May 11, 2022 • 24 mins
Welcoming Allison Behringer to The Pod Club! Allison Behringer launched Bodies independently in 2018 and it is a testament to how honest stories can truly make a difference in peoples’ lives. Over 3 seasons Bodies has grown into this fascinating and moving collection of stories that empower people to understand their own bodies and advocate for themselves even when the medical establishment might brush them off. From STIs to painful sex to Autism Spectrum Disorder, every episode pulls back the curtain on what it's really like to have an unsolved health issue. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as doctors on TV make it look. Our healthcare system is way more screwed up than that.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Let's go back to Bodies really quick. For people that
don't know about it, tell me what Bodies is about.
Oh my god, I don't want to mischaracterize it because
I don't want to be like, it's about medical mysteries.
And I'm sure Allison has way more nuanced take on it. Baby.
I don't know. I don't know if we'll be able
to do this, but we could get Allison on the
show to talk to us a little bit about Bodies.
Oh definitely. I mean, Allison stupendous individual, really amazing persons.
(00:28):
Past podcast about podcast dreams really do come true. Today
we're finally having Allison Barnder on the pod Club to
talk all about our show Bodies, after we got that
high praise from former guest every Troubleman. I love growing
(00:49):
our little pod club family. Allison launched Bodies on our
own in and it's just a testament to how honest
stories can truly make a difference in p those lives.
Over three seasons, Bodies has grown into this fascinating and
moving collection of stories that empower people to understand their
own bodies and advocate for themselves, even when the medical
(01:11):
establishment might brush them off. Happens all the time. Beyond that,
Allison is just a complete crow in the radio and
podcast world, and she's an incredibly thoughtful storyteller and editor.
One of the things that I was most excited to
talk to her about is why it's important to tell
the kinds of stories that often make people feel uncomfortable. Hi, Allison, Hey,
(01:46):
how's it going. It's good. I don't know if your
if your ears were ringing, but the one and only
every Truffleman and I were just singing all of your
praises about you and about bodies. Yeah, yeah, Avery's Avery
is awesome. Well, let's just dive right into it. So
Avery recommended Bodies as one of her go to favorite podcasts.
(02:10):
I'm Alice and Beranger and this is Bodies. I think
we often see our bodies as this independent system. I
want to tell listeners a little bit about it, but
then I want you to explain it, because you're definitely
going to explain it better than I can. Yeah. So,
when I was first talking about it, I very much
was talking about it as a medical mystery show. So
(02:32):
each episode follows one person as they solve some kind
of health related mystery about their body. And I also
kind of talk about it is like the anti House,
like on the television show House. You know, this doctor
comes in and he's like, oh, just you know, taking
one look at a patient and you know, solving the
health issue. And in reality, that's not how it happens. Oftentimes,
(02:53):
it's the person who's going through the health complication who
goes to ten different doctors before they get an answer,
or they researched it online and get connected with the
community that's similar to them and then they find the
right doctor. So that's kind of the typical arc of
the story. And then in each episode, we're really interested
in two things. One the way that societal structures, race, gender,
(03:15):
capitalism impact health. And then the second thing we're really
interested in is a person going through some kind of
health issue, the way that that impacts them personally, their
sense of self, their relationships, what they're trying to get
out of life. And so we kind of weave together
a really intimate personal narrative, and some episodes really feel
(03:37):
like a profile of a person, but also integrating that
like kind of broader critique of the medical system. For
the first episode, it was your personal story, was that
always going to be the plan or did that come later? Yeah,
So the first episode of Bodies is my own experience,
(03:57):
my own medical mystery. This happened when I was in
my ad twenties, but I was dating someone and all
of a sudden, sex became painful. I had never had
that issue before. I couldn't figure it out when to
my O b G. I n was just kind of
flat out dismissed. And then eventually, through a friend who
told me her story, I figured out that the hormonal
birth control pill was causing the painful sex. So, you know,
(04:21):
you can listen to the episode for all the nitty
gritty details, but basically ended up getting to the doctor then,
you know, a doctor who really knew his stuff and
started looking into like why didn't I know about how
the birth control pill has all these side effects, lots
of mental health side effects in addition to sexual side effects,
and started looking into the history of the pill. So
(04:41):
when that happened to me, I was like, no way
am I talking about this. You know, I didn't talk
about it with many people. I was super ashamed of it.
And then a couple of years later, I just found
myself like talking to friends a lot being like sharing
my experience or talking about the side effects of the pill,
or talking about painful sex, and I realized, like, this
is an important information that you get out there. And
(05:03):
I was like, Okay, maybe I should write the story
or pitch it to another podcast. But the more I
started talking about it, the more I started realizing that
this thing that I had gone through was like a
very common experience across a lot of people's experiences, particularly
women marginalized genders, and I thought, Okay, I think this
could be a whole podcast. So my personal story was
(05:26):
always kind of the first episode because that's what I knew,
and then that's also how I pitched the show, and
then each subsequent episode is about a different person or
a different community. We're going to play a little bit
of that first episode because I've had so many people
tell me that they had the same issue, same problem,
(05:46):
and your show was one of the only things they
could find out there that talked about it, because we
don't talk about women's health enough, and especially when it
comes to pain in women's bodies. So let's play a
little bit of that. The first time I feel the pain.
We're in Paris after the summer apart he meets me
at the airport with flowers and a chocolate croissant. We've
(06:09):
been practicing our French together all summer. That first night
back together, we're having a hard time taking it slow.
It's going exactly as I imagined. But then he enters
me and I feel a little pain and some burning,
but it also feels so good to have him inside
(06:31):
me again, so I don't say anything he comes. I've
been on the pill since I was eighteen, but Luke's
the first guy that I let come inside of me
without a condom. We hold each other for a minute,
the pain goes away, and besides the late summer air
being too chilly for my sleeveless dresses, the weekend is
(06:52):
perfect and romantic in all the ways Paris with a
lover should be. Do you have a favorite episode, an
episode that, if someone hadn't listened to Bodies before, you'd say,
oh my god, you have to listen to this episode
and you'll you'll be hooked. Well, that's such a hard question,
because I feel like I fall in love with every
story and fall in love with all the participants. Um gosh.
(07:17):
We did an episode last season about a person named Melinda,
and it's her story with dangerous medical devices. So she
had a vaginal mesh implanted in her and it caused
all kinds of health issues. And basically the f d
A doesn't regulate implanted medical devices very rigorously, so there's
(07:40):
all these medical devices that are on the market that
are actually pretty dangerous. And Melinda is just like such
an incredible person. The story is about consent, basically informed consent,
and it intersects also with her personal story of growing
up in the Mormon Church and an experience she had
where she was kind of course into giving up her
(08:00):
baby for adoption because she had the baby when she
wasn't married. Through this medical journey, she kind of has
this epiphany about kind of her whole life, what does
it mean to have true informed consent. One of the
episodes of Bodies that I really enjoyed was the one
about Reese Yes and her anxiety and that she has
(08:21):
such a difficult time just organizing her daily life, and
that therapists and doctors kept saying, oh, well, the issue
here is that you're a stripper. Tell me a little
bit about that episode. Yeah, So this episode is about
a person named Reese, and this is kind of the
most kind of classic medical mystery format that we have.
But you know, the story start. She's living in New
(08:43):
York City. She's trying to be a writer, trying to
be a journalist, and she's also a sex worker, so
she does stripping and dancing and she's like trying to
figure out her life. But she's having a ton of
trouble like getting to work on time, managing her life
and just kind of feels like, as she calls it,
like a mess. Like she just feels like a mess.
(09:04):
And she thought it was maybe anxiety depression, and like
kind of goes on these different routes, and then eventually
she's on a Facebook group for women with anxiety and
she's describing all of her symptoms, the things she has
troubled doing, and someone said, have you considered a s
D autism spectrum disorder? And Reese was like, what, no,
that's you know, that's no way, I'm not autistic. But
(09:28):
then she started looking into it, and it turns out
that ways that autism expresses in girls and also trans
people is very different from the way it expresses in boys.
But the issue is that starting from when a researcher
first kind of identified and categorized autism as a condition.
(09:49):
That cohort was majority boys, and for as long as
autism has been researched, the majority of the research has
been on boys and men. And so what that means
is that the diagnostic criteria is normed off of boys
and men, but autism looks different in girls and trans people.
The research has come a long way in the last
ten years, so the d s M is being more
(10:10):
inclusive of the way that it manifesting girls. So for example, boys,
you know kind of the classic things like oh, lining
up trucks. If you see a kid like very meticulously
lining up their trucks and toys, that's a sign of autism.
For girls, a lot of girls will mask their social discomfort,
so you know, they might kind of memorize social scripts.
So I'm supposed to look a person in the eye
(10:32):
for this amount of seconds, I'm supposed to say these things,
but they still have a lot of social anxiety or
have like trouble relating to people. Again, you just took
something that might make the average person uncomfortable for any
number of reasons, because it's talking about autism spectrum disorder,
because it's talking about a woman with autism spectrum disorder.
(10:54):
And then because it's talking about a woman who happens
to work as a stripper who might have autism spectrum disorder,
that's right there. That is what I really enjoy about
this show is that it's not just about the medical mystery.
It's about how the mystery then impacts and changes all
these other aspects of our lives. Did you think that
(11:16):
that was what was going to happen when you first
started this or did that kind of evolve as the
seasons went on. Yeah, I think that's definitely part of
my vision from the very beginning, Like the medical mystery
was always just the hook, right, Like it's not a
true crime show. It's not like a traditional medical mystery.
It's more like what gets the person interested. And I
(11:37):
think also from the beginning, I obviously wanted to make
a show that was centering women and marginalized genders voices.
I wanted our experts to be mostly women, people of color,
queer people like I really wanted to center those experiences,
like I really wanted it to feel like something that
(11:58):
anyone could listen to. And I think that it, frankly,
like a medical mystery is something that anyone can get
interested in. Oh my gosh, everyone wants to listen to
a medical mystery. Yes, yes, tell me a little bit
(12:47):
about how you got started in podcasting, because you've been
doing this for a while now, and there's a lot
of people that literally discovered podcasts exist fifteen minutes ago,
but you started out with your show The Intern, right,
tell me a little bit about The Intern. And as
someone that lived out in San Francisco and was just
(13:11):
immersed in tech startups, this is pretty awesome. Yeah. So
I was in my mid twenties at the time, and
after college, I had taught a little bit, done some
nonprofit work, but really kind of also thought maybe journalism.
I wanted to try your documentary. So I did this
short documentary studies in Maine at a school called the
(13:31):
Salt Institute, and so I studied writing, and after I
finished that, I moved to New York with this idea
of like being a long form, you know, narrative writer, which,
as you can imagine, made my first couple of months
in New York a huge struggle and was working for free,
just like kind of trying to do anything to just
(13:52):
like get into media or journalism or documentary. And then
I saw an email from like on the alumni list
serve from the Shoal Institute and was like, Hey, there's
this company that wants to make a podcast about, you know,
someone who recently moved to New York and is trying
to like figure their life out or something like that.
(14:13):
And I was like, great, that sounds like me. So
I like contacted this company, which I would come to
find out, you know, this is kind of the heyday
of like tech startups in New York City and people
developing apps and like that era. And so this company,
Beta Works, was uh kind of like part incubator, part
VC firm, and they had invested an anchor, they had
(14:36):
invested in Gimlets. They were kind of playing in the
audio podcast space, and they thought, wouldn't it be cool
to bring someone in who has never worked at a
tech startup, has never worked in podcasting, have them like
self document this experience of like living in New York
for the first time and working in tech as a
way to both like experiment with the medium and as
a way to like also promote the company. So that
(14:59):
was me. I like, SA, end up for it. I
don't know, you know how I convince someone to pick me.
But I did, and they're like, Okay, now make a podcast,
And I was like, how the heck do you do that?
So it was really cool. I worked there for a year,
and I think kind of the three big things that
I did during that year was one just by like
doing it. If you want to learn how to make
(15:19):
a podcast, there's so much you can google on YouTube
and like how to edit and how to cut the
tape and all of that. So a lot of that
I just kind of like learned by doing or googling.
And then I also recognized early like I needed a
story editor, like someone to listen to drafts, advise me
on narrative, Like I just knew I needed an editor,
and UM basically convinced Beta Works to let me hire
(15:43):
an editor. So I had met Caitlin Pressed, who is
the creator of The Heart. I met her and basically
was like, will you be my editor? And so I
learned a ton from her, like stuff you can't really
learn on the internet, which is just like seeving feedback
about how a story is crafted, how to bring your
(16:04):
personal story into your work, how to report, And learned
a lot of that through her just by having her
as my editor and getting feedback from her. And then
I think the third thing that was happening during that
time was like I was just going to all the
podcasts meet ups in New York and like meeting other
people who were similarly like just getting started. And I
think those friendships and relationships, like I'm still close with
(16:26):
a lot of those people today. A lot of the
people that I met early on um in my career,
I guess are people who I'm collaborating with on Bodies
or who I like reach out for support or any
of that. So, yeah, that was kind of like my
start to the podcast world. I love the idea of
podcast meetups. Yeah, yes, So tell me a little bit
(16:49):
about what you listen to when you're not dissecting some
of the craziest medical mysteries out there. M I think
that a lot of people who make audio or podcasts
can relate to this. But it's like when you're in
the season, you like, can't you don't have any ears
left for other work that I would say when I'm
(17:10):
not in the midst of Bodies. A friend of mine
and actually someone who's an advisor on the Body's team,
Kalaliah just made a really incredible show with w NYC
called Tulsa Burning, and it looks into the Tulsa massacre
and it's the hundredth anniversary of it, but really focusing
on like what led up to it. And there's an
episode that's like very Bodies in the sense that Kalia
(17:32):
talks to someone who talks about like the long term
psychological and embodied impact of having people in your family
who went through the Tulsa massacre, Like what is that
ripple effect on not just the black community, but just
like our country. But yeah, beautiful, beautiful series. I actually
(17:52):
haven't listened to that yet. So now I love it
when guests tell me new things to add add to
my list and we can and we can play a
little clip about one episode because it also sounds really great.
I will never forget the violence of the white mob
when we live our home. I still see black men
(18:14):
being shocked, Black bodies line in the street. Here, the
screams have lived through the MASCO every day. That was
Miss Viola Fletcher. She's one and seven years old. She
was just a little girl at the time of the massacre,
(18:37):
and a few weeks ago she testified in front of
a US House subcommittee about what it was like. Country
may forget this history, but I cannot. I will not.
This is blind Spot Tulsa Bernie, the story of a
(18:59):
community set on fire and the scars that remain years cleaner.
Um and so what else? What else are you listening to?
Let's see what else am I listening to? Oh? I
really like the show This Is Uncomfortable. It's all about money,
(19:20):
but it's about how money impacts are lives, are personal relationships.
I feel like it's it's similar to bodies, and like
bodies is about the way that health intersects with all
these other things in our lives, and it's like how
money comes into play with relationships and our careers what
we want. So it's very kind of like it's not
like personal finance. It's just like stories about money and
(19:42):
it's another one of those things, similar to bodies. It's
like we don't really talk about our bodies, don't really
talk about sex, you know, we don't talk about money either.
I'm Adrie Marais and welcome to This Is Uncomfortable, the
show for Marketplace about life and how money messes with it.
If you're a first generation immigrant settling in New York City,
(20:03):
driving a taxi cab can seem like a practical, decent
way to provide for your family, but the reality is
that for many drivers this job, being part of this
industry has been a financial nightmare to drive a taxi.
Thousands of drivers took out sometimes exploitative loans they could
never afford. Right now, the average New York City taxi
(20:24):
driver owes five hundred thousand dollars under taxi medallion, half
a million dollars just for a permit for the right
to get into a taxi and drive it. This week,
we narrow in on one family story, a family that
tried and tried to get ahead, only to get way
down by the systems that were meant to help them.
(20:45):
And speaking of sex and money, also, Death, Sex and
Money is another one of my favorite shows. After you
said this is uncomfortable and like, but what about Death,
Sex and Money? Uh, do you have a favorite episode
of Death, Sex and Money? Gosh, one that I liked
that was kind of recent. It was about chronic illness
and it was about a rock climber who was kind
(21:07):
of navigating chronic illness and the episode, I think the
end of the episode you realize that the interviews were
conducted over like three or four different days, and I
just think in a sales like an incredible interviewer. Yeah,
I know, she is just a national treasure. Yes, she
really is. And that was a mean question to ask
you too, because now I'm like, wait, what's my favorite death, sex,
(21:30):
and money episode? But the pro climber episode. We can
play a little bit of actaus. It's really good. Also,
Anna's voice is just the best. Mason Earle spends most
of his day in bed. That's where he was when
I reached him over FaceTime. Hey, Mason, how you doing. Yeah,
I'm all right. How are you good? You You might
(21:51):
notice Mason is thirty two and he has a chronic
illness called myalgic and cephalo myelitis or mm E CFS,
commonly called chronic fatigue syndrome. AMYCFS is a complex illness
with a wide variety of symptoms, including muscle and joint pain,
memory issues, trouble sleeping, and extreme fatigue. There's no known cure.
(22:17):
Before Mason got sick, he was a professional rock climber.
He climbed all over the world, was featured in major
climbing magazines, and was paid by corporate sponsors, including Eddie Bauer.
But today the basis means most of I really enjoyed
the common thread between your show Bodies and death, sex
(22:38):
and money, and they are all things that people are
generally uncomfortable about that we're like, oh, is that icky
or gross? And should I not talk about that? Yeah?
I think that. To me. It's like when I find
myself sharing an episode or like using it as a
conversation starter, I'm like, yeah, that's I love this show
kind of thing, right, Yes, exactly. When I find an
(22:59):
episode that I like, I just want to tell everyone
and that's that's the mark of a great episode. I'm like, oh, okay,
yes this, everyone around me has to listen to this
now so that I don't feel so alone in the world.
Totally totally awesome, awesome, Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you,
nice to meet Slash, see you off. That's it for
(23:26):
the pod Club today. Thank you, Thank you to Allison
for coming on our little show. If you haven't listened
to Bodies yet, how lucky are you to have three
seasons to get to binge to go through right now
to recap? Alison recommended blind Spot Tulsa burning, This is
uncomfortable and death, sex and money. I can't believe we
(23:47):
still haven't had Anna sales on the show. Can somebody
again on that? Have me listening? We'll see you next week.
The pod club is hosted by me Joe Pianza. Our
executive producers are Me Again and Emily Maronoff. Our producers
are Mary Do and Darby Masters. Our associate producer is
(24:10):
Lauren Philip. Our theme and additional music was composed by
Aaron Kaufman. Aaron Kaufman is also our consulting producer and
special thanks to Nikki e Tor. He was just a
wonderful human being whom I like to thank at the
end of episodes.
Let's go back to Bodies really quick. For people that
don't know about it, tell me what Bodies is about.
Oh my god, I don't want to mischaracterize it because
I don't want to be like, it's about medical mysteries.
And I'm sure Allison has way more nuanced take on it. Baby.
I don't know. I don't know if we'll be able
to do this, but we could get Allison on the
show to talk to us a little bit about Bodies.
Oh definitely. I mean, Allison stupendous individual, really amazing persons.
(00:28):
Past podcast about podcast dreams really do come true. Today
we're finally having Allison Barnder on the pod Club to
talk all about our show Bodies, after we got that
high praise from former guest every Troubleman. I love growing
(00:49):
our little pod club family. Allison launched Bodies on our
own in and it's just a testament to how honest
stories can truly make a difference in p those lives.
Over three seasons, Bodies has grown into this fascinating and
moving collection of stories that empower people to understand their
own bodies and advocate for themselves, even when the medical
(01:11):
establishment might brush them off. Happens all the time. Beyond that,
Allison is just a complete crow in the radio and
podcast world, and she's an incredibly thoughtful storyteller and editor.
One of the things that I was most excited to
talk to her about is why it's important to tell
the kinds of stories that often make people feel uncomfortable. Hi, Allison, Hey,
(01:46):
how's it going. It's good. I don't know if your
if your ears were ringing, but the one and only
every Truffleman and I were just singing all of your
praises about you and about bodies. Yeah, yeah, Avery's Avery
is awesome. Well, let's just dive right into it. So
Avery recommended Bodies as one of her go to favorite podcasts.
(02:10):
I'm Alice and Beranger and this is Bodies. I think
we often see our bodies as this independent system. I
want to tell listeners a little bit about it, but
then I want you to explain it, because you're definitely
going to explain it better than I can. Yeah. So,
when I was first talking about it, I very much
was talking about it as a medical mystery show. So
(02:32):
each episode follows one person as they solve some kind
of health related mystery about their body. And I also
kind of talk about it is like the anti House,
like on the television show House. You know, this doctor
comes in and he's like, oh, just you know, taking
one look at a patient and you know, solving the
health issue. And in reality, that's not how it happens. Oftentimes,
(02:53):
it's the person who's going through the health complication who
goes to ten different doctors before they get an answer,
or they researched it online and get connected with the
community that's similar to them and then they find the
right doctor. So that's kind of the typical arc of
the story. And then in each episode, we're really interested
in two things. One the way that societal structures, race, gender,
(03:15):
capitalism impact health. And then the second thing we're really
interested in is a person going through some kind of
health issue, the way that that impacts them personally, their
sense of self, their relationships, what they're trying to get
out of life. And so we kind of weave together
a really intimate personal narrative, and some episodes really feel
(03:37):
like a profile of a person, but also integrating that
like kind of broader critique of the medical system. For
the first episode, it was your personal story, was that
always going to be the plan or did that come later? Yeah,
So the first episode of Bodies is my own experience,
(03:57):
my own medical mystery. This happened when I was in
my ad twenties, but I was dating someone and all
of a sudden, sex became painful. I had never had
that issue before. I couldn't figure it out when to
my O b G. I n was just kind of
flat out dismissed. And then eventually, through a friend who
told me her story, I figured out that the hormonal
birth control pill was causing the painful sex. So, you know,
(04:21):
you can listen to the episode for all the nitty
gritty details, but basically ended up getting to the doctor then,
you know, a doctor who really knew his stuff and
started looking into like why didn't I know about how
the birth control pill has all these side effects, lots
of mental health side effects in addition to sexual side effects,
and started looking into the history of the pill. So
(04:41):
when that happened to me, I was like, no way
am I talking about this. You know, I didn't talk
about it with many people. I was super ashamed of it.
And then a couple of years later, I just found
myself like talking to friends a lot being like sharing
my experience or talking about the side effects of the pill,
or talking about painful sex, and I realized, like, this
is an important information that you get out there. And
(05:03):
I was like, Okay, maybe I should write the story
or pitch it to another podcast. But the more I
started talking about it, the more I started realizing that
this thing that I had gone through was like a
very common experience across a lot of people's experiences, particularly
women marginalized genders, and I thought, Okay, I think this
could be a whole podcast. So my personal story was
(05:26):
always kind of the first episode because that's what I knew,
and then that's also how I pitched the show, and
then each subsequent episode is about a different person or
a different community. We're going to play a little bit
of that first episode because I've had so many people
tell me that they had the same issue, same problem,
(05:46):
and your show was one of the only things they
could find out there that talked about it, because we
don't talk about women's health enough, and especially when it
comes to pain in women's bodies. So let's play a
little bit of that. The first time I feel the pain.
We're in Paris after the summer apart he meets me
at the airport with flowers and a chocolate croissant. We've
(06:09):
been practicing our French together all summer. That first night
back together, we're having a hard time taking it slow.
It's going exactly as I imagined. But then he enters
me and I feel a little pain and some burning,
but it also feels so good to have him inside
(06:31):
me again, so I don't say anything he comes. I've
been on the pill since I was eighteen, but Luke's
the first guy that I let come inside of me
without a condom. We hold each other for a minute,
the pain goes away, and besides the late summer air
being too chilly for my sleeveless dresses, the weekend is
(06:52):
perfect and romantic in all the ways Paris with a
lover should be. Do you have a favorite episode, an
episode that, if someone hadn't listened to Bodies before, you'd say,
oh my god, you have to listen to this episode
and you'll you'll be hooked. Well, that's such a hard question,
because I feel like I fall in love with every
story and fall in love with all the participants. Um gosh.
(07:17):
We did an episode last season about a person named Melinda,
and it's her story with dangerous medical devices. So she
had a vaginal mesh implanted in her and it caused
all kinds of health issues. And basically the f d
A doesn't regulate implanted medical devices very rigorously, so there's
(07:40):
all these medical devices that are on the market that
are actually pretty dangerous. And Melinda is just like such
an incredible person. The story is about consent, basically informed consent,
and it intersects also with her personal story of growing
up in the Mormon Church and an experience she had
where she was kind of course into giving up her
(08:00):
baby for adoption because she had the baby when she
wasn't married. Through this medical journey, she kind of has
this epiphany about kind of her whole life, what does
it mean to have true informed consent. One of the
episodes of Bodies that I really enjoyed was the one
about Reese Yes and her anxiety and that she has
(08:21):
such a difficult time just organizing her daily life, and
that therapists and doctors kept saying, oh, well, the issue
here is that you're a stripper. Tell me a little
bit about that episode. Yeah, So this episode is about
a person named Reese, and this is kind of the
most kind of classic medical mystery format that we have.
But you know, the story start. She's living in New
(08:43):
York City. She's trying to be a writer, trying to
be a journalist, and she's also a sex worker, so
she does stripping and dancing and she's like trying to
figure out her life. But she's having a ton of
trouble like getting to work on time, managing her life
and just kind of feels like, as she calls it,
like a mess. Like she just feels like a mess.
(09:04):
And she thought it was maybe anxiety depression, and like
kind of goes on these different routes, and then eventually
she's on a Facebook group for women with anxiety and
she's describing all of her symptoms, the things she has
troubled doing, and someone said, have you considered a s
D autism spectrum disorder? And Reese was like, what, no,
that's you know, that's no way, I'm not autistic. But
(09:28):
then she started looking into it, and it turns out
that ways that autism expresses in girls and also trans
people is very different from the way it expresses in boys.
But the issue is that starting from when a researcher
first kind of identified and categorized autism as a condition.
(09:49):
That cohort was majority boys, and for as long as
autism has been researched, the majority of the research has
been on boys and men. And so what that means
is that the diagnostic criteria is normed off of boys
and men, but autism looks different in girls and trans people.
The research has come a long way in the last
ten years, so the d s M is being more
(10:10):
inclusive of the way that it manifesting girls. So for example, boys,
you know kind of the classic things like oh, lining
up trucks. If you see a kid like very meticulously
lining up their trucks and toys, that's a sign of autism.
For girls, a lot of girls will mask their social discomfort,
so you know, they might kind of memorize social scripts.
So I'm supposed to look a person in the eye
(10:32):
for this amount of seconds, I'm supposed to say these things,
but they still have a lot of social anxiety or
have like trouble relating to people. Again, you just took
something that might make the average person uncomfortable for any
number of reasons, because it's talking about autism spectrum disorder,
because it's talking about a woman with autism spectrum disorder.
(10:54):
And then because it's talking about a woman who happens
to work as a stripper who might have autism spectrum disorder,
that's right there. That is what I really enjoy about
this show is that it's not just about the medical mystery.
It's about how the mystery then impacts and changes all
these other aspects of our lives. Did you think that
(11:16):
that was what was going to happen when you first
started this or did that kind of evolve as the
seasons went on. Yeah, I think that's definitely part of
my vision from the very beginning, Like the medical mystery
was always just the hook, right, Like it's not a
true crime show. It's not like a traditional medical mystery.
It's more like what gets the person interested. And I
(11:37):
think also from the beginning, I obviously wanted to make
a show that was centering women and marginalized genders voices.
I wanted our experts to be mostly women, people of color,
queer people like I really wanted to center those experiences,
like I really wanted it to feel like something that
(11:58):
anyone could listen to. And I think that it, frankly,
like a medical mystery is something that anyone can get
interested in. Oh my gosh, everyone wants to listen to
a medical mystery. Yes, yes, tell me a little bit
(12:47):
about how you got started in podcasting, because you've been
doing this for a while now, and there's a lot
of people that literally discovered podcasts exist fifteen minutes ago,
but you started out with your show The Intern, right,
tell me a little bit about The Intern. And as
someone that lived out in San Francisco and was just
(13:11):
immersed in tech startups, this is pretty awesome. Yeah. So
I was in my mid twenties at the time, and
after college, I had taught a little bit, done some
nonprofit work, but really kind of also thought maybe journalism.
I wanted to try your documentary. So I did this
short documentary studies in Maine at a school called the
(13:31):
Salt Institute, and so I studied writing, and after I
finished that, I moved to New York with this idea
of like being a long form, you know, narrative writer, which,
as you can imagine, made my first couple of months
in New York a huge struggle and was working for free,
just like kind of trying to do anything to just
(13:52):
like get into media or journalism or documentary. And then
I saw an email from like on the alumni list
serve from the Shoal Institute and was like, Hey, there's
this company that wants to make a podcast about, you know,
someone who recently moved to New York and is trying
to like figure their life out or something like that.
(14:13):
And I was like, great, that sounds like me. So
I like contacted this company, which I would come to
find out, you know, this is kind of the heyday
of like tech startups in New York City and people
developing apps and like that era. And so this company,
Beta Works, was uh kind of like part incubator, part
VC firm, and they had invested an anchor, they had
(14:36):
invested in Gimlets. They were kind of playing in the
audio podcast space, and they thought, wouldn't it be cool
to bring someone in who has never worked at a
tech startup, has never worked in podcasting, have them like
self document this experience of like living in New York
for the first time and working in tech as a
way to both like experiment with the medium and as
a way to like also promote the company. So that
(14:59):
was me. I like, SA, end up for it. I
don't know, you know how I convince someone to pick me.
But I did, and they're like, Okay, now make a podcast,
And I was like, how the heck do you do that?
So it was really cool. I worked there for a year,
and I think kind of the three big things that
I did during that year was one just by like
doing it. If you want to learn how to make
(15:19):
a podcast, there's so much you can google on YouTube
and like how to edit and how to cut the
tape and all of that. So a lot of that
I just kind of like learned by doing or googling.
And then I also recognized early like I needed a
story editor, like someone to listen to drafts, advise me
on narrative, Like I just knew I needed an editor,
and UM basically convinced Beta Works to let me hire
(15:43):
an editor. So I had met Caitlin Pressed, who is
the creator of The Heart. I met her and basically
was like, will you be my editor? And so I
learned a ton from her, like stuff you can't really
learn on the internet, which is just like seeving feedback
about how a story is crafted, how to bring your
(16:04):
personal story into your work, how to report, And learned
a lot of that through her just by having her
as my editor and getting feedback from her. And then
I think the third thing that was happening during that
time was like I was just going to all the
podcasts meet ups in New York and like meeting other
people who were similarly like just getting started. And I
think those friendships and relationships, like I'm still close with
(16:26):
a lot of those people today. A lot of the
people that I met early on um in my career,
I guess are people who I'm collaborating with on Bodies
or who I like reach out for support or any
of that. So, yeah, that was kind of like my
start to the podcast world. I love the idea of
podcast meetups. Yeah, yes, So tell me a little bit
(16:49):
about what you listen to when you're not dissecting some
of the craziest medical mysteries out there. M I think
that a lot of people who make audio or podcasts
can relate to this. But it's like when you're in
the season, you like, can't you don't have any ears
left for other work that I would say when I'm
(17:10):
not in the midst of Bodies. A friend of mine
and actually someone who's an advisor on the Body's team,
Kalaliah just made a really incredible show with w NYC
called Tulsa Burning, and it looks into the Tulsa massacre
and it's the hundredth anniversary of it, but really focusing
on like what led up to it. And there's an
episode that's like very Bodies in the sense that Kalia
(17:32):
talks to someone who talks about like the long term
psychological and embodied impact of having people in your family
who went through the Tulsa massacre, Like what is that
ripple effect on not just the black community, but just
like our country. But yeah, beautiful, beautiful series. I actually
(17:52):
haven't listened to that yet. So now I love it
when guests tell me new things to add add to
my list and we can and we can play a
little clip about one episode because it also sounds really great.
I will never forget the violence of the white mob
when we live our home. I still see black men
(18:14):
being shocked, Black bodies line in the street. Here, the
screams have lived through the MASCO every day. That was
Miss Viola Fletcher. She's one and seven years old. She
was just a little girl at the time of the massacre,
(18:37):
and a few weeks ago she testified in front of
a US House subcommittee about what it was like. Country
may forget this history, but I cannot. I will not.
This is blind Spot Tulsa Bernie, the story of a
(18:59):
community set on fire and the scars that remain years cleaner.
Um and so what else? What else are you listening to?
Let's see what else am I listening to? Oh? I
really like the show This Is Uncomfortable. It's all about money,
(19:20):
but it's about how money impacts are lives, are personal relationships.
I feel like it's it's similar to bodies, and like
bodies is about the way that health intersects with all
these other things in our lives, and it's like how
money comes into play with relationships and our careers what
we want. So it's very kind of like it's not
like personal finance. It's just like stories about money and
(19:42):
it's another one of those things, similar to bodies. It's
like we don't really talk about our bodies, don't really
talk about sex, you know, we don't talk about money either.
I'm Adrie Marais and welcome to This Is Uncomfortable, the
show for Marketplace about life and how money messes with it.
If you're a first generation immigrant settling in New York City,
(20:03):
driving a taxi cab can seem like a practical, decent
way to provide for your family, but the reality is
that for many drivers this job, being part of this
industry has been a financial nightmare to drive a taxi.
Thousands of drivers took out sometimes exploitative loans they could
never afford. Right now, the average New York City taxi
(20:24):
driver owes five hundred thousand dollars under taxi medallion, half
a million dollars just for a permit for the right
to get into a taxi and drive it. This week,
we narrow in on one family story, a family that
tried and tried to get ahead, only to get way
down by the systems that were meant to help them.
(20:45):
And speaking of sex and money, also, Death, Sex and
Money is another one of my favorite shows. After you
said this is uncomfortable and like, but what about Death,
Sex and Money? Uh, do you have a favorite episode
of Death, Sex and Money? Gosh, one that I liked
that was kind of recent. It was about chronic illness
and it was about a rock climber who was kind
(21:07):
of navigating chronic illness and the episode, I think the
end of the episode you realize that the interviews were
conducted over like three or four different days, and I
just think in a sales like an incredible interviewer. Yeah,
I know, she is just a national treasure. Yes, she
really is. And that was a mean question to ask
you too, because now I'm like, wait, what's my favorite death, sex,
(21:30):
and money episode? But the pro climber episode. We can
play a little bit of actaus. It's really good. Also,
Anna's voice is just the best. Mason Earle spends most
of his day in bed. That's where he was when
I reached him over FaceTime. Hey, Mason, how you doing. Yeah,
I'm all right. How are you good? You You might
(21:51):
notice Mason is thirty two and he has a chronic
illness called myalgic and cephalo myelitis or mm E CFS,
commonly called chronic fatigue syndrome. AMYCFS is a complex illness
with a wide variety of symptoms, including muscle and joint pain,
memory issues, trouble sleeping, and extreme fatigue. There's no known cure.
(22:17):
Before Mason got sick, he was a professional rock climber.
He climbed all over the world, was featured in major
climbing magazines, and was paid by corporate sponsors, including Eddie Bauer.
But today the basis means most of I really enjoyed
the common thread between your show Bodies and death, sex
(22:38):
and money, and they are all things that people are
generally uncomfortable about that we're like, oh, is that icky
or gross? And should I not talk about that? Yeah?
I think that. To me. It's like when I find
myself sharing an episode or like using it as a
conversation starter, I'm like, yeah, that's I love this show
kind of thing, right, Yes, exactly. When I find an
(22:59):
episode that I like, I just want to tell everyone
and that's that's the mark of a great episode. I'm like, oh, okay,
yes this, everyone around me has to listen to this
now so that I don't feel so alone in the world.
Totally totally awesome, awesome, Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you,
nice to meet Slash, see you off. That's it for
(23:26):
the pod Club today. Thank you, Thank you to Allison
for coming on our little show. If you haven't listened
to Bodies yet, how lucky are you to have three
seasons to get to binge to go through right now
to recap? Alison recommended blind Spot Tulsa burning, This is
uncomfortable and death, sex and money. I can't believe we
(23:47):
still haven't had Anna sales on the show. Can somebody
again on that? Have me listening? We'll see you next week.
The pod club is hosted by me Joe Pianza. Our
executive producers are Me Again and Emily Maronoff. Our producers
are Mary Do and Darby Masters. Our associate producer is
(24:10):
Lauren Philip. Our theme and additional music was composed by
Aaron Kaufman. Aaron Kaufman is also our consulting producer and
special thanks to Nikki e Tor. He was just a
wonderful human being whom I like to thank at the
end of episodes.
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