894: I Couldn't Help but Notice

People dealing with new, glaring, massive changes happening right where they live. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners https://thisamericanlife.supercast.com?utm_id=lifepartners&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=shownotes to sign up for our premium subscription. (00:00:00) Prologue: Rick Cole, a city councilmember in Pasadena, CA, talks to Ira about how he responded to a surprise nighttime military exercise in his neighborhood this June – complete with helicopters, gunfire, and flash bangs. (5 minutes) (00:05:30) Act One: A doctor trained as a midwife tells the eye-popping story of how she and others came together to save a baby during a birth that suddenly went wrong, in a part of rural Maine where the local labor and delivery unit had closed less than a month before. (26 minutes) (00:34:56) Act Two: Producer Valerie Kipnis never felt inside the jokes and stories her family would tell about growing up in the Soviet Union, until she saw this year's Oscar-winning documentary, Mr. Nobody Against Putin. The film follows the changes unfolding in one school as Russia rolled out a nationwide propaganda push after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Valerie interviewed the young teacher at the center of the documentary and learned things that never made it into the film. (21 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org https://www.thisamericanlife.org/894/transcript / This American Life privacy policy https://www.thisamericanlife.org/page/privacy-policy. / Learn more about sponsor message choices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices.

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

• 0:00Ira Glass?

  Hey, it's Ira with a quick word before the show starts. So I have this video that I want to show you. Maybe you heard, because we did so many promos, actually, that we just did this live show onstage in Los Angeles where I told stories and then Vic McAlister and these really talented comedians did improvised scenes based on those stories on the spot. And we livestreamed video of this show. And I'm just here to say that if you missed the livestream, you can now see the show. We have posted the video online. It's a really fun show. And to watch this for absolutely free, sign up for a free trial This American Life Partners subscription. And our hope is, you know, you'll stick around after the trial and that you'll love all

• 0:42Ira Glass?

  the bonus episodes and listening ad free and all the other stuff we give you. Plus, we hope you'll like helping us make the show by sending us this money. But if you don't, if you just want the free trial, watch the video, try it out for a couple of days, quit, no foul, fine with us, and I think you're really going to enjoy watching the show we did. Go to thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners and use the, this is a very, very original promo code we came up with, VIDEO. That's right. The promo code is VIDEO. That link is also in the show notes. Okay, here's this week's show.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  This message comes from A24 with "You Can See Everything." 34 days before she's set to begin her prison sentence, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes invites Nathan Fielder to move in with her family and document their every move. Now playing in theaters.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org.

• 1:46Ira Glass?

  Back in June, Rick Cole was sitting in a meeting of the Pasadena Municipal Services Committee in City Hall there. That's about as dull a sentence as you could start a podcast with. But then things happened. Rick's a council member.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  And I get a text that I glance at from the police chief to the city council that says, "At 5:30, we're making a public announcement that there will be military exercises in northeast Pasadena. They will take place at St. Luke Hospital, but do not reveal the location." This is at 5:24, six minutes before the public is to be informed.

• 2:24Ira Glass?

  So you saw that and you thought what?

• 2:27Speaker 03

  Well, I thought, that's really strange.

• 2:30Ira Glass?

  It's unprecedented there'll be military exercises in a residential area. That happens in America. But still, it's strange when it's your area with no notice at all. The meeting ends, Rick runs to another event.

• 2:44Speaker 03

  Meanwhile, I had told my assistant to post on our Instagram account that this military exercise was happening and to actually identify the location. And she told me, you know, they told us very sternly not to say the location. And I said, the people deserve to know where this is happening.

• 3:03Ira Glass?

  And did she post the name of the hospital?

• 3:06Speaker 03

  She did.

• 3:07Ira Glass?

  Because you just figured, what are they going to do to me? I'm just going to do this?

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Exactly. I mean, that's the way I've lived my life, Ira.

• 3:15Ira Glass?

  He's got stories. If you ever run into Rick, get him to tell you the one about how he tried to stop Christopher Columbus's great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson from becoming grand marshal of Pasadena's Rose Parade. But I digress. Anyway, that night in June, he heads over to this hospital, a creepy old building with broken windows and peeling paint. It's been abandoned for years. And sure enough, sometime around 8:00 PM.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  These giant helicopters can be heard in the distance getting closer and closer. Then they disgorge paratroopers clamoring down ropes onto the roof of the hospital. Flashbang grenades are going off. Simulated gunfire is rattling through the neighborhood. I mean, it was jaw dropping.

• 4:02Ira Glass?

  This is all supposed to end by 8:30, but in fact, it wasn't over until about 2:00 AM. To Rick, this was outrageous. Why do this in a residential neighborhood with no warning? So people had no chance to prepare, maybe go elsewhere for the night, maybe give their pets tranquilizers so they don't freak out. Now people were hearing all the commotion, probably going on to their phones to figure out what was happening. And he thought he needed to jump in and explain.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  Councilmember Rick Cole here in front of the former St. Luke's Hospital. As you can hear.

• 4:36Ira Glass?

  He's in the dark. Explosions are flashing behind him, like he's some sort of suburban war correspondent.

• 4:41Speaker 03

  Flashbangs and simulated gunfire are going on. They're going to be going on for the next half an hour, we're told. I was focused on the fact that I should tell people what's going on because their dogs are going to bark, their kids are going to ask questions, and they're going to wonder why are helicopters descending on Pasadena? Why are they hearing gunfire in the neighborhood?

• 5:04Ira Glass?

  He'd done videos like this in the past, in the wake of the Eaton fire last year, letting people know when it was safe to drink the water, read vegetables from their gardens, that kind of thing.

• 5:14Speaker 03

  And this is going to go on for a while. And good luck to the people that have got to get up and go to work tomorrow morning.

• 5:21Ira Glass?

  It's funny, the weird thing about this is that it seems like you all were supposed to act like this was not a weird thing to happen.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  That's exactly.

• 5:30Ira Glass?

  Did it make you feel sort of crazy to be told like, oh, no, this is normal. Don't sweat it?

• 5:35Speaker 03

  I wouldn't say crazy. It infuriated me.

• 5:39Ira Glass?

  Yeah.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  You know, we owe to the people we serve to treat them with respect and to keep them informed about things that affect them. And this was such an egregious breach of that trust.

• 5:58Ira Glass?

  Rick couldn't help but notice that nobody in the military seemed to care how everyday citizens were experiencing all this. And as a 73-year-old council member, he felt a duty to take what he saw as a more old fashioned approach. I reached, by the way, nearly 8 million people with his videos informing the public, succeeding more than he ever imagined. Today on our program, we have stories of people who see a future arrive that feels uglier and meaner than the past. And it's not like they can turn that around. It's way too big. But in every story today, there is somebody who takes a stand and tries to clean up the mess that's around them or call attention to that mess and say no.

• 6:39Ira Glass?

  We have stories today of some very stubborn and idealistic people, from a small town in Maine to a school in Russia. From WBEZ Chicago, This American Life, I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.

• 7:05Speaker 04

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• 7:08Speaker 02

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• 8:08Ira Glass?

  It's This American Life, Act One, Closing Time. Sometimes, as things change in a country because of big historic forces, doctors get put in some weird and difficult situations. That's what happened in this first act in Maine, way up north, in a rustic county that's so far north that the Canadian border is closer than the nearest US city. The local hospital there is Holton Regional Hospital, and last year, they announced they were going to close their labor and delivery unit with one month's notice. Even the unit's nurse manager, Heather Quinn, had no idea this was actually coming.

• 8:48Speaker 05

  It was delivered very abruptly and matter-of-factly, I guess. This is what's happening. Our birth rates are going down. We can't recruit. It's not basically a moneymaker, so we're closing. There was no, I'm sorry, you know, we hate to, you know? It was, it was just very matter-of-factly.

• 9:13Ira Glass?

  It is a pretty matter-of-fact reality at this point in America, rural hospitals closing. But labor and delivery departments in particular, they've been vanishing in lots of rural areas. And when a community loses its place to have babies, in the first weeks after that happens, that's when you really see what it means in people's lives. And the story in Maine unfolded just after Holton Regional Hospital packed up its labor and delivery department and closed the doors there. As that was happening, a woman who lives in the area named Katie Gowell was pregnant with her fifth child. This was a low-risk pregnancy. She was planning to give birth at home, just like she'd done with her fourth child. Her family doctor, who was a midwife before she became a doctor, was going to deliver the baby.

• 9:58Ira Glass?

  So that was the plan. 29 days after Holton closed its labor and delivery department, Katie Gowell went into labor at home. Reporter Elaine Appleton Grant has the story of what happened next. Quick heads up before we start. Some of us here on staff found ourselves thinking about the TV show The Pit as we were making this story, because there's no way to explain what happened without diving into some very vivid medical details during childbirth. Just want to say, if that's not for you, please know that is part of this story. Here's Elaine Appleton Grant.

• 10:31Speaker 06

  Sunday, June 1, 2025, just after midnight. Katie starts having contractions. She calls her mom and eventually her doctor. Lots of family members show up. They live nearby. She and her family run a business together, a big wilderness resort up the road. There's snacks. It's fun, but slow. Here's Katie. I'm like, well, Mom, maybe I shouldn't have called them already because it was sort of, I sort of kind of went like a standstill for a while. It's so slow that her doctor, Dr. Rose Fuge, takes a nap on the couch, even with all the noise. But all of a sudden, it was like someone poked me awake and I sat bolt upright. And I said, what did Katie say?

• 11:16Speaker 06

  And Katie was down the hallway.

• 11:18Speaker 07

  In the bathroom at that point. So I went down there and I said, did you say something? And she said, yeah, I said, my water broke.

• 11:24Speaker 06

  Katie's sitting on the toilet. Everything's fine.

• 11:27Speaker 05

  And then I just sat there for a few minutes and it so then I'm like, well, I'm going to get up now. So and then I went to wipe and I felt something.

• 11:36Speaker 07

  And she said, what's that? And I looked down in the toilet and there was probably eight inches of cord hanging out, not quite touching the toilet water, but close. So I was like, immediately, this is very bad. Right? This is a prolapsed cord, which rarely happens. I just said, it looks like the cord. We need to check you out. Let's get in the bed.

• 12:00Speaker 06

  A prolapsed cord is a dire medical emergency. It just happens sometimes. Katie didn't really have any risk factors. In a normal delivery, the baby's head comes out first. Its umbilical cord, which is the baby's blood and oxygen supply, follows, but not this time. The cord slipped out first. It's squiggly, like an old fashioned telephone cord. You can see the red vein and purple arteries through the thin skin. If it's outside the body, it's a huge risk to the baby's life, unless Katie can deliver now.

• 12:36Speaker 07

  And we got her on the bed and I was checking to see like if she's completely dilated, you know, ready to push the baby out. I thought if I, you know, it's her fifth baby. I thought if we could give one push and finish this, I'll do that. But that wasn't the case. She was probably about six centimeters.

• 12:53Speaker 06

  Fully dilated is 10 centimeters. Katie's nowhere near giving birth. It could still be hours. Dr. Fuchs isn't saying any of this out loud. She's spent years cultivating her doctor-y persona, calm, confident, and command. She is 60, elegant, and somehow old fashioned. She wears a lot of ankle-length skirts, sometimes pulls her long silver hair up in a bun. She's been a primary care doctor for decades. She was a midwife before med school. In almost 40 years of practicing, she's attended about 1,000 births. She has never seen a prolapsed cord before, but she knows that the only way to save the baby is for Katie to have

• 13:37Speaker 06

  an emergency C-section now. If they were in a hospital, they'd be running down the hall to surgery. Speaking of hospitals, this is the first time Dr. Fuchs has attended a birth without a hospital labor and delivery unit nearby to back her up.

• 13:52Speaker 07

  I was terrified because I didn't want the baby to die.

• 13:59Speaker 06

  And so then what happened?

• 14:01Speaker 07

  I turned around and my nurse has beautiful, big, blue eyes and they always comfort me in the middle of anything. And I turned around and I looked in her eyes and I said, call 911. And her eyes went two sizes bigger because she's actually never heard me say that in working with her 12 years. Yeah.

• 14:24Speaker 06

  Dr. Fuchs calmly advises Katie.

• 14:27Speaker 07

  I started to coach her that the life of the baby is at stake and you're going to have to go through quite a bit if we're going to hope to save your child.

• 14:37Speaker 06

  Katie's shocked, so stunned, in fact, that the day becomes hazy. So she wants Dr. Fuchs to tell the story.

• 14:45Speaker 05

  Because me being in the moment, I don't remember the, every detail, where she would remember every detail. And I trust her with telling my story. I trust her completely with everything.

• 14:59Speaker 06

  It's about 6:35 a.m. Here's what Dr. Fuchs knows. Best practice for a prolapsed cord is for Katie to be in surgery in five to 10 minutes. So the clock is ticking. She is 90 minutes away from any working obstetrics department. Just a month earlier, Katie's local birthing unit at Holton was still up and running, an entire institution designed to handle exactly this kind of emergency. But now there's just Dr. Fuchs. So there in Katie's bedroom, Dr. Fuchs makes her first important decision. If the cord gets cold, if it dries out, the baby could die, or possibly suffer brain damage.

• 15:43Speaker 07

  I chose what I thought was the best course of action, which I gently replaced it into the vagina. Is that okay to say? Okay. Gently replaced it inside so that the warmth of her body would keep the cord warm because I knew we're in Maine. And although it was June, it wasn't that warm.

• 16:04Speaker 06

  But there's another problem. The baby's head is pressing down on the cord, which could also cut off the blood and oxygen supply. She has to protect the cord from the weight of the baby's head coming down the birth canal, right on top of it. So she gets into a position that obstetricians call riding the bed.

• 16:26Speaker 07

  I shifted myself and climbed onto the bed between her legs, crouching sort of on all fours, kneeling, crouching down.

• 16:35Speaker 06

  Then she starts pushing the baby's head back up the birth canal to make space for the cord.

• 16:42Speaker 07

  I, you know, was internally inside the patient, pushing upward toward her head as basically hard as I could, using two fingers to push up, the rest of my fingers to lightly be touching the cord to keep track of the heart tones at all times. Because if they slowed down, I knew something's pinching. If they, if they slowed down, I also knew I needed to push up higher and get the head up higher.

• 17:08Speaker 06

  How much of your hand was inside Katie's body?

• 17:13Speaker 07

  Probably up to my wrists, starting forearm. Meanwhile, Katie's own body wants to push the baby out, right? Contractions push down. So, you know, to have my hand, that's painful for her. And I knew it was painful and I told her, I'm very sorry, but I can't care about your pain. It's a very weird pain. It's a deep pain. Anyone who's had a cervical biopsy, an endometrial biopsy, an IUD put in, I think it's a pain no one can describe. And then this is times a whole lot more because there's a baby in there too, and now someone's hand as well.

• 18:00Speaker 06

  It's 6:40. Sasha, Katie's husband, is on the phone with 911, the Penobscot County Dispatch Center, the busiest in the state. The dispatcher tells Sasha that an ambulance is on the way. Meantime, she's giving instructions. Have her roll up and get onto her knees and elbows, she tells Sasha, meaning tell Katie to get up onto her knees and elbows. Sasha, he's in another room because he has to move a dog gate to make a clear path for the ambulance crew when they arrive. So he yells these instructions to Dr. Fuchs.

• 18:34Speaker 07

  I said, no, we're not. And they said, well, that's what they're saying. I said, I don't care what they're saying. We are not doing that. You tell them a doctor's on site.

• 18:44Speaker 06

  The dispatcher also says, through Sasha, do not try to prevent the birth. Make sure that nothing is being pushed back into her vagina. But Dr. Fuchs knows that if she stops pushing the baby up, the baby will die. It's now been about seven minutes since the cord dropped. While Sasha's on the phone with the dispatcher, Dr. Fuchs' nurse calls Holton's emergency department, because at least the ER is still running. And the nurse says they plan to bring Katie to the ER. But the ER says, no, they can't handle this. And Katie needs to be flown to a much farther hospital. So the 911 dispatcher switches gears and contacts Lifeflight, that's Maine's air ambulance service, and then warns the nurse that due to some bad weather, they're not

• 19:29Speaker 06

  sure a helicopter can fly. They're also not sure yet where Lifeflight will pick Katie up and where the local ambulance will have to take her to meet them. It is mayhem. A month ago, when Holton's OB was open, the medical sequence of events would have been clear. 911 orders an ambulance, which takes Katie to Holton's labor and delivery department. There, a trained obstetrician would perform an emergency C-section. There would have been no need to airlift Katie somewhere else. OBs in hospitals do C-sections all the time. Now Dr. Fuchs realizes, with dawning horror, that because of Holton's closure, no one seems to know or agree on who's

• 20:12Speaker 06

  actually in charge, where Katie can go, and even what should be done to save this baby. She's hunched over, counting the baby's heartbeats, and she attempts to take charge. Over her shoulder, she speaks to her nurse.

• 20:26Speaker 07

  And I said, you call Holton Regional. You know, you're telling them we're coming. And I mean, we're coming.

• 20:33Speaker 06

  Holton Regional, the hospital that closed its labor and delivery department, but still has an emergency room. Dr. Fuchs thinks someone might be able to do a C-section there. It's about 6:48. 13 minutes have passed. At the house, the ambulance crew has arrived and they can't get in. It's an old Maine house. They can't get the gurney through the narrow hallway and around a sharp corner into the bedroom. The EMS crew, who don't seem to understand the situation, ask Katie to get up and walk to the gurney.

• 21:04Speaker 07

  I said, Sasha, then get a chainsaw and cut the wall down.

• 21:08Speaker 06

  What did he say?

• 21:10Speaker 07

  He was ready to go get a chainsaw and cut the wall down because they knew I wasn't moving and I wasn't allowing her to get up. I didn't care if it was EMS in their truck. I was not giving over my place of authority because I did not see that they had adequate knowledge or understanding of the situation.

• 21:32Speaker 06

  Finally, they managed to maneuver the gurney down the hall and into the bedroom. Now, they have to lift both Katie and the doctor together onto the gurney, locked in their position, like lift the sheet they're both on and transfer them together. And while they do, Dr. Fuchs cannot move her hand at all.

• 22:00Speaker 06

  Meanwhile, she's waiting for the lead paramedic to get things going.

• 22:04Speaker 07

  We always count to three and then we all pull together like, you know, a bunch of he men, right? So he's like, who's going to count? And how are we going to do this? Are you going to count? Who's going to count? You know, they just kept on like that. And I looked at my nurse and I said, you count. So she took over, like she heard me say that and that was it. And I hate to get real loud on this mic, but she proceeded to just roar. We're going to count. One, two, three. And honestly, I think she almost single-handedly pulled me, Katie, over to the gurney with them helping some.

• 22:42Speaker 06

  It's about 6:58. Katie should have had a C-section 25 minutes ago.

• 22:51Speaker 06

  7:10. Katie and the doctor have been locked together for about 33 minutes. The EMT has loaded them into the ambulance. Dr. Fuchs is under the impression that a nurse has convinced Holton to accept them, and they are now heading to the Holton emergency room for the C-section. Katie's in terrible pain. Dr. Fuchs is on the gurney balancing on both knees and one hand. Her other hand is inside Katie as the driver navigates the winding roads.

• 23:21Speaker 07

  It's a very bumpy road. These are the back roads of the county, right? So potholes, bumps, very curvy. At times, I thought I was going to fall off the gurney and the paramedic would grab the waistband on the back of my skirt and hold me so I would hold steady. And I needed to hold steady. My hand had to hold steady. And her leg at one point slipped off the gurney and sort of fell down. And so I was trying to, I grabbed her leg and pulled it back up and I was holding her leg on the gurney with me. So it was a tight squeeze. I was beginning to feel exhausted.

• 23:58Speaker 07

  I myself don't have the best back, and this was a very awkward position. And, you know, your legs are all curled up under you, so you're in an intense kneeling, you know, sitting on your legs squatting. So my legs are falling asleep. My hand is starting to fall asleep from the angle that I'm at.

• 24:16Speaker 06

  That scares her. Without her hand, she can't count the baby's heartbeat and keep the baby alive. Her hand is the only instrument she has.

• 24:26Speaker 07

  But, you know, my hand would periodically feel like it was completely numb and I would worry, like, am I, am I going to be pinching this cord? And then it would sort of wake up again, you know, intermittently. But it was painful, like when your hand falls asleep and it's very painful. It was becoming physically very painful to continue.

• 24:46Speaker 06

  Dr. Fuchs has scoliosis. This position is excruciating. She tells herself, hang on, it's not much longer, just until we get to Holton. But then they tell her the plane is still for Lifeflight, Maine's Air Medical Service, to airlift them to Bangor. The helicopter is apparently going to pick them up at Holton.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Lifeflight's still headed to Holton Regional?

• 25:07Speaker 07

  Correct.

• 25:08Speaker 06

  The Lifeflight dispatcher and the hospital are mapping out these plans while Katie and Dr. Fuchs bounce around the ambulance.

• 25:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, they just started swooning up. I'm looking in my window at them. So, yeah.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 25:19Speaker 07

  So, plan.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  They are just now leaving the scene headed to the hospital.

• 25:23Speaker 07

  I did not agree with that plan at all because I knew that I could not take another, however many minutes it would take to get into Lifeflight and them to fuel up and then to stay like that till a C-section can be done at Eastern Maine Hospital in Bangor. There's just no way.

• 25:46Speaker 06

  So bear with me for just a second. We're going to leave the ambulance and go over to another important place, Ivy's Motor Lodge, three minutes from Holton Hospital. That's where Dr. Monica Sheerhart, an OB-GYN, is sleeping. She's been on call here once a month for three years, and on this weekend, she's coming to the end of her time at Holton Hospital, when the phone on her bedside table rings.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  I think they woke me up from sleep. So it was one of those like, ring, ring, phone call. What's going on? Okay, I'll be there in five minutes.

• 26:20Speaker 06

  She throws on her leggings and goes to the hospital to meet the ambulance that's on its way with the patient who has a prolapsed cord. At the ER, they lay out the plan. They want her to stabilize Katie so she can take the Lifeflight helicopter to Eastern Maine Medical Center for the C-section. That would take another hour.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  But I'm here. At that point, I'm like, no, we'll, we'll have the baby here and let's go ahead and call in the OR team and we should deliver her here. We have, we still have that capability. And everyone at that point was like, oh yeah, we can do that.

• 26:53Speaker 06

  So basically, they hadn't realized that they had the capability to do this.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  To still, yeah, they didn't even really think about the fact they still had that capability, but at that transition time, they did, so.

• 27:07Speaker 06

  I reached out to Holton to ask them why they wanted to transfer Katie in the first place. They said they couldn't comment on any specific patient. We asked Holton to comment on other decisions they made throughout this story. They responded, quote, "We have no further comment regarding the closure of the OB department." Back to Dr. Sheerhart waiting in the Holton ER. She's making the case to the team there that she wants to perform the C-section at Holton, and she prevails. But they can't do it without OB nurses. The birthing unit closed almost a month ago. So the ER has to call up the OB nurses who used to work in labor and delivery and ask them for help. A couple of them volunteer in Russian.

• 27:48Speaker 06

  Dr. Fuchs and Katie arrive at Holton at about 7:53 AM, and there are people there to greet them.

• 27:56Speaker 07

  And so we pulled up at the ambulance entrance and the obstetrician came outside to meet us, which I was so glad for, and started taking the history from me while we were unloading.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  And I was like, hi, I'm Dr. Sheerhart. I'm an OB-GYN. I'm the one on call today. Recommendation is, you know, emergency C-section if it's okay with you. And we're going to roll you right into the operating room and deliver the baby. So, and Dr. Fuchs also was giving me kind of a sign out about what was happening with her, what her background was, and, you know, that, that she could still feel the cord pulse.

• 28:30Speaker 06

  They speed the gurney down the hall to the operating room. Katie is far from out of the woods. The baby has to survive through the surgery. And if she does, what about the possibility of brain damage or cerebral palsy? An anesthesiologist puts Katie under. At this point, Dr. Fuchs has been riding the bed for almost 90 minutes. Remember, no more than 10 minutes to C-section is best practice. She still can't leave her post, which means now they have another problem. The nurses can't fit the surgical tool table over Katie the way they normally would because Dr. Fuchs is in the way, so her back will have to serve as the table. They throw a drape over her, basically a plastic bag.

• 29:15Speaker 06

  Dr. Fuchs will become part of the surgery.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  So we basically put the surgical drapes over the top of Dr. Fuchs, threw the, you know, Betadine sterilizing fluid on Katie.

• 29:27Speaker 07

  They opened a bottle of iodine and dumped it over, over her belly, over my, top of my arm, my forearm that was, you know, near her. So my, my cheek is laying on Katie's thigh. I have my head sideways, trying to breathe in a little air, air pocket in this drape. It's a very awkward position, to say the least, for her and me.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  We have surgical equipment and...

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Tubing and electroc artery and suction, kind of sitting on top of Dr. Fuchs because she's right there between Katie's legs.

• 30:04Speaker 07

  They are, I can feel they are putting their tools on my back.

• 30:08Speaker 06

  But they're missing some usual tools, like a Doppler, to monitor the baby's heartbeat.

• 30:13Speaker 07

  And nurses sort of scurried about looking for a Doppler. They either couldn't find one or they didn't have one available, but they had no Doppler anyway. And so I told her, it's OK because I can feel the heartbeat. And so, you know, it had been 120s, but then at one point, while they were still prepping, it went down to like 90. And so I called that out to her. I said, so we're down to 90, you all better hurry.

• 30:38Speaker 06

  And what is optimum?

• 30:42Speaker 07

  A normal fetal heart rate is 120 to 160. And so we allow a little bit outside that range, but 90 is definitely getting in trouble. It's often the signal that there's an impending disaster. My fear was the next beat was going to be 60 and the next beat, you know, nothing. And then I did my usual, which I pushed a little harder on the head, tried a little harder to protect the cord, and I felt the heart rate go back up to like the 120s. So then I sort of called out again to reassure them, we're back up to the 120s. You're OK. We're doing all right.

• 31:21Speaker 06

  Dr. Sheerhart starts the surgery.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  As soon as she went to sleep, I made the incision, got down to her uterus.

• 31:26Speaker 07

  I could feel them start to cut the skin and the muscle layers, you know, to enter the abdomen. And I thought, oh, dear, my fingers are awfully high up there. What if they cut my fingers? I better pull back a little bit at just the right moment, but not too soon to lose the heartbeat. So I withdrew a little bit and then I could sort of feel them, that they were in the uterus.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  And my hand reached down to pull the baby's head out and our hands touched. So my hand touched Dr. Fuchs's hand as I was lifting the baby's head out of the incision.

• 31:59Speaker 06

  The C-section is done in two minutes and the baby is breathing. She's born at 7:58 AM. She's seven pounds, 12 ounces. Dr. Fuchs, gasping for air under the drape, slithers out and climbs off the table. When she leaves the OR, she's shaky, starts to see black before her eyes. She almost passes out from the sheer effort of the delivery. Her nurse, the one with the big blue eyes and the loud voice, she runs and gets her a chair and a glass of water.

• 32:34Speaker 06

  When Katie wakes up, her baby is alive, but she's in an incubator that has lots of tubes. Katie can't be with her and they can't stay here in the hospital. With the department closed, the nurse is gone. Holton has no way to admit a newborn, no one to take care of the baby or of Katie, who should recover in a hospital for a couple of days. The lifeflight medics are there and they start getting the baby ready to fly to a bigger hospital. Katie doesn't understand what's happening.

• 33:05Speaker 05

  I could see her off to my left when they were, she was getting worked on. And then when I was in the recovery room, she was still getting worked on because then that's when they put her in their incubator type thing. I still didn't get to hold her.

• 33:21Speaker 06

  Then they load the newborn into the lifeflight helicopter and it takes off for Eastern Maine Medical.

• 33:27Speaker 05

  I cried. I cried. I mean, like, I didn't know at that time. I didn't know how she was. I didn't get to see her. I didn't get to know anything. And then I just saw her and wheel her away.

• 33:41Speaker 05

  It's just a, I don't know how to describe. It's a very hard thing, especially seeing her leave.

• 33:51Speaker 05

  I don't know. It's just hard. It was hard, very hard.

• 33:57Speaker 06

  Katie has to follow her new baby to the other hospital by ambulance, but she's just out of a major surgery. She needs an OB nurse to accompany her and Holton doesn't have anyone. So the ER makes another call to Heather Quint. Heather's the nurse you heard at the opening of this story, the one who used to run labor and delivery and got the sudden matter of fact news that the OB department was closing. They asked her to go with Katie in the ambulance. Heather races to the hospital and walks into the recovery room. I asked Heather why she showed up that day.

• 34:32Speaker 05

  I wanted to be like, when they closed it down, I wanted to be like, OK, this is what you guys want. This is what you're going to get.

• 34:40Speaker 05

  But the nurse in me, the person in me, that's, that's my patient. Hell, yes, I'm going to be there. I threw on my clothes and I was there and I went to Bangor with her and I sat and I held her hand and I talked to her the entire time. So, no. Oh, when I got the call, I wanted to be like, figure it out, but not when my patients were involved. I'm like, yep, I'll be right down.

• 35:07Speaker 06

  When I think about what it took to deliver this one baby, this is the thing I've been struck by the most. So many people's instinct to save a life, no matter what. Right now in America, the majority of rural hospitals no longer have labor and delivery departments. And instead, here is a collection of people choosing to jump in, to fill in gaps. This is a success story. Katie's baby is fine, healthy, no brain damage, no cerebral palsy, which is remarkable because this baby was much more likely to die than to survive. This is what success can look like today.

• 35:50Speaker 06

  In some places, we're creating a hero-based healthcare system and we can't rely on the Avengers in order to have a baby. The whole Marvel Universe showing up to help a person give birth safely.

• 36:04Speaker 06

  That's what hospitals are for.

• 36:17Ira Glass?

  Elaine Appleton-Graham. That story was produced by Lily Sullivan and edited by Thea Bennett. Elaine originally learned about this story from reporting by Emily Hedegaard and Stephanie McFeeters of The Main Monitor. Coming up, raise your hand if you know what "trud del chesť" means. That's in a minute, comrades, from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

• 36:40Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 36:45Ira Glass?

  Support for This American Life and the following message come from EasyCater, the workplace food platform. EasyCater helps organizations order food from favorite restaurants, meet dietary needs, and stay on budget with employee meal programs, flexible payment options, and 24/7 customer support, all in one platform. Learn more at easycater.com.

• 37:06Speaker 02

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• 37:35Ira Glass?

  Support for This American Life and the following message come from Southern New Hampshire University, a nonprofit provider of online education. SNHU students are a lot like you, parents, professionals with big career plans, busy people balancing life's many responsibilities. And SNHU students do all of that while earning their degrees. Because with no set class times, online tuition that's less than its peers, and dedicated student support, Southern New Hampshire University makes going back to school possible. Get started at SNHU.edu/american.

• 38:08Ira Glass?

  It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, I couldn't help but notice, we have stories where people see a new future arrive, one that is not quite as pleasant as the past, and they can't help themselves. They take action in some way or another in their own little corner of the world. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, Conversations About Important Things. So the documentary that won this year's Academy Award is called Mr. Nobody Against Putin. It was co-directed by a Russian guy and an American, Pasha Tlandkin and David Bornstein. And it's about the propaganda campaign that was rolled out in Russia after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and the shock of that propaganda push for one person in particular.

• 38:52Ira Glass?

  If you haven't seen the film, it is really worth seeing. I am one of the people on staff here at This American Life. Valerie Kipnis has watched it four times. She'll tell you why. Here's Val.

• 39:04Speaker 07

  Here are some scenes from my family growing up. Someone, let's say my mom, would say this to me, "Glory to labor." She'd say it in Russian. Then she'd hand me a broom. Or she'd say, "Trud del chesť." "Labor is a matter of honor." She used to say that on Sunday mornings when she woke me up for chores.

• 39:26Speaker 07

  These are all propaganda slogans from her upbringing in the Soviet Union. She and my dad both grew up there. My dad would say things like this, too. So did my grandmothers. They both live with us. And these lines always got a laugh from each other. Like my mom would say, "Partia, naš rulivoy." "The party is our helmsman." And my grandmother Bella would laugh and say, "Last time I saw that one was on the wall of an auditorium."

• 39:56Speaker 07

  Unlike them, I grew up here, which meant I was always behind, always playing catch-up in a household full of inside jokes, always trying to see into this world they had in their heads. I was obsessed with it. So I'd ask the same questions over and over again, and they would answer my questions, patiently, kindly, on long car rides, on the subway to school, on our walks near the BQE. But I kept going. I wanted to understand what it actually felt like to live surrounded by banners and slogans. My grandmother would shrug and say, "Štobula, tobula." It just was what it was. It didn't feel special to us. We didn't know another version of life. And then...

• 40:41Speaker 07

  She'd call me by my family nickname, "Почемучка", which means roughly, "kid who drives us crazy by asking why all the time."

• 40:52Speaker 07

  Being a "почемучка" and all, it's only natural that I watched this new documentary four times. Three times before it won the Oscar. Just saying. And the thing I couldn't get enough of was that here was a movie that answered some of the questions I'd been asking for so long. The documentary starts less than a month after Russia invaded Ukraine, the beginning of the full-scale invasion. And it focuses on one school in one town in Russia as the Ministry of Education rolls out a massive, nationwide propaganda campaign, a new, quote, "patriotic curriculum", which would include: new lesson plans for teachers, nationalistic poem recitations for students,

• 41:35Speaker 07

  mandatory school-wide salutes to the flag, and mandatory lessons called "разговоры о важном", "conversations about important things", where teachers are asked to talk about stuff like the importance of war songs or the heroism of Russian fighters. Also, a single-approved set of history textbooks written by two people closely affiliated with the Kremlin. High schoolers would start paramilitary training and gym class. And in the school that's in the documentary, one teacher captures how this all plays out. Паша Толонкин. And I called him up. [Russian] Here was a person who made a whole film about what it felt like to see slogans in the auditorium. Different slogans than the ones my parents and grandparents grew up with.

• 42:19Speaker 07

  A very different time, but with an undeniable similarity. Both then and now, the state had a tight grip on its own people. And here was Паша, who wasn't just seeing what was happening around him. He wanted the whole world to see what he was seeing. [Russian] This is Паша. He's got a round, wide-eyed baby face, big glasses. He's an impish kind of person who talks through a smile like he's in on some joke you don't know about. The school in the film is actually the same school he once attended. And he loves the school, loves his students, loves his grumpy mom. She's the school librarian. And when the film begins, he's the school's event coordinator

• 43:04Speaker 07

  and videographer. He films the piano recitals, graduations, performances. And under the brand-new patriotic curriculum at Паша's school, Паша was told he now had a brand-new role. He would be filming teachers and students performing the new lessons. He'd be filming the new flag salutes and paramilitary trainings. And he'd be sending all of that footage to the government as proof of compliance. I wanted to know what he thought of his new role as he was doing it, how it actually felt. He answered by telling me a story that never made it into the film. [Russian] What was I thinking about when I filmed this?

• 43:48Speaker 07

  I mean, at first, I was just... How do you say this in Russia? I started sweating under my visor. I just lost my mind about what was happening. I just totally freaked out. [Russian] When I was going to film computer class, it didn't end up in the final cut. I asked myself a question. [Russian] Who is that idiot who is going to be watching all this shit? I mean, who is he? Who is that moron? I mean, it should be some sort of paid job sitting and watching all this shit. I mean, they should pay you some money for that, at least a little bit. Anyway, I did this one little bit of trickery where I left in only the beginning of the class,

• 44:32Speaker 07

  where the teacher says, "Hello, kids", and the end, where they say, "Okay, class is over", but the shot itself went the whole time of the class, 45 minutes. So in the middle, there was just a black screen, as if something had gone wrong with my camera. [Russian] And I sent the video in, and I sat there waiting as they looked over the footage. And I kept waiting for them to say, "You know, we can't see it. Something went wrong. It's just a black screen." And they didn't give me a single note. And I thought... [Russian] Holy shit. I'm here not to actually record, but to surveil the teachers, you know? "Watch out.

• 45:17Speaker 07

  We're watching you. We have a camera. Here it is, recording you." And in that moment, I thought, "I'm being used." [Russian] "I'm being used." He figured, yeah, okay, they were using him. But he was simultaneously and obsessively filming the changes at his school for his own purposes. And the footage that Паша captured was really eye-opening for me. It answered so many of the questions I badgered my family with over the years. Because the propaganda, as it rolls out, is sort of the opposite of what I'd always imagined it would be. You know, the classic images of state control, the seamless, crisp obedience,

• 46:01Speaker 07

  massive signs, arms being raised in unison, echoey speeches delivered to neat rows of thousands of people. Паша shows scenes that are so intimate and small and messy. A teacher stumbling over new words she's now required to say: "Денацификация", "демилитаризация".

• 46:23Speaker 07

  He films teenagers, bored out of their minds, staring blindly into space as another teacher tells them... [Russian] "If you were born in this country and you don't believe we're doing the right thing, then leave. Go to the country that you think is better." Паша films young kids with these tiny red berets chanting new slogans in an assembly.

• 46:47Speaker 05

  [Russian]

• 46:52Speaker 07

  They're excited, but looking at each other like, "Right? We're saying the right thing?" The school days in the film look kind of normal in so many ways, despite all the changes. Kids still horse around and tease each other. There are still piano recitals. It's still just school. But Паша was like the kid in the emperor's new clothes. Every change stood out to him, and he couldn't stop talking about it. His own mother was like, "Of course, these things are happening. They've always been this way. Shut up." And he argued with her. He lived in a sort of continuous state of shock about the war, about the propaganda. And he told me that when the patriotic curriculum started, he kept sort of waiting for the people around him to freak out as much as he was

• 47:36Speaker 07

  about what they were being asked to do. But most people just went along with it, adapted or chose to stay quiet. I wondered why he didn't do that. Then, when I talked to him, I got it. For starters, Паша and I are almost the same age, in our 30s. And part of why he's so stunned by what's happening is because of the era he grew up in. It was right after the Soviet Union fell apart, but before Vladimir Putin really started consolidating power. So Паша was raised in this short window of time when students weren't flooded with slogans and propaganda in the schools, when schools were left mostly untouched by the state apparatus because the state apparatus had fallen apart. And so, what Паша was seeing

• 48:20Speaker 07

  was something my parents and grandparents never got to see: the beginning of a propaganda push in the schools, which meant he understood what his school was losing when it adopted these changes. And he knew what he was personally losing as nationalism became more and more strictly enforced. Over and over again in the film, he addresses people in his life in the camera directly, like, "Can you believe this? Why is this happening? Почему?" He told me that, off-camera, he had many more exchanges like that, especially with the other teachers. [Russian] The teachers came to me. [Russian] They said, "Паша, we don't like all this." [Russian] And then they come into class and [Russian] started to say

• 49:05Speaker 07

  what the Ministry of Education had sent over to them. [Russian] The teachers are hostages of this system too. [Russian] Паша also saw himself as a hostage. Before the war and the new curriculum, Паша was the teacher with the Pussy Right poster on his wall, the cool guy, the weirdo his office all the theater kids hung out in, the teacher who had different politics than what was on TV every night. And for a while, even after the war was underway, he was able to continue being that guy. He wore blue and yellow paperclips on his clothing as symbols of support for Ukraine. He hung an image of an anti-war flag in his office, flipped a Russian flag outside the school upside down. One time,

• 49:50Speaker 07

  he even played Lady Gaga, singing the

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Star Spangled Banner during a flag assembly instead of the Russian National Anthem.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  In the movie, he does things that I could not believe he was getting away with. In a country that was introducing laws to criminalize things like even saying that the war was in fact a war. How on earth could he just do these things and not get in trouble?

• 50:11Speaker 07

  Ко мне изначально было такое отношение, что... People sort of saw me as как юродивым. A gesture, a holy fool, you know? There he goes, walking around, being foolish.

• 50:25Speaker 07

  В России есть такая историческая практика, когда шуты и... In Russia, there is this historical tradition that the gesture, the holy fool, could speak out even to the czar, you know? The lowest level of society, the most seemingly worthless people, they could say exactly what they thought, tell anyone, right to their face.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  But that didn't mean the czars would just ignore him forever. When I talked to Pasha about how his constant provoking was playing out in real life, he told me that behind the scenes of making the film, he could feel his status changing from holy fool to persona non grata. This isn't in the film, but at some point, at Pasha's school, compliance started being supervised in person, via a new quote "advisor" on student affairs. And this advisor took a special interest in Pasha.

• 51:15Speaker 07

  Этот советник должен отслеживать социальные сети детей. This advisor was supposed to monitor student activity on social media, establish contact with them, you know, basically sniff everything out. And so one day, this advisor came to me and said, you know, "I'm gonna close your little bullshit factory, your office, in other words, right? I'm gonna close it." And so I took my door off its hinges and put it in front of her door and said, "How are you gonna close this bullshit factory if it doesn't have any doors?" Но, конечно, этот performance потом закончился. But of course, this performance eventually ended and I returned the door to its place.

• 52:00Speaker 07

  But in the meantime, she got really committed to this work of telling the students not to come see me.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  And fewer kids were showing up at his office. The domain he'd carved out inside the school, not just the physical space of his office, but the permission he represented for kids who wanted to joke around, talk freely, ask questions, and for him to be able to do that. That was being shrunk down to nothing. When I asked Pasha what this period of his life felt like, he gave me an answer that I can't help but classify as literally the most Russian thing I've ever heard. He said it was like this one painting he loves, Barge Haulers on the Volga, which is an oil on a canvas painting by Ilya Dapin. It depicts 11 men hauling a barge along the banks of a river. These men are at the point of collapse from exhaustion,

• 52:52Speaker 01

  oppressed by heavy, hot weather, leaning into these big leather straps attached to the boat they're pulling. They're exhausted, covered in dirt. But among them stands a younger man, whose face is in the path of the sun. He looks in a different direction, he looks up, and his body refuses to pull the boat. He seems to be the only one questioning the work they're being asked to do.

• 53:16Speaker 07

  Like, "Why are we doing all this?" And the rest of them just keep their head down? Keep pulling this ship along the Volga?

• 53:26Speaker 07

  As if they don't hear what he's saying?

• 53:31Speaker 07

  It's like you're speaking different languages. You don't understand each other. You don't have points of contact, you don't have common views on, you know, basically any questions. You can't discuss issues that demand discussion. It require it not because you can change something, but because you need to not be alone. You need to speak in order to feel support, to find at least one person that you can talk about this with. But there's no one.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  There's one last scene in the film that really got to me. It's so inside, in a way that lets you really feel how much has changed in this one school, this one town. Pasha gets invited to this party of a recent graduate, Vanya, who is heading off to the army. It's his going away party. All his friends toast to him and wish him luck in the future. They post her pictures of Vanya. Instead of cheese, they say "armi." Then, they take turn shaving his head with a shaver that breaks halfway through the process.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Pasha takes a turn at shaving Vanya's head. As he does it, he asks, "You decided to sign up on your own?"

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Vanya says, "Didn't have time. They sent for me." Pasha says, "Why didn't you call me?" Vanya sort of shrugs, as if Pasha's question is dumb and annoying. But then quietly, he mumbles. It just all happened so fast, in a split second.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Besides that, it's all laughs and jokes and debauchery. The shaving part is funny. Everyone's kind of wasted. But then, as it gets late, Vanya and his friends start embracing. One guy cries and hugs him, tells him that he really loves him so much that he won't forget him. He tells him, "You're like a brother to me, not by blood, but by soul."

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Vanya doesn't look so brave in the dark. He looks small and scared. His friends also do.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  And that's when it hit me. Before now, Vanya and the others seemed like they may be believed in this war, like they wouldn't mind going to fight for Russia. But in this moment, it feels like you can see everyone grasp the realness of the thing they'd been saying and then immediately understand that there was now no turning back, like a joke gone too far. Because at this point, so many Russians have gone to fight this war. And well over 100,000 Ukrainians have been killed in it.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Do people believe the propaganda? I wondered this question over and over again as I was watching. Does Vanya actually believe in the war he's going to fight? Do the teachers believe that Russia is denazifying Ukraine? Do the kids throwing fake grenades believe in the country they're being trained to defend? It's a version of the question I've been asking my family my whole life. But did you believe in the things you were being taught? The things you were doing? The slogans hung up in the gym? Those are the questions they seem the most frustrated by. It took me asking Pasha to figure out why. When I asked him if the people around him believe in all this, he scoffed at me, the way my grandma does. Like, "That's a bad question, you dummy journalist. Don't you understand?"

• 57:09Speaker 01

  He told me, "It doesn't matter if people believe in it or not. What matters is that they say it, that they hang the slogans, teach the lessons, sing the anthems."

• 57:20Speaker 07

  Сперва это рутина. First, it's a routine that's like, "I believe, I don't believe, but I say it."

• 57:30Speaker 07

  Then it becomes culture. These lessons are already in the schedule. Everyone's used to it, that you gotta say this, you gotta listen to that, you gotta raise the flag or whatever else.

• 57:42Speaker 07

  And then it becomes a cage. And you think, "This is normal." And I'd also add that the cage actually remains open.

• 57:53Speaker 07

  And you can leave it at any moment. But as soon as you do, you realize that everyone else is in the cage. You walk out and you realize that you've become an outcast, a loner. That like, your opinion, you, yourself, you don't matter to anyone. And that's also the work of propaganda. That's what it does.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Pasha became more and more isolated, retreated from his friends and family. They stayed away from him too. An unmarked vehicle showed up outside his home and he got scared and left the country without telling anyone where he was going or why. And he can't go back.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  I should probably fess up now and say, all those times I was asking my family about how they felt growing up, when I was posing those exact questions to Pasha, in the back of my mind, I was always wondering, who would I be if I was put in that situation? What kind of person? Would I be able to see what was happening and push back? When I saw the film and when I talked to Pasha, I found all these similarities between us. We're both similar ages, similar tendency to ask questions. And I did think quietly to myself that had I been put in the situation, I probably would be like Pasha. I told my dad this. Big mistake. He said, really?

• 59:22Speaker 01

  You'd be like that? What are you doing right now? In this country? There are things happening here that you don't like. Then I said, I'm doing my best. I think. Then he said, well, isn't that great? Your best. What's that got to do with anything?

• 59:55Ira Glass?

  Valerie Kipnis is one of the producers of our show. The actor who's reading Pasha's quotes in English was E. Leah Kohnbock.

• 1:00:42Ira Glass?

  Well, our program was produced today by Nadia Raymond and edited by Nancy Updike. The people who put together today's show include Chana Joffe-Walt, Adrian Lilly, Tobin Low, Molly Marcello, Catherine Raimondo, Stone Nelson, Ruthie Petito, Ryan Rumory, Ruby Schwartz, Frances Swanson, Christopher Swetala, Marisa Robertson, Texter, Julie Werderker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor, Sarah Abdurrahman. Senior editor, David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry. Special thanks today to Emmanuel Perret, David Borenstein, Katya Kitzia, Bela Shavitz, Daniel Pleyem, Catherine Emery, Ruth and Mark Fitzpatrick, Henry Frank, Chris Lavoie, and Brett Morse. The Lain Appleton Grant story in Act One was supported by a grant from the National Institute for Healthcare Management. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio

• 1:01:27Ira Glass?

  Exchange. Special thanks today to This American Life partners, Sean Collins and Stonewall and Traveler Peak. Sean Collins, I know you. We worked together at NPR. Nice to see you here in this ad. How's Oklahoma? They and all of our life partners have subscribed to help us keep making our program. When you do that, you get to listen ad-free and you get other stuff, including bonus episodes. Our most recent one that I did with one of my coworkers, Diane Wu, turned out so much more emotional and personal than I think either of us expected. Anyway, if you want to hear that, you got to join. Go to thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners. That link is also in the show notes. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia.

• 1:02:11Ira Glass?

  You know, his dream job was actually to be on Sesame Street. When he auditioned, he was told his performance was not quite right for children. We're going to count. One, two, three. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from NPR sponsor A24, presenting You Can See Everything. 34 days before she's set to begin her prison sentence, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes invites Nathan Fielder and a camera crew to move in with her family and document their every move. This jaw-dropping, once-in-a-generation theatrical event demands to be seen on the big screen. You Can See Everything, now playing in theaters.