender.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  And then they come to find out that they were born intersex and were assigned a gender as an infant.

• 17:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, we live in a, a binary dualistic society. I mean, when you're born, there's a birth certificate and there's two boxes, right? So you gotta check one of those.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Yep, exactly. Yeah. And it's, yeah, that, uh, that's changing. Um, I was just, I was just telling Daniel that, um, Oregon just passed, uh, um, not a law, but they're allowing people to identify, uh, as the third gender on license, on their license, um, when they're, you know, applying to, to their license. So you've seen, you're seeing all these little things that are, you know, coming, coming into the equation that are allowing people to be a little bit more, you know, diverse with what they identify.

• 18:11Rich Roll?

  Fluid.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, fluid, exactly.

• 18:12Rich Roll?

  And I think it's important, I mean, this comes into play when we're gonna talk about sports down the line here, but not to conflate intersex with trans, like, these are different things.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's, I think that's an important thing, an important thing to say. Because, and this is something that I've been trying to kind of tiptoe around, like, as in, in talking about this, because I don't, one thing I don't want to do is alienate the, the trans community and Delegitimize, you know, what they're feeling, just because it's not, you know, from a genetic standpoint. I was genetically born both, but that doesn't mean that someone that wasn't genetically born, not, you know, as they were born or who they were born as, that doesn't take away from how they feel.

• 18:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Just because they don't have like a, you know, genetic, you know, uh, thing to back it up.

• 19:00Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, there's a distinction between biology and gender.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 19:05Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 19:06Rich Roll?

  This is where it starts to quickly get complicated.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:10Rich Roll?

  And I'm the furthest, you know, from having mastered all of this, which is why I'm a little tentative about all of it.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 19:15Rich Roll?

  I really want to learn and I want to better understand.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 19:18Rich Roll?

  Um, but let's go back to 1213, you have this doctor's appointment. So are you, like chromosomally, are you XY? Or you are? Okay. Right.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 19:29Rich Roll?

  So it really is this like merging of the two.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:33Rich Roll?

  In a very unique way.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, and it just, you can look at it from so many different angles and, um, I kind of go back to my entire life, just trying to identi- like identify and force myself into this female box, rather than embracing that, that masculine side of myself, that male side of myself. And, you know, a lot of that has to do with society and has to do with how, uh, we're raised and how we come to understand the world. And, um, and if I would have had, you know, resources to deal with, being told at 1213 that you're kind of born both, um, maybe this would have played out differently. Having said that, I wouldn't change, you know, anything.

• 20:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  How about how it played out? And, um, I'm sitting here talking to you.

• 20:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  On, on your podcast about it, which is pretty cool. So.

• 20:24Rich Roll?

  Well, it's, I, I look at you and it looks like it's an almost perfect blend, like a 50 50 kind of thing. And it leaves me wondering whether that's always the case. Like is, is it, does it tip sometimes more towards one of the two?

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. So what's been cool about this, you know, and sharing my story is I've had a lot of people who are intersex and who are born with, you know, a variation of AIS reach out to me. And so, yeah, it's, it's, there's definitely a spectrum. Um, there can be, uh, a full-on male born with a variation of AIS. And you look at him and you would never know, you would never assume that there was anything. Different or that they had, you know, variations of both genders. It's just, it can be.

• 21:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  And then on the other end of the spectrum, someone who is visibly very feminine looking could also have AIS. So it just depends.

• 21:20Rich Roll?

  So you're in this situation where you have a choice between being a masculine young girl or in effete young male, but you've been raised as a girl. You have this test and what's interesting is kind of what happens in the wake of, you know, coming into this information, right? Like, where are your parents in all of this? And like, how did that, you know, go?

• 21:47Speaker 01

  So I went up to that doctor's appointment with my mom, only my dad was working. And so we went up there and.

• 21:55Rich Roll?

  Did you, first of all, sorry to interrupt, but like, was there, was there any sense on your parents' part? Like now, looking back, retroactively, that they knew like something was a little bit different? Or was this a big surprise?

• 22:07Speaker 01

  You know, what's funny is so it's important to state that me and my parents literally did not ever have a conversation about this outside of the one doctor's appointment in Portland when I first found out. And then when we got referred to an internal medicine doctor in Eugene, that day we talked about it. We literally never talked about it.

• 22:26Rich Roll?

  You're like, okay, all right.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:28Rich Roll?

  Anyway, what's for dinner?

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Okay. Hilarious story. So just real quick, I remember we went to that doctor's appointment in Eugene. It was me and my dad, my mom, and that was like just a traumatic experience in itself. But I remember walking out of the doctor's appointment and me and my dad, my dad was like, I think Lakers are playing tonight.

• 22:49Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Like, I'm not kidding. That stands out in my head like clear as day and.

• 22:55Rich Roll?

  Well, part of that's sort of cool, like, okay, you know, we'll, we'll deal. Like, he's basically saying it's gonna be okay. Like, I'm like, I'm not gonna allow this to like color how I see you.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. And that's, and that's how I interpreted it. And I think, you know, I've heard a lot, not a lot of feedback, but just a lot of questions surrounding, you know, how my parents handled it and all that. And.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  I think it's tough. I think you put yourself in my parents shoes and I'm the youngest. So it's I already have that, you know, baby, you know, complex, whatever. I'm always going to be the youngest. And how would you handle it? You're a parent. Like, I'm sure you've thought about it in hearing the story. How would you handle your kid, you know, coming in the information that your kid was born intersex? It's, it's, there's no handbook. There's no like, oh, this is what you do. This is the, you know, I think. And how they handled it, I think it was from a place of protection and love and just wanting to create a sense of normalcy

• 23:57Speaker 01

  for, for, for me. And just kind of sweeping under the rug was, was, and it wasn't in like a we're ashamed of this, or we, no one needs to know about this because we're embarrassed about it. It was more, at least how I was.

• 24:12Rich Roll?

  Protecting you.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Out of protection. So.

• 24:14Rich Roll?

  I mean, I'd like to think that I would have a super woke reaction to it, but you know, culturally, we're in a very different place right now than we were 20 years ago.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Very.

• 24:23Rich Roll?

  So it's, it's easy to say, you know, right now, everybody likes to think that they would, you know, do the right thing, you know, with whatever terrible thing was happening 50 years ago. It's like you weren't living in that moment.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 24:35Rich Roll?

  It's fair to.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Perspective and hindsight sure changes a lot. So that's exactly, I think, you go back 20 years and it's just the rate at which the world is changing and society is changing. It's insane. So 20 years ago, it was a much different, you know, world. So.

• 24:51Rich Roll?

  Right. But here you are, you know, 12, 13 years old and it's, they don't tell your siblings, right? So your parents know, it's never discussed again, but you've got this, you know, this bomb just dropped in your life where it's like, hey, you're not a girl, you're not a boy, you're kind of both, you're neither, you're, you're like, what are you supposed to do with that? Like you have no, there's no counseling, there's no therapy. Like, how are you processing that as a young person?

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Exactly. I think I did everything in my power just to block it out and not think about it. And I got really good at it, which probably not a good thing. I think with anything in life, it's never good to, to, you know, block things out that are clearly impacting your life and need to be addressed.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  I literally just blocked it out.

• 25:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  And you know, I'd have, I'd have moments or I'd have, um, I'd see things, you know, in the news or hear about other people, um, that were, you know, somewhat related to gender or whatever. And it would kind of, you know, bring me back to, you know, a self-realization moment. And I, it was like a great cause of anxiety, obviously.

• 25:54Rich Roll?

  It had to be incredibly confusing.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, really confusing.

• 26:00Rich Roll?

  Well, also, um,

• 26:04Rich Roll?

  it's considered like interse-, I, I was diving, you know, and kind of getting ready to talk to you today. I was diving, you know, down this like rabbit hole of like, what is intersex? And, and there's a lot of pieces that I read that classify it as a disorder. Right? And like, yeah, I was, oh, it's a disorder. It's a disorder. I saw that word come up again and again and again. And, and I thought, it's not really a disorder. It's only a disorder because of how we socially classify gender. Right? I mean, you're just, there's nothing wrong with you. You're just born in a certain way that's different, but that doesn't mean that you have a disease or anything like that. And yet there was a protocol, right? Like you end up taking, you, you were doing estrogen therapy for a long time.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, I think that's, that's the biggest thing, looking back for me was, I remember at 12, asking the doctor if this was life threatening, a 12-year-old asking. And he was like, he kind of laughed. He said, oh, no, no, you're, it's, it's not life threatening. You can go on to live a long, healthy life and, and it's fine. Um, but I think that was the biggest thing, looking back was, and not to throw my parents

• 27:13Rich Roll?

  It can be life threatening though, because if you don't get help and you're confused.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's exactly right. If you don't have the resources, if you don't have something or someone, some support system helping you walk through this, absolutely it can be life threatening. Um, but it was, that's a great point. It's, it's, you see everywhere, it's a condition. It's, it's a disorder. It's, something's wrong with you and it's, that's not the case. That, that was the biggest discovery for me in this whole process was understanding that actually it's kind of cool I was born this way. It's, it's what makes me unique. It's what makes me stand out and. Um, I think everyone has something about them that makes them unique.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Um, and it's kind of about discovering that and owning it, but um, that's going in, looking back as a kid. That was something that I really wish would have been.

• 28:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Clearly expressed to me that Kendra, you know what? It was, it's great that you're born this way. You're perfect, just how you are.

• 28:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  That was never.

• 28:12Rich Roll?

  Rather than being stigmatized or, or kind of carrying around this sense that there's something wrong, but yet nothing that you can do about it.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's like you're gonna go to your doctor's appointments once every three months, get this injection. And that was just always like, just such a, just awful thing. I, you know, I, I'd go do it and then I'd be like, okay, like three months, you know, I don't have to go do that again for three months. And then that three months would fly by and then the next couple of days, like, oh, I gotta go to this doctor's appointment. And that was, that was my childhood from 12 till 25.

• 28:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  So.

• 28:46Rich Roll?

  But now being on the other side of this journey of self-discovery, of like embracing your authenticity.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 28:53Rich Roll?

  Um, when you, and, and owning your story and kind of owning, you know, who you are fundamentally. When you walk into a room and you're like, you stand in your power, it's, it's kind of fucking badass. Cause it's like, who is that?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:06Rich Roll?

  I've never seen anyone who looks kind of like that, like.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:08Rich Roll?

  Like I'm, it's, it's, there's a magnetism to it.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. Um, so that's, it's funny because it goes back to, it's never about what anyone else thinks or anyone else feels about you. It's about how you feel about yourself. And before I would, you know, I'm like six, one, almost, um, athletic looking. And so already I kind of stand out, but you know, then there's these other features about me that make me stand out that don't, you know, that people look at and they kind of double take and, and I get that all the time. And before this, this, you know, self-discovery thing happened, that I was, I would just avoid those situations. I would just try and sneak in and, and just kind of go to the corner or whatever. And not that I enjoy the limelight really, I'm, I'm pretty introverted. Um.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  But it's now it's I own all of this and I embrace it and people still we were flying down here and I was talking we were sitting there waiting to get on the plane in Portland and Daniel and I are just like charging our phones and this couple is sitting I don't know 10 feet from us and I can tell they're talking about me he kind of like whispers in her ear and I was like in mid sentence talking to Daniel and I was like sorry I got sidetracked these people are talking about me and and Daniel just like starts laughing and you just kind of have to like laugh at it because you don't really know what they're saying and it doesn't matter anyway and but it yeah it is interesting I think people yeah kind of look at me and are like huh what's going on there that's

• 30:37Rich Roll?

  But you are in Portland it's like the most progressive

• 30:39Speaker 01

  I know exactly there's no there's no better place I really could be from than than Portland so I'm very lucky for that so

• 30:46Rich Roll?

  Alright so you start getting these estrogen injections and the idea behind that is to like repress the the progression the growth of like your innate maleness

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Correct

• 31:00Rich Roll?

  And kind of keep that at bay

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah exactly because you know obviously finding out at that age is pivotal you're about to go through puberty and your body is about to really change so it's interesting to think about had I not gone on hormone treatment what I would look like today or how my mind would be different all of that stuff but yeah essentially that's what it was and that was kind of the goal was or the plan was I guess not by my design really take the take the estrogen hormone and then eventually you know have you know my testes removed essentially to whatever and that's and that's what you hear from all these doctors

• 31:42Speaker 01

  that that go in and take them out of these children oh it's well it's you know it's cancer risk and it's like well actually my body is completely healthy and fine and everything that's internally in my body is healthy so like that's not something that needs to happen immediately or at 18 I can you know go on and live an extremely healthy life and everything internally in my body can be fully functional and fine but that's kind of what that's what they do they put under the guise of oh well it's a cancer risk so we'll just take them out and it's like You, that's something I've heard a ton from people reaching out and seeing my story is, well, yeah, I was, I'm intersex, but at, you know, as a baby, they, or whatever age they, you know, about the age that I, you know, found out that I was intersex, they removed,

• 32:26Speaker 01

  you know, had surgery, so.

• 32:28Rich Roll?

  It's depriving you of your agency and your choice about how you want to live and be.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Yep, exactly.

• 32:34Rich Roll?

  Certainly, you know, if you want to make that decision for yourself at, at some point in adulthood, that's your prerogative, but the fact that it would be done, you know, at birth or as a young person, doesn't seem to make sense. I know there were some, now there's some intersex advocacy groups that are really rallying against that practice.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, Interact is, is one agency that I've been kind of in touch with and they've been, they've been great throughout this whole process. I've been talking with a lady that is kind of the, the head of that and we had a really good conversation and, and just hearing about her experience, she's like, I think 45, so, I mean, I can't imagine, um, you know, being born in the late seventies, you know, whenever she was born, early eighties, um, I guess would be in the seventies, um, and having, you know, what I found out, it was, it already was, you know, not, you know, woke, you know, the, you know, like everyone,

• 33:27Speaker 01

  I can't imagine being born in the seventies and the lack of information that they had back then, like, it's, it's crazy to think about, so.

• 33:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, you know, this is all happening at a good time for you.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So what is the experience of, of getting estrogen injections? Like, how does that change how you feel?

• 33:47Speaker 01

  So, I just remember, um, from an aesthetic standpoint, my body, I gained weight, I had acne, um, really soft features, lethargic all the time. Basketball, like I said, basketball was, you know, a big part of my life and just absolutely loved playing and I never, I look back on my high school career and there was never a game where I felt like my energy level was at a hundred percent. I was always at 75, 80%, no matter what. And it's not like I wasn't conditioning, it wasn't, it's not like I wasn't practicing, you know, doing all these things. Um, and so that was a big part of it. Um, just, just your overall, um, morale is just down. Um, that's the best way I can explain it. And

• 34:31Speaker 01

  that's how, that's traditionally how I always felt, was just, just not at a hundred percent. And for me, it's like,

• 34:40Speaker 01

  You're putting something, you know, foreign agent in your body that's not meant to be there. Clearly, I was born this way and should just be left alone. And I don't need anything else. I don't need some foreign agent, you know, to come into my body and.

• 34:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, disrupt your hormonal regulation.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so, yeah, it was just not, not a good experience at all. And I stopped taking it. I'm, I'll be thirty one in a couple of days. I stopped taking it when I was twenty five. And from basically twenty five on, I've, I've never felt better. I've never felt more energized, more alert, just cognitive function, just everything. And that's, I don't have any science to back that, but just speaking from my experience and my perspective, that's, that's just how I've, you know, I felt, so.

• 35:31Rich Roll?

  Well, it's great that your body could still go back to its set point after, after that, that practice going on for so many years.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, I think that's, you know, a, just, just speaks to how amazing our bodies are and how amazing the human body is. You know, it's, it's, it's built to last. It's designed to, to fix itself and to thrive if you, if you give it the right thing. So it is, it is amazing.

• 36:04Rich Roll?

  Well, it was interesting in the video, you see these pictures of you when you were much younger, when you were taking the hormones and, and you look a lot different.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:12Rich Roll?

  You look very, very much a girl.

• 36:16Rich Roll?

  And obviously, you know, that had a profound impact on like your, not just your physiology, but like how you navigated the world at that time.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. It, you know, played into sexuality. It played into how I saw myself. And it's all, it's all connected. You know, it's, there is, you know, there's different, you know, sectors of, of the mind and the body, but it is all interconnected and it, it impacted the way I felt, the way I saw the world, the way I saw myself.

• 36:47Rich Roll?

  Did you do like the traditional date boys in high school thing or?

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Kinda. I, I hadn't, not really. And that's another thing that's really funny is I remember.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Going back when I was six or seven years old, like I had crushes on girls, like there's no doubt about it and and thinking about it. And that even looking back on that, that was definitely like kind of the first sign that uh something was different. Something was causing that either whatever, but um but yeah, I tried to, you know, I tried to fit into that mold. I tried to um I had an older I had an older sister and and she, you know, was an incredible influence on me and just kind of helped me navigate and she obviously she didn't know, but I think sisters have certain experiences together and certain conversations together and those obviously weren't happening, you know, I didn't I didn't menstruate. I didn't do these things that um you know, sisters would probably be talking about.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  So she she and she's pretty intuitive herself, um so she knew something was was different, um but didn't, you know, didn't

• 37:53Rich Roll?

  Never said.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Never said anything, didn't, you know, fully understand and um but having her kind of helped me. And she was so supportive and so inclusive and just wanted me to be around her and hang out with her friends and um and at a time where my self-confidence and self-esteem was was low, um honestly, uh that was huge. And it helped, she kind of helped me navigate, you know, a very difficult time for any youth, you know, going through high school or middle school. Um it's a it's a confusing time as it is, let alone trying to navigate being both genders kind of, so.

• 38:29Rich Roll?

  Right, well, you must have gotten some self-confidence from sports because you're crushing it in basketball and golf.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  I I'm beyond grateful for for athletics, that's probably saved my life. Not that I ever had any, you know, moments of uh just I didn't have any rock bottom moments, I don't think. Um but sports were always the centerpiece of my life growing up and and had been until I stopped playing professional golf, so.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  In a way, it it held me back in some, you know, in some areas of self-discovery, but also was kind of the vehicle to navigate me through a lot of confusion and almost served as a distraction, which I think distractions in life can can be positive. I think they're necessary in in certain times, but sports, yeah, it saved my life essentially.

• 39:23Rich Roll?

  So what like in high school, what was your crowd? Like I take it you were like a pretty like, you know, sort of to yourself kind of person, but like, who were you hanging out with?

• 39:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was. I was. I like, I was, but I did. I had a lot of friends and I think, and it's been really cool since this video come out, hearing from people from that I grew up with from elementary school through high school. And and I I keep hearing the same answer is, you know, wow, this this kind of makes sense because we always just saw you as Kendra. Like, we never like, and I hear that from my brother and sister. I hear that from their friends. I hear from my friends. It's like, oh, well, never really thought about it. We felt something was different, maybe, but we just saw you as Kendra. And that's how I feel to this day. And that's how I always felt growing up. And but yeah,

• 40:15Speaker 01

  I did kind of keep to myself, like, kind of keeping people at bay. I didn't let anyone really get too close to me, but was kind of friends with everyone and and nice to everyone and and got along with everyone and just, you know, just kind of tried to just just go about my business and.

• 40:30Rich Roll?

  Was anyone like, I knew, I knew all along. I knew from day one, like, like, you know, 2020 in retrospect?

• 40:37Speaker 01

  I honestly, no one has said that.

• 40:39Rich Roll?

  No?

• 40:39Speaker 01

  The only thing I've gotten is we knew, we just kind of thought you were a tomboy. That's kind of like what I what I get. But no one is, and that's what's crazy. So had you ever heard of Intersex? Or were you familiar with it before you saw my story?

• 40:53Rich Roll?

  No, I mean, I've been sort of following at arm's length, like the Castro Semenya's case. So I mean, that's probably the, you know, the closest that I've gotten to kind of understanding.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's just, people just don't know about it. And people, you hear a lot about like hermaphrodites. And that's literally not something that is, like a human can't be. That means that you have literally both, both reproductive parts and you're, you know, that's not something that happens in, with humans. So that's.

• 41:24Rich Roll?

  It's kind of a pejorative term.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  It is, and it's not, yeah, it's a very kind of, yeah, not, not something that you'll, you'll hear that sometimes. And it's very, uh, yeah, not, not a welcome term. Um, so yeah, everyone is just like, oh, wow. I didn't even know this was a thing. And so I, we were talking uninterrupted yesterday and in front of, you know, 50 people. And so I was like, has, had anyone heard of intersex or you known an intersex person before you saw my video? And like three people raised their hand. So.

• 41:53Rich Roll?

  Or they're like, or they think it means trans.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. See, that's, that's where it's, you know, it's, it's just, they do get kind of lumped together and they're, but they're, you know, obviously we talked about, they're extremely different. So this whole process has been, it's been educational for me because for a lot of my life, I didn't even want to think about it. I didn't want to research it. I didn't want to hear about it. I just blocked it out. And so even for me, you know, doing research and learning about it as I'm, you know, telling this, the world, my story has been crazy, but, um, hearing from people, whether it's strangers or friends, wanting to know more and, and wanting to ask questions. And that's, that's what I want, you know, at this point, I'm, I'm an open book and I want, you know, I want people to be educated. So.

• 42:39Rich Roll?

  So you go off to Oregon for college and you play golf and you're killing it, right? Like you're clearly a super talented golfer. Uh, you have this crazy long swing, right? Like that's what you're known for. And I read a little bit, you know, a couple of articles and people were like, yeah, I mean, Kendra could just go into any tournament and win when she put her mind to it. But there was always the, the consensus, or it seemed like people were saying, you know, she should have gone further with it. Like there's no reason why she couldn't have been just absolutely killing it on the, on the, on the LPGA tour. So there was something holding you back, right?

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:16Rich Roll?

  So walk me up, you know, walk me through this experience of playing. Golf in college and going pro and what happened?

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I I just have a very weird relationship with golf. I always have. Basketball was always my main sport, was always my my true love and.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  I think part of me always feels like I wish I would have taken basketball further. I could have played both in college. I opted to just play golf um in the in the form of of being practical, I guess, and and and with the idea of turning pro after college, which it's just funny because when you when you look back and think about how you view age and view the world when you're in high school going into college, you think you have all this time and you think, oh, that's, you know, five years away. I'll figure it out. You know, when I'm after college and looking to turn pro, I'll figure it out then. And it goes by quicker than you think. And so I always kind of just went along with this idea that I play professional golf and I just do it and um and then with that I have this

• 44:21Speaker 01

  you know, huge thing going on that I haven't addressed in my entire life, so.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  I just

• 44:30Speaker 01

  you know, I just kind of delayed it and just let it be and just kind of went along this this path of, oh, yeah, I'll I'll turn pro and so I go play in college for four years and do really well and um I'm working towards this this goal that's everyone thinks is my dream that I'm gonna go play professional golf and be on the LPGA and I just kind of go along with it and

• 44:52Rich Roll?

  But it wasn't really your dream.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  No, it really it really wasn't. Um and I think I think it's interesting to look back and think about how I would have viewed golf differently if I would have just been born or athletics in general, um had I just been born, you know, a a fully functioning female, none of this extra baggage going on, how I would have dealt with it and and what I would had I been born, you know, fully female, what my goals would have been, how I would have viewed the sport and and, you know, how I would have navigated that, but

• 45:26Speaker 01

  so, yeah, I had a really successful college career, um won tournaments, placed well, all conference, all that stuff.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  And I had a fifth year at at school afterwards. My my senior year didn't end very well and um I was kind of burnt out on golf, so I was kind of thinking about my options, but um I was like, well.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  I need to try this. I need to, you know, I need to turn pro and, um, and see, you know, where this goes. Meanwhile, just still refusing to, to think about, you know, the, the, the underlying issue of, of gender.

• 46:00Rich Roll?

  Was there a sense that someday, you know, that moment, that reckoning would come? Or were you operating under the idea like, I'm just gonna hide this forever?

• 46:10Speaker 01

  So I figured, I figured one day it would, it would come out and I think always in the back of my head, I knew that it was gonna get to a point after I turned pro that I was either gonna have to fully face it and, and, and come out to the world and be like, I'm, I was born intersex, I'm gonna continue to play professional golf and I'm gonna figure this out and the, the governing bodies, we're gonna have to, you know, because they have rules and regulations set in place, um, and we're gonna, we're gonna figure out, or it's gonna be the reason I said away from golf.

• 46:43Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  And it ended up being the latter. So, um, I just knew that, I played on the Symmetra Tour for, for two years. I had status for another, another year before I stopped playing and, um, I had a little bit of success, not a lot, um, and kinda what you, what you're speaking to, just people being like, I don't, what's going on there? Like she, she has all the tools, you know, she has everything to, to make it to the top and, um, there's, there's something going on there. There's.

• 47:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  And I had my swing coach, um, who was a fraternity brother of my dad's in college, actually, um, who I'd worked with, you know, as a kid and, and into college and then as a pro, um, he was interviewed for, for Golf Week article and, and he said something like, I always questioned her mental strength. I, I just figured, you know, she, she didn't have a lot of strength. And he obviously didn't know any of this, um, about, you know, the way I was born. And, and he was like, you know, and coming into this knowledge about how she was born, I, you know, I can't imagine how, how mentally tough she is. So.

• 47:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Um, I think that's, I always, I always felt like I was mentally weak because that's what I heard from people. Like, um, why aren't you producing? Why aren't you shooting these numbers? Why aren't you progressing to the LPGA? You have all these, you have all the ability in the world and are you not passionate about it? Or do you not have the work ethic? And it wasn't that, it was this underlying, you know, issue of of not addressing.

• 48:08Rich Roll?

  Right, well, A, you're not a fully integrated person.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:12Rich Roll?

  Like, you're you're you're in denial of your true essence.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:16Rich Roll?

  So in a game like golf, where precision is everything.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:21Rich Roll?

  Um, that dissonance can't help but affect your game.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Exactly, and that's something that I I don't think I ever took into account, that this issue was affecting every aspect of my golf game, of my personal life. It was one hundred percent, especially with in a game like golf, where you have so much time to think about things and process things. And the reason I like basketball so much was because I could just rely on my, you know, inherent athleticism and ability to just react and not think about it.

• 48:52Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Golf, I had all the time in the world to think about everything and not a good thing.

• 48:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, thinking, that's not gonna help.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 49:00Rich Roll?

  Like golf's all about trying to not think.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, and that's some of the best golfers are just able to just calm their minds down and just go out there and and and be reactive and just just play.

• 49:14Rich Roll?

  Right, so you have that going on, but I think at the same time, like, I look at it as um a fear of success, really. Because success would mean ultimately that this secret is gonna come out and it's not gonna come out on your terms.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  One hundred percent, that's exactly what it was, fear of being successful and um because that would one hundred percent mean that it was gonna come out. I remember I qualified to play in the US Women's Open and I was like terrified I was gonna get drug tested. And they were gonna find, you know, even though I was still on estrogen, they were gonna find higher levels of testosterone. And I was gonna get, you know, outed and that was like a horrifying experience. I played awfully at the Open and um it was incredible experience because it's the US Women's Open, but um. I was in the back of my mind, I'm just sitting there like waiting to get tapped on the shoulder. Come with me, we gotta go paint a cup.

• 50:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You could have called a press conference, though, and come out with it.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  I know, right? Exactly. I have, I have something small to announce and just, and just kinda just out of myself and, and just, and just brought on the storm. And it's just.

• 50:23Rich Roll?

  You weren't ready.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 50:25Rich Roll?

  So you end up quitting golf and then it was, it was around that exact same time that you stopped with the estrogen treatment?

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 50:33Rich Roll?

  And so what was that decision all about?

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Um, I was just, I was just tired of the way it was making me feel, um, the way, what it was doing to my body.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  I weigh like, I'm six one, I weighed, I don't know, one sixty, something like that. And I was, you know, one eighty, one eighty-five and I mean, I was working out and stuff, I was healthy, I wasn't, you know, doing anything crazy.

• 50:56Rich Roll?

  The estrogen made you gain weight?

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 51:00Rich Roll?

  When it's supposed to keep this hormone at bay?

• 51:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:03Rich Roll?

  That is associated with muscle bulk and the like.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I, I don't know, you know, I'm sure there's, there's science behind it or, you know, whatever, but it's, it was almost not instant, but as soon as I stopped taking it, I leaned out. I was able to put on more muscle mass, um, sort of makes sense, but, um, I think my frame, just in general, is more, obviously more of a lean frame, so. I just got, kinda got back to, to my essence.

• 51:33Rich Roll?

  Basketball now.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go do an open trial, just, just, yeah, just, just play some basketball. Actually, when I stopped playing golf, I actually went and, you know, joined a city league, um, in Portland and played a bunch of basketball. So that was like so fun. I don't do it anymore just because I'm just, I don't wanna, you know, tear an ACL or tear an Achilles over, you know, an open gym, so.

• 51:55Rich Roll?

  And how long did, once you stopped the estrogen, how long did it take for your body to kind of reach a, a stable set point?

• 52:03Speaker 01

  I would say.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  Probably a year.

• 52:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably a year. That's kind of when I really started to notice a difference, you know, sort of physically and mentally. Um, was about a year. So.

• 52:16Rich Roll?

  And the fact that you made that decision tells me that you're inching up towards, you know, a willingness to own this finally.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  I think so. Um, and you never know.

• 52:30Rich Roll?

  Like, was there something that prompted that?

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I met someone last summer.

• 52:35Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, that that completely flipped my paradigm 100%.

• 52:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah. When that person was like, what are you doing? Or were you honest with that person?

• 52:44Speaker 01

  So I met her, uh, last June. Yeah, June 2018 in Portland. Um, and she she knew right away. Um, something was something was different. Something was, um, but it was was totally accepting and and it's just funny because I didn't obviously didn't tell her right away. Like, I still hadn't told anyone. Um, and it led, I think I told her,

• 53:13Speaker 01

  actually, I told her on my birthday, uh, 2018, which was sort of been like a month and a half later. Um, we had an open conversation about it and um, she was like, yeah, Ken, I already knew and I don't care. Like, I think you're, I think you're great. I think you're perfect how you are. And and it's so funny because I, you know, growing up, I always kind of imagined what that conversation would be like with the first person that I told and just kind of fearing their reaction or fearing, um, uh, you know, being denied or being, um, just made to feel less. And we, as humans, I guess we sometimes, you know, always hear the worst or think that the worst thing is going to happen. And it was the complete opposite of what happened. And it was like, oh, okay. Well.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  That went pretty well. Maybe, you know, I'll have a conversation with it about about this with my family.

• 54:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, the scarier thing, we we sort of assume like we're afraid of what all these people are gonna think. But I think in your case, it's really about having to then own this essential truth about who you are. Like, that's the truly terrifying part of it.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's.

• 54:18Rich Roll?

  You can hide behind like, oh, I don't want the judgment of other people. It's the self judgment.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  It's not what exactly. It's it's it's never about what what anyone else thinks or feels about you. It's always about how you feel about yourself. And for my entire life, I didn't understand that. It was always, oh, I'm afraid of what people are gonna think or what people are gonna say. And and I think you never know what event is gonna prompt you to kind of own yourself or whatever, you know, situation it is. For me, it was meeting someone and being being told that I think you're great. I think the way you're born is really cool. That's what it was for me. And so it could be meeting someone. It could be an event that happens to you. It could be, you know, a situation that you're in. You never really know what it is gonna be.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  But it it is always within you, and maybe it just takes something to to bring it out.

• 55:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And the next kind of phase is when you you write a couple of letters, right? So how long after that?

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think I wrote that letter to my family. When would that have been? That would have been September? No. Yeah, September, early September. So it was probably three or four weeks after after I I had had that first conversation. And that was, I sat in a in a coffee shop in Portland and actually typed it and write it. It would have been cool to be handwritten, but it would have been really long. Typed it in a coffee shop and and just kind of unloaded on it for for three hours and and sent it off to to all of them. And and then, yeah, the the phone started blowing up from everyone. So my brother, he was living in in Hollywood at the time. My sister, where was she?

• 56:02Speaker 01

  I guess she was she was living in Portland as well, and and my parents were in Portland. But, um, yeah, I kind of dropped that that bomb on them. And and my parents and talking to them, you know, in hindsight, they were like, yeah, this was always, we knew this was this day was gonna come. We just didn't know when it was gonna come, and and we wanted it to be on your terms.

• 56:27Rich Roll?

  When you look back on how they parented you through that, do you have misgivings? Like, do you feel like, "I wish they had known this," or "had done this"? And how do they feel about, you know, how that whole thing went?

• 56:40Speaker 01

  I think, from my standpoint, I don't, I don't have any, any ill feelings towards them at all. I think, because I know how they acted was from a place of, of protection and love.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  That was always the attitude I got from them in regards to this. It was never, like I said, it was never, you know, "We're ashamed of this, we can't tell anyone, we're embarrassed by this." It was, I could just sense that it was from a place of protection. I think they, and they haven't really been open with me about how they truly felt in dealing with it. I think they had a lot of guilt, you know, as you get older and you can kind of start to see through, you know, what your parents tell you, and you can kind of be like, "Oh, they're lying, they're not, that's, you know, that's BS." But...

• 57:26Rich Roll?

  I just feel like, at least at one point, they would have been like, "Kendra, you know, remember that thing when you were 12? Like, "Are you okay? Like, how's it going? Like, can we, do we need to talk about this?"

• 57:36Speaker 01

  It's crazy, right?

• 57:37Rich Roll?

  "Is there somebody that you want to talk to? You know, can we help you? Like, what's going on inside?"

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Never happened, which is crazy.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  And from the outside, I can, I can see why people would be like, "What is going on there?" Like, "Why, why was that, like, not even like, 'Hey Kendra, like, you know that time when you were told you were born both genders? Like, is that, how are you doing with that?"

• 57:57Rich Roll?

  Did that, I mean, were you like, "Wait, did that actually happen?" Or was that like some dream that I had?

• 58:01Speaker 01

  It was like an out-of-body experience, it was like transporting to a different realm and just like, "Wait, did I just hear that right? Like, I'm both? Huh?" So, um, so yeah, I think, I think they, they, they harbored a lot of guilt over it.

• 58:16Rich Roll?

  It's like, you're cut, you're like a, you know, like a, you're like a superhero, or you're, you're, um, not the Avengers, who are the ones that all go to the school?

• 58:29Rich Roll?

  The mutants?

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Oh, teenage mutant ninja turtles?

• 58:32Rich Roll?

  No, no, no, no, the one where, the guy in the wheelchair, you know the superhero movies? Where all the kids that are different and they go to the school and...

• 58:39Speaker 01

  I honestly...

• 58:39Rich Roll?

  What's that called?

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Help us out?

• 58:41Rich Roll?

  X-Men. Yeah, the X-Men, yeah. It's like, you're, you're kind of an X-Man?

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:46Rich Roll?

  But like, we're not going to talk about it anymore. You just file that away and you're...

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  It's funny because I was having a conversation with with one of my buddies, his name is Mike. And he was saying like, you know, your story really reminds me of this, this, uh, this animated cartoon that I used to watch. And I don't remember the name of it, but he was like, this cartoon had all these cool superpowers and never felt like he could tell, share it with the world because he thought that everyone would think he was weird and he was embarrassed about it. But really, when he did tell him, it made everyone like him and think he was his coolest thing. And I was like, that's, yeah, that's pretty cute.

• 59:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  I'll go with that. I don't have superpowers, but I'm both.

• 59:27Rich Roll?

  And just to be clear, like I use the word mutant because that's what the X men, that's the vernacular of the X men. I don't, I'm not saying that in the context of being.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 59:36Rich Roll?

  Like, please don't at me with that. All right. All right. But you write these letters and it sounds like they're pretty well received, right? Like you're loved by your siblings and your parents and all of that.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:48Rich Roll?

  So how do you go from there to now, you know, kind of being public about this?

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, of, uh, avoiding YouTube comments, avoiding, uh, comments in, in USA Today articles.

• 1:00:00Rich Roll?

  Well, how did the uninterrupted project come together? We should say like uninterrupted is the digital production company of LeBron James.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  And Maverick Carter. Yeah.

• 1:00:08Rich Roll?

  Did they approach you or how did they?

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  No. So it's a crazy story, actually. So after I had that initial conversation,

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  it was kind of tossed, the idea was kind of tossed around like, hey, you know, you should really tell this story publicly. And I think it would, it would help a lot of people. And I was like, ah, yeah, like I'd kind of just hold my, my family and.

• 1:00:32Rich Roll?

  But how did they know then?

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 1:00:36Rich Roll?

  Well, who said, like, I'm confused. So did they, you reached, who reached out to who?

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  Right, right. So this, the idea that I would maybe approach some, some media entity, would, you know, and approach them like, hey, I have this story. Uh, I want to share. Would you be interested in helping me tell it?

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  So at first, and I won't, I won't name the media company. It was another kind of, um, athlete geared media company. I approached them and said, hey, well, first I reached out to a friend who I thought might have a connection there. And so I told that friend who was like the second, third person, you know, that I'd ever shared my story with. It's like, hey, do you think this is something they might be interested in telling? He was like, I think so. Let me get in touch with my friend who's an editor there. So was in touch with that editor for like two months and the process just was really slow. It wasn't going, I didn't feel like it was going anywhere and I was kind of getting frustrated. And I ended up telling Daniel, who's here with us today, my friend, um, my story. And I told him, I was like, you know, I'm talking to this media company about sharing

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  this story, you know, on a platform, but it's not really going anywhere. I'm kind of frustrated. And he was like, well, I have this friend who works at uninterrupted. You should reach out to them and see if they would be interested in sharing it. I think they would. So he gave me his friend's contact information and I wrote an email and said, hey, this is my story. Would you guys be interested in, in helping me tell the world about it? And he was like, definitely. And I'm, it was almost like the next day I was on the phone call with Jimmy Spencer, the VP there and a creative director, Camille, who I've worked closely with throughout this whole thing. And they were incredible. So that's kind of how that, that kind of came into light. And, and that was in December of 2018.

• 1:02:18Rich Roll?

  Right. So you, you, you guys shot this quite a long time ago.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, I think the first time we filmed was March and then they came back up, um, in end of April to shoot again. So it was from December, basically until July 8th, I think it was the day it came out. It was, it was pre-production, filming, post-production. And so it was, yeah, it was a seven month process.

• 1:02:42Rich Roll?

  Right. It was, well, it's beautifully done. They did a great job.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  They did. They, I mean, just.

• 1:02:46Rich Roll?

  I can't imagine like a more compelling and graceful way to introduce your story to the world.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Super, super grateful to uninterrupted for, for allowing me to share the story. Um, and it's not like, I'm not a, clearly not a household name. I'm, you know, I'm a golfer from the Symmetra Tour. Um, so it's like, I didn't have that clout, you know, to back it up, but they saw, they saw value in, in sharing a story like this. And I think the, the uniqueness of it and. I'm just, I can't really put into words how grateful I am towards them. Um, and just not only allowing me to share the story, but how they handled it and how they, they knew it was a delicate subject and just involving me in areas that they probably usually don't allow, um, when they're working with an athlete, but just because of the, uh, the

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  delicacy of, of the, of the subject, they, they included me a lot in, you know, in, in sort of the, the shaping of it and, and how it was presented and, um, just, yeah, I don't, I, I just, yeah, I have amazing things to say about, about.

• 1:03:49Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's not really a video about sports.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:03:52Rich Roll?

  Being an athlete.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's, it's, I, yeah, I have this crazy story and I also happen to play golf and, and that was very much so. That's kind of how we wanted to, to frame it as well as, it was, you know, I, I played golf at a high level, but this, this other part of it is, is way more obviously the, the centerpiece. So.

• 1:04:12Rich Roll?

  So that was like five or six weeks ago when this thing.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:04:17Rich Roll?

  Was published and introduced to the world. And there's been, you know, a fair amount of media in the wake of that, USA Today, uh, Golf Digest or, you know, like there's been a lot of articles out. Um, but I would imagine it's been a pretty tumultuous, topsy-turvy last six weeks of you now being foisted, you know, by choice, by design, you know, into this place where, um, you're now, you know, associated with what it means to be intersex and, and the focal point of conversations that are taking place around this subject, particularly in the context of sports and being an athlete.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Totally. I think, and that's, that was, and obviously whenever the story was going to come out, I knew that that was the, the direction the, the conversation was going to go was, okay, well, this is great, but should you have been allowed to, to compete?

• 1:05:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  And that was always what I was most afraid of. Um, and,

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  and yeah, it's, like I said, uh, yeah, tried to avoid looking at comments from, you know, on these publications, but I, you know, do take a peek and, and kind of see what people say. And, um, and it's tough. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a complex issue. And, um, you know, we talked, kind of touched on, on caster earlier and, um, I don't think there is one.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Easy solution or, or you know, right answer, but um, just yeah, just kind of being now looked at as sort of a voice for, for this, this, you know, gender and sport, you know, topic. Um, and yeah, it's, it's tough. It's, it's

• 1:05:58Rich Roll?

  Well, you're new to suddenly being a mouthpiece for this.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:06:02Rich Roll?

  Right? And so the sense that I get is you're trying to work all this out in real time.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:06:07Rich Roll?

  But everyone's looking to you now to have an opinion about these things. And you know, I just know as somebody who has a very, you know, arms length relationship with kind of what's going on in this world. Um, I have knee jerk reactions where it seems very black and white.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:24Rich Roll?

  And even in preparing to talk to you today, like I really did some research into this world. And the more that I learn, the more I realized it is much more complex and nuanced than even I originally imagined. And I thought that I had a pretty good grip on it.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's, I think to your point, I have been kind of figuring this out as I go. And I don't have an official stance on, you know, I'm, I'm very much still formulating like, cause all of this is still extremely new to me. I'm, like I said, I'm, I'm still doing your research. I'm still figuring out about myself and, and what this all means. And, um, and like you said, people kind of, you know, want me to have a stance on it and, and stand for something. And, and it's tough because I'm just, I'm not there yet. And I'm, you know, I'm still figuring it out. And I think I kind of just go back to the idea of, you know, inclusion. And at the end of the day, that's, that's the

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  direction I think that we as a society are going. Um, we as, you know, athletes and the sports world in general are going, um, you're starting to see way more inclusion. And I think, um, just sort of bending the way that we look at gender and, and, and how we, you know, it's not black or white. It's very much a spectrum and there's a lot of gray area. But with that, it's, it is a complex issue and it is something that I think both sides are going to have to make compromises in the, in the short term at least.

• 1:07:49Rich Roll?

  It's super difficult. Like basically what it is, is

• 1:07:55Rich Roll?

  A human rights issue that is butting up against the interest of fairness in sport. And it's a gender identity issue that is also butting up against traditional ideas of fairness in sport and how you reconcile all of these things to create, you know, not an even playing field, but a playing field that we can all wrap our heads around that seems at least fair. Yeah, right. There is no good immediate solution. And it's interesting that you're this, you know, this, this coming out, you know, July 8th, when this video comes out, I mean, it's right on the heels of May 9th with this big meet where, where, you know, how do you say her last name? Semenya. Semenya.

• 1:08:38Rich Roll?

  Castor Semenya, you know, competed at this event and is really challenging these new regulations and rules in track and field that are requiring her to lower her testosterone. And, you know, from what I understand, her medical records are sealed, but there's, there's been leaks and the kind of consensus is that, you know, she's somewhere on the intersex spectrum. Correct. I mean, if you look at pictures of her, it's not a leap. Right. You know, to imagine that that's the truth. Totally. And so what does that mean as, as, as an athlete who's competing at the highest level? I mean, she won gold in 2012 and 2016 in the 800 meters.

• 1:09:17Rich Roll?

  Going into 2020, now being forced to take testosterone reducing drugs in order to create some, you know, basic fairness in the sport. Like, I don't know that lowering testosterone is the right way. I understand the sentiment behind it. Like, she's a beast, right? And if she is intersex, is that fair? Like, I don't know the answer to that. Yeah. And we don't need to, you know, come to some determination of that right now. We're gonna figure it out right now. But I do appreciate the complexity of it. And I can very much see both sides of this argument. Totally. It is tough. It's, um...

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  Like you said, it's, it's like, first of all, who, who decides that this level of testosterone is like, so someone set this, this level that she's above or whatever, that's the acceptable level. And it's like, okay, some, some person set that that said, okay, well, this is, this is the, the quote unquote norm, or whatever the case is. And she actually just got barred from, I don't know if you saw it, from competing in the world championships. She can't defend, she can't defend her title.

• 1:10:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I saw that, right.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:22Rich Roll?

  There was an appeal, but the appeal was denied.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So I think, like you said, in the short term, there is no, there is no immediate answer. There's, there is, no matter which way you go, one party is going to feel like they're being, you know, given the shaft, or however you want to phrase it. So, and like you said, it's like, is, is the testosterone level, is that what, is that the determining factor as to why she's so great, or why she's so dominant in this sport? Right? So it's like...

• 1:10:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think there's questions around that in terms of how the science breaks down. I know that, you know, whether you're, you're double X or XY is a big factor in how your body processes testosterone. And testosterone isn't the only thing. But I think fundamentally, this is a person who was born a certain way, in the same way that you, you are. And, and her argument is like, look, I, I've been a woman my whole life.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:17Rich Roll?

  This is how I was born. If I'm naturally higher in certain aspects of, of what it means to perform at the highest level.

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:25Rich Roll?

  At what point does that become unfair? And the example that keeps getting raised is like, well, Michael Phelps has this incredible wingspan, and he's got giant feet and hands, and should we make him, you know, get surgery to reduce the size of his hands because he's genetically gifted in a way that other people aren't?

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:41Rich Roll?

  It's trickier with gender and sex, though.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  It is. And that's, someone actually asked me that question yesterday, uninterrupted. And this is a, a deeper topic that we don't have to go into. But I do think it is because she is female, and the way we, not we, but society views strong dominant females. I think you look at the way, I brought this up yesterday, the way Megan Rapinoe has been treated and, and how she's been labeled, you know, she goes and celebrates the goal, and she's like, oh, she's so egotistical, she's so arrogant. And it's like, her male counterpart goes and does that. Cristiano Ronaldo goes and celebrates the goal, and everyone's...

• 1:12:19Rich Roll?

  Greatest thing ever.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. So it's like, why is there this double standard?

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  So

• 1:12:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, if there was a male athlete who just had crazy high levels of testosterone,

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  Just naturally?

• 1:12:30Rich Roll?

  Nobody would say, well, that guy needs to take, needs to lower his testosterone.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  He needs to go take some estrogen. Like, it would be celebrated, like, oh, he's such, you know, he's such a, uh, uh, yeah, like specimen.

• 1:12:42Rich Roll?

  And it's a broader, it's a broader conversation about not just gender and sexuality, but also fairness in sport.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:12:47Rich Roll?

  You know, where do we draw these lines? And, you know, we all want, we all want some semblance of fairness, but, um, but what does that look like? And what does that mean? And it breaks down when we get into this terrain. There was a really great episode of Malcolm Gladwell's podcast, Revisionist History, where he talked about this with respect to two pitchers, baseball pitchers, one who, I'm forgetting their names, I should have known those, but like, one who had a surgery to repair, um, whatever the rotator cuff or whatever it is. I know, I'm totally mis recalling this, but, um, that's totally fine.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:23Rich Roll?

  And he went back to normal. And the other pitcher who got some, it was steroids or some kind of, you know, injections that were just used for medical purposes to kind of enhance the healing process. So he could get back on the mound and that person became a pariah.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:13:38Rich Roll?

  You know, so we have, we, and, and that's, you know, this is, this is two like dudes.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:44Rich Roll?

  In Major League Baseball. Now imagine intersex and, you know, all of these other issues that get thrown in there and all of our biases and historically how we think about these things. It just becomes like almost impossible to have a cogent discussion about it.

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. I, I kind of go back to the idea of how are we evolving as humans? And I, I attribute a lot of my athleticism, obviously genetics, but also having an older brother and having, you know, playing against him and him roughing me up and having to raise my game to meet his level. So it's like, and this is another example, it's like,

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Right now in the WNBA, there aren't a ton of women who are dunking basketball at 10 feet, right? So I've, you know, there's on Twitter or whatever, there's in the past, there's been discussions, well, should we lower the hoops to eight feet to make the game a little more exciting? Or how should we handle that? And it's like, well, what happens if we lower the hoop to eight feet? We're not going, we're not going to, you know, continue as evolve, continue to evolve as humans. Someday at 10 feet, there's going to be women who are throwing down the basketball all the time. I don't know how far into the future that is, but that's going to be, because you set a, a level, we will meet it. So it's like, what are we saying if we don't allow Castor or anyone who's intersex to compete?

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  If they identify as female and they were born female, if we bar them, I think we're, we're doing the greater, you know, good a disservice. I think allowing these people to compete, well, maybe not tomorrow or in a year or two, but maybe five, 10 years down the road, it is going to raise the level of, of competition, in my opinion.

• 1:15:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's hard, man. Because I, I can easily see the other side.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:15:30Rich Roll?

  If I was, if I was an Olympic 800 meter female runner and I see Castor, I'm like, I can't compete with that. That person is, is fundamentally different from me. And should be characterized as such.

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  There's, there's, there's components of her that no matter how hard I work, no matter what I do, I will not be able to compete.

• 1:15:52Rich Roll?

  And all you have to do is look at the times. Like, they're so much better.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And in track especially, it's like, like, her numbers are like astronomical, like in terms of like distances of, of the, you know, what she wins by is, you know, in track terms.

• 1:16:06Rich Roll?

  I think in that meet in May, she beat the American record holder by like four or five seconds or something.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  Which is insane. You know, it's like.

• 1:16:14Rich Roll?

  So, but then you looking back on your career as a golfer, like, there has to be some aspect of you that, you know, has to own the fact that you had an advantage. There's some benefit to being wired the way that you're wired that, that allowed you to be successful.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And I think like the, how far I hit the golf ball is, is definitely, is definitely one thing I'd easily. The longest hitter on probably any tour if I were to go out right now. And what's funny about that is it's great. It's great to hit the ball, you know, really far. It can also be a great detriment. Symmetra Tour typically plays golf courses that are shorter and tighter, which for someone that hits the ball a long way is an advantage. It's actually, you know, I'm so many times I would only hit driver one or two times during a round. I'd, you know, constantly be hitting like two iron off the tee or three wood and essentially taking my greatest weapon out of my bag.

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  Because I'm not going to hit driver on a, on a hole that's short and narrow because the chances that I hit in the trees are, you know, pretty high. So not to say that this is like a disadvantage, but golf is funny in that, that something that can be viewed as a huge advantage can also be a disadvantage. But absolutely, they're looking at the way I was born and how it put me in a place that other women that I was competing against simply wouldn't be able to get to, no matter what they did. That's an advantage and that's something that, yeah, I do have to accept and, and own. And that's a part, you know, that's a whole part of this.

• 1:17:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. How do you think about all these things in the transgendered athlete community? Because then it becomes even harder to wrap your head around.

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, I think there has been a couple of cases in the Northeast somewhere where there's been transgender boys who identify as girls have been allowed to compete as girls in track meets. And you want to talk about a sticky subject that, um, I think, I think it goes back to kind of what I was talking about earlier about how just because I was biologically born this way or genetically born this way.

• 1:18:31Speaker 01

  It doesn't make how I feel internally more legitimate than someone that was born fully functioning male who identifies as a female. I think when you involve sports, it obviously makes it extremely difficult and tricky. But from a human element, it doesn't, it doesn't make my case more legitimate because I have science to back it. It's, I think it's just, it's just about people having compassion for people and understanding that you truly don't know how someone, how they're feeling on the inside or what they're going through. And you, you need to respect that. But yeah, it's, it's, it's a difficult subject.

• 1:19:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it really is. I mean, this is, this is a situation in which I really wanna fully understand all aspects of this debate and this argument. And maybe it is because I'm 52 years old and grew up in a different time. But to me, I look at the clear cut cases like a transgender woman who is in combat sports or powerlifting. And those seem to be, you know, people who have undebatable advantages.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:19:42Rich Roll?

  And it's odd to me that we're debating this at all, but then, you know, I watched a little mini documentary on Vice about this powerlifting transgendered woman named J.C. And, you know, she looks at it as a human rights issue. And she feels like she has met all of the sort of regulations that she was supposed to meet and took her testosterone reducing drugs and, you know, all the like, and is adamant that she should be allowed to compete. And I have a, it's a harder leap for me to see her point of view than it is for me to go, look, if you, if you were born and raised male and you developed, you know, a certain

• 1:20:24Rich Roll?

  bone density and musculature and all of that, and then you, you transition to female, and then you go into the boxing ring or the, the cage and you're in an MMA fight, like, it, it's, it almost seems unsafe and, and, and certainly unfair.

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I think for me, it's, it's definitely a case of seeing both sides to it. I think you have to look at it from, from both points of view and imagine, imagine yourself as, you know, a fully functioning female.

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  You know, growing up and what that entails, how your body develops and the physical disadvantage you have compared to a fully functioning male. You grow up your whole life, you do all these things, you reach the top level, you know, in MMA and all of a sudden you're standing, you know, in the ring with someone who was born fully male and transitioned to female. From that person's point of view, I, yeah, I'd feel, I'd probably feel a certain way about it. I think because these rules and regulations are in place and requirements that, okay, if you're a male and you want to transition and compete as a female, this is, this is what has to happen. This is, these are the steps you

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  have to take. I mean, that's, it's the best they can do right now, right? And I, I just don't, it's, it's so hard to come to a definitive conclusion on, on who's right, who's wrong, what's, what's the best way to go about this. And kind of like what I said earlier was, both sides are going to have to compromise. And in, in this idea that inclusion has to be the number one priority and everyone, no matter how you're born, how you feel, what you identify as, there is a place for you to compete at the highest level in, in whatever, in whatever avenue you go down.

• 1:22:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, participation in sports is, you know, a human right.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:18Rich Roll?

  And I, I certainly don't want to be somebody who would prevent or bar anyone from, you know, pursuing their love of sport. And I think, you know, it's going to be interesting to kind of watch this unfold over time. And I would say to anybody who's listening to this, who is transgendered or intersex or has a very different point of view on this.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:40Rich Roll?

  I'm open and willing to learn. Like, my ideas on this are evolving.

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:22:45Rich Roll?

  Like, it's just kind of where I'm at right now, as somebody who's barely glanced at this issue. So I don't want to assert that, like, I have a firm grip on this and that, you know, I have an ironclad.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:54Rich Roll?

  You know, opinion. Like, I, I'm, I'm open and I want to learn more.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  That's, and that's like, that's the most important thing is that, you know, people, and that's, that's what's wrong with our society in general, is people just like, nope, this is the way it is, is how I feel about it, and I'm not changing my mind. It's like, if everyone could just have an open mind and be open to, you know, different possibilities.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  We would get, we'd make a lot more progress than, than, than we do. The problem is, I think the overwhelming majority of people are, you know, closed minded and aren't willing to, to shift their, um, the way they view things or the way they feel about something because of their experience in, in growing up or, or whatever the case is. And, um, but I totally agree. I think, um, as long as people have an open mind, we can, we can eventually, I don't know when, but we will eventually get to a common ground where, where everyone feels seen and, and things are as, as fair as, as they can be. So, I don't know.

• 1:23:48Rich Roll?

  Well, here we are, you're six weeks out from, you know, sharing this publicly. Uh, I mean, you reached out to me, like you, you're wanting to tell this story and to share it. So, I can't help but presume that, that there's some aspect of you that wants to be, you know, if not a role model, like somebody who is in this conversation, you know, in service to other people who are, you know, struggling quietly with what you had to go through.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think I look back to myself as a 12 year old and, and, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't change how this, how everything played out from when I found out until, until this moment, sitting here with you. Um, but I do think that a big motivation for me in telling this story and, and coming on, you know, this podcast and, and sharing it in other, in other areas is to be a voice for, for kids, um, or, or adults who are struggling with this or struggling with any sort of identity or whatever they're going through. And that, um, there is a platform for you to be seen and to be heard and, and how you're born and how you feel is validated and it is legitimized. And,

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  um, and just, you know, so much of life is just finding commonalities with people and being able to relate. And I remember the first time I, I met up with, um, someone for the first time, knowing that they were intersex going into this meeting. Um, it was something I'll never forget. It was the most incredible experience for the first time, getting to relate to someone in person that has gone through the exact same things. Um, As me, so kind of taking that and putting it on a platform that obviously I can't meet every single intersex person to ever exist. So, and not every intersex person to ever exist will see this story. But the more that I can share it and put light on it, hopefully the more corners of the world it'll reach. And you don't have to be intersex to relate

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  to my story. I think, I think everyone is going through something internally that, you know, they, or something that they feel on the inside that they don't feel like they can share, or, you know, talk about, or, or identify with. This is, this story is for them as well. And whatever you're feeling on the inside, it's, you know, it needs to be respected, and it needs to be addressed. And you, you will always have people in your life that are, that are willing to sit down and hear you. So.

• 1:26:09Rich Roll?

  What is the one thing that you, you know, want that person to hear? Who, you know, who is dealing with this quietly?

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  I think what I would have wanted to hear is that the way you're born is, is perfect. You're perfect just the way you are. We live in a society that, that tells us there's, there's two genders, and there's, there's roles within those genders. And, you know, I, I think, forget about it. Don't, don't worry about it. You're unique. You're perfect. And just own it. I think if someone would have told me that at 12 years old, when I had just found out, I think that would have made a pretty profound impact on me. Maybe not immediately, but in time. And I think I would have been in a place where I kind of could have dealt with this before I turned 30. But, yeah, I just think that

• 1:27:00Speaker 01

  no matter what, no matter what your genetic makeup is, no matter how you were born, you're, you're perfect just the way you are.

• 1:27:06Rich Roll?

  Well, it's interesting times right now.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:09Rich Roll?

  Because now, we are talking about this in a way we never have historically. You know, the subject of transgender rights is, you know, first, it's front, front and center. More and more people are coming out, and there's a broadening of understanding on these issues. Why do you think this is happening now? It's not like these people didn't exist.

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:27:34Rich Roll?

  This has been going on.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:36Rich Roll?

  The whole time. But it's only now that we're really dealing with it.

• 1:27:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think, you know, the world. Around us is getting smaller because of, you know, social media and people are as are as close and as able to communicate as quickly as ever. And I think people are are yearning for that, that sense of community and that sense of identifying with other people that are like minded. And I think that's, that's the single driving force behind this. And it's funny because the person that kind of changed my, you know, kind of helped me flip my paradigm, you know, I, it was like a, you know, interpersonal connection, but people are, you know, reaching out to all corners of the earth, trying to find people that are

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  like them or like minded. And, you know, you go back even, even 10 years ago, 15 years ago, people weren't as connected as they are to this day. So I think, you know, people are finding out that, oh, there are a lot of people out there that think like me, that are like me. Like, we deserve to be, we deserve to be seen. We deserve to be heard. And I think you're seeing people kind of grow that, that confidence and that, that self, that that sense of, you know, I, I want to put myself out there. And I think that's, you know, it's a beautiful thing. And I hope that it only continues. And I think it will only continue.

• 1:28:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, we need more role models and, and people that are willing to step out, you know, into the, into the spotlight and kind of own this in a public way. And we are seeing that slowly. Like, it's amazing. I don't know if you watch Billions, but

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  No, I don't.

• 1:29:08Rich Roll?

  Kate Dillon, you know, playing Taylor on that show. I mean,

• 1:29:13Rich Roll?

  their performance in that program is, it's really a game changer. It's really quite something because you can't take your eyes off them. Like, the performance is incredible. There's so much charisma and it's such a bold character in the show, a pivotal character. And to see that like writ large in a very prominent, well-received television show is, is not a small thing. And I think we're going to start seeing more and more of that.

• 1:29:39Speaker 01

  That's kind of my hope. It's like, there's, I don't, in a major, you know, film, there's never been an intersex character, which when that happens will be the coolest thing ever. Like, I think, just, just thinking about Everyone that will see that and come to at least get a elementary understanding of what being intersex is, that's, that's going to be a huge day. And like you said, it is coming. I think we're, we're, you know, hurling down this road of, of inclusion and shedding light on, on all these things that our generations, generations past have, you know, put under the rug. So.

• 1:30:15Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, education is everything.

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:30:17Rich Roll?

  And it's like, look, you know, intersex is a new thing for a lot of people. It was for me.

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:23Rich Roll?

  And, and it is important to not conflate it with the transgendered community. It is a different thing. I mean, there's obviously overlap in that Venn diagram, but it's its own distinct thing. What do you think people most misunderstand about you and who you are and what you stand for?

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  That's a really good question. Um, I think, I think people probably, like, I'm sitting here, in my entire life, I've just felt normal. Like, I just feel normal. I just feel like a human. I just feel just how I am. And I think people, in the way that some of the things that they've said, they, they almost come at it from the standpoint of, wow, you must feel like an alien or something. You must feel like really different. Or, and I do in some areas, but I do just, like, I think that's, any topic in life is, you know, whether you're a different race, or a different gender, or whatever, is you just feel you and you just feel human and normal. And I think people, from what I've, you know,

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  in conversations I've had, I think people think, I feel like an alien or something, like, from a different planet or something. But I don't, I just, I just feel like Kendra, I just feel normal. And I think people don't understand that. They have this preconceived, like, yeah, you must feel really different. And it's like, no, I just, I'm just Kendra, I just, you know.

• 1:31:43Rich Roll?

  Well, I would imagine you feel better now, like, more comfortable in your own skin now, because you've owned this completely.

• 1:31:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:51Rich Roll?

  You've, you know, communicated with your loved ones, and now it's a public thing, and you're standing in that, right? So there's none of that dissonance, and, you know, there's no longer a secret that's like eroding, you know, your.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:32:04Rich Roll?

  Your insides and all of that. Like, I, I would imagine there's a sense of freedom that even, you know, a couple of years ago, you couldn't access.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was just total liberation. That's the best way I can explain it. It's, it's amazing, just in hindsight, looking back and seeing. How in every aspect of my life, this affected me and in areas that I didn't even realize. I mean, every single aspect of my life, this, this thing was looming over me and I got really good at blocking it out and pretending it didn't exist, but subconsciously, of course, you always know that it's there and I always just had like this, this anxiety about it, like this, this, this cloud or that I was, and I was like this, I was hiding something and, and it was almost not something that I was, you know, 24/7, uh, every single day,

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  uh, you know, all parts of the day aware of, it was, you know, kind of subconscious, but, and, and that's just disappeared. It's just, it's gone. And that is like, everyone deserves that. And like I said, there's varying degrees of what people are going through, but I'm sure everyone has some sort of element to something they're going through that if it, if they addressed it and let it be free, they would feel this way and everyone deserves to feel this way. And it's just, it's almost like an out of body experience. So, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty, it's, it's pretty great. And I, I don't want everyone to feel this way. So.

• 1:33:31Rich Roll?

  I have to ask you, I, I want to be like respectful of boundaries and I don't want to be insensitive, but I'm just curious.

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  No boundaries here.

• 1:33:37Rich Roll?

  Like this might seem frivolous, but I'm interested in how you figure out how you wanna, um, portray yourself to the world. Like, do I wear a dress? Like you're wearing a black t-shirt now, but you're wearing earrings. You know, it's like, there's this mix. Like, or, or maybe like, do you play around with that? Like, how do you figure out what your aesthetic is? Cause this is the forward facing you. This is how the world receives you. So I would imagine there's some intention and thought that goes into that.

• 1:34:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, very, what you're, what I'm wearing, I'm wearing cons, black jeans and a black shirt. This is pretty much all I wear. Uh, I wear, I wear.

• 1:34:14Rich Roll?

  You and me both.

• 1:34:17Speaker 01

  See, exactly. And it's like, that's cool.

• 1:34:18Rich Roll?

  I've got like ten black t-shirts and that's pretty much what I wear.

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's, yeah, and that's something that we can, we have a commonality and we can relate to, which is cool. Like regardless of gender, you know, so, um, yeah, just kinda non, not that I identify as non-binary or whatever. Let me just say, like, for me personally, like, I don't feel strongly about, like, that. Like, I'm not like, you know, I've so many times people have been like, okay, what are your pronouns? And I'm like, for me personally, I just, I, yeah, she, her, of course, but like, I don't know. I don't feel really strongly about it and I don't know what that means or whatever. I just.

• 1:34:54Rich Roll?

  Do you feel pressure, like you have to, you have to be, uh, like a social justice warrior in a way that doesn't feel authentic to you?

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  Exactly. Couldn't have said it better. Um, all, all I can do is, in, in trying to be authentic is, is speak to how I feel. And, um, I guess it's like not, like, because my whole life I was trying so hard to put myself in a box. I think that's a part of it that I now I'm like, I don't wanna be put in a box. I don't, like, I would never, I would never identify as non-binary and, and, and be referred to as they or, you know, whatever. Um, nor would I wanna be called he, you know, um, but.

• 1:35:39Rich Roll?

  Unless you're prerogative. That's the whole point. You get to choose.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. And if people feel strongly about that and they wanna, and they have their pronouns, I think that's awesome. Whatever, whatever is authentic to you, do it. That's, that's my message really. Just, just be authentic, whatever that looks like. And so like for me, authentic is, is skinny jeans, black tee and some cons. That's, and if I could wear that the rest of my life, I'll, I'll be happy. So.

• 1:36:06Rich Roll?

  Well, you can.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's a free world, right? So that's, that's, that's the goal.

• 1:36:11Rich Roll?

  So where do you go from here? You're not playing golf anymore. I think you, you mentioned before we started the podcast that you're doing something with Nike Golf now.

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So I just accepted a position with Nike Golf. Last, last week, it's not actually fully official, but kind of is. So hopefully, hopefully.

• 1:36:29Rich Roll?

  What is that doing what?

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  So it's a brand manager role and it's, it's kind of a unique role. In that I think, you know, they're kind of looking to bring someone on that has a different perspective of the golf industry, the golf consumer, someone that has played at a high level. And I haven't, you know, I'm not super well versed in the corporate world. I just never have been. And my, my skill set is sports and I have a creative background as well. And I think they were kind of looking for someone to come in and bring in and offer a different perspective and point of view. And that doesn't have that, that history of that, that corporate background. So that's kind of what.

• 1:37:09Rich Roll?

  You have like some background in photography and filmmaking and like a branding background as well.

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that was, you know, that was something that was enticing to them as well. And, and I didn't get this opportunity because of the story, but I think, and that was kind of expressed to me that that is something that makes my, my profile unique as well. And so I think they're just kind of looking for, for someone to come in and shake things up and, and offer something, something different. So I'm really excited about it. And like I said, I was a Nike athlete when I was on tour. I, I played when they were still making golf clubs, played Nike clubs in, in college and went to the U of O, which is of course where it started. And so I've kind of been, kind of been hand in hand with, with Nike for my whole life. So.

• 1:37:51Rich Roll?

  And, and how do you think about this, you know, evolving role as you as this sort of mouthpiece spokesperson?

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:58Rich Roll?

  You know, role model. I would imagine you're getting opportunities. People are wanting you to come and speak and.

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's something that's on my radar.

• 1:38:09Speaker 01

  Like I s- like, it's tough for me because I think, yeah, I think you made this point earlier was, people are looking to me to have an opinion, have an official stance and feel very strongly, you know, very much one way, but in a funny way, it's like, I'm almost coming at it from the standpoint of, I don't necessarily want to be black and white on this issue because we live in a, in a, in a world where there is so much gray area and maybe that's kind of a cop out.

• 1:38:35Rich Roll?

  But thematically, no, it's perfect because you're not like, your whole thing is like defying this duality.

• 1:38:41Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:38:41Rich Roll?

  Like in being non-binary, like, so how could you be binary on the issue?

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:38:46Rich Roll?

  Like it's part and parcel of your.

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  It is, I know. There are so many like metaphors and just like contradictions.

• 1:38:51Rich Roll?

  You are literally gray, so your perspective is gray.

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I couldn't have said it any better.

• 1:38:56Rich Roll?

  Well, that doesn't work for people though. They want you to like, we want you to come and speak, but here's the line we want you to toe and

• 1:39:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:39:01Rich Roll?

  Uh, that's kind of, you know, how culture is functioning right now in a, in a, in a not good way.

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. Um, and that, so that's, yeah, going forward, I think I do want to be someone that is looked to, to

• 1:39:18Speaker 01

  offer a pers- offer a perspective on what I've been through in my, my life. And, and like I said, I think I obviously want people who were born intersex that may be going through something similar that I did to look at the story and, and find solace and, and feel validated. I also wanted to relate to people who are just going through anything in general that they feel like they can't talk about or can't live out. Um, so in turn, I mean, you're not gonna, you're not gonna see me in rallies, you know, protesting in front of courthouses and stuff like that. That's just not who I am, you know, to my core, like from a standpoint of being authentic. Um, but my whole thing is just, just, just inclusion and I will continue to, continue, continue to talk about inclusion

• 1:40:01Speaker 01

  wherever this takes me and, and whatever platform I have. And, um, I just, inclusion and compassion, that's, that's really the, the two main things for me. So.

• 1:40:10Rich Roll?

  And how's the dating going?

• 1:40:13Rich Roll?

  Come on, I have to ask.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  Oh my goodness.

• 1:40:17Rich Roll?

  You don't have to answer.

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  Wow, on the spot.

• 1:40:21Rich Roll?

  You could just say fine, or not, or whatever.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  Not well. No, I'll just be honest. I mean, I think my life has been, has been crazy in the last, in the last six weeks and, and it, you know, basically when this process started back in December, I really just secluded myself from the world.

• 1:40:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:41Speaker 01

  Daniel can probably talk to me, you know, just ghosting and just not being available to hang out. And it was such a, it was such a weird time going from December until July from when it came out, just almost feeling like I, like, because this was going on and I was going to be hanging out with people that I wanted to tell, but I couldn't, or didn't know if I should. I did kind of seclude myself and I think a lot of this in coming out in, in the last few weeks and moving forward here in the, in the near future is, you know, opening myself to, to people, whether it's friendship, relationship, whatever. Of course I want that. I think, you know, everyone, everyone wants that. But, and I think when you do open yourself

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  to that, the universe kind of, you know, provides that. And so that's, that's what I'm hoping at least. That's what I tell myself.

• 1:41:30Rich Roll?

  Well, I'm excited for what's to become with you. I think your, your story is super powerful. It's important. It was very courageous of you to own it and come out in the way that you did. And I really appreciate you sharing it with me today. And I think it's going to be a beacon of light and, and hope for a lot of people out there. So in closing, are there any resources that come to mind? Like if somebody's listening to this and, and they're relating to you, but they feel alone, like, are there therapeutic resources? Are there certain websites that you know of that I can put in the, in the show notes or that you can mention now where people can go to learn more?

• 1:42:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you just, if you use Google interact, that's, that's a huge resource that was actually, I was made aware of a few months ago, but in, in the story coming out, people from interact reached out and said, hey, like, Just want to introduce ourselves. Like, we have, uh, we have cells, you know, kind of all over the country. We have a cell in Portland that, you know, a community where you can reach out and you can, you know, connect with other intersex people. Um, I think that's, that's the, the one for sure. Uh, so you can just Google that, that'll kind of, you know, find your, wherever you're located, should have, should have resources there to provide. So.

• 1:42:41Rich Roll?

  And if people want to connect with you, what's the best way?

• 1:42:43Speaker 01

  Uh, just Instagram, Twitter, at Kendra underscore Lit. So.

• 1:42:47Rich Roll?

  L I T T.

• 1:42:48Speaker 01

  L I T T. Yeah. Two Ts.

• 1:42:49Rich Roll?

  There's, there's a few Kendra Littles out there.

• 1:42:52Speaker 01

  Okay. Real, real.

• 1:42:53Rich Roll?

  There's like a software engineer and there's a designer.

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  Funny story.

• 1:42:56Rich Roll?

  It pops up when you Google you.

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  Kendra Little, another Kendra Little, reached out to me after she saw my story and she was like, hey, never heard of you. This story's amazing, whatever. I was like, oh, cool. Two weeks later, I'm looking at her Twitter profile again. She lives in Portland.

• 1:43:11Rich Roll?

  No way.

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  Yes. I was like, I tweeted her, I was like, wait, did, how did I miss that you're in Portland as well? So I, I don't know. Do you know many Kendras in your life?

• 1:43:19Rich Roll?

  No, I don't know.

• 1:43:20Speaker 01

  Like, let alone Kendra Little?

• 1:43:22Rich Roll?

  That is pretty crazy.

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  So she's in Portland. So maybe we're talking about getting coffee. So.

• 1:43:26Rich Roll?

  All right. Good. Your folks okay?

• 1:43:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:28Rich Roll?

  They're happy?

• 1:43:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're great. Yeah. They're actually moving back down to Eugene, which is, which obviously where I grew up and my sister just is popping out babies. So my mom's going to be in heaven down there helping raise those. So, um, so yeah, every, everything's, everything's moving in a positive direction. So.

• 1:43:43Rich Roll?

  Cool. Well, uh, everybody listening, check out the video, the undefeated video. I'll put a link in the show notes about it, or uninterrupted. Why did I say undefeated? Uninterrupted. Undefeated is a sneaker store. Uninterrupted. I'll put the link in the show notes to that. Everybody should watch that and, uh, come back and talk to me again sometime.

• 1:44:01Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for having me on. Super grateful.

• 1:44:02Rich Roll?

  Appreciate it. How you feel? You feel okay?

• 1:44:04Speaker 01

  Awesome. Good. Amazing.

• 1:44:05Rich Roll?

  We did it, right?

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  We did it.

• 1:44:06Rich Roll?

  It was cool.

• 1:44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:07Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:44:07Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:44:12Rich Roll?

  What an incredible, beautiful being you are, Kendra. Thank you for trusting me with helping tell your story. I hope that you guys enjoyed that, were touched by that. I think it's really powerful. Uh, for more on Kendra, please check out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. Watch Becoming More. I'll put a link up to that as well. Her. Little mini-doc produced by Uninterrupted. And let her know how this one landed for you by sharing your thoughts with her directly on Twitter and Instagram @Kendra underscore Litt, L-I-T-T. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on the program on Apple Podcasts. That really helps with discovery, getting new people on board with what we're doing here. Tell your friends about your favorite episode, share the show on social media, subscribe

• 1:44:56Rich Roll?

  to my YouTube channel, find the show and subscribe on Spotify, Google Podcasts, wherever you listen to this, and you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for their video genius. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Ali Rogers for portraits. DK for advertiser relationships. And as always, theme music by Analemma. Appreciate all of you guys. I don't take your attention for granted. I can't do this without you. So, thank you for all the love and I will see you back here next week with our Best of 2019.

• 1:45:36Rich Roll?

  Until then, be you, because we all need all of you to be more of who you truly are. Peace. Bye.