Two Is One, One Is None!
5/17/20261 hr 1 min
One family faces the Trump administration’s ban on trans people serving in the military, and responds with a surprising secret weapon.
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Prologue: Geirid and Chrissy are extreme planners. But about a year ago, they were confronted with a situation that even they had no idea how to plan for. (4 minutes)Act One: Geirid and Chrissy make an “in case of emergency, break glass” spreadsheet and get some big news. (14 minutes)Act Two: Geirid and Chrissy have less than a month to make a life-changing decision...
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:01
A quick warning: there are curse words that are un-beeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org.
Laura Starcheski· Host0:10
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Laura Starcheski, sitting in for Ira Glass. I'd been waiting for months for a certain moment to arrive. Garrard had mentioned it, Chrissy had mentioned it, and here we all were, sitting in their house in the suburbs of DC. We were in their living room. Their son was hopping around with an icy popsicle in his hand.
Speaker 20:35
[gasps] This was left in the freezer overnight. Feel it.
Laura Starcheski· Host0:39
And Garrard's laptop was right there. Wasn't open yet, but I was on the edge of my seat. And finally she asked me ...
Garrard Morgan· Guest0:50
Are you ready for this?
Speaker 40:50
I'm ready.
Garrard Morgan· Guest0:51
Okay.
Laura Starcheski· Host0:51
Chrissy jumped in to hype it up.
Speaker 40:53
It's beautiful. It's excellent.
Laura Starcheski· Host0:55
Yeah. It's a thing of beauty. And Garrard opened the laptop and pulled up a file on her computer called Valkyrie, after the Norse women warriors. They were very into the Thor movies around this time. And suddenly, it appeared. [instrumental music] A spreadsheet. Hold for applause. I was looking at many tabs, many rows, many columns, thousands of data points. This is where Garrard is mapping out their whole future.