Raft of Passion - Snap Classic

Eleven attractive, young people set sail across the Atlantic in a raft as part of a radical group experiment. And a boy falls in love with a girl… and her fungus. STORIES Vintage Spirit Did you ever think that you missed a moment of history? A moment you were made for? Glynn explores an era that had a spark. Produced by Pat Mesiti-Miller. Raft of Passion Mary needed to get away from her husband. A handsome stranger offered her a way out. All she had to do was participate in the strangest group experiment of all time. Thank you, Mary Gidley, for sharing your story with Snap. Mary just released a memoir titled Point to Point https://www.amazon.com/Point-meanderings-musings-life-ebook/dp/B07XPFY8JL. You can learn more about the Acali experiment in the incredible documentary The Raft https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_raft. Hear from Mary and other participants as they relive the experiment on a life-size recreation of the raft. The Raft opened in theaters in the U. S. in 2019 and begins streaming on digital platforms in the U. S. on May 19, 2020. Special thanks to director Marcus Lindeen. Produced by John Fecile, original score by Leon Morimoto, artwork by: Sanaa Khan https://sanaakhan.com/. Linda, Loretta, and Me What happens when boy meets girl and fungus? This is a story about love and spores, from one of our favorite podcasts,Love Me https://www.cbc.ca/radio/loveme. Be sure to check out producer Jonathan Zenti’s podcast, Meat http://www.meatpodcast.com/. Produced by Mira Burt-Wintonick, Cristal Duhaime, and Jonathan Zenti. Snap Classic - Season 16 - Episode 33 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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

• 0:08Glynn Washington?

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• 1:31Glynn Washington?

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• 2:16Glynn Washington?

  It's the best way to support the show.

• 2:33Glynn Washington?

  Okay, so I know the past has been glorified, hyped up and all that, I know this. But did you ever think that maybe you missed your moment of history? A moment you were made for? I mean, back in the day, Nixon actually called a nerdy college professor, a man of letters, a scholar. He called him "the most dangerous man in America." Big it, the guy just said stuff. He said, "Turn on, tune in, drop out," and people lost their stuff. Leary also said that women who seek to be equal to men, they lack ambition. Same time, Black Panthers, they refused to cower.

• 3:15Glynn Washington?

  Instead, they went up to the California State Capitol waving rifles and shotguns around the place. Folk converged on the Woodstock Music Festival and forgot to set up any toilets. The Summer of Love, almost 100,000 people descended on San Francisco. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, war protests, remember those? Remember those actual war protests? Freedom marches. Real life, unironic hippies walking around doing unironic hippie stuff. Say what you will about the era, I didn't live it. But it seems like they had a spark, a fire, a hope that things could be different than what they are.

• 3:59Glynn Washington?

  So today, we uncork a little bit of vintage spirit. We slide into those old bell bottoms. Snap Judgment proudly presents "Raft of Passion." A single story about a very special journey. My name is Lynn Washington. Rise up, my brothers and sisters. Rise up! Because you're listening to Snap Judgment.

• 4:38Glynn Washington?

  Now then, is there ever a way you could actually turn on, tune in and drop out, get rid of your phone, email, simply drift out to sea? We begin, not exactly in the 60s, but close enough to not make any difference. And because of real life, this episode does contain descriptions of domestic abuse and sexual situations that may not be appropriate for younger listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Snap judgment.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  So, um, one night, do you want me to tell that one night? Or are you more?

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, is it hard for you to talk about?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Well, a little bit, but not, you know.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  The night her marriage came to an end, Mary was aboard her sailboat, the Yo Ho Ho.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  So, anyway, I'm anchored out on the boat by myself and this friend of mine, she got somebody to row her out to the boat. We sat and had some coffee and then we talked about things. She talked about her marriage and then I was telling her about my marriage and that I was thinking I needed to get a divorce.

• 5:53Speaker 03

  Her husband Cass, a fisherman, was watching their three kids that night. They'd met at a bar when she was 22 and he was 48. And for over a decade, they'd sailed together from port to port, up and down the West Coast.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  I got caught up in him and I got caught up in his life. I liked the life of a fisherman. I liked, I didn't want a nine to five job ever in my life, never.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  He was like so free and so outspoken and so, what would I say, charismatic. So I was to the point where I would follow him almost anywhere.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  But this was the problem.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  I was no longer happy just following his ideas or his plans. I think I could not get something going for myself. I really wanted to be doing my own thing.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  Mary had been having an affair and she told her friend that night on the Yo Ho Ho.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  There was another man in my life, and I thought there was another woman in his life.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  We were talking, just letting it all out. And all of a sudden, I hear

• 7:12Speaker 01

  footsteps on the side of the Yo Ho Ho. And it was Cass.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Right away, I was thinking, how long has he been on deck? How much has he heard?

• 7:28Speaker 03

  Cass took Mary's friend ashore, while Mary waited below deck until she heard his footsteps again.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  I was thinking, I really might need some protection.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  I wish I wasn't on the boat out here in the middle of the bay.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  He came back to the boat, and right away, he was like,

• 7:59Speaker 01

  overheard everything that we had talked about. He heard that there was this other man in my life, and he was like, I want to know who that person is. I want to kill him.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Then he started pouring himself some scotch, which is his favorite drink. And he's like drinking scotch.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  It wasn't the first time he'd hurt her. But that night, it felt different.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  He got so that he was like grabbing me. And he started grabbing me around the throat. And he started strangling me. And I thought, you know, he's going to kill me. I had a feeling, this is it.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  When he poured himself some more to drink, I managed to get up. And there was a table in the middle of the Yo Ho Ho. It was like a drop-leaf table. So I started around the table. But then he started around to get me. And so we went around the table like two or three times. He couldn't quite get me. And then I ran up the companionway, up to the deck of the boat. And I jumped in that skiff that he'd come out in.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  I was trying to untie the lines to get the skiff loose so I could row ashore. He came up and at this point, he was like really weaving. He was totally, totally drunk. He kind of fell into the skiff with me. And I just happened to have on this huge Indian sweater. And he grabbed the arm of the sweater and I managed to pull my arm free out of the sweater. And then I got up on the boat again. And then I just like ran right to the bow of the boat and I leaped off the boat.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  I am a good swimmer and it's a good thing I was because when you've got your clothes and your shoes on, it's not that easy. And it happened to be very low tide. I will never forget. The low tide, the black mud. Crawl ashore in the mud and I got up on there and I just felt the full of mud.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  That was the point where I filed for divorce. It took that much, you know, before I really made a move. But I was like just glad to be alive at that point. You know, I survived. I survived it.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  Mary made her way to a 7-Eleven and called her sister to come pick her up. The next day, she was back at work.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  I was working at Howard Johnson's as a waitress.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  The manager decided that I would just fold napkins because there was no shape to do anything else.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Kaz came into this banquet room where I was folding the napkins and he accused me of calling the cops. He was so out of it and I was like, this is bad. I was afraid that he would not let me alone. He could attack me again, you know, he could assault me again. He was dangerous.

• 11:23Speaker 03

  Cass left. Mary kept on working. Later, her manager called her into his office to take a phone call.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  We weren't allowed to have personal telephone calls, so he wasn't happy about me getting a call.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  The man on the other end of the line introduced himself as Dr. Santiago Genovez.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  He was an anthropologist, and he had wanted to do this study.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  Mary had no idea what the hell this man was talking about.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  We were going to be a laboratory, but we were going to be on the water. We were going on a raft.

• 12:02Speaker 03

  Something about crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a raft?

• 12:06Speaker 01

  And he wanted me because I had navigation experience. I was like, no, there's no way. I'm not gonna, you know, I can't. I've got three kids. I'm in the middle of a divorce.

• 12:18Speaker 03

  But the next day, Santiago showed up at the restaurant with a briefcase.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  He looked very young, although he was like 48 or 49 at the time. He had a wonderfully handsome face and look about him.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  I keep trying to describe him to people. I'm like, he's kind of like, he's like Antonio Banderas mixed with older Michael Douglas.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say a Michael Douglas type. Yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 03

  He demanded that they sit down.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  He was an overwhelming presence, in a way. It's like, not like the manager at Howard Johnson's. You know, this is a real man.

• 13:04Speaker 03

  Santiago really was an anthropologist from a university in Mexico, and he was attempting a radical group experiment.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  This was in the 70s, early 70s. It wasn't that strange.

• 13:20Speaker 04

  These are not prisoners, and this is not a prison. They are college students.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  A lot of people were doing like psychological experiments and tests.

• 13:30Speaker 05

  The subject denies the evidence of his own eyes and yields to group influence.

• 13:40Speaker 03

  Santiago's experiment required 11 people from all over the world. He wanted to study them as they shared close quarters on a raft drifting across the Atlantic.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  He wanted to see what kind of conflict that would bring about, whether somebody would become violent. How would people of different nationalities and cultures get along together? Because he was interested in peace.

• 14:09Speaker 03

  Then Santiago pulled some blueprints from his briefcase.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  And he opened up the plans and showed me the plans of this boat. And I was like, well, this is a really stable boat. You know, this is not just a raft. This is a boat. Except it's shaped like a raft. It looks like a raft on top. But it had these huge pontoons underneath, steel pontoons, that were going to have tons of water in it so that it would give you stability. It won't sail like a boat, but my God, it's stable. It's not going to sink right away. So it's not a raft. It's like Huck Finn took down the Mississippi River.

• 14:51Speaker 03

  It was still a crazy idea, but also an opportunity for Mary to get away from Cass.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  The timing was pretty perfect. I'll get away. That would be great. The divorce would happen when we were at sea. I'll wake up one morning and then I'll be free. Why not? This will be my own adventure. Yeah. Get to fly to Madrid right away. Okay. And then come back on a raft going about two miles an hour. I realized that when we were over the Atlantic Ocean on a plane. I was like, oh, my God, what have I done?

• 15:43Speaker 03

  At a dock in the Canary Islands off the coast of Spain, Mary saw the raft for the first time.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  It was absolutely funny. It was hilarious.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  It was orange, it was purple, it was yellow, you know, it was totally colorful.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  A Mexican artist had painted fish on the cabin in the middle of the deck. Santiago had named the raft the Akali.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  And Akali was an Aztec word for the house on water.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  The Akali was towed out into the current on May 12, 1973.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  They dropped us and there we are, you know, goodbye to the towboat.

• 16:37Glynn Washington?

  When we return, the raft of passion sails the high seas and things start to heat up. Stay tuned.

• 16:57Speaker 06

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• 18:05Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the raft of passion episode. When last we left, the Akali had just set sail on a journey across the Atlantic. Snap Judgment.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  There were six women and five men on the raft, including Santiago. They were young, they were fit, they were foreign, and Mary was about to be single.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  So, well, I mean, I was 35, you know? So you're still hot-blooded.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  At night, she slept inches away from the others in the raft's plywood cabin.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  There was no air in there. It was really cramped.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  During the days, she'd read books that Santiago had written, the only kind of entertainment allowed on the raft, which Mary didn't mind.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  He was charming. He was smart. He had kind of pulled himself up by his bootstraps. I sort of admired that in him.

• 19:11Speaker 03

  When the heat got to her, she'd go for a swim.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  We'd swim off the raft with a rope attached to us, but then we started seeing sharks behind us, so that ended that.

• 19:28Speaker 03

  They lived on powdered mashed potatoes and hot dogs and the flying fish that occasionally landed on deck.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  If you were on watch or you woke up early, you could go around the raft and collect all these flying fish, and then you could fry them up.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  Mary hadn't been at sea long when her divorce went through. She'd marked the day on her calendar.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  I knew I was going to be free, and then I was free. Now I could start my life over and do what I want to do. It was kind of like a private moment. I didn't say anything to Santiago. I think I told Maria.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  Maria was the captain of the raft, and she was also a participant in Santiago's experiments. Twice a day, she and Mary measured the angles of the sun and stars to figure out where they were.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  So we had sort of a little bond due to that. We worked together.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Maria was blonde, Swedish, quiet. She was the first female sea captain Mary had ever met.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  It was like mind boggling that there was a woman captain. She was really rare.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  The raft's doctor was a woman, too.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Doctors were always men. There were never women doctors. It took me a while before it sort of like dawned on me that this is possible. Women can be doctors. Why not?

• 21:03Speaker 03

  But this was actually part of the experiment. Santiago had placed women in positions of authority on the raft to create tension with the men. He'd also selected people he considered sexually attractive.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  He didn't tell us that right away. He was only studying human behavior at first.

• 21:26Speaker 03

  Santiago believed that violence was a result of sexual frustration. So participants were encouraged to form new intimate relationships on the raft.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  I thought it was a great idea because it gives you more freedom. It's just like having another friend, but it just happens to be that probably sex is part of it, too.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  The European press gave the experiment a nickname.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  They called us the Sex Raft or the Raft of Passion.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  There was plenty of hooking up on the raft. Where would sex even happen on the raft?

• 21:59Speaker 01

  I don't know. We did have like a roof on top.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  Every day Santiago had them fill out surveys with questions like, who would you most like to sleep with on the raft? How many times a week do you masturbate? And then there were the drawings.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  He was just supposed to draw a tree. Depending on how you drew your tree, it showed whether you were becoming more violent or less violent, I guess.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  Like if this has more branches?

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It means you're more open. And if it's like a fir tree, then you're uptight, you're closed in.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  Mary kept her own observations in her diary.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Sunday, May 20. Here we are on the sex raft, sunbathing on the terrace. Tuesday, May 28. Heavy seas, winds of gale force, but felt very much in tune with it all. Thursday, June 7. Amazing how the days go by.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  She shared a kiss with a Japanese man named Esuke. You kissed Esuke?

• 23:13Speaker 01

  I guess I did. I sort of, let me see, where did I read that?

• 23:18Speaker 03

  But she had her eyes on someone else.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  My estimation of Santiago has gone up since yesterday. He's more intelligent and something that I blotted out. I don't know what's happened there.

• 23:31Speaker 03

  Is it fair to say that you had a crush on Santiago?

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Oh, definitely. It must have been very gradual because all I remember is I sort of liked the sight of Santiago on the stern of the raft, you know, sucking in all the good air.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  I am hopelessly in love with this crazy, crazy man, and I feel his spirit moving me.

• 24:03Speaker 03

  Santiago had already slept with one of the other participants, so why not Mary?

• 24:09Speaker 01

  When we were at sea, you know, he got tanner. His hair grew a little longer. He looked a little more like a hippie. He had a beard and he had a little gray in the beard. Then I am drinking my coffee and smoking a cigarette when Santiago appeared, nude. He'd been taking a bath on the poop deck. I am not embarrassed, really.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  Sometimes, Mary and Santiago would share the watch, keeping an eye out for approaching ships as the sun went down.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  If there's no clouds, it's just like the big orange ball and it goes down lower and lower. And then the light spreads out and then it gets a little darker and a little darker until it's totally dark unless there's a moon.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  Sitting at the stern in the moonlight, they would talk. Once Santiago gave her a kiss on the cheek.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  You know, he was interested in my life, where I grew up and how I grew up and that I was sort of an adventure like he was. I felt like I could say what I wanted to say with Santiago because that was part of his whole project was to be able to be honest about your feelings. So I tried to be honest.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  One day Santiago asked them to write an essay about someone else on the raft and Mary chose him.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  It was like how I wanted to be shipwrecked on an island with Santiago by myself.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  All the things that we would do together, how the rest of the world wouldn't matter anymore, how wonderful the sex would be. Well, I was a little embarrassed afterwards, you know, it's kind of like when you say something, you want to take it back, but if you've written it down, you don't have any choice.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  Later Santiago came to speak with Mary, alone.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  And he sort of thanked me, he was very grateful. He was a little surprised, but he also was like, he liked the fact that I liked him, you know? He didn't know quite how to treat me and I didn't quite know how to treat him.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  As the days went on, Mary and her raftmates grew more and more comfortable.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  You got so, if somebody was sitting next to you and you were outside, you didn't have to talk to them. People left you alone. You know, it didn't feel like you had to talk or socialize with everybody all the time.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  This was not good for the experiment. Santiago wanted to study conflict. Everybody was getting along.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  One of the things he always kept saying was, "You're all in your own little shoes." Meaning that we weren't establishing these relationships that he thought we should be establishing. I know he was under a lot of stress. He had to give these reports back, you know, to Mexico City or whatever about what was going on in Iraq. And he didn't really have a lot to report. He wanted something to happen.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  So he decided to make something happen. He began to single out participants and berate them. Mary wrote in her diary...

• 27:42Speaker 01

  "One day Santiago threw a bucket of water, cold saltwater, in my face and it ran down my collar."

• 27:50Speaker 03

  "Once, he slapped her in the face."

• 27:53Speaker 01

  "Santiago likes me. Of this I am deeply relieved and grateful for, despite the fact that Santiago is vain, moody, abusive, demanding, and slightly insane."

• 28:06Speaker 03

  Mary's relationship with Santiago was starting to feel a lot like her relationship with Cass, her ex-husband.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  When I first met Santiago, I was like, "Oh, this is a really charismatic guy again. Oh my God." I didn't think of it in terms of, "Oh, this is the same kind of guy." He had a confidence. He was strong. You know, he had very strong ideas. But Santiago was more, I would say, more manipulative. What bothered me about Santiago was that I was always having hopes that he was going to be really a principled guy. Not to totally beat myself up, but in a way, I'm like, "Wow." You know, like, "There you did it again. You just went along with somebody, you know?

• 28:57Speaker 01

  You didn't say no, you know? I could have said no."

• 29:05Speaker 03

  The raft, bobbing in the current, arrived in the Caribbean in late August. Mary knew it was hurricane season. She wrote in her diary.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  I would hate to go down with the ship unless it was a beautiful, meaningful death in Santiago's arms. Don't like crawling. This comes out of your fantasies, right?

• 29:32Speaker 03

  The weather was picking up, and Maria, the Swedish captain, didn't think it was safe to go on. So Santiago staged a mutiny on his own raft.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  He announced that he was now the captain, that we would supposedly take orders from him and not Maria. To him, we were his children. He liked total control over everybody. Santiago was just a dictator.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  A couple nights later, Mary was having trouble sleeping.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  You know, it's hot because we're in the Caribbean, so we're just sort of tossing and turning. Anyway, somebody comes in and shakes Maria and tells her to wake up.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  Something was happening on deck.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Maria was like, kind of half awake, and then we went out onto the deck, climbed over everybody.

• 30:37Speaker 03

  It wasn't a hurricane. It was a massive freighter, and they were right in its path. Santiago, who was on watch, hadn't spotted it in time.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  The lights would have shown you that they were coming right for us. But he didn't identify that soon enough, and it was dawn. So by the time he did, that ship was really close to us. It's not like they're going to get out of our way. But we can't get out of their way. We're too slow moving.

• 31:06Speaker 03

  Maria shouted at Mary, "Get the emergency flares."

• 31:13Speaker 01

  I was like thinking, "Oh my God, I hope we haven't used all the matches for our cigarettes." Shot up some flares. No response from the ship, it's still coming straight at us. Shooting up the flares on the radio, no response. This can't be happening to us, it's getting bigger and bigger, right, and closer to closer. And there's nothing we can do, we're totally, totally helpless.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  They were about to be crushed, or worse.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  If we were close, we would have been sucked up by their wake and gone down, we would have been underneath that boat. And we would have all drowned, there's no way.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Probably about the last batch of flares, two or three flares, that ship just slowly moved enough, so it just barely went by us.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  It just veered slowly away. I remember Santiago, he had this like megaphone thing, you know, like a cheerleader or whatever, and he yelled at, he goes, "Why don't you watch where you're going?" Screamed at them, and you know, I mean, it was really ridiculous. Everything fell apart, as far as any feelings that I had for him, it all fell apart.

• 32:39Speaker 03

  After 101 days, the raft finally floated its way to Mexico.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  The first thing usually you see, you see birds, you don't, you haven't seen land yet, but you know land is fairly close. It comes on gradually, like it'll be like a shadow in the distance, and then it gets more and more defined, and then all of a sudden, you know it's land. Oh my God, I can't believe it.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  You know, it's kind of like you cut off your ties to land and then when you see it again, it's like, "Oh, my gosh, this is scary. I'm going to have to get back in there, you know, and start functioning like a normal person with a normal life."

• 33:34Speaker 01

  So many boats came to meet us and we had so many people on the shore. Santiago had pulled out a nice, white, sparkling, clean pair of white shorts that he put on. Bikini-type, men, men, bikini-type, you know. And he looks, he's like preened, like a, you know, like a little rooster. He's got his white trunks and the rest of us are like, you know, we just look really, really rough.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Somehow, this seems to be the way my life goes. It's kind of like fate that I'm out here again with this guy, this kind of guy. I sort of like got a little bit like, when are you ever going to learn?

• 34:17Speaker 03

  I think you're being a bit hard on yourself, you know?

• 34:19Speaker 01

  I am?

• 34:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. Because you, I mean, what you're, I mean, what you're describing seems to me to be just part of the human condition. Like, you, you can't really escape from your own life. You can't escape from who you are. Does that feel true to you?

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think some people change.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  You know, if you're aware of your weaknesses, you could try to avoid that weakness later on, you know, try to compensate for it some other way. I'm stubborn. I mean, I'm open to other ideas, but I always feel like I know best. I want to be the dictator of my own life, you know? Maybe Santiago's the same way.

• 35:41Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, Mary Gidling, for sharing your story with the Snap. Now, Mary just released a memoir. It's titled Point to Point. She still loves being on the water, and Mary is still single.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  There's no dog, and there's no man. Sorry.

• 36:00Glynn Washington?

  You can learn more about the Echolite experiment and the incredible documentary. It's called The Raft. You can see a completely different side of the story that you just heard here from Mary and other participants, as they relive this experiment on a life-size recreation of The Raft. We highly recommend it, highly.

• 36:20Speaker 08

  How often do you masturbate? I don't count. With whom have you had sexual contact? Many, many. Everybody.

• 36:31Glynn Washington?

  The Raft opened in theaters in the US last year and started streaming in the US in May on digital platforms everywhere. Special thanks to the director, Marcus Lindin. The original score for that story was by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by John Faseal.

• 36:58Glynn Washington?

  On return, find out what happens when a man falls in love with a woman and her fungus. Stay tuned.

• 37:33Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Wrath of Passion episode. My name is from Washington, Snap is today, we have a special treat for you. See, when our friends over at the podcast love me, when they share stories we listen, and yes, they make stories about love, as you may have guessed, but generally, they don't buy what the boy meets girl thing, no. Now, their love stories come from a completely different place, like our next piece. It's about a man, a woman, and a spore. Snap Judgment. This story does deal with some adult situations. As such, listener discretion is advised.

• 38:22Speaker 09

  It was raining very hard that day.

• 38:26Speaker 10

  I remember her nice, bright, yellow coat.

• 38:30Speaker 09

  I told you that the rain is one of the things that makes the fungus grow. And you said, "Wow, is it growing right now? Can I see it?"

• 38:42Speaker 10

  When I met Linda, I felt something stirring inside myself for the first time in a long while. It turns out, there was something stirring inside Linda, too.

• 38:55Speaker 09

  In Italian, the word fungo means fungus, mold, and mushroom. And my thing is all three.

• 39:11Speaker 10

  Linda has a fungus that lives in her knee.

• 39:15Speaker 09

  I was in Thailand in 2004. I was hit by the tsunami. My leg was torn apart by a piece of wood.

• 39:25Speaker 09

  And somewhere, somehow, this bloody fungus that usually lives in the seawater found its way inside my knee bone.

• 39:35Speaker 10

  But no doctor could remove it. It was a story she had told a thousand times, the quick version to explain the scars on her legs.

• 39:47Speaker 09

  I'm used to hearing the "Oh, poor little girl" kind of reaction, but you didn't have it. You were curious.

• 39:56Speaker 10

  I wanted to know everything about Linda: the story behind each scar, the tragedy that the tsunami must have been. But I didn't know if she would let me in.

• 40:10Speaker 09

  Healing from this, finding a way to keep the fungus quiet, became the most important thing of my life.

• 40:25Speaker 10

  The first time we were intimate, I had to be careful not to pull Linda's leg too high, not to push against the fungus, not to squash the scars too hard.

• 40:43Speaker 09

  You see this long scar? From my knee to half of my shin? They open me from here to here.

• 40:57Speaker 09

  The fungus is made by countless spores, and it's impossible to take them all away with surgery. And the knee is a place where it's hard for blood to carry the proper drug that could defeat it.

• 41:11Speaker 10

  If Linda doesn't manage the fungus, it grows. And when it grows, it starts eating her knee and tibia tissue.

• 41:21Speaker 09

  When I'm really sick, Loretta gets stronger.

• 41:28Speaker 10

  Did I mention I named Linda's fungus Loretta?

• 41:32Speaker 09

  Hmm, remind me, why did you name her Loretta?

• 41:36Speaker 10

  I got the name Loretta from Monty Python's "Life of Brian", that I saw at least fifty times in my teenage years, while everyone else was out on dates. Some rebels are planning a riot and one of them comes out saying that he wants to be a woman. And then, proud of her new place in the world, she says: "From now on, I want you to call me Loretta."

• 42:02Speaker 10

  Loretta can be a very cranky roommate. When it's humid outside, Loretta groans and stretches.

• 42:09Speaker 09

  It feels like being blown up from the inside.

• 42:12Speaker 10

  When Linda eats pizza, Loretta gets bloated from the yeast.

• 42:16Speaker 09

  And I don't want my knee to turn into a loaf of bread.

• 42:19Speaker 10

  Linda has to keep herself away from cakes, pastry, sweet and everything that contains sugar.

• 42:25Speaker 09

  Otherwise the fungus will start to ferment.

• 42:28Speaker 10

  No mushrooms, because they grow stronger together.

• 42:31Speaker 09

  And no white rice or potatoes, because they have glucose.

• 42:39Speaker 10

  Linda even had to give up her favorite hobby: salsa dancing, because Loretta isn't very athletic.

• 42:47Speaker 09

  And no wine. And in Italy, it means that I have to start an argument with the waiter every time I sit at a restaurant table.

• 43:13Speaker 10

  Hanging out with Linda, I found out that she and I could never be alone.

• 43:20Speaker 09

  Sometimes you thought I was pulling out Loretta just as an excuse because I didn't like you or I didn't want to do things with you. But it was just her.

• 43:42Speaker 09

  It was raining very hard that day.

• 43:46Speaker 10

  The air was full of water.

• 43:51Speaker 09

  When random people found me after the tsunami, I was sitting completely naked on a mattress that had been taken away by the wave.

• 44:05Speaker 09

  I rescued myself by climbing on it, pulling myself out of the water.

• 44:14Speaker 09

  I was trying to shout "Help", but a toneless wiffle was coming out from my mouth.

• 44:22Speaker 10

  Someone carried her through the wreckage to a hotel.

• 44:27Speaker 09

  It was one of the very few buildings left standing after the wave passed through the island.

• 44:35Speaker 10

  Her legs were devastated by open wounds. One of her rescuers brought her a muddy bed sheet so she could cover her body.

• 44:46Speaker 09

  Somewhere, somehow, this bloody fungus that usually lives in the seawater found its way inside my knee bone.

• 44:56Speaker 10

  Loretta

• 45:02Speaker 09

  You see this long scar? From my knee to half a foot. After I got back to Italy, it took me five years to walk again, to become confident in my legs, to accept my scars and to feel normal again. They opened me from here to here.

• 45:26Speaker 09

  My leg became the test for my potential relationships, letting people get closer if I felt they could make my life easier and pushing them away when I thought they were not brave, patient, or understanding enough to handle what I was going through.

• 45:48Speaker 10

  Sometimes I water the plants only in Linda's balcony, and I find some little mushroom in the plant soil. It happened a couple of times that I started talking to them like a jealous father, protecting his teenage daughter, saying: "Loretta isn't home! Go away! She has to study! She doesn't have time for you, mushroom boys!"

• 46:17Speaker 10

  But sometimes, even Loretta needs a bit of fun.

• 46:22Speaker 09

  Oh, what do we have here?

• 46:26Speaker 10

  It's our anniversary, and after a lot of research, I found the most suitable cake for Linda to eat. It's an adaptation of the traditional torta tenerina.

• 46:44Speaker 09

  I spent seven years of my life trying to get rid of my fungus, even if I knew I had to live with it inside me forever. But since you gave her a name, when Loretta knocks on my knee or starts to hurt me, I try to find a way to get along with her.

• 47:05Speaker 09

  Maybe she's not so evil.

• 47:09Speaker 09

  She's not the one who tore open my leg. She just crawled in there, looking for a home.

• 47:20Speaker 10

  Loretta found a home in Linda's knee,

• 47:24Speaker 10

  and a home is what I've also found:

• 47:28Speaker 10

  a home with a smart, brave girl living inside, a fancy bright yellow raincoat in the closet, some plants to water on the balcony,

• 47:40Speaker 10

  and an oven, to bake a cake once in a while, to make life sweeter for both of them, to make life sweeter for all three of us: Linda, Loretta, and me.

• 48:17Glynn Washington?

  Big love to the happy couple and to Loretta the fungus. Thanks so much to the folks at the Love Me Podcast. Subscribe to them with a quickness. Thank you for sharing your story with us now. The story was produced by Mira Burt Win tonic, Crystal Duhaime, and Jonathan Zenti. Find out more about the Love Me Show and about Jonathan's show at snapjudgment.org.

• 48:48Glynn Washington?

  It happened again. I know, Snapers, I know. Do me a favor if you will. If you dig Snap storytelling, let somebody know. Wear your Snap flag high on social media, at your book club, and if you see these young toughs down at the corner blaring their supposed music, you roll up and hit them with some Snap full blast. They can't know unless you teach them. If you missed even a moment, get the amazing Snap Judgment Podcast. That's right, get the podcast that takes storytelling with you wherever you go. It's fun and easy. All that stuff you hate to do, laundry, dishes, your job, we'll do it with you. Follow Snap Judgment on Instagram, Snap Judgment Radio, for pictures of the underground lair and

• 49:33Glynn Washington?

  all that is Snap. Hit me directly on the Twitter and I'll let you know what I really think.

• 49:43Glynn Washington?

  And you know, the beat doesn't happen without you. Support Snap storytelling. Go to our Patreon, patreon.com/snapjudgment, so the beat goes on. Snap is brought to you by the team that can make a cellphone out of a coconut. Give it up for the Uber producer, Gilligan Mark Ristich, the skipper too, Pat with C.D. Miller, Marissa, the millionaire Dodge, and her wife, John Facile, the movie star, Rizzo Gorial, Seamus Sheely the professor, Liz, Mary Ann Mack, here on Snap Judgment.

• 50:20Glynn Washington?

  Special guest star, Eliza Smith, wardrobe by Lauren Newsom, transportation by Anna Sussman, Taylor Cott on catering, Flo Wiley, handles our security, Nancy, stunt double Lopez, Leon Morimoto on logistics, while Nicka Singh does makeup.

• 50:39Glynn Washington?

  Well, this is not the news. No way is this the news. In fact, you could book a 10-day, 11-night luxury cruise vacation through the Azores, only to turn up at the dock to see a guy named Jerry sitting on a 4-by-5-foot wooden raft. And recall, the ad did say, "No refunds."

• 51:00Glynn Washington?

  And you would still, still, not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is... P-R-X.