840: How Are You Not Seeing This?
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from W B E Y chicago, is this american life i'm open low in for ira glass. You may have heard of comedian tig naro, but if you're a gay person like me, you have really heard of tig nature. SHE is what I would call gay famous, which makes the story of what happened to her so surprising. SHE in her wife steffani have two kids, twin boys, and after seven years of living in the same house with steph anie and tig having their two moms tend to every meal and but wipe seven years of the boys telling their teachers and random whoever that they have two moms, they're all on the car on the way to first grade one morning.

stephane, I were just in the front seat talking, and they were in the back seat talking like we always do. And and then Stephanie said something about us being gay. And our son leaned forward and pokes his head between us and he he says, you gay.

We were like, obviously just as shocked as he was um we were like, yeah and he said, what's gay? And that was a whole other level of stand. H, my gosh, is this information only just now coming out takes .

them with your wife for over a decade? And as far as they knew, they've been gay for the entirety of their children's lives. But apparently IT was news to max and fin.

Then I started to feel insecure thinking, oh my gosh, here he's live, seven over seven years, not knowing he had gay parents. What if he's upset now what if he doesn't like his life for his family or he's disappointed?

And somewhere or what's the first thing you say back to him? He is that question.

okay. So gay is um when a boy likes a boy or a girl likes a girl, and and that would be specifi C2Being yea h and and the.

y wer.

e jus t lik e a o.

ka y bef ore the y can say mor e, they're pulling .

up in front of the school. The car right is only a couple minutes long and then the kids are running out of the car and taking our wife are left to wonder how their sons had possibly not seen something right in front of their faces.

And we drove away, maybe going half a mile an hour. We were so on stefanie games at each other. Like, what in the hell just happened?

Do you have a moment after this comes out where you're like, oh no, what kind of parents I that this simply discussed is there like a part of your brain doing that?

Oh, a million percent. I mean, when. When there is any sort of moment, I was going to say moment like this, but I don't know how many moments i've had. I mean, I did have a similar one when they were five, and I was reading them a story before bed and then erupted me and said they call me maybe which is for mother french and um and fence said, mr, are you a boy or girl um and that was when he was five and I just stopped and I laugh and I said, well, what do you what do you think I am and he said, I think you're a boy and I said, okay I said, well, um I am a girl and he said, 嗯， okay, but you look like a boy right and I said, yeah yeah and and then we just kept reading the book and I was just laughing to myself like, oh, my god is my son didn't know I was a girl one reason .

all of this was especially mystifying was that the boys, like I said, definitely knew they had two moms.

Part of IT not like, na h, yeah, we have two moms there is like we have two moms with two also, the school they go to is very progressive and celebrates pride every year. And we, you know everyone drops their kids off in rainbows and and it's like, I guess they didn't know, I guess they didn't know what the pride was. They're just running around with rainbows on happy pride.

Taking Steven, he eventually figured out what happened. Sure, maxon fin knew they had two moms, but tagg steph anie had never SAT down with them to say two moms who were married. That's what gay is. And more importantly, they never said the words we're gay.

Took a while for me to sort that out and understand that a wedding picture in two moms doesn't equal gay.

right? right? And I was thinking about how, like when you first come out, there's like a moment where you like have to do this speed a bunch to people and then IT sort of like tapers often you just start living your life. Like, I can't remember the last time I just sit down and have a coming out conversation.

Somebody IT has been so long since I had to come out to anybody, anybody, and I would never have been in my own house. There were two people, didn't I? Like, we have three cats. I feel like they probably know we're going.

This stuff happens all the time. The people close to you miss something about you that seems so obvious. The truth is right in front of their face, and they don't see IT.

Today on the show, we have stories of people trying to end this misunderstanding once for all. In one, they build an actual machine to try to convince the other person. In another, they call a scientist for help.

One perceive and tries reaching out to the federal government, which kind of works. Actually, in every case, they get a certain kind of satisfaction. Stay with us.

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Visibility at indeed dot com flash american terms and conditions apply, need higher. You need indeed, support for this american life comes from square space, connect major social and multi media accounts to your website in a few clicks as icon, direct link or embedded fees, build visitor trust while updating content only where you need IT. Sellers can also sink their product cat logue directly with instagram, facebook, youtube and google to reach more customers and reduce the steps for a purchase visit square space out com slash american for ten percent off your first purchase of a website or domain.

It's this american life act one. There will be blood. okay? So in this first story, a person gets so fed up with other people dismissing a thing that was happening to them that they devise away for the other person to actually experience IT.

First hand, they build a machine that simulates period pain. Maybe you ve seen these videos on tiktok of people, mostly men, getting hooked up to one of these things, getting to feel for the first time what a person with a uterus goes through regularly. I've eva to corn fell.

One of the producers on our show got curious if this social experiment really changes anything, if men who didn't really believe their partners about what happened during their periods would be convinced by this experience. So SHE went to see IT in the wild at a radio, and calgary owners the stampede where the machine was set up. For anyone who might be a doubt, or here's a vivo, I admit I .

came into this pretty skeptical, the idea that five minutes of manufactured cramping could somehow make men understand women Better. IT seemed optimistic, especially when their studying point seemed to be so basic. I asked man standing line for the machine the question, what does a period crt feel like? Their guesses included food poisoning, bone pain, getting kicked in the balls, a pinch and being really full.

More often than not, they made these guesses while standing next to their partner, who was off. Mike silently shaking her head. No, either more women than I that avoid talking about their periods with their partners, or most of these boyfriends have extremely selective hearing. How is your period pain really bad? really?

I didn't know. They heard what you, no, no.

you're learning right now that you're golf is terrible theod yeah, pulling and you been .

together five years.

His girlfriend asked, what did you think was going on when I was in bed?

I like you just want to sleep. The one, yeah, I knew. I happy I never really asked much about IT.

This kind of ignorance is the exact motivation for luxury. The person running the simulator lucks to thirty one, they are sharp and funny. They they first started running to simulate, or a couple years ago.

And if since taken IT all over the world, lux is doing all of this because period pain has been the defining factor of their life. They have severe in demetrios is, which is a chronic disease, or tissue that supposed to grow inside the uterus, grows outside of IT, which causes all sorts of problems, including extreme pain. Lux has ben to the hospital with complications over seventy five times, and IT took over twenty years for them .

to even get a diagnosis. And when everyone around you is telling you that the pain that you it's completely not real and it's ruined your entire life, it's kind of how you end up building a simulate .

luck isn't the only one .

who's done this. There are lots of period simulator videos online, but the machine people are using in those other videos only triggers a very superficial crap, nothing like a real period. Where's legs have their machine modified to make the crops more intense with the goal of getting people to understand what period pain actually feels like.

So you're going to peel them off this plastic thing and you're going to apply them directly to your skin where you're over this would be.

So the way lux, this machine works, you place two stick y pads for your over. These are, or would be, which is lower than you think.

Those pads are .

connected .

by wires to a hand health machine, which then trigger a crop. The machine goes from one to ten, luck says. Most women who have tried the machine say they are Normal.

Period pain is around levels seven, some little lower, some much, much. Hier, I watched one hundred people get hooked up to the machine over the course of two days. When lucks cranks the simulator up.

Women tend to be stoic. They calmly described the pain, their feeling. I watched one woman on a level ten say, thought fully, huh? This is what I felt like when my site structured. Was man, tend this on more like this?

Oh my god. Chee's quite okay. Enough enough.

Fuck me.

Oh my god. fuck. sorry.

I'm sorry. That happens to you.

Whenever a guy was hooked up to the machine, women would crowd around the booth to watch. They would help questions at the man, would you still be able to go to work, go out with .

friends having that thing? Would you go to the? No, no, I wouldn't. I mean, like, probably could, but I wouldn't be a good day.

Another woman jumping. I have to pick up kids all day. What do you think you could do that?

Probably not. I don't know. Like IT wouldn't be fun for sure, that probably like, wanna sit, watch T, V, not really too much. The women .

badgered and hackled from the sidelines. Good, naturally, but still often times they would. Lemon to one another, that the simulator could only simulate craps, which in IT could somehow also trigger the headaches, backpack, monds, aci, noja, depression, everything else that comes administration. There seems to be a real pleasure in watching the men rive, a tiny bit of justice, if only for a minute.

Let me just say, I know how all this sounds. So by ary, I don't mean to drag us back to a time when we thought of men and women as two totally different species. And we're not saying all men acted this way and all women acted this other way.

There are obviously exceptions, though, honestly, as far as I saw not many, to be clear, most of the men I met, or nice, empathetic, they clearly knew what they were supposed to say. Course, they believe women, even if other feelings so about sometimes, why do you think your girlfriend wants you to do this? I don't know how IT feels.

So you winds voted. So IT. Is wine feel like the right verbs to you? No.

no. They actually could just wait.

At least half the men who tried this simulator did so because their girlfriend or wife was dragged them, sometimes literally, over to the booth, and forcing them to try IT and legs to have had a number of couples storm off. afterwards. They like to guess .

which couples they gonna break up. Yeah, like we have this couple last year were Young ish, maybe in their mid. And SHE really wanted him to experience because he had .

short for ando material. Sis, he was .

completely dismissive leading up to. And then when he was on the simulator, he like pushed through IT. Like you can see when people are like really trying to suppress the experience.

And so he was really like, wouldn't say that he was in pain and they stormed off, like, completely pissed at each other. He was like, why would you like, why do you have to save those things in front of people? Like we could hear her.

What was he saying?

Well, he was saying that SHE exaggerates that. It's not that bad. You know like that if this is what you're going through, like there's no reason that you can't like do the dishes or like IT was like really offensive stuff. And it's just sometimes you you just, you wanted say something like to the, to the girl you like. This guy is such an ass.

So can this humble machine change a man's mind? Un and cartier are a great test case for this question, because they do not see I to eye about her periods at all. U.

S. From south africa, cautious from poland. The rose in their early forties, and though of a kind of couple that is always talking past one another, constantly disagreed.

We've married for fourteen years. We have two big kids, big ten, seven. But yes.

even so, there is a real affection between them. In a sort of old timing. The old ball and chain is in my spouse real pain in the ass kind of way.

SHE wants me to stop complaining. Yeah I think he thinks it's a choice we have as women when we get really cranky. And i'm like and the choice is and that's what IT feels like the I had a history of very, very difficult crap. He thinks i'm difficult when i'm on my period and i'm like, come on, I mean, have got to be right. Let's see.

Un was actually the one who spotted the booth first and suggested they try IT, which surprised casa SHE said he's never displayed an interest in her period pain, though secretly SHE wondered if he was doing that to see if he was exaggerating or at least prove .

his on toughness.

You and nasha get hooked up to this simulator together. So we'll feel the exact same thing at the exact same time this way kosh a consider you in this right here. This is what my craps feel like and they're hooking themselves up you and repeatedly tells usha don't cheat and he looks over at her to make sure she's putting the .

pads zone in .

the right place.

You're so skeptic to go of her cheat. What else with there .

are ten levels. The first four levels are just kind of look a tingling sensation. Five is when IT drops too low, frequent and should feel more like a crap. Seven is what most people experience, and anything over seven would be considered painful.

You're doing IT right? This is .

about competition. You, for some reason.

seems convinced that lucks might secretly crank his machine while leaving kosta. On a lower level. Lux walks them through the levels they get up to level six.

That that can be hard.

Feels you I can't held.

feels never the whole time. Yeah, really. Yes.

the next cramp comes.

P no, we go. yeah. Look.

stops you s machine, but keeps cautious on who is now to a level nine. You and does not want to join her.

Never do at nine was at eight. No, no, no, no. I think I think this too high that's going to I don't think that I can feel can is that really I feels is that I feels this right now?

I'm feeling IT really good. Yeah, oh yeah. This was a pure paint like it's really deeping to you that's IT catia .

eventually convinces you and to get back on the .

machine nick side of your office. no.

Yeah, it's like giving birth. Is this like giving bird? Now you don't ten 呢？

The ten, that ten, the ten. Is that on tin now? Yes, yes, that's a deep pen.

Hold on one more and then you be done. Here's greeting her. Arma, yeah, no, he's heard to me. yes.

You know, when the thing goes all the way to your back, that deep muscle pain that goes into back, that's the period pain the whole time, the whole time continuously. But is that how feels? Hold on, the thing about.

do you think this will change way that you interact with your partner really well?

Now I will. Oscar, are you having the same, the same vibrations as as you are? Is so tough.

So you feel you believe her more now.

definitely.

How can you think that you had to experience the pain yourself to believe her?

Be honest, like mood changes.

You felt he was just being White, White un. Went from my wife complaints too much about period pain to ask him why shouldn't make more of a scene in her period over the course of five minutes. So theoretic icici mission success.

A few days later, the longevity of ewan's transformation was tested. Key and kosta, we're back at home in england and koh a had a period to sitting on the couch and told you in a matter a level right now. He's said, okay, he understood. Patient told me, if you think he then got me a glass of water or pillow or to care of me in some way, that's not the husband I have. But he acknowledged my pain and that was new, and I appreciated IT.

I'd flown to calgary to watch men get hooked up to the simulator to see what they've learned about period pain. I hadn't planned on learning anything about periods myself. I already have one to figure. I know about them, but I was shocked by how many women offhandedly dly mentioned going to the hospital for their period pain.

At first, I wasn't sure if I was just way more ignorant about period pain than i'd realized, or if I was just in canada, where regular people can actually afford to go to the hospital with some regularity, was probably both. But there were just so many women in so much pain, so much of the time, like this woman, gabby, with demetrios. She's twenty seven, just to walk with a cane, and she's applied for disabilities since the pan is so dibbledean.

And when I met her, he was a butterfly of the U. S. To pay for her second surgery, which costs about forty thousand dollars out of pocket.

Looks what? Gabby, all the way up the scale ness in mulatter. You got two and nine, didn't .

blink you. yeah. So this is the time.

Yeah it's like IT feels then you can feel a little bit more of the like, almost stabilise. I'm trying to figure out what this is on my pain scale. Yeah I mean, and i'm still standing. I would say this is probably like a this is probably like my everyday like a six o yeah, no, I could definitely function with this.

When I tried the machine, my level was seven average at levels eight, nine in ten, I couldn't even speak IT was just silently breathing through the pan IT was so much worse, my crops and watching gabby casually hold a conversation at level ten, I felt like I finally emotionally understood the whole point of the machine. It's easy to think that because you've experienced a piece of a thing that you understand the entirety of IT. But on the spectrum of period pain, gavage experience is as far from mine as mine is from the men.

I felt angry that I somehow didn't know any of this before. And when I got home from calgary, I couldn't start talking about what i'd seen asking everyone with the furber of a college freshman who just learned about feminism, do you have any idea how much pain women are asked to enter? Before this? I think a part of me felt like these guys were being kind of insensitive dummies, totally unaware of the pain of the people around them. But I guess I was basically as clear as they were.

Aviva corn field is a producer on our show.

Act two, face your demons. This next story is about a man who wants more than anything in the world to be able to see people around him accurately, which is not an easy thing to do. Our producer speak has the story.

Love was always important to Jason. Marble love, probably the most important thing as a kid growing up in south africa. He often imagined his future partner what the man might look like, how close the two of them would be. Jason was crossing his fingers for the standard version of the love story, the one in all the movies I was looking for.

a so mate, the one the person who would understand me and complete my life and allow me to fully connect with them on every level and share every detail of ourselves. I guess, a very disney way of thinking about life.

So IT felt like good news when, at the age of twenty four, Jason met marius, an artist with thick black glasses, who proudly held Jason's hand in public. This was two thousand and eight, and Jason had recently graduated from university with a degree philosophy. He was out on his phone trying to get a life and a small house for a business up and running. And marris was incredibly supportive, confident that Jason would succeed at whatever .

IT is that he tried. He looked at me like, I metered, and I remember him laughing a lot, and he had a good laugh, very warm.

But then one night, pretty early in the relationship, Jason had an experience that left him deeply shaken.

So I remember we were sitting at a table at a restaurant. I was outside the movies. We were gonna go see a movie that night, and I remember looking at him, and I thought he was smiling at me.

the expression on his boyfriend's face for a moment. Jason thought he saw a look of pure hatred. IT was just a flash, but IT was a nerving IT felt like jessy.

I'd seen a glimpse of something deeper, like the expression revealed some buried in her truth. Jason didn't think he had said anything to offend his boyfriend, and there was nothing in his boyfriend's voice that was native malicious. But the expression marrs looked like someone who clearly meant him ill.

I remember looking at his face and thinking, I don't want to be anywhere near this person. He feels like a stranger and like, he wants to harm me, to hurt me.

Did you say anything to him? Like, why are you looking at me like that?

No, because I thought I must be misunderstanding, and I am just asking enough questions to find out what he's feeling in order to understand him differently. And I started to asking questions about how he felt about us, about what he wanted from the relationship. And he he reacted a very confused way. And that was our first fight.

Jason an eventually let IT go, and the rest of the night was Normal. Unfortunately, in the days and weeks that followed those brief, menacing expressions, they continued, doesn't get catching marriage with a malicious look on his face, a kind of goodish. Sarah, every time he saw that, he felt his heart race.

The look was almost demonic. IT wasn't all the time, and usually the look would emerge and then disappeared just as quickly. So Jason was never absolutely certain that what he thought he saw was what he saw, but still IT upset him almost every time, no matter how many times mario told him that he was just imagining IT. The marya's loved Jason and only wanted the best for him. Jason found the expressions impossible .

to ignore, fight a lot. And I always felt like we had two relationships. There was the relationship I had with him when he looked like someone I could trust in love. In the relationship I had with him when he looked awful, and the relationship felt very chaotic. IT was good, and I was bad, and was good and was bad, is good and was bad.

I started to research facial expressions obsessively, so I read every book I could in my investor's library.

There were a few about facial .

expression that's .

so interesting. Why and what are you looking for in these books?

I basically wanted to be able to see a facial expression and be able to recognize what emotion was was underlying at what the person was feeling. I became obsess with that because what I thought he was feeling and what he said he was feeling didn't match. So I became obsessed with working IT out what is IT that on the government face?

Mario and Jason were together for four years until eventually the expression problem came to ahead. Jason says he remembers the exact moment he'd come into a room where marius was working on an art project.

I just hated the way he looked at me.

IT looked .

like he was looking at me with contempt. And then a few months later we broke up. IT was just that particular look. IT stayed with me.

And IT wasn't only with marius. This happened with other people too. These flashes of apparent mAlice IT happened with his mother, some, though not all, of his friends, where random strangers he encountered in the world.

IT wasn't everyone. IT wasn't all the time. But I kept happening. So Jason started to change his patterns. He went out with friends and family, much less even created a worklife where he could spend most of his time alone.

He just couldn't stand to see the terrible expressions, and they bothered him most in the context of his romantic relationships, that part of his life, where he had so ped to find unconditional love and support, Jason desperately wanted a healthy relationship. And so he did the difficult thing that people do when they're having trouble in love. He consulted experts, went to see therapies one after another.

I put myself into therapy.

And what did you say to the therapy? And what did they say to you about what the issue could be?

I, I, I said, the person i'm dating or this friend isn't someone that I can trust, isn't someone that I can feel close to you. And then the second thing I would say is, what is wrong with me for feeling like that? Is that there more is that me, but sometimes is very wrong hand. I don't know what IT is, but is the demo is that mean?

And what did the therapies tend to say? Was IT them or was IT you?

They would find some story to tell about that, like they either was something very wrong with them, or there was something very wrong with me wanting someone who I had such discomfort around.

This went on for thirteen years, and Jason withdrew more and more. Every romantic relationship ended the same way with a look so terrifying didn't could no longer stand IT. In fact, in one case, the look on his boyfriend's face was so disturbing.

Disseminating leave that incident literally went online, paid for airbnb and told him to pack. But then about three years ago, Jason stumbled on the source of this problem and understanding what IT was, made him think about his whole life differently. IT started one day when he was on this online forum and gotten a conversation with a woman named Catherine. Doesn't described to Catherine his experience with faces, the strange flashes he saw that haunted him for days afterwards. And Catherine told him that he thought he knew what his problem was sheat, the name of a disorder that he had never heard of, then told him that to figure out if he had IT, he should purchase the special light, which allows the user to change the color of the light through the full color spectrum.

I thought SHE was a bit of a quack, to be honest. I thought SHE doesn't what he's talking about um but i'll humor her and get these coloured bulbs for my lights and SHE said, sit in a perfectly dark room with no other light sources and put a lamp on either side of you so there no shadows and look in the mirror and change the colors on the spectrum and see what you see now in Jason .

was a kid and really all through high school, he told me he'd felt pretty good about the way that he looked. He considered himself reasonably attractive. But when he was in his mid twenties, that started to change.

What Jason saw when he looked in the mirror was someone whose write eye kinda looked at a place and was much smaller than the other one. And he decided he wasn't very attractive. He was kind of a strange looking guy. So anyway, Jason is down in his bedroom and ranges the light just like the woman said, and then he looks .

in the mirror and I sort of went around the color dle and um when the color was Green, my eye was not smaller and to the side and higher than the other eye. IT was where IT should be on a symmetrical face. How did that make you feel? I was amazed.

I was like, I was truly amazed by how I looked. And suddenly things started to pop into place, all of a sudden, in my head of this, because i've always had, I don't want to sign an arrogant, but I ve always had a lot of attention from other men. And I could never understand why, because I thought, I don't know what these people are seeing in me, but I am not a pretty person.

I have a really ugly face. Why they're doing, which would feed into sort of a paranoia about, like, are they trying to use me in some way? They can't possibly be attracted to me.

But suddenly, under the Green lights, my face was not distorted. I didn't see the faces was before as a distortion. I thought there was reality, and I was really shocked. I was, I felt thone and I couldn't stop staring.

But then just then turned to the dial and the opposite .

color to Green on the color will is red. And and I took the dog way to read, and I stayed at my face in the mirror, and my face became truly the money. Like I I remember, I was so intense IT felt like everything around my face went completely black and the change that i've seen in so many people over years and years and years was concentrated and magnified and Christal zed on my face and I looked so terrible um and the the difference between myself in the Green light and the red light was so massive IT was A A terrifying experience and I I switched the lot of I couldn't look at myself along and I cried. I sobbed.

IT turned out that Jason had a natural neurological condition. There was a name for what was going on.

It's this condition called pmo, although pro meter more foxier again, although poo meter mopsa.

That's a lot of lot of vows.

And it's actually worse than that, because the particular kind I have is called him my although pom meter or fop.

yet not much is known about pmo is extremely rare. But for people with the disorder, facial features distort melting and swelling until the expression of the person is so twisted. IT looks demonic, an exaggerated narrow that for Jason wasn't possible to tell wasn't real, and sitting in that dark room, looking at his face in the mirror, suddenly the last thirteen years made a certain morbid, sensitive Jason. So that was the very first time that you realized that none of this was real, that I was all just projection.

Yeah, IT gives me goose bumps. Now to think about IT, it's IT felt like the biggest thing of my whole life, bigger than anything.

Since he found out Jason spent working with a researcher at dark mith who studies this condition, a man named brad do shane. And looking back, they realized that all of his symptoms started after he had had this really bad case of mono in his early twenty, right before he started dating marriage, actually. So they think that that what caused pml seems like he can come on after an illness or to the brain.

And here's another cork of the disorder. For some people, including Jason, the distortions are harder to notice. If the person he's looking at is wearing glasses because apparently glasses interrupt the typical way that faces processed by the brain.

It's an instruction that kind of resets things. So if you wear glasses, you can look perfectly fine. But even knowing all this, it's obvious that it's still surprisingly hard for don to put aside something that he's seeing with his own eyes.

Jason has literally spent months working with researchers, building a detailed understanding of his disorder and how IT changes his visual experience. But still emotionally, it's just so hard to ignore. Like one time this and I were talking over zone, which is typically a little bit tough for Jason because if he has to look directly at a face for too long, it'll distort. But fortunately, I was wearing glasses. You will .

face a turkey final. The zero changes .

because I have glasses on yeah. So if I took off my glasses, then what happens?

So now your right is moving up and is starting to move across. Okay, so now this part of your nose is getting dark and pushing in .

the .

bridge part of your nose, yeah, I like flattens into your face. And then this part of your cheek drifts out like, bulges out.

And and do I look? Do I look angry at you?

Yeah, yeah.

And does that affect the way that you feel about me right now?

Yeah, I try not to .

let .

IT because I I know my conscious mind knows that that's not real but my unconscious feels the threat um and when I look at the face front on intensively for a while my hot rock goes up. I my my voice catches in my throat to just feels uncomfortable. It's not a nice experience and I just instinct to to keep looking away and back so that I don't have to see IT here.

Let me put on my glasses now. Now i'm perfectly fine, right?

Likely fine. yes. yeah. In fact, or me, you're not a different person. So like, I feel that warm towards this person, but the other person, I didn't really luck.

For all those years, all those relationships, Jason had been seeing the world through the distorted lens and didn't know IT now that he knows Jason has developed workarounds that he didn't have before. Like when he goes out to dinner, he's its next to a person, not across from them. He also has Green lights for his home.

All of that has eased things even as a partner. Now they've been together for a while. Do you think he's somebody that you could have the kind of a relationship with that you imagined as a child?

Like no.

because it's hard to live .

with somebody or yeah we did live together um for a while about six months and IT was very hard. It's not just that faces changes that i've built up a whole life style around that where I go to sleep very late, that i'm not around people, that I can spend a lot of time by myself. I've bought up a whole way of coping with this and living with someone really undermines a lot of that um and he was very hard for me.

Do you think that you'll ever be able to really, really, really trust a romantic partner?

Not as long as i've eyes yeah.

For the rest of his life, Jason will be surrounded by the faces of demons, and he says his heart will always jump when he sees them, because IT always, always does. But he knows he doesn't have to listen to those warnings that the goods that he sees her only projections, they mean him no harm.

At least angle is a producer on our show. Coming up, a person finds a way to create an almost unlimited quantity of gold. What could go wrong? That's in a minute from chicago public radio when our programme continues.

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it's this american life i'm open though in forever glass today show how are you not seeing this stories of people struggling to agree about what's right in front of their faces where IT act three, act three pump IT up? So in this next story, the fate of the entire world is at stake. And one person finds himself completely alone, surrounded by people who just do not get what has to happen.

The person is our very own David testing bomb. And the thing that he was trying to do was to replace the furness in his house with a heat pump. The furness he was replacing ran off natural gas, a fossil fuel.

The heat pump, much Greener, runs off electricity and can miraculously both heat and coal. When David saw the federal government was offering people two thousand dollar tax credits to switch to heat pumps, he figured that would be easy. IT was not David. Here has this, uh, guide as to how to get your heat pump and tax credit.

If you wanna get a heat bump, you'll start with the usual thing of asking a bunch each vat companies to come out and give you estimates. They'll ll up in their little vans with the companies are names on the side, poker around your house. Measure some things.

You'll tell them you, anna heat pump, they'll say they usually installed gas furnace and why didn't you take with that? You'll tell them you're worried about climate change and you point out the heat pump is actually a little cheaper when you include the new tax credit. You just need to make sure the one they install qualifies for the tax credit, which is when theyll tell you they've never heard of the tax credit even though what's been around for a year.

Undeterred, after they leave, you'll go to the IOS website because you want to make sure you go to a heat pump. The qualified on the irs website, you will find this heat pumps with a thermal efficiency rating of at least seventy five percent qualify. That seems simple, except you you don't know what thermal efficiency rating is, no matter because IT turns out this is wrong.

You'll find out this is wrong from a second I S. Document, which is very clear. He says in order to get your two thousand dollars, the heat pump must satisfy, quote, the energy efficiency requirements.

In q one, you may wonder if q wund refers to the first financial quarter IT does not IT refers to question one for the down in the document which says the heat pumps must quote, meet or exceed the highest efficiency teer, not including in the advance here established by the consortium for energy efficiency that is in effect as of the beginning of the year in which the property is placed in service. This will fill you with despair until you see that there is a search able database of equipment that i'll meet the qualifications. That sounds great, but there is no link.

So you google around and find a government website that has a link with instructions for how to use the database, but the link does not load. You will wait five minutes for IT to load because you figure a little sort itself out. But that does not you try back the next day.

And no, really does not seem to exist. The only way for IT seems to be to look up the actual requirements for you to get your two thousand of attacks credit. You go to the consortium for energy efficiency website, where you will finally find IT spell out.

And I am going have to spell here, because these are no words. The heat pumps, S E E R two, E E R two, H S P F two and C O P measured five degrees for in height. All have to be about certain values.

You will also learn here, in fact, skipped over elsewhere. If you are in the northern U. S, there are different requirements. You'll need a cold climate rated one. At this point, you will cry, because how are we ever gone to solve climate change if this is what IT takes to get one heat pump installed in one house?

At some point in your searches, you will find something hopeful. A government went page that seems designed for simple people like you. Energy star dock gov.

It's run by the epa, and it's friendly with ice stock type photos of parents playing happily with children on couches. This is where you should have been along. It's basically a database with a nice clean design.

IT shows you a giant list of heat comes. There are search filters on the left hands side, there is even a box for tax credit eligible. So you check that now it's showing only heat pumps, IT says our tax credit eligible, but you soon realized there is a problem.

It's not taking into account the fact that the requirements are different. If you live in northern states, this seems really bad. IT should say, if you live in the north, only these ones there is a box to check for cold climate certified for the people who live in the north.

But if you click that for some reason, IT doesn't change the search results. You will puzzle over this for a long time and finally realized, even though you are asking you to show you things that are tax credit eligible and cold climate certified, IT is showing you things that qualify for either, not both. Because you are a journalist, you will reach out to the epa about this.

There will be a very awkward twenty minute interview with a public affair specialist named denis, who will seem surprised by this fact that when you click on cold climate certified IT still shows you things that are not called climate certified. The niece will click and see this for herself. Then another press person on the call will erupt to ask if the whole interview can instead be on background.

If they can get you someone else to talk to, they will not get you someone else to talk to, they will not fix the website. Two months will pass theyll send an update, saying they are waiting for a possible update from the irs about which heap pumps qualify. You do eventually buy what you hope is he pumped qualifies.

A nice man named algan will come over with a crew and installed IT in a few hours. This is really nice. He will say, I think I might get one for myself.

David castine bomb is our senior editor. Months after David talked to the epa just recently, the government did finally fix the website. The URL is W W W energy star dot gov.

Flash product finders, slash product, slash certified dash heat dash pumps, slash results. Then you got ta click a couple more times on the right things, and then at the ends, like the day to tab. Anyway, good luck.

Act for i'm great. Thanks for not asking the last stories about a person going through something and they want to share IT with their friends. But that can be hard sometimes. It's a short story by murray phillips. Here's murray.

We meet at the bar that you shows twenty minutes from your place and an hour from mine and five minutes early, you're twenty five minutes late. You text me that you're in your way and ask me to order you a genotoxic. The ice is already half melted when you flock down in your seat and say, my god, it's been forever.

How are you? But I can see in your eyes that how are you not a genuine? It's just a piece of perfunctory, polite tss.

A chance to give me a sentenced tube for we get down to the real business of the evening, which is talking about you. I don't know how this happened. We used to share everything, but lately I feel like you've been slipping away from me, taking less and less interest in my life.

So I know that you don't want me to tell you about what it's like to still be living with my mom in a sketchy suburb of south london that you've never visited because you can't reach IT on the underground. You don't want to know about how broke we got, how we resorted to selling our possessions on ebay or other, how I resorted to selling my mom's possessions with her permission, because SHE still finds the internet confusing and asked me what her passwords are fifty times per day. I don't know, mom, they're not my passwords.

Why did you write them down? You don't want to hear about how I got catch fish by some guy into settle him, our beloved cow for some beans. The town who lived in our garden, which country to what our neighbors say is completely legal, is just that most people don't have one.

Anyway, I sold her, her beans. And what would happen if I told you how my mom yelled and yelled at me about these stupid beans and how I threw them in the compost deep, and then the next day there was a bean stock that went all the way up to the sky? You'd probably just hijack the conversation to say that you're growing tomatoes this year.

If you cared, you'd know that my garden is north facing and tomatoes won't grow there. And I love tomatoes. I really do.

I'm not going to tell you about how I climbed that being stock because I don't want to to hear about your travelling on training. Actually, that happens. There was a land up there and a house the giant living in IT.

But i'm gna keep that to myself. You'd only ask about what the property values are up in the sky. And being stock land would IT be a nice place to have a second home.

If you really cared how I am, you'd read my news letter, and you'd already knows that. When I got to the house, the giant said, the five foo fun, I smell the blood of an englishman. Be he lie or be he dead, i'll grind his bones to make my bread. You obviously didn't read my essay on what I was like to be missing dead by countable.

If we were still true friends, maybe I would trust you enough to tell you how I had to hide in the oven and oven that other humans had literally been cooked in until the giant fed asleep, and then I stole a bag of gold from him on the way out. But I don't want a lecture, in my opinion, is restore of justice. But whatever, anyway, IT doesn't matter.

Because as you was so funder reminding me, i'm terrible budgeting. I think a lot on the real way. Yes, the gold is work on. So I had to go back up the mean stock. I can just pick to you stifling a yn.

As I tell you, I went through the whole fee, five, four thing again, and at this time there wasn't a bag of gold, just a goose that lays gold necks, and how I took her instead. Do you want to know how SHE is too pretty? Discomposes later at living in south london, SHE doesn't liked the traffic noise.

Plus as IT turns out, it's quite hard to find someone whole cash a goldin egg for you and not ask too many questions about where you got to. No, I do not want to hear that you have a guy. I still remember what I was like when I called the account you recommended, and SHE told me that he doesn't do jobs, that small geese don't lay eggs forever.

And I has already started to slow down fear and fuel the time. I doubt you care that once a goose has lost a fatlings, she's considered worthless. But for me, hard identify, i'm not gonna tell you about that though, because you have no idea how feels to be approaching midlife while childless.

Otherwise you would not keep going on at me about how you were transformed by parent hood and only knows, you know, the true meaning of love. You will never know the beauty of becoming close to a bird. Though having said that, because of the no more egg thing which could happen any day now, SHE will not solve our financial ways indefinitely.

Plus, can you imagine what it's like to be financially dependent on a mano poser goose? No, I don't think you can. Oh, by the way, does your husband still run that hatch fund? Well, anyway, I discussed IT with my mom, and we decided that I had to go back up the bean stock. SHE couldn't do IT because he has problems with her knees.

Not that you asked how he is so if you find form again, that little thing of being misled ded for the third time, but don't worry about IT and the long as the short of IT is that I stop a talking hard who kept yelling out, master, master, because he has stocked on syndrome me or something. And the giant heard IT and chased us on the bean stock. And I was freaking out like this is that I am literally toast.

But I got to the bottom first. I choked down the being, stopped with my mother's accident. IT came crashing to the ground and the giant died.

But why would I tell you that you just missed the point completely and ask some irrelevant question, like, why does my mother have an x the thing is, though, I miss you. We used to have so much in common before you met your husband and started hanging out with his north london friends. I remember when we were teenagers and you run away from home.

You were living in a house share and working as a cleaner. After school, you knew what I was like to go through tough times. Back then, you'd asked me how I am and mean IT.

I wish I could find the right words, the right question to remind you of that time to bring you back to me. But instead I take a sip from my warm White wine and say, i'm fine. How are you? Do you have a hit from those seven doors?

Murray phillips, she's the author of multiple books, including god's behaving badly. This piece was produced by bim Edwin me.

Today's program was produced a manual joke and edited by David custom about the people who put together today. Show include shang cole fea andon, so we chase Michael comedy handlon, Catherine mondo, so Nelson naira iman ryan remi was a ship, Francis sanson persona nt ney and diane u. Our managing editor is our of ramon.

Our executive editor is a manual berry. Special thanks today to brad to shame. By the way, ten attar who you heard at the top of today show has a very funny podcast.

It's called handsome and you can listen wherever you get your podcast. You can also check out our two dates at take natal docs, our website, this american life dot ward. You can streaming our archive of over eight hundred episodes for absolutely free.

This american life is delivered to public radio stations by P. R, X, the public radio exchange. Thanks, as always, to my boss hourglass.

You know, we're always talking about the election, which voting block my way, the vote. Whenever IT comes up, he runs into the room yelling, jane. I'm open low back next week with more stories of this american.

Next week in the podcast of this american live everything, and he was eleven march, one of one thing, study abroad in america, just from all these older kids.

You have to do IT. You're parting everyday. You're getting five domino pizza xe everyday.

So SHE began school in the U. S, and then a war starts back home. In a Normal year of american high school is impossible. This next week in the podcast, a new local public radio station.

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