826: Unprepared for What Has Already Happened
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A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaten ed in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, this american life at org, there will be easy. Chicago, this american life from our glass, and I am happy to welcome to the studio will levan one of our producers. Hey, hi iron, and you're here because we want to pick off today, show with this interview that you did and explain how this is with.

So the interviews with the sky named Jackson lenders Jackson, he is in outdoorsy type of person. He fishes he, and he writes about that stuff. He's a journalist who sometimes does this adventure journalism, like he rote whole book, where he traveled, run with america, hunting and eating invasive species. But the thing that I talked him about was as one moment that happened near his house in Virginia, the day he won't fishing and I got .

my car or had the fishing ear in the car, stays at all summer and drone to the rest war and I pick up um my um my water shoes and I put them on and while i'm put in one of the moon I feel like a like a beating and I didn't last long was he wasn't too painful but felt like a big thing I I took off I took off the shoe and I shoot IT out and I saw the pieces of the dead spider, and I knew those are the legs and the fragments of the dead black. What boy, this isn't good.

So Jackson actually knows a lot about black widow spiders and their bites. He lives in a place where there are a lot of them, and you know, sometimes he finds in the house, or one time he found, put in a Mason jar and kept jar in his desk for months, and you know, he would feed IT and observe IT and watch its behavior. So he knew a lot about them, and he also knew that the truth is black to bites are very rarely fatal. They're just really painful, the kind of pain that like, would leave someone doubled over incapacity. But Jackson, he had just been bit, and he's not feeling any of that yet.

Just I felt like a beating, and I thought, well, okay, is this really what I think IT is? Or I don't know, maybe this isn't that bad. And while I was thinking about IT, I picked up my cast net. I was fishing with a net, and I went down to the water, just three fishing. So fishing while i'm mulling this .

over where you start started fishing.

yeah I mean, i'm there there's the water there's net in in retrospect CT this made this was absolutely rational and and I I knew that yes, you you have to seek medical attention. And by the way, as our call, I didn't have any idea health insurance at the time. So part of IT IT is like I don't want to incur medical bills if I don't have to, if I can just tough this thing out and just be in pain.

He also knew that when you go to a hospital, they almost never give you the anti vum.

It's a stuff they can cure a by bike because .

there's a fear that while the black widow probably won't kill you, the anti actually made. So when you go to the hospital, they usually just help you manage your symptoms.

And I knew that if I went to the hospital would probably be maybe to give you some pain medication. You just going to be like a lot of pain for like three days and just are. And part of me was thinking, maybe i'll just do that at home for free.

He didn't go home though.

Continue doing what he was doing.

fishing. yeah. And then he started to feel this tightness in his stomach. He never .

heard of her, was a tightness. And then IT grew and grew where IT feels like I was being like, like punched in the stomach, that, okay, this is bad. I get to get out here.

Home is ten minutes away. I drove home. I laid down on the floor and thought, okay, I can do this.

And I posted on facebook just so people would know, nobody hears for me for while the situation, I met home on land, on the floor. And no, nobody hears to me what's happened on the flour a bit by black to. And then I got bad enough.

The punch in the stomach got tighter and tighter and I got bad. And if I thought I pain medication are going to give hospital, I can't take anymore. I I feel like imagine your entire chest is an advice like imagine a medieval torture device is just going to crush your chest where someone he's turning to drew a little bit more and a little bit more.

Jackson s. Mom drives into the hospital. And when IT gets there, it's really lucky for him because they have a new experimental anti vm that they give him.

And IT was like this wave of wonderfulness I felt past through my body from the point where the iv went IT I could feel a wave of pain just being a raced as IT just moved through my ARM and then into my chest and like through out my whole torso and then down through my legs and that my feet was just IT was like I could feel the then on being erased somehow.

To work.

Yeah.

but the fact that he waited so long to stop fishing and get to a hospital, he thought a lot about that decision. He says IT wasn't just about the money.

so of thing else. One of the things that prevented me for making a decision more quickly when I was bit was a failure to accept a radical new reality that that most of me feels fine. Right after a bit was I felt like a beating and the sun was still shining, and everything looks and feels the same.

And when everything looks the same, it's very difficult to accept that um that reality has just changed. Things are about to be really different and I could be an organizing pain and I need to be go to hospital and things could become very expensive and very chaotic and very stressful. And it's very easy to just be sort of paralyzed um by an unwillingness to accept that .

day on our program. People who are in a situation where reality changes and they have not caught up to the new reality they're giving in this happens in so many different kinds of situations, actually got the idea for the epic from something that a climate future said to go about wild fires. The guys, a nme is out, Stephen. And he talked about how so many of us, when he comes to the climate, are experiencing, quote, the shock that comes with recognizing that you are unprepared for what has already happened, having you felt that with a climate maybe with where politics has gone in this country the last few years, or with personal news, sometimes the shock of realizing you're unprepared for what has already happened today, where your story of people struggling without exact thing, that reality shifting lag time, stay with us.

That one is probably nothing from very begin of the war ukraine going to cost to chinky was there, arriving the day after russia invaded, riding a writing stories that were shocking and city of kerman SHE talked to people who told that they have been tortured by russian soldiers. You've found the place where they have been held captive to got the names of dozens of people who have been kidnapped.

She's a long time russian journalist publishing in the country's leading independent newspaper, nova a. Gazeta, and enjoy the S. I called how they try to kill me that without of the today show, because IT shows so clearly how during a time with everything is changing quickly, looking in war, your perception of what is happening around you can lag way behind the reality, even when other people are telling you straight to your face that things are different.

Now it's reversed by belsher viage. IT starts about a month into the war. The land spent the first month reporting from ukrainian cities that were under a russian attack or occupation.

In those weeks, I could only focus on what was directly in front of me, where I could find electricity, where I could shower, how to cross the front t lines for a story, how I could document everything I was seeing. I was surrounded by catastrophic, figuring out at the Operate inside of a catastrophe. What I couldn't see then, and i'm beginning to understand now, was the whole bigger picture of what had been unleased since the innovation ion.

There are new dangers now, a new rules. I couldn't foresee how much my world was going to change. First, my newspaper collapsed.

I was at a checkpoint when I learned that nova guys, yet though the paper that I had worked for for seventeen years was ceasing Operations under pressure from the russian government, in some ways i've been expecting IT other russian media outlets were shutting down, left and right. But still, the pain of IT was unbearable. Nowhere was like a second family to me.

When I got the news, i'd been planning to go to medium ple model. Po was still resisting russian incursion. I decided that I was going to stick to my plan, go to my ub anyway, publish whatever I wrote, wherever I could.

I spent the afternoon before I was supposed to go in a hotel. I was trying to gather my strength. A colleague from nowhere, a called me.

He asked me if I was still planning on going to matua. I was taken a back. Only two people from the newspaper knew that I was supposed to go there.

I said, yeah, i'm going tomorrow. And SHE said, my sources have gotten touch with me. They know that you're going to mario.

They said that the cadeau ates have orders to find you. They're not just gone to hold you. They're gonna kill you.

Those are their orders. IT was like running into a wall. I went def.

Everything went White. I said, I don't believe you. And he said, that's what I said too.

I told them I don't believe them, but then they played me a recording of you talking to somebody about going to maribel planning your trip. I recognize your voice SHE hung g. Up, and I SAT down on the bed.

I didn't think anything. I just SAT there. Forty minutes later, my source from ukrainian military reconcile called me.

He said, we have information that an assassination of a female journalist from novaya is being organized in ukraine, and all points bulleting on you has been sent out to every russian checkpoint. I couldn't stand the idea that they were gona stop me from reporting on their massive atrocities. I decided to give myself another twenty four hours to figure out another plan for getting to.

The following morning, I woke up to messages from an editor, and nova, the russian prosecutor general's office and the government sensor had sent them letters demanding they take my reporting from ukraine down from their website. The authorities said that if nova didn't take my stories off of the website, the whole site would be taken down. Nova took my stories off of the site.

Somehow this is a crashed me. I started crying and couldn't stop. Then rage came in place of the tears. I decided I would go to my you no matter what. I kept trying to find another road in a road that didn't exist.

The only thing that ultimately stopped me from going was thinking about what would happen to whoever agreed to take me in their car. If I got killed, they wouldn't be spared either. The next night I left ukraine.

I left in a really bad state. I had less mumps and P, T, S, D. My friends took me and my girlfriend yanna came from russia.

SHE tended to me. My plan was to get Better, finished the book I was writing and go back to russia. All of my work, my mother and sister, my entire life, all of that was there.

I couldn't yet see that in this new world. I wouldn't be able to go home. At end of April, two months into the war, nova's editor in chief, demetra murat, called me.

He spoke a very gentle voice. He said, I know that you wanna come home, but you cannot go back to russia. They're going to kill you.

I hung up the phone and started screaming. I stood in the street and screamed. At the end of september, I got in touch with more of them again.

I asked him to find out whether I could return to russia now. He called me back several days later. No, no, no.

I found an apartment in berlin and stayed there. I began working for the largest remaining independent russian media outlet, media. We decided that my first reporting trip was going to be a to iran.

And then we decided that after iran, I would go back to ukraine. I decided to go a munich's, apply for a VISA at the ukrainian consult there in person. Their website had been attacked by hackers and wasn't letting me file for a VISA online.

There is no justification for what I did next, and there cannot be. But I need to confess that when I was planning my trip to munich, I corresponded about a over facebook messenger. IT wasn't secure at that time, and I knew that.

But I thought, i'm not in russia. I'm in germany. I believe that europe was safe. The basic tenants of my security, the protocols i'd been following for years, didn't even even occur to me.

I left myself exposed to what happened next at all of these moments that I can see so clearly. When I look back on the evening of october seventeenth, I took an overnight train to munich. I took off my shoes, lay down on my seat and slept.

People walked past me. They bump ed into my feet. I kept sleeping. On the morning of october, teens arrived.

I went to meet my friend, try to sleep, then went to the consulate, but I still was unable to apply for a VISA. Now their internal system was glittering. We decided that I would come back another day.

My friend picked me up with the console, and we went out to, we SAT outside at a restaurant while we were eating two different groups of her acquittance ces happen to run into us. They came up to our table. There was a man and then two women.

I thought, what a small town munich's like, everyone here knows each other. I went to the bathroom and then came back. All I could think about was the VISA IT was unlikely that I was gonna get .

IT but what if IT worked out?

After lunch, my friend took me back to the train station as we approached IT. SHE said, listen, I have to tell you something. You smell bad.

Let me find you some deoderant. But SHE couldn't find any. I remember I was really surprised.

She's a very tactful person. He would have never said anything to me if I hadn't actually smelled terrible. When I got on the train, I found my seat and immediately went to the bathroom.

I went some paper towels and started wiping myself off with them. I was covered in sweat. The sweat smells strong and strange, like rotten fruit.

I SAT down and started reading the manuscript of my book. After a while, I realized that I was just reading the same paragraph over and over my headache. I gotten over covered with a few weeks earlier.

I thought, do I really have IT again? I was covered in sweat. I went back to the bathroom and wake myself off again.

When I got out at the berlin train station, IT hit me that I couldn't figure out how to get home. I've tried to describe what was going on in my mind at the train station. And the closer second get as this, a friend told me once about what I was like having a stroke.

SHE knew he was having a stroke. SHE understood that he needed to get down the stairs of her house and go out into the street, but SHE couldn't understand stairs. I asked, you mean you cannot walk down the stairs? He said, no.

IT wasn't about being able to walk. I couldn't understand the concept of stairs at all. For me, the idea of space itself felt weird.

In berlin, it's easy to transfer from the train to the subway. I'd done IT many times, but suddenly I didn't understand getting from one platform to another, the whole idea of changing levels. My mind failed.

I was terrified. Finally, I did manage to get on the subway platform, but when I realized that the trains went in both directions and I would have to figure out which way to go, I burst into tears. People on the platform helped me get on the right train and told me to go two stops and then get off.

I did on the stairs. I got short of breath. I thought to myself, this fucking covet has really messed me up time.

I didn't once think maybe i've been poisoned. I didn't know that what was possible had shifted in the old world. Before the war, russian reporters had been poisoned, but only inside of russia.

Russians who were poisoned outside the country had mostly been former security services people, not reporters. Like me. As soon as I got home, I went to sleep.

I hope that I would feel Better when I got up, but I only got worse, a pain. My stomach woke me up. The feeling was strange, very strong, but like a cup getting switched on enough, I felt so dizzy.

The room was spinning. I barely slept, my head cap spinning whenever I SAT down or got up. On the third day, IT became clear that I was not going anywhere and that whatever I had wasn't.

IT isn't easy to see a doctor in berlin, and I didn't know how to navigate the medical system. I was able to get an appointment until ten days after I got ill. The appointment was at a regular clinic in my igbo hood.

The doctors, there were two of them, both immediately said that I had long code, but they didn't alter sound to just in case all clear, I also got them to do some blood tests. I came out of the clinic, consoled IT was nothing. I get Better soon than the blood test came back.

They were bad. The levels of at and S T to enzyme s in my liver were five times above Normal. They tested my iron.

There was blood in IT. The doctors began taking me seriously. I was referred to another more experience specialist.

SHE said that I was most likely viral hypothetic s, which I had contracted during the war. We'll figure out which habitats that is and then will treat IT, SHE said. Petites tests came back negative.

My symptoms kept changing. My face started swelling. My fingers started looking like sausages.

Then IT was my feet. I lost sort of my chin. My face was no longer my face. I couldn't recognize myself in the mirror.

Sometimes the palms of my hands and the bottom of my feet would start to burn, turning red and shiny. A few weeks into these symptoms, of friend of man came to berlin. He was horrified at the state I was in.

He said, do you understand that you may have been poisoned? Have you talked to your doctors about that? I said, I haven't, and i'm not going to that stupid.

I said, don't try to infect me with your paranoia. Everything was exhAusting, but I stopped being able to sleep altogether. IT was as though my brain had forgotten how to fall asleep.

My hypocrisy levels kept ized. I kept going to doctors. The doctors would come up with series to test them, come up with new ones, aumale diseases, systemic diseases, a cute, complicated, complex pillon of british.

Finally, a doctor asked me, is this possible that you have been poisoned? I replied, no, i'm not that dangerous. I told yona about IT later, and we laughed.

SHE said, of course, it's the simplest explanation of russian journalist. SHE must have been poisoned. In december, two months after my trip to muni K, I went back to my igher hood doctor.

I got a new round of tests, and the results had gotten worse. My L T was seven times above Normal. We SAT in the doctor's office.

Then he said, elena, there are two theories left. The first one is that the anti depressing iron may have suddenly started working abroad tly. But you recently change medications in your symptoms, and test results haven't changed.

That's why we have a second theory. Please try to stay calm. You may have been poisoned.

I laughed. The doctor stayed silent. I said, that's impossible, SHE said.

We've ruled out all other options. I'm sorry. You need to go to the toxicology department at sherita hospital.

I spent the next three days in the apartment just lying there and thinking, at first, I told yanna that I was all stupid and that the doctors had made a mistake. They just couldn't figure out how to diagnose me and didn't want to run any more tests. Then I got in touch with medusa, my employer, and we started trying to plan our next steps.

In order to get blood test done for poisoning in berlin, you have to go to the police. So I did. They sent me straight to the hospital from the pricing the police officers came to to talk to me and the doctors.

My first round of questioning with the berlin criminal police lasted nine hours. They wanted to know everything, what I was working on, what I was planning to work on, who had been in contact with ukraine, who I was talking to. Now I had to reconstruct, october seventeenth and eighteenth, my trip to munich.

Minute by minute, the police checked my clothes and apartment for radiation, my body too. They took the close. I'd travelled to munich, quit. Then the police did a safety check of my apartment.

An officer asked me, why are your blinds open? You could easily be shot from the balcony across the way they told me I needed to follow new safety protocols, like what I asked, move, take different routes home. Don't get cabs directly to your destination.

Get out of cars a few blocks away. Wear sunglasses. The police officers were mad at me. They didn't show IT IT first, but after the third round of questioning, we started talking.

The lead detectives s said, we can understand why I took you this long to come to us. You should have called the police right away. As soon as you felt sick on the train, we would have met you at the station, but I didn't think i'd been poisoned. I'm still not sure.

Why didn't you think so? IT seemed crazy to me, and i'm in europe. I felt like I was safe here.

That is what drives us up the wall. The detective said, you people come here and act like your own vacation. Like this is some kind of paradise.

IT doesn't even actually you to keep yourself safe. The russian special services are active in germany. We have political killings here.

The senior detective had already run two previous investigations of russian citizens being attacked in berlin. One was shot and killed in berlin in twenty and fifty. The killer radium crash C.

V. Received a life sentence in germany for murder. Quote on the orders of the russian government. A year earlier, the same detective investigated the parent poisoning of a prominent critic of president putin, pathetic gazella.

But the detective said, we weren't able to establish anything in that case, not even the substance used. I asked, how come? Because it's impossible to ask a lab.

Was this person poisoned? You could only ask if there was a specific substance present in their body and there are thousands of poisonous substances. That's why it's such a popular means of assassination.

The berlin police do not have any answers for me. Four months after had first gone to them, the prosecutor general office informed me that they had not found, quote, any indication that there had been an attempt to kill me. Quote, blood test results do not conclusively indicate poisoning, but in the meantime, I was approached by the editor in chief of online russian investigative news site insider at a journalism conference.

He took me a side. Lena, I have a personal question, but first I need to tell you something. Crystal groser from belen catini have been investigating a series of poisonings in europe.

All the known targets are female russian journalists. I want to ask you, you haven't written anything for a long time, is IT because you've been sick? And I told him what i'm telling you. Now the doctors in toxicologist belling cat consulted came to the conclusion that the most likely explanation of what happened to me was that i'd been poisoned with an organic cloran compound. I've passed this information onto the berlin police.

I've thought a lot about why I took me so long to believe i'd been toison ed. During my time at nova, guys, either four of my colleagues were killed. I organized the funeral of him, key journalists.

Me held the cat of he'd been a friend. I knew that journalist Scott murdered, but I didn't want to believe that they could kill me. I was protected from the thought by revulsion, shame and exhaustion. IT disgusted me to think that there were people who wanted me dad. I was ashamed to talk about IT, even with loved ones, let alone the police, and I felt how exhausted was, how little strength I had left, that I wouldn't be able to go on the run again.

At this point, the pain, noa and swelling have gone, but I still have very little energy. There are days when I can't do anything. I feel useless reporting as what has given me purpose my whole life.

My partner yanna, and I have to move every month. Now the berlin police say we need to as much as we can for our safety. We have to decide for ourselves how much moving that means.

It's so exhAusting every time new languages, new currencies, new neighborhoods, packing and packing over and over again, it's hard for anyone to get a sense of what's safer, what's dangerous in our current reality. Like, what if moving around so much is actually stupid and we're driving ourselves crazy for nothing? Does anyone really know what yanna and I are supposed to do? But the reality that we found ourselves in isn't actually totally new to me.

There's something familiar in IT. Even though rushes my home, I never felt safe there. So for me, the feeling of home is the feeling of being unsafe.

Now, I walk around foreign cities the same way I used to walk around russian cities, paying close attention to the people and things around me, listening, watching, always wearing my risks. The habit of being vigilant actually feels comforting. IT is both Normal and not. You can take the girl out of russia, but russia may not let you go.

Bali average really and I say by I going to cost of chanca this has ever appeared in an n pass one try into english by by the buckle and and talks about the essay has come out it's intimate eye ending stories of people, all of a russia it's called I love russia. Reporting from the last country, the radio adaptation of esa was to spend anti update and valued capacities going up.

Something good happens suddenly to comedian tig notarial, but he has trouble catching up to the reality of that. That's in a minute in chicago, O A radio, when our program continues. American live from our our glass are two days about moments when we all find ourselves catching up to some new reality that we're living inside.

Members who were shocked to realized that we are unprepared for what has already happened. I don't know about you, but feel like we get a lot of those moments is last few years. They happen when they're big.

You world shaking changes wars and politics and demo s the climate. But they also happen with small personal pupils. We find themselves catching up to some new reality that we find themselves in.

We have an example of that happening that got recorded on tape, like as IT happened, somebody who was not adJusting to the new reality, their heads still sort of spinning, trying to get a grip on where they now found themselves. This is going to be the second act of our show. Act two.

We had the hotel motel very locked in. And the person that happens to is one of our regular contributors. Take meta SHE was on tour doing stand up and secrets to california in a .

big theatre, the first theatre. And everywhere you .

got on stage, this thing happened to her, and you can hear IT in her voice in this recording. SHE is still not over this mentally. He has barely caught up to the fact that he is on stage in front of all these people. And he talks IT out, brings them along for her mental.

Ride with this.

You really know, you don't know how happy I am to see you there. I had no idea how happy I was going to be to see a very happy. But what you don't know, and this is going to sound funny.

But IT wasn't. In your fair city at my hotel, I was locked in my bathroom for thirty minutes. You're laughing.

IT was not funny and I was. H, I can't believe i'm out there. I don't know if you can see.

I was trying to break that out of my back. I have bruising and swelling that what was going on when you were out to dinner before the show? I was shot in my bathroom at my hotel.

Well, yes, I appreciate you. And you know what, I was on my way over here are going. I cannot wait to see these people. I will never forget you.

I truly is having a catered that gives thirty minutes, you know, those locks that do this and I go along, they locked down when no stuck thirty minutes to move on, I know. But was an even thirty minutes ago that that was happen. Still, in fact, I really loves a woman here, right?

Clap I saw in the hall at the hotel. Are you here? Yeah, i've had just got out of my bathroom.

She's like, oh, good. You should like, oh, you had no idea. You know what I learned? I can't break a all down.

I can kick the door down. I would. I would like him.

You're not going to die. You're not going to die. What could kill you? Nothing except yourself. Know, like, I was like, you're just knocked myself out. I like that. Thought I would like to slam ahead in the wall and just like, go unconscious because I can't do and then I was like, or do I just get the shower and then just take another shower? And for ten, like this is happening.

I was yellowing. Did you tell me yellow? I said, how did get out at the same question for you? I have.

I did. I get out. I called Stephanie. I was backstage just now pulling her. Like, I just have to talk you. I have to tell you, well, I just went through, I was just traumatized.

I've had to go on stage and and she's had to open and I said, honestly, I don't know. I don't know how to open. I am not a religious person. And I don't really believe in magic, but it's one or the either happened in that room in my hotel night. magic.

But that i've got to tell you what room I means. But I feel. My voice is still shaking. That's how recent IT was you guys? Good night.

And you know, if I knew IT in my bones, I was like, I know we're gonna be good to me and I thought, don't talk about this. I care about myself. I was still saying to myself as I walked up the year, it's like, don't don't talk about IT new material. And I was like I was knocking my bathroom room.

Really bum out that is crying. No, I was cry and i'm my hand over funny, but I did. He was going to tonight, think the humor was going to come right.

I thought I was going to be like, you know, in a month and I was walking up these steps, read here and I was like, just get in your material. I know you had still stuck in that after and you're still shaping. I learned like fifteen years ago and I close to family.

I and um um what are they called out later data in dc. And I was with somebody of newly dating and the elevator stuff, and I hope I would hear about people. They were closer.

Poc, I didn't understand IT. Like, what is the problem is not like anything thing's happening. And our elevator stocked again, newly dating.

And I was like, panic. And we are set for a less than three minutes. Now take short, nine, thirty minutes. And anyway, we're here, we're here and I do appreciate give me up here. It's a lot that you want everything else to come here.

Dignitary when you stand up special hello again comes up in two weeks on amazon for podcast handsome available wherever you get your podcast.

That's my story, and i'm absolutely not sticking to IT. So I showed that is about moments when we are catching up to some new reality that we are living inside and we turn in this act to political realities. One thing that is very particular to being a politician is that IT is a politician's actual job to make a new ality.

So maybe that reality is a world without abortion rights. Maybe is a world where rich people get tax a lot more. You see what i'm saying.

Maybe you remember the old famous quote from a senior bush administration official who told a reporter, when we act, we create our own reality. Being politician means that you think that you are the one who can reshape the reality that the rest of us live in. And with that in mind, we have this very interesting, very local example. When you see a politician trying to bend reality to suit his purposes, sorry, chase explains.

this is a story of a politician who denied the truth and then admitted IT, and then very publicly went back to the original denial as if no one would notice. Starts in november of twenty eighteen, down in the north CarOlina, A. You have feeling when you think you have something in the bag and you're on top .

of the world about IT. I absolutely wanted start tonight by by thanking our there lord who has blessed my family and has blessed campaign and is that's .

the position this guy, mark Harris, was in a few years ago. This was his Victory speech, just run for congress.

I have the greatest family in the world who has been a rock and has been such A.

This was a very tight race, though margin of just about nine hundred votes in Harris was headed to washington when word came in. He might not have one election.

Officials in north CarOlina are unanimously voted not to certify the winner of the state's north district congressional election as a currently stands. Republican mark Harris holds a nine hundred and five vote lead over democrats democratic, but the Harris campaign is being accused of coordinating an effort to collect ballots from voters and either fill them in for Harris or threw them away if the vote was former created. Well, those actions are illegal.

And join me now out. IT wasn't long before mark is former baptist preach was accused of major election fraud. The whole scheme was revealed at a hearing and rally.

The testimony was wild, mostly about a political Operative. Hair had hired mci, this guy, a cradle, is, there is so much I could say about him because they did a whole pie guests about this. But briefly, he was described as a good old boy who eat, drink and smoked politics.

You can usually find them with a cigarette outside the hardware store in windbreaker, mcrae had been higher to run mark rs absented ballet campaign down in blading county. Mcrae allegedly hired people he knew to go around picking up ballots, illegal. Filling them out, illegal.

Signing for witnesses who weren't there, illegal. Apparently he paid a woman named Kelly who'd befriended at the hearty drive through. He hired his in law, Jessica. His stepdaughter lisa SHE testified at .

the hearing. So you were filling in the old walls and .

voting for other people.

right? Yes, you are voting other people's about yes, right? I assume you knew that he was not legal to vote. Other people's baLance.

right? We do. We were able to do.

I understand you, but you were paid to do something that you do was wrong. yes. The question at all.

this, of course, was did the candidate mark is no mercy was directing all this fragile ent voting activity? Had herr's signed off on IT? When mark carrs finally took the stand, he was like, nope, not me. No idea. And if this was going on, I had no reason to democrat or what he was doing at the time.

The big moment in the hearing came on day three, when a surprise black buster witness up ended the haris teams s narrative of things that witness his son, giant hairs is a lawyer at the time in his in U. S. District attorney, respected, known lawyer in rale.

And john got up there all fresh faced at twenty nine years old, and was like, dad, you knew, you knew mccray was a friendster, allegedly. And you knew, because I told you, we talked about IT, I sent you emails, emails which are now in possession of the court, showing you he'd likely cheated in elections before using absinthe ballots, and warned you he was probably cheating now. And you ignored me. He recounted those emails and calls to his parents on the stand.

They believed mckay when he said, bala collection doesn't take place. That's what he told him. I said, I don't believe migrate because I look at the data and the numbers don't head up and I said in the first call, collecting about that is about the I see you to thank you .

at the very end of his testimony, which the entire room seems to find extremely convincing john hairs as to make a statement, his voice cracks.

Hello, 妈妈。 I certainly have now been dead against them. I think that they make mistakes in this process.

John's crying and then pain. The camera, too, is dead. The candidate mark carrs, there's this famous picture of this moment.

Mark area is crying, watching a sun testify. You could see this as a moment where the reality of the situation finally caught up to mark rs. Both hares faces crumbling up with tears.

But mark here is mad, ashamed, moved. He stormed through hours of testimony the next day, and after a break, he walked into the hearing room, tight lip and miserable. He looked down and read a statement of a piece of paper, admitting, yeah, some very bad things were done by his own campaign.

Neither, anne, any of the leadership of my campaign were aware of or condoned the improper activities that have been testified two in this hearing through the testimony have listened to over the past three days. I believe a new election should be called is become clear to me that the public is confidence in the nine district seat general election has been undermined to an extent that a new election is warranted. Mister chairman, that concludes in a statement .

another moment of catching up to reality. I think mark is essentially admitting, after everything we've heard, I agree with you guys he was improper, whether I should have known or not.

My side screwed up so bad the yet it's stood over after that mark s leaves immediately and the hearings pretty much ber, the elections board unanimously votes to run a new election and Harris doesn't run kind of a big deal was the first and only federal election to be overturned due to election fraud. D in ninety years. Anyway, that's where this tale of mark rs is short run for congress.

Lived in my mind, a politician who had to admit the truth, sort of. So imagine my surprise. Imagine how shocked, shocked I was to see mark rs announce to run for congress last year.

Twenty twenty democrat told the election for president from the year before they did IT to me. Well.

on twenty twenty four.

a president trump is making a company, and so am I with a completely .

different version of what had happened in the twenty eighteen election. N, A new version that matches exactly what former president trump s says about his election.

Just like the D O J has come after trump, the weaponized, democrat controlled state board of elections came after me. They made up accusation, spread laws and use the attention to make themselves famous. Didn't take long for the medium machine to get in line with their attacks, and the only slot raged. In the end, they succeeded. They stole the election and drug me through the mud.

I am, first of all, where do I started? Doctor mark caris, you were the one who called for a new election back then. Remember, I understand that running a campaign based on being persecuted is very in vogue right now.

But this is a very extreme example of IT here is claiming he was persecuted for something that he himself was accused of election fraud allegedly engineered by the campaign guy he hired. But mark cares is reading the room correctly. This is the new reality we all live in, saying you had an election stone from you. People like that even, and maybe especially, even if IT isn't actually true.

I reached out to Harris and his son to discuss this new take on things. Neither one would talk to me. This wonderful T. V. Reporter in north CarOlina ago, joe bruno, asked, here is about this.

A few weeks ago, people testified under roof elements were criminally charged, six pleaded guilty, force still have pending charges, and you yourself said that public confidence was undermined in the election on the scene. So how can you call IT a manufactured scandal?

Well, I think when you really look at at the fact that that ended up coming out later, like there were things not shared is almost like there was information that was not shared in the hearing.

The that I don't move right there, the everything hasn't come out. Move the once IT does I will be vindicated.

Move do you accept that you're race twenty eighteen was tainted to the point where a new election was necessary?

No, I don't think there should have been a new election based on all of what happened.

I'll say again, he's the one who called for that new election back then. There's reality and then there's political reality. The two of them are so far apart right now post twenty twenty republic in politicians are pretty much required to agree that the election was stolen from Donald trump.

That's just the table sticks, markers. And a bunch of other candidates are taking in one step further. And seeing IT happened to me too, I have personally felt the pain of a stone election and IT works.

Last week on super tuesday, Marcus won the primary in this district. That means he finally gets to go to congress. Welcome to washington, doctor Harris.

So we chase is one of produces about our program, her pipe, which he does, the whole story about how election for accusations tore apart way county, if you haven't heard, this is called the improvement association, is from serial productions in the new york times.

Act for what I is. So we closed our show today, today with this story from toben goo. But a very special group of people who have to catch up to new realities all the time.

They have no choice to part of their lives. Here's open. This specific morning .

was unremarkable. Joe ambrozy, a detroit public school teacher at the time, was getting ready for work. He had been out for a while, so he wanted to get to school a little early to get back in the swing of things. He had a quick breakfast dashed out the door.

Everything's pretty Normal as i'm getting there. You know, i'm driving through the suburbs. Everything's looking great. And I really noticed the moment I got on the highway. There is absolutely no line to merge onto the highway at all.

and is are usually line to emerge on the highway.

Detroit is the city of cars, right? So we are no stranger to traffic. But as I was driving and realizing just how few cars were on on the road, I started thinking, like when I did, this area of town becomes the ghost town.

He arrives at school, walks down a small fighter stairs to the front desk, where the school secretary in the principle are hanging out.

And when I turned the corner, when they both have looked at me, I could see a sense of panic in their eye. And at first I would like their surprise to see me, but then it's sort of switched ed. I could see legitimate concern in their faces.

The secretary stood up, turned around the quarterly. They're like both immediately. Wanted to know, how did you get here? How did you get here? what? What what roads did you take? Tell IT. And I was like, I did this, this and this, and they were just like, oh my god, there's a nipper on the throw. You could have been killed.

Apparently, a man with a gun had been randomly firing at people along ninety six that week, the very highway joe had just taken to work. The men would end up shooting at twenty three drivers .

after speaking with them. This was the thing that quickly became known to me that everybody was well aware of in the area. IT was kind of like, you know, I was kind of like, I had been sleeping for a couple weeks and missed everything and now i'm just getting caught up discipline.

IT wasn't even kind of like that. That's literally what happened. He had been asleep for the past three weeks, missed everything. And I don't mean napping or catching up unrest. Joe has a rare neurological disorder called line levin syndrome, or careless IT, affects about one in a million people.

And its defining feature is that those who have IT experience episodes of extreme exhaust entering a deep sleep for days, weeks or even months at a time now and then they wake up. But when they do, they're a fog, usually with only the enough energy to beat a little, use the bathroom and then back to bed. There's no known cause for careless, and also no known cure. When joe first started showing symptoms as a teenager, he was completely debilitating ating. He go to school feeling like he just pulled all nighters for three weeks in a row.

There's nothing keeping you awake. You feel IT and you're done. I remember I would walk from class, the class in the minute I would hit my seat, I would sleep done, head on the table, sleeping. Teachers yelling at me, trying to get me to wake back up, pulling me out a class, giving me detention for sleeping in class, calling, telling my parents sleep. But all I does this sleep lep sleep, sleep, sleep.

When he finally got a diagnosis, he learned that the only way out of an episode was to give into IT, which is what people would care us have to do. They just have to for however long IT takes to get passed IT. So people would care less frequently, find themselves emerging into a very different reality than the one they left.

I talked to someone who missed the outside of, covered completely, broke up to a shutdown world. I talked to another guy who missed the events of nine eleven, and a woman in ecuador who recently woke up to find out war had broken out in her country. But the person I talk to, who experiences the longest episodes, by far, was arial pollie.

I had a nine months episode and a fifteen months episode.

Fifteen months? wow. yeah.

So when I was twenty five and twenty six, I was sick for over a year.

During that year, Ariel had to put off her plans to go to grad school and instead move in to her childhood bedroom at her parents' in boston.

letting go downstairs in my parent tone for that in higher six months, I did go to the bathroom on the upstairs floor, my bedroom upstairs, but I didn't go downtown stairs the whole time. I did not see anybody or speak to anybody.

IT was two thousand five. I pulled up some of the biggest headlines from that year just to get a sense of how much you could miss in that amount of time. SHE slept with the death of pope john poll a second hurricane katina SHE remember seeing some headlines about IT in magazines. Her mom left for her, but not much more than that star wars episode revenge of the site was the top clothing movie of that year.

No, but that would not have meant anything to me. Anyway.

I guess two thousand and five was also the your time. Crews jumped on the Operas couch.

I remember reading about that after I, I was not at all aware of present when that happened .

during those fifteen months, all SHE knew was that shit. Sleep almost all day and night, wake up for some amount of time, then go back to sleep. And even during those waking hours, sh'd be in a haze.

SHE won't talk. The people I talk to you described waking up during an episode as extremely confusing. And the story anting like they couldn't tell what was real or what they .

were halcon ating. During the episode, I was somewhat aware of the passage of time, but also somewhat not know.

The chAllenge was really the long jetty. This is so long as you'd gone through all these different this long period of time, and we would try to give a sense of the seasons changing.

This is Ariel's dad, neel. Ariel had gone into her episode in july.

So at one point, and that was snowing outside, so I went outside and just took A A cup of a, you know, paper cup and boys and stone inside, and I just remembering, what did IT SHE feel that? And there was a sense of, oh my god, you know, that the snow.

remember just looking at hand and tears leaking. You know, I didn't say anything, I couldn't say anything, but I felt very sad to see this now.

Yeah, IT was no incredulous that he had bit back all that time. And there's a disbelief that that all this is happening because the last thing he had remembered as there .

was nice weather.

Ariel says, even though he missed a whole year of her life, that's not the episode that sticks out to her. The one that really hurt happened when he was a teenager. He was in a deep sleep for a couple of weeks, but occasionally when he would get up to use the restroom, SHE see her dad in the hallway.

So my father wasn't shaving, and I saw him, and I saw that he was growing a beard that was confusing, you know, layer onto the confusion of having kill. And then my dad looked different, and I wasn't quite sure why.

When SHE did finally come out of IT, SHE found out her grandfather, her godden's sick and and died. That's why her dad hadn't shaved. He was observing a jewish tradition. When you're in morning, SHE looked at pictures of the rest of her family who had been able to travel to see her grandfather to say their last boards to him.

That was the first time something like that happened, like something that I couldn't get back. You know, I always was a good student and able to make up work at school and able to make up things that I add mess. But you can't, you can get back the opportunity to say goodby e to someone so that that was different.

IT makes me think about, like my grandmother, who passed away several years ago, SHE had a stroke and her passing with this really long process, IT just took a very long time. And I remember at times feeling like I wish I could skip this part, like I wish I could zoom forward to what's eventually gonna happen.

In my case, my experience of of being robbed of those chances to be present made me prefer to be present to adjust changing reality, right, to process the information in real time. As IT was happening. I think if somebody who missed a lot of moments, I would always prefer to experience a moment, even if it's painful.

I see that before talking the area on. I don't know that I would have said i'm glad I was there for the most difficult parts of my grandmother's decline. But now I get IT. It's way worse to have a new reality hit you all at once. Better to be there lucky even.

Open glow is an order to here to program. If you think you might have the often misdiagnosed crime goin synergy, you get more information from the k less foundation at K, L, S.

Foundation that work.

Is british today by dian ruin bethel hf day people put a show together and could be a bands and divine shank com I could commented, while cathro's cheswardine wand marsa Roberts and texture m matt tyranny and july video are managing editor sorb derin, our senior editor David casting bomb our executive editor is a manual berry special thanks to asic armed store of josh closing and fAiling july snider new drummer Daniel via a man, your man vertol lic Kathy paging Cathy Scott thanks also the day that alex Stephen problem that we named this week show after was a story by eliza th while for the new york times 是 magazine called this isn't the california I married Jackson landers。

The guy who got hit by the black spider also read about his experiences for the new york times. His book about hunting invasive species is got eating aliens. Our website, this american life at org, you can listen to over eight hundred episodes of our show for absolutely free.

This american life is deliver to public radio stations by P. R X, the public radio exchange. Thanks, as always, to a programs cofounder. This story, malta, they tried to make me go to rehab and he said.

no, no, no.

I'm about a guess back next week with more stories of this severan life.