894: I Couldn't Help but Notice

If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org.

Back in June, Rick Cole was sitting in a meeting of the Pasadena Municipal Services Committee in City Hall there. That's about as dull a sentence as you could start a podcast with. But then things happen. And I get a text that I glance at from the police chief to the city council that says at

530, we're making a public announcement that there will be military exercises in northeast Pasadena. They will take place at St. Luke Hospital but do not reveal the location. This is at 524, 6 minutes before the public is to be informed. So you saw that when you thought what? Well, I thought that's really strange.

That happens in America, but still it's strange when it's your area, with no notice at all.

The meeting ends, Rick runs to another event.

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

She did.

“Because you just figured, what are they going to do to me?”

I'm just going to do this. Exactly. I mean, that's the way I've lived my life, Ira. These got stories. If you ever run into Rick, get him to tell you the one about how we tried to stop Christopher

promises great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great

A pair troopers clamoring down ropes onto the roof of the hospital, flashbang grenades are going off, simulated gunfire is rattling through the neighborhood. I mean, it was jaw dropping. This is all supposed to end by 830, but in fact, it wasn't over until about 2am. To Rick, this was outrageous.

Why do this in a residential neighborhood with no warning, so people had no chance to prepare? Maybe go elsewhere for the night, maybe give their pets tranquilizers so they don't freak out. Now people were hearing all the commotion, probably going under the phones to figure out what was happening.

And he thought he needed a jump in and explain. Counts have a recall here in front of the former St. Luke's hospital. As you can hear, he's in the dark. Explosions are flashing behind him, like he's some sort of suburban war correspondent. Flashbangs and simulated gunfire are going on.

They're going to be going on for the next half an hour, we're told. I was focused on the fact that I should tell people what's going on because their dogs are going to bark, their kids are going to ask questions, and they're going to wonder

“why are helicopters descending on Pasadena, why are they hearing gunfire in the neighborhood?”

He done videos like this in the past, in the wake of the eight and fire of last year. Got to people know when it was safe to drink the water, read vegetables from their gardens. That kind of thing. This is going to go on for a while, and could luck to the people who got to get up and

go to work tomorrow morning. It's funny. The weird thing about this is that it seems like you all were supposed to act like this was not a weird thing to happen. That's exactly.

Did it make you feel sort of crazy to be told like, oh, no, this is normal, don't sweat it. I wouldn't say crazy, it infuriated me. Yeah, you know, we owe to the people we serve, to treat them with respect, and to keep them informed about things that affect them, and this was such a egregious breach of that

trust. We're good now, but now it is that nobody in the military seemed to care, out every day citizens were experiencing all this. And as a 73-year-old council member, you've had to do to take what he saw is a more old-fashioned approach.

I reach by the way, nearly 8 million people, with his videos, informing the public, succeeding

more than he ever imagined. Today on our program, we have stories of people who see a future arrive, that it was ugly

“or meaner than the past, and as I think they can turn that around, it's way too big.”

But at every story today, there is somebody who takes us down and tries to clean it up the mess that's around them. We'll call attention to that mess, and say no, we have stories today of some very stubborn

this American life of America glass, stay with him.

“Quick program note, we just put out this new bonus episode that came out really nicely.”

These bonus episodes go toward this American life partners, people who've subscribed to support the show, and this particular one is one of the ones where one of my co-workers here at the show brings in a couple of their favorite stories to play for me and for listeners.

These are stories that we think that most people might have missed, or never heard in the

first place because they're from so long ago, and then we talk about them, and in this particular episode, producer Diane Wu, picks some stories that just really got to us both. And we ended up in this very personal conversation, that got very emotional. Anyway, to hear this, and the many other bonus episodes that we have put out at this point, they get all kinds of other stuff.

Subscribe at this American life dot org slash life partners that link is also in the show notes. It's a American life act one, closing time. Sometimes, a thing's changed in a country, because a big historic force is doctors get put in some weird and difficult situations.

“That's what happened in this first act, in Maine, way up north, at a rustic county.”

That's so far north that the Canadian border is closer than the nearest U.S. city. The Oklahoma Hospital there is halt and regional hospital, and last year, they announced they were going to close their waiver and deliver unit with one month's notice. Even the units nurse manager, Heather Quinn, had no idea that was actually coming. It was delivered very abruptly and matter of factly, I guess.

This is what's happening, our birth rates are going down, we can't recruit.

It's not basically a money maker, so we're closing.

There was no, I'm sorry, you know, it was just very matter of factly. It is a pretty matter of fact, reality at this point in America, rural hospitals closing, labor and delivery departments, in particular, they've been vanishing in lots of rural areas. And when a community was it's place to have babies, in the first weeks after that happens, that's when you really see what it means in people's lives.

And the Australian man unfolded just after Holden Regional Hospital packed up its labor and delivery department, because the door is there. As that was happening, the woman who lives in the area named Katie Gaule was pregnant with her fifth child. This was a low risk pregnancy, she was planning to give birth at home, just like she

done with her fourth child, her family doctor, who was a midwife before she became a doctor,

who was going to deliver the baby, so that was the plan. 29 days after Holden closed its labor and delivery department, Katie Gaule went into labor. That home, reporter Elaine Appleton Grant has a story of what happened next. Quick heads up before we start, some of us here on staff found ourselves thinking about

the TV show the pit as we were making this story, because there's no way to explain what happened. Without diving into some very vivid medical details during childbirth, just want to say if that's not for you, please know that as part of this story, here's Elaine Appleton Grant.

Sunday, June 1st, 2025, just after midnight, Katie starts having contractions. She calls her mom and eventually her doctor, lots of family members show up, they live nearby, she and her family run a business together, a big wilderness resort up the road. There's snacks, it's fun, but slow. Here's Katie.

I'm like, well mom, maybe I shouldn't have called them already, because it was sort of, I sort of kind of went like a standstill for a while. It's so slow that her doctor rose fuchs, takes a nap on the couch, even with all the noise. But all of a sudden, it was like someone poked me awake and I sat, bull upright and I said,

what did Katie say? And Katie was down the hallway in the bathroom at that point.

“So I went down there and I said, did you say something?”

And she said, yeah, I said my water broke. Katie's sitting on the toilet. Everything's fine. And then I just sat there for a few minutes and it was so then I'm like, well, I'm going to get up now.

And then I went to wipe and I felt something and she said, what's that? And I looked down on the toilet and there was probably eight inches of cord hanging out, not quite touching the toilet water, but close. So I was like immediately, this is very bad, right? This is a prolapse cord which rarely happens.

I just said, it looks like the cord we need to check you out, let's get in the bed.

It just happens sometimes.

“Katie didn't really have any risk factors.”

In a normal delivery, the baby's head comes out first.

It's umbilical cord, which is the baby's blood and oxygen supply, follows, but not this time. The cord slipped out first. It's squiggly, like an old fashioned telephone cord. You can see the red vein and purple arteries through the thin skin.

If it's outside the body, it's a huge risk to the baby's life, unless Katie can deliver now. And we got around the bed and I was checking to see if she's completely dilated, you know, ready to push the baby out. I thought if I, you know, it's your fifth baby.

I thought if we could give one push and finish this, I'll do that. Um, but that was on the case. She was probably about six centimeters. Fully dilated is 10 centimeters, Katie's nowhere near giving birth. It could still be hours.

Dr. Fuchs isn't saying any of this out loud. She spent years cultivating her doctorate persona, calm, confident, and command. She is 60, elegant, and somehow old fashioned. She wears a lot of ankle-length skirts, sometimes pulls her long silver hair up in a bun. She's been a primary care doctor for decades.

She was a midwife before med school. In almost 40 years of practicing, she's attended about a thousand births.

She has never seen a prolapse to cord before.

“And she knows that the only way to save the baby is for Katie to have an emergency”

c-section now. If they were in a hospital, they'd be running down the hall to surgery. Speaking of hospitals, this is the first time Dr. Fuchs has attended a birth without a hospital labor and deliver unit nearby to back her up. I was terrified because I didn't want the baby to die.

And so then what happened? I turned around and my nurse has beautiful big blue eyes and they always comfort me in the middle of anything. And I turned around and I looked in her eyes and I said, "Call 911." And her eyes went to size as bigger because she's actually never heard me say that in working

with her 12 years. Yeah. Dr. Fuchs calmly advised Katie that I started to coach her that the life of the baby is at stake and you're going to have to go through quite a bit if we're going to hope to save your child.

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

“Because me being in the moment, I don't remember the everyday tale where she would remember”

every detail and I trust her with telling my story. I trust her completely with everything. It's about 6.35 a.m.

Here's what Dr. Fuchs knows.

Best practice for a prolapse chord is for Katie to be in surgery in five to ten minutes so the clock is ticking. She is 90 minutes away from any working obstetrics department. Just a month earlier, Katie's local birthing unit at Holden was still up and running an entire institution designed to handle exactly this kind of emergency.

Now, there's just Dr. Fuchs. So there in Katie's bedroom, Dr. Fuchs makes her first important decision. If the chord gets cold, if it dries out, the baby could die or possibly suffer brain damage. I chose what I thought was the best course of action which I would gently replace it into the vagina.

Okay, gently replace it inside so that the warmth of her body would keep the chord warm because I knew we're in Maine and although it was June, it wasn't that warm. But there's another problem. The baby's head is pressing down on the chord which could also cut off the blood and oxygen supply.

She has to protect the chord from the weight of the baby's head coming down the birth canal right on top of it. So she gets into a position that obstetricsians call "riding the bed." I shifted myself and climbed onto the bed between her legs, crouching, sort of on all force, kneeling, crouching down, then she starts pushing the baby's head back up the

birth canal to make space for the chord. I, you know, was internally inside the patient pushing upward toward her head as basically hard as I could using two fingers to push up the rest of my fingers to lightly be touching the chord to keep track of the heart tones at all times because if they slowed down, I knew something's pinching.

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

“Probably up to my wrist starting forearm.”

Meanwhile, Katie's own body once pushed the baby out, right, contractions pushed down. So, you know, to have my hand, that's painful for her and I knew it was painful and I told her I'm very sorry, but I can't care about your pain. It's a very weird pain, it's a deep pain. Anyone who's had a cervical biopsy, an endometrial biopsy, an IUD put in, I think it's a pain

no one can describe, and then this is times a whole lot more because there's a baby in there too and now someone's hand as well. It's 640, Sasha, Katie's husband, is on the phone with 911, the Penop Scott County Dispatch

Center, the busiest in the state.

The dispatcher tells Sasha that an ambulance is on the way, meantime she's giving instructions. Have her roll up and get on to her knees and elbows, she tells Sasha, meaning tell Katie to get up on to her knees and elbows. Sasha, he's in another room because he has to move a dog gate to make a clear path for the ambulance crew when they arrive, so he yells these instructions to Dr. Fuchs.

“I said no, we're not and they said well that's what they're saying, I said I don't care what”

they're saying, we are not doing that, you tell them a doctor's on site. The dispatcher also says through Sasha, do not try to prevent the birth, make sure that nothing is being pushed back into her vagina. But Dr. Fuchs knows that if she stops pushing the baby up, the baby will die. It's now been about seven minutes since the court dropped.

While Sasha's on the phone with a dispatcher, Dr. Fuchs's nurse calls Holtman's emergency department because at least the ER is still running, and the nurse says they plan to bring Katie to the ER, but the ER says no, they can't handle this, and Katie needs to be flown to a much farther hospital. So the 911 dispatcher switches gears and contacts the life flight.

That's means air ambulance service.

“Then warns the nurse that, to disembad weather, they're not sure a helicopter can fly.”

They're also not sure yet where life flight will pick Katie up, and where the local ambulance will have to take her to meet them. It is mayhem. A month ago when Holtman's OB was open, the medical sequence of events would have been clear.

911 orders an ambulance, which takes Katie to Holtman's labor and delivery department. There, the trained upstetrician would perform an emergency C-section. There would have been no need to air-lift Katie somewhere else. OB's in hospitals do C-sections all the time. Now Dr. Fuchs realizes, with donning horror, that because of Holtman's closure no one seems

to know or agree on who's actually in charge where Katie can go and even what should be done to save this baby. She's hunched over, counting the baby's heartbeats, and she attempts to take charge. Over her shoulder, she speaks to her nurse, and I said, "You call Holtman regional. You know, you're telling them we're coming, and I mean we're coming."

Holtman regional, the hospital that closed its labor and delivery department, but still has an emergency room. Dr. Fuchs thinks someone might be able to do a C-section there. It's about 6.48, 13 minutes have passed. At the house, the ambulance crew has arrived, and they can't get in. It's an old main house. They can't get the gurney through the

narrow hallway and around a sharp corner into the bedroom. The EMS crew who don't seem to understand the situation, ask Katie to get up and walk to the gurney. "I said, Sasha then get a chainsaw and cut the wall down." He was ready to go get a chainsaw and cut the wall down, because they knew I wasn't moving,

and I wasn't allowing her to get up. I didn't care if it was EMS and their truck. I was not giving over my place of authority because I did not see that they had adequate knowledge or understanding of the situation.

Finally, they managed to maneuver the gurney down the hall and into the bedroom.

Now they have to lift both Katie and the doctor together onto the gurney, locked in their position, like lift the sheet they're both on and transfer them together. While they do, Dr. Fuchs cannot move her hand at all. Meanwhile, she's waiting for the lead paramedic to get things going.

He's like, "Who's going to count? How are we going to do this? Who's going to count?"

They just kept on like that, and I looked at my nurse, and I said, "You count!" She took over. She heard me say that, and that was it. I hate to get reload on this mic, but she proceeded to just roar.

“We're going to count one, two, three, and honestly, I think she almost single-handedly”

pulled me Katie over to the gurney with them helping some. It's about 658. Katie should have had a C-section 25 minutes ago. 7-10. Katie and the doctor have been locked together for about 33 minutes. The EMT has load them into the ambulance. Dr. Fuchs is under the impression that her nurse has convinced Holden to accept them, and they are now heading to the Holden emergency room for the C-section.

Katie's interrible pain. Dr. Fuchs is on the gurney balancing on both knees and one hand. Her other hand is inside Katie as the driver navigates the winding roads. It's a very bumpy road. These are the back roads of the county, right? So pot holes, bumps, very curvy. At times, I thought I was going to fall off the gurney, and the paramedic would grab the waistband on the back of my skirt and hold me so I would

hold steady, and I needed to hold steady. My hand had to hold steady, and her leg at one point slipped off the gurney and fell down, and so I was trying to grab her leg and pulled it back up, and I was holding her leg on the gurney with me. So it was a tight squeeze. I was beginning to feel exhausted. I myself don't have the best back, and this was a very awkward position, and your legs are all curled up under you. So you're in

intense kneeling, you know, sitting on your legs squatting, so my legs are falling asleep. My hand is starting to fall asleep from the angle that I'm not. That scares her. Without her hand, she can't count the baby's heartbeat, and keep the baby alive. Her hand is the only instrument she has. But, you know, my hand would periodically feel like it was completely numb, and I would worry,

like am I am I going to be pinching this cord, and then it would sort of wake up again, you know, intermittently, but it was painful. Like when your hand falls asleep and it's very painful, it was becoming physically very painful to continue. Dr. Fuchs has scoliosis. This position is excruciating. She tells herself, "Hang on. It's not much longer, just until we get to hold him." But then they tell her, the plan is still

for lifelight, means air medical service to airlift them to Bangor. The helicopters apparently are going to pick them up at Holton.

“Lifelight still headed to a whole regional, correct?”

The lifelight dispatcher in the hospital are mapping out these plans, while KD and Dr. Fuchs bounce around the ambulance. Yeah, they just started pulling up and looking at them all in the morning, so I'm going up and start playing. Bad day are just now leaving the scene headed to the hospital.

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

So bear with me for just a second. We're going to leave the ambulance and go over to another

important place. Ivy's motor lodge, three minutes from Holton Hospital. That's where Dr. Monica Sheerhart, an OBGYN, is sleeping. She's been on call here once a month for three years, and on this weekend she's coming to the end of her time at Holton Hospital when the phone on her bedside table rings.

“I think they woke me up from sleep, so it was one of those like ring ring, phone call.”

What's going on? Okay, I'll be there in five minutes. She throws on her leggings and goes to the hospital to meet the ambulance that's on its way with the patient who has a prolapse cord. At the ER, they lay out the plan.

They want her to stabilize Katie so she can take the life flight helicopter to Eastern Maine Medical Center for the sea section. That would take another hour. But I'm here at that point I'm like, no, we'll have the baby here and let's go ahead and call in the OR team and we should deliver her here.

We still have that capability and everyone at that point was like, oh yeah, we can do that.

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

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

They said they couldn't comment on any specific patient.

“We asked Holton to comment on other decisions they made throughout this story.”

They responded, quote, "We have no further comment regarding the closure of the OB department." Back to Dr. Shearhart waiting in the Holden ER. She's making a case to the team there that she wants to perform the sea section at Holton and she prevails. But they can't do it without OB nurses, the birthing unit closed almost a month ago.

So the ER has to call up the OB nurses who used to work in labor and delivery and ask them for help. A couple of them volunteer and Russian. Dr. Fuchson Katie arrived at Holton at about 7.53am and there are people there to greet them.

And so we pulled up at the ambulance entrance and the obstetrician came outside to meet us,

which I was so glad for and started taking the history from me while we were unloading. And I was like, "Hi, I'm Dr. Shearhart. I'm an OB-GYN. I'm the one I'm called today. My recommendation is emergency section.

If it's okay with you, and we're going to roll you right into the operating room and deliver the baby." Dr. Fuchson also was giving me a sign out about what was happening with her when her background was and that she could still fill the court pulse. They speed the gurney down the hall to the operating room.

Katie is far from out of the woods. The baby has to survive through the surgery and if she does, what about the possibility of brain damage or cerebral palsy? An anesthesiologist puts Katie under. At this point, Dr. Fuchson has been riding the bed for almost 90 minutes.

“Remember, no more than 10 minutes to see section is best practice.”

She still can't leave her post, which means now they have another problem. The nurses can't fit the surgical tool table over Katie the way they normally would, because Dr. Fuchson is in the way. So her back will have to serve as the table.

They throw a drape over her, basically a plastic bag.

Dr. Fuchson will become part of the surgery. So we basically put the surgical drapes over the top of Dr. Fuchson through the, you know, made it on sterilizing fluid on Katie. They opened a bottle of iodine and dumped it over her belly, over my top of my arm, that was, you know, near her. So my, my cheek is laying on Katie's thigh.

I have my head sideways, trying to breathe in a little air, air pocket in this drape. It's a very awkward position to say the least for her and me.

“We have surgical equipment and tubing and, and electrocordary instruction,”

kind of sitting on top of Dr. Fuchson because she's right there between Katie's legs. They are, I can feel they are putting their tools on my back. But they're missing some usual tools, like a Doppler, to monitor the baby's heartbeat. And nurses sort of scurry about looking for a Doppler, they either couldn't find one, or they didn't have one available, but they had no Doppler anyway.

And so I, I told her, it's okay because I can feel the heartbeat. And so, you know, it had been 120s, but then at one point while they were still prepping, it went down to like 90. And so I called that out to her. I said, so we're down to 90, you all better hurry. And what is optimum? A normal fetal heart rate is 120 to 160. And so we allow a little bit outside that range,

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

Dr. Shearhart starts the surgery. As soon as she went to sleep, I made the incision got down to her uterus. I could feel them start to cut the skin and the muscle layers, you know, to enter the abdomen. And I thought, oh dear, my fingers are awfully high up there. What if they cut my fingers? I'd better pull back a little bit at just the right moment, but not too soon to lose the heartbeat. So I went through a little bit and then I could sort of feel them

that they were in the uterus. And my hand reached down to pull the babies head out and our hands touched. So my hand touched Dr. Fuchs's hand as I was lifting the babies head out of the incision. The c-section is done in two minutes and the baby is breathing. She's born at 7.58 AM.

slithers out and climbs off the table. When she leaves the OR she's shaky,

“starts to see black before her eyes. She almost passes out from the sheer effort of the delivery.”

Her nurse, the one with the big blue eyes and the loud voice, she runs and gets a red chair and a glass of water. When Katie wakes up, her baby is alive. But she's in an incubator that has lots of tubes. Katie can't be with her and they can't stay here in the hospital. With the department closed, the nurse is gone. Holten has no way to admit a newborn. No one to take care of the baby or of Katie who should recover in a hospital for a couple of days.

The life-flight medics are there and they start getting the baby ready to fly to a bigger hospital.

Katie doesn't understand what's happening. I could see her off until my left when they were she was getting worked on. And then when I was in the recovery room, she was still getting worked on because then that's when they put her in their incubator type thing. I still didn't get to hold her. Then they load the newborn into the life-flight helicopter and it takes off for eastern main medical. I cried. I cried. I mean, like I didn't know what

that time. I didn't know how she was. I didn't get to see. I didn't get to know anything. And then

I just saw him wheeler away. It's just a, I don't know how to describe. It's a very hard thing,

especially seeing her leave. I don't know. It's just hard. It was hard. Very hard. Katie has to follow her new baby to the other hospital by ambulance. But she's just out of a major surgery. She needs an OB nurse to accompany her and Holton doesn't have anyone. So the ER makes another call to Heather Quint. Heather's the nurse who heard at the opening of this story, the one who used to run labor and delivery and got the sudden matter of fact news

that the OB department was closing. They asked her to go with Katie in the ambulance. Heather races to the hospital and walks into the recovery room. I asked Heather why she showed up that day. I wanted to be like, when they closed it down, I wanted to be like, okay, this is what you guys want. This is what you're going to get. But the nurse and me, the person and me, that's, that's my patient. Hell, yes, I'm going to be there. I threw my clothes and I was there and I went to Bangor with her.

And I sat and I held her hand and I talked to her the entire time. So no, oh, when I got the call, I wanted to be like, figure it out. But not when my patients are involved, I'm like, yep, I'll be right now. When I think about what it took to deliver this one baby, this is the thing I've been struck by the most. So many people's instinct to save a life. No matter what, right now in America, the majority of rural hospitals no longer have labor and delivery departments. And instead, here is a collection of

people choosing to jump in to fill in gaps. This is a success story. Katie's baby is fine, healthy, no brain damage, no cerebral palsy, which is remarkable because this baby was much more likely to die than to survive. This is what success can look like today. In some places, we're creating a hero-based healthcare system. And we can't rely on the Avengers in order to have a baby.

“The whole marble universe showing up to help a person give birth safely. That's what hospitals are for.”

I'll end up with a ground. That's where I was produced by Lily Sullivan, and edited by Fiona Bannon. I'll end originally going about this story from reporting by Emily Head of Guard and Stephanie McFeeders of the Maine Monitor. Coming up, raise your hand if you know what "trude" that'll attest your means. That's in a minute comrades. Which got good up a radio when our program continues. It's a American life from our class. Today's program,

I couldn't help but notice. We have stories where people see a new future arrive. One that is not quite as pleasant as the past. And they can't help themselves. They take action. In some way or another in their own little corner of the world, we've arrived at a two of our program, act two,

“conversations about important things. So the documentary that won this year is Academy Award,”

is called Mr. Nobody Against Putin. It was co-directed by a Russian guy and an American,

after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. And the shock of that propaganda push for one person in particular.

“If I haven't seen the film, it is really we're seeing. And one of the people on staff here at this”

American live, Valerie Kipness, has watched it four times. She'll tell you why. Here's how. Here's some scenes for my family growing up. Someone, let's say my mom, would say this to me. Glory to labor. She'd say it in Russian. Then she'd hand me a broom. Or she'd say, throw a deal of chase to you. Labor is a matter of honor. She used to say that on Sunday mornings when she woke me up for chores. These are all propaganda slogans. Humber up bringing in the Soviet

Union. She might add both corrupt there. My dad would say things like this too. So they're my

grandmothers. They both live with us. And these lines always got a laugh from each other.

Like my mom would say, Barthia, National Lviv, the party is our homesmen. And my grandmothers

“are Bella with laugh and say, last time I saw that one was on the wall of Notitorium.”

I'm like them. I grew up here, which meant I was always behind. Always playing catch-up and a household full of inside jokes. Always trying to see into this world they had in their heads. I was obsessed with it. So I'd ask the same questions over and over again. And they would answer my questions. Patiently, kindly, along car rides on the subway to school and our walks near the BQE. But I kept going. I wanted to understand but it actually felt like to live surrounded by

banners and slogans. My grandmother would shrug and say, "Stabula, tabula." It just was what it was. It didn't feel special to us. We didn't know another version of life. And then she'd call me by my family nickname, Pachimuchka, which means roughly. Kid who drives us crazy by asking why all the time. Being a Pachimuchka in all, it's only natural that I watch this new documentary four times, three times before it won the Oscar, just saying. And the thing I couldn't get enough of

was that here was a movie that answered some of the questions I'd been asking for so long. The documentary starts less than a month after Russia invaded Ukraine, the beginning of the full-scale invasion. And it focuses on one school in one town in Russia. As the Ministry of Education rolls out a massive nationwide propaganda campaign, a new "patriotic curriculum," which would include new lesson plans for teachers, nationalistic poem recitations for students,

mandatory school-wide salus to the flag, and mandatory lessons called "Bhazgavota Avazna,"

“conversations about important things, where teachers are asked to talk about stuff like”

the importance of war songs, where the heroism of Russian fighters. Also, a single approved set of history textbooks written by two people closely affiliated with the Kremlin. High schoolers would start paramilitary training in gym class. And in the school that's in the documentary, one teacher captures how this all plays out. Pasha Delunkin, and I called him up. Here is a person who made a whole film about what it felt like to see slogans in the auditorium.

Different slogans then the ones my parents and grandparents grew up with. A very different time, but with an undeniable similarity. Both then and now, the state had a tight grip on its own people. And here was Pasha, who wasn't just seeing what was happening around him. He wanted the whole world to see what he was seeing. This is Pasha. He's got around wide-eyed baby face, big glasses. He's an empish kind of person who talks through a smile like he's in on some joke you don't know about.

The school in the film is actually the same school he once attended. He loves the school, loves his students, loves his grumpy mom, she's the school librarian. And when the film begins, he's the school's event coordinator. And videographer, he comes to piano recitals, graduations, performances, and under the brand new patriotic curriculum at Pasha's school, Pasha was told he now had a brand new role. He would be filming teachers and students performing the new lessons. He'd be filming the new flag solutes and

paramilitary trainings and he'd be sending all of that footage to the government as proof of compliance. I wanted to know what he thought of his new role as he was doing it. How it actually felt.

He answered by telling me a story that never made it into the film.

freaked out. When I was going to film computer class didn't end up in the final cut, I asked

“myself a question. Who was that idiot who was going to be watching all this shit? I mean, who”

is he? Who is that moron? I mean, it should be some sort of paid job sitting and watching all this shit. I mean, they should pay you some money for that at least a little bit. Anyway, I did this one little bit of trickery where I left in only the beginning of the class, where the teacher says hello kids and the end where they say okay class is over, but the shot itself went the whole time of the class, 45 minutes. So in the middle there was just a black screen as if something had gone wrong

with my camera. And I sent a video in and I sat there waiting as they looked over the footage and I kept waiting for them to say, you know, we can't see it something went wrong. It's just a black screen and they didn't give me a single note and I thought, "Oh banana, is this the abam's

“disk I'm ready?" It didn't steal it. Holy shit, I'm here, not to actually record, but to surveil the teachers.”

You know, watch out, we're watching you, we have a camera, here it is recording you. And in that moment, I thought I'm being used. I'm being used. He figured, yeah, okay, they were using him. But he was simultaneously and obsessively filming the changes at his school for his own purposes. And the footage that Pasha captured was really eye-opening for me. And answered so many of the questions I'd barged my family with over the years. Because the propaganda, as it rolls out,

is sort of the opposite of what I'd always imagined it would be. You know, the classic images of

state control. The seamous crisp obedience, massive signs, arms being raised in unison, echoey speeches delivered to neat rows of thousands of people. Pasha shows scenes that are so intimate and small

“and messy. A teacher is stumbling over new words she's now required to say, denotsification,”

demilitarization. He films teenagers, bored out of their minds, daring blindly into space, as another teacher tells them. If you're born in this country, and you know, believe we're doing the right thing, then leave. Go to the country that you think is better. Pasha films young kids with these tiny red berets, chanting new slogans in an assembly. They're excited, but looking at each other like, right? We're saying the right thing.

The school days in the film look kind of normal, and so many ways, despite all the changes. Kids still horse around and tease each other. They're still piano recitals. It's still just school. But Pasha was like the kid in the emperor's new clothes. Every change set out to him, and he couldn't stop talking about it. His own mother was like, "Of course these things are happening. They've

always been this way. Shut up!" And he argued with her. He lived in a sort of continuous state of shock,

but the war about the propaganda. And he told me that when the patriotic curriculum started, he kept sort of waiting for the people around him to freak out as much as he was about what they were being asked to do. But most people just went along with it, doubted it, or chose to stay quiet. I wondered why he didn't do that. Then when I talked to him, I got it. Pasha and I are almost the same age, in our 30s. In part of why he's so stunned by what's happening,

is which is a big era he grew up in. It was right after the Soviet Union fell apart. But before Vladimir Putin really started consolidating power. So Pasha was raised in this short window of time, when students weren't flooded with slogans and propaganda in the schools. And when schools were left mostly in touch by the state apparatus, because the state apparatus had fallen apart.

And so the Pasha was seeing was something my parents and grandparents never got to see.

The beginning of a propaganda push in the schools, which meant he understood what a school was losing when it adopted these changes. And he knew what he was personally losing. As nationalism became more and more strictly enforced. Over and over again in the film, he addresses people in his life in the camera directly. Like, can you believe this? Why is this happening? But you know, he told me that off camera had many more exchanges like that, especially with the other teachers.

They said, Pasha, we don't like all that. And then they come into class and

“that we facilitate ministers to start to say what the ministry of education had sent over to them.”

The teachers are hostage as a system too. Pasha also saw himself as a hostage. Before the war in the new curriculum, Pasha was a teacher with the Puzzi Wright poster in his wall. The cool guy, the weirdo's office all the theater kids hung out in. The teacher would different politics and it was on TV every night. And for a while, even after the war was underway, he was able to continue being that guy.

He wore blue and yellow paper clips on his clothing, as symbols of support for Ukraine.

He hung an image of an anti-war flag in his office, flipped a Russian flag outside the school upside

down. One time, him and played Lady Gaga singing the star-spangled banner during a flag assembly, instead of the Russian national anthem. In the movie, he does things that I could not believe he was getting away with. In a country that was introducing laws to criminalize things like,

“even saying that the war was in fact a war. How on earth could he just do these things and not get in trouble?”

Communion was a part of the situation that people saw me as a hero. A gesture, a holy fool, there he goes, watching around being foolish. In Russia, there is a historical tradition that the gesture, the holy fool could speak out, even to the Tsar, the lowest level of society, the most seemingly worthless people. They could say exactly what they thought, tell anyone, right to their face.

But that didn't mean the Tsar is, which is ignoring forever. When I talked to Pasha about how his constant prevoking was playing out in real life, he told me that behind the scenes of making the film, he could feel a status changing from holy fool to persona non-grata. This isn't in the film, but at some point, at Pasha's school,

“compliance started being supervised in person via a new quote advisor on student affairs.”

And this advisor took a special interest in Pasha. Your office and other words, right, I'm going to close it. And so I took my door off its hinges and put it in front of her door and said, "How are you going to close this bullshit factory if it doesn't have any doors?" Of course, this performance eventually ended, and I returned the door to its place.

But in the meantime, she got really committed to this work of telling the students not to come see me. And fewer kids were showing up at his office. The domain he'd carved out inside the school, not just the physical space of his office, but the permission he represented, for kids who wanted to joke around, talk freely, ask questions, and for him to be able to do that. That was being shrunk down to nothing.

When I asked Pasha what this period of his life felt like, he gave me an answer that I can't help but classify as literally the most Russian thing I've ever heard. He said it was like this one painting he loves, "Arch Hallers on the Volga," which is an oil and canvas painting by Eidia Diapin. It depicts 11 men hauling a barge along the banks of a river.

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

"The Buddha was mushing, like, there's a chair we're doing all this, and the rest of them just keep their head down, keep pulling the ship along the Volga." "As if they don't hear what he's saying." "It's like you're speaking different languages. You don't understand each other.

You know, if points of contact, you don't have common views on, you know, basically any questions.

You can't discuss issues that demand discussion. It requires it not because you can change something, but because you need to not be alone. You need to speak in order to feel support."

"There's one last scene in the film that really got to me. It's so inside. In a way that

“let's you really feel how much has changed in this one school, this one town.”

Patrick gets invited to this party of a recent graduate, Vanya, who's heading off to the army. It's just going away, party. All his friends toast to him and wash him luck in the future. It has repictures of Vanya. Instead of cheese, they say army. Then they take turn, shaving his head with a shiver that breaks halfway through the process. "Pasha takes a turn at shaving Vanya's head. As he does it, he asks you decided to sign up on your own."

Vanya says, "Didn't have time. They sent for me. Pasha says, "Why didn't you call me?" Vanya sort of shrugs as if Pasha's question is dumb and annoying,

then quietly in mumble. It just all happened so fast in a split second.

Besides that, it's all laughs and jokes and debauchery. The shaving part is funny. Everyone's kind of wasted, but then as it gets late, Vanya and his friends start embracing. One guy cries and hugs him. Tells him that he really loves him so much. They won't forget him. He tells him, "You're like a brother to me. Not by blood, but by soul." Vanya doesn't look so brave in the dark. He looks small and scared. His friends also do.

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

Do people believe the propaganda? I wonder this question over and over again as I was watching. Does Vanya actually believe in the worries going to fight? Do the teachers believe that Russia is denots flying Ukraine? Do the kids throwing fake grenades believe in the country they're being trained to defend? It's a version of the question I've been asking my family, my whole life. But did you believe in the things you were being taught? The things you were doing? The slogans hung up in the gym?

Those are the questions they seem the most frustrated by. It took me asking Pasha to figure out why. When I asked him if the people around him believed in all this, he scoffed at me, the way my grandma does. That's a bad question you dummy journalist don't you understand?

“He told me it doesn't matter if people believe in it or not. What matters is that they say it,”

that they hang the slogans teach the lessons, sing the anthems. I spit about it to rutina,

first it's a routine that's like, I believe, I don't believe, but I say it. It's a culture.

Then it becomes culture. These lessons are already in the schedules. Everyone's used it. You've got to say this, you've got to listen to that, you've got to raise the flag or whatever else. At the moment, it is to know it's a clear thing. And then it becomes a change. And you think this is normal. And it also adds that the cage actually remains open. It's a clear thing. You can leave it at any moment. But as soon as you do, you realize that everyone else is in the cage. You walk out and

you realize that you've become an outcast alone or a genocha. It's like, you're a opinion,

“you, yourself, you don't matter. And that's also the work of propaganda. That's what it does.”

Pasha became more and more isolated, retreated from his friends and family. They stayed away from him too. An unmarked vehicle showed up outside his home. He got scared and left the country without telling anyone where he was going or why. And he can't go back. I should probably fess up now and say, all those times I was asking my family about how they felt

growing up. When I was posing those exact questions to Pasha, in the back of my mind, I was always wondering,

who would I be if I was put in that situation? What kind of person? Would I be able to see what was

between us. We're both similar ages, similar tendency to ask questions. And I did think,

quietly, to myself, that had I been put in the situation, I probably would be like Pasha. I told my dad this, big mistake. He said, really, you'd be like that, what are you doing right now in this country? There are things happening here that you don't like.

“Then I said, I'm doing my best. I think, then he said, well, isn't that great?”

You're best. What's that got to do with anything?

Larry Kippness is one of the producers of our show. The actor, who is reading Pasha's quotes in English, was a rice crime book. I can't even be the mismatch from hell, I waited way too long. I've played life like the game of all and I'm greater to the song. I'll get it be that it's all my fault. We'll have a reach, a tip, a tip. And my ear won't do one time, then I'll bounce me all the long. Now that I've seen it, I can't not see it.

“Well, the program is produced today by Nadie Raymond, a native by Nancy Updike. The people who put together”

today's show include Khanajafi Wald, Adrian Lily, Tobin Vo, Malay Marcello, Katherine Raimondo, Sto Nelson, Ruthie Petito, Ryan Rumory, Ruby Schwartz, Francis Swanson, Christopher Sotale, Marisa Robertson, Texter, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu, are managing editor Sara Abduraman, senior editor David Kessenbaum, our executive editor is a manual berry. Special thanks to day-to-day manual paray, David Borenstein, Katia Kitia, Bella Shiavitz, Daniel Piam,

Katherine Emery, Ruth and Mark Fitzpatrick, Henry Frank, Chris Levoie, and Brett Morse, laying out with a grand story and I'd one was supported by a grand from the National Institute for Health Care Management. This American Life has delivered public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange, special thanks to day-to-day American Life partners, Sean Collins, and Stonewall and Traveller Peak. Sean Collins, I know you. We worked together at NPR. Nice to see you here in this ad.

How's Oklahoma? They and all of our life partners have subscribed to help us keep making our program. When you do that, you get to visit at Had Free, and you get other stuff including bonus episodes. Our most recent one that I did with one of my co-workers, Diane Wu, turned out so much more

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you got to join, go to thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners. That link is also in the show notes.

I just always do a program's co-founder, Mr. Malatia. You know, his dream job was actually to be on

Sesame Street. When he auditioned, he was told his performance was not quite right for children. We're gonna count! One, two, three! I'm Hara Gloss, back next week with more stories of this American Bye. [Music]