When was the last time you said, I never thought about it that way. The Current aims to give you that moment every single day. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and our award-winning team brings you stories and conversations to expand your worldview. Sometimes they connect to the news of the day, sometimes to the issues of our time. You'll hear all kinds of people on The Current, from best-selling authors to the Prime Minister to maybe your neighbor. Find us wherever you get your podcasts now, including YouTube. I'll talk to you soon. This is a CBC podcast. Hi there. It's Rose. This is the final episode of Tested. At the very end of this episode, there are two bad words.

Quicker, quicker, quicker. Go, go, go, go. Don't be that up. It's a quick movement, right?

Christine Boma trains in a nondescripted gym in Wind hook, the capital of Namibia. It's not fancy, and it's certainly not private. She's training next to middle-aged men who are just trying to get their workout in before they head into the office, while her coach, Hank Bota, pushes her.

Lift it up, Siny. Your mind is the strongest I've seen in the athlete, so show me your mind, Christine. Come on, Christine. Come on, Christine.

At one point, Christine is sitting against a wall, her legs at a 90-degree angle, holding a medicine ball out in front of her.

I know the pain is there, but you're not going to give up. You're not going to give up. We don't give up.

She has to keep the position for a full minute.

I want more. Come on. Yes, yes, yes. Five, three. Thank you.

This is the life of an elite athlete. Before the spotlight, the glory, the finish line at the Olympics, there is this, pain and sweat and unglamorous days at the gym. For Christine, she's had to go through more than just hard workouts. Her road to Paris included things that almost no other athletes have to go through. Regular blood tests and drugs. But just like every other athlete, Christine still had to run an Olympic qualifying time by the deadline, June 30th. And after failing to qualify at the Kipkano Classic back in April, time was running out. Over in Kenya, Maximila Imali was doing her own training, preparing for her case at Court of Arbitration for Sport, or CAS. When I called her in April, she told me she was constantly in touch with the people helping with her case.

I always talk to them because they need to prepare me very well. We need to Actually to prepare for the testimonies and everything.

Not being able to compete in elite races has taken a toll on Max's income. She told me that she struggles to find the money to continue in athletics. She has to scramble and scround to her coach, get to the track, and even to feed herself.

Sometimes, like yesterday, I went the all day until 20, 30 PM. At that time is the time that I eat something. It's not good. I need at least to have a good diet, and all of these things need money. I went bankrupt, totally bankrupt. I have nothing to my account, so I'm I'm fighting this alone, and it was very painful.

Christine and Max are just two of the women impacted by these policies. They chose different paths. Take the medications, take World Athletics to court. But they're both living with the effects of these policies every single day. Over the last few months, they've both been preparing for one of the hardest things they've ever done. And on this final episode, you're going to find out how it went for each of them and how their stories could affect so many other athletes. From CBC and NPR's Embedded, This is Tested. I'm Rose Evelyn. In April, Max was just a week away from flying to Switzerland to present her case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, or CAS.

Now, I'm so nervous because it's my first time to go and contest the case. Sometimes you feel that like, this case, are we going to win this case or what are we going to do?

Are you allowed to talk to people during the case?

You will not be there?

No, I can't be there. I was hoping, but I can't come.

Okay. I'll be talking to you, actually. We'll be talking.

On that call, Max and I made a plan that I would call her every day at the end of the hearings so we could talk about how it went. On the first day of the case, I called. Instead of answering, Max sent a cryptic note asking me to talk to her lawyer. Something unexpected had happened, and I made a lot of calls to try and figure out what it was. At this point, all I can tell you is that things didn't go the way anybody had planned. The court has still not released anything about the hearing, and no one on either side is talking about it publicly yet. And since there's still been no public decision, it means that Max has no shot at Paris. Without a ruling from the court striking down the testosterone rules, she can't to qualify. So she's missing the Olympics once again. And while I can't tell you what went on in the courtroom, I can share something with you that happened outside of it. Here's a Nimetra, the athlete's rights advocate. She was in Switzerland with Max, and she said something that surprised me.

I would say that I have witnessed the most powerful moments of my career in that week, which made me feel like life is worth living.

Max wasn't the only athlete who went to Switzerland for this case. There were other women impacted by these rules who had flown in from around the world to speak in front of the court. When they came together, they had time to basically hang out and talk, which is unprecedented.

Each of these it needs have been made to feel in the past. You have something wrong about your body. You are inadequate, and therefore, you are not supposed to talk about it in public. You should be ashamed of your body. You should hide it. You should fake injury and not say what exactly has happened. And therefore, this has not allowed them to feel any connection with anyone else because they always felt they're the only one going through this. They felt that this time, because Because they're together, they are not willing to accept being treated unequally. And in a very organic way, they came together and said things like, We are not going to be oppressed.

Rest again. Regardless of what happens at KAS, some of these athletes say that they will never give up. Last December, Caster Semenya spoke at a sports and human rights conference at the United Nations. Here's what she said.

The minute you start categorizing women's sports, you're touching us and we come for you. I promise that as long as I live, I'm never going to stop. I'm going to be that whistle in your ear. Your ceilings will be written Caster Semenya. So The Court of Arbitration for Sport isn't the only way to fight these rules.

Last year, Caster Semenya won a case in front of the European Court of Human Rights, a ruling that is now being challenged by the Swiss government. Meanwhile, Well, Christine was still trying to make it to Paris. After her last place finish in Nairobi, Hank told me that she was struggling, not physically, but mentally. After Kipkano, she went home and ran a small race in Namibia on the track where she trains. But she didn't land a qualifying time there either. Christine doesn't like discussing her problems. When I was with her in January, I asked her who she goes to when things get hard. She told me that she rarely talks to anybody.

I really don't talk to people. For me, when I tell someone my problem and the person feel pity for me, I feel bad. I don't want someone to see that I'm weak.

At one point in May, Hank told me that he was going to offer Christine an out.

We will have a nice chat tomorrow, and I need to tell her, Listen, if you don't want to do this anymore, let's just leave it. You are not forced. You are still a human being. You are not an object. I'll have to talk with her tomorrow, and I'll let you know.

Hank and Christine had a long talk. After their conversation, he told me that she agreed to talk to a sports psychologist. Hank told me that it's important to him to not pressure her into anything.

I will say this a thousand times that It's not about medals and winning and everything. It's nice to have those, but if it's not meant to be, it's not meant to be.

But Christine didn't want to give up. Not yet. So in early June, they flew to Europe. Their first stop was France, where Christine visited the Eiffel Tower. The Olympics were happening so soon that the tower had the iconic rings put up. Christine posed for a selfie beneath them. Watching her Instagram stories, I couldn't help but think that she was so close, yet still so far away. On June 18th, she left Paris and ran in a tiny event in Romand in Southeastern France. And again, she couldn't land a qualifying time. Then, in the last week of June, Christine went to Cameroon for the African Athletics Championships. This was her last chance to hit a qualifying standard. In the semifinal, Christine lined up in lane two.

Set.

She gets off to a strong start off the blocks, and then, about halfway through, she gets passed by almost everybody in the field.

We got to reach for quick semifinal number two, Diasas.

Christine came in last, again. Her time was 12 seconds flat, nearly a second too slow to qualify. Christine would officially miss the Olympics in Paris.

It was just everything went wrong. We thought that will be our big one, but everything didn't work out.

Yeah. Was she disappointed or are you disappointed about the Olympics?

I must be honest with you, I was, and I think She didn't say. She said it's okay, but I can see in her face, she was not happy about it. And obviously, knowing it's 20 days to go and know that other athletes are on their way and not being part of that doesn't make you happy. But It's not the end of the world. Yeah, it's sad, but it's not the end of the world. Yeah, I'm sad, but I'm okay with that.

That's very positive. You weren't sad at all. I feel like you're allowed to be a little bit sad.

Yeah, I'm just a bit sad, but yeah, it's okay.

I asked Christine how she stays so positive and keeps going in the face of all of this. She told me, basically, that her whole life has been full of hurdles. This is just one more.

I'm a strong person. So a lot of stuff happened in my life. For me, not missing out the Olympic for this year, it won't bring me down. I lost my A lot of people criticized me, the worst stuff happened with that. This is not the only thing, the bad thing that happened to me, but still, I stand out being strong.

Some people will point to Christine's failure to qualify for the Olympics as proof that these rules are necessary and working, that it was only her high testosterone that made her great. But we We can't know whether or not the medications are what have kept Christine from being able to get back to her previous pace. It could be her nagging hip flexor injury from two years ago. It could be that it takes a while to get back into shape if you haven't been competing at the elite level for two years. It could be the mental toll, the stress and attention on her. It could be all of the above. While on the drugs, Christine has struggled with getting back to her peak competition weight. While she says she doesn't think she's got side effects, Hank recently learned that she's been sleeping way more than usual.

I didn't realize she's sleeping the whole day. She's literally in bed, covered with the blankets in bed.

Yeah, when You told Christine, Hey, I noticed you're sleeping all day, what did she say?

Yeah, she was looking at me funny at first, but I think after today's session, again, she actually say, Yes, it's true, coach. I'm sleeping more than usual, and I feel like I can't do anything. The medicine just make me tired.

Christine told me that she wishes she just had more time.

The time was short. I didn't get enough time for me to qualify.

But it's not over for her.

I think our focus was too big on the Olympic qualifying than just getting back to running and just get her back on her career. So that's what we doing currently. So we haven't stopped with our season. We will go ahead and see if there's still races, and we will still run for the rest of the year.

So you're still racing, you're going to race the rest of the season, still not giving up on the drugs and trying something else.

I I mean, she's got a family to support, and we decided this is what we're going to do for at least another year. And then if we see there's still no results, then we'll look at a different option for what we will do then. But I'm still fairly positive. She just told me she's positive. We will just have to work twice as hard. I just have to focus on my season. It's not the end of my season.

You think you'll be back to it, though? Next Olympics, you'll be there?

Yeah, next time.

Over this series, we've followed Max and Christine because they are examples of two of the key choices, take the drugs or fight. But there are other athletes impacted by these rules, too, some of whom also tried to qualify for this year's Olympics. But as far as I know, based on all my reporting, none of them were able to do so. No DST athlete, as far as I'm aware, will compete in track and field in Paris. When was the last time you said, I never thought about it that way? The Current aims to give you that moment every single day. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and our award-winning team brings you stories and conversations to expand your worldview. Sometimes they connect to the news of the day, sometimes to the issues of our time. You'll hear all kinds of people on The Current, from best-selling authors to the Prime Minister to maybe your neighbor. Find us wherever you get your podcasts now, including YouTube. I'll talk to you soon. For the last several years, I've traveled around the world and talked to athletes and coaches whose lives have been upended by these rules. Amina Toussainti from Niger, has opted for the medication, too.

I visited her back in December in France, where she trains to talk about her decision to take the medication. What do you want people to know about you? What would you hope that we would make sure to include? She says, I'd like people to understand one thing. Even if we have a different body or even if I'm different to others, it doesn't mean I'm not human, because there are people who judge with no holds barred. In June, Amina started competing again, but it was too late for her to manage to qualify for Paris. Other athletes have had irreversible changes made to their bodies in the hopes of getting to run. One of them is Annette Ngeesa of Uganda.

I'm a female, a body female. My parents know me a female. My father know me a female. My friends know me a female.

But in 2012, she was told she couldn't compete in the female category unless she lowered her testosterone. To do that, she wound up having surgery to remove internal testies from her body.

Because there are too much love for this part, I had to go in for the surgery.

Annette says that at the time, nobody made sure she understood what surgery meant. She told me that she thought they were going to give her an injection to somehow pull the testosterone out of her body. Instead, she says she woke up and found incisions on her abdomen.

So whereby I woke up in the morning from the operation room when I have the cuts on my brain and I was wondering myself, and I was so scared.

She says the surgery and lack of post-surgery care ended her career.

I didn't know the consequences which will come later. I didn't know that it would be the end of all my dream which I was chasing for.

Annette's story was featured in a 2019 Human Rights Watch report titled They're Chasing Us Away from Sport. At least three other women have undergone surgery in an attempt to comply with the regulations. World Athletic says that it doesn't advise athletes on treatments and has, quote, never forced any athlete affected by its regulations to undergo surgery. The latest regulations specifically say, quote, surgical anatomical changes are not required in any circumstances. Another story I'll never forget is about Margaret Nairera Sarah Wambui. In 2016, at the Kenyan National Trials, she won gold in the 800 meters.

She crossed the finish line. She had got a ticket to her first Olympic Games. A moment of celebration.

That's Celestine Karroni. At the time, she was a sports reporter for CGTN Africa.

But you have a section of the crowd saying, No, no. Hapana. Hapana. That's hapana means no in Kenyan, hapana.. In Swahili means not a woman. When a whole crowd shouts at somebody who's won their first Olympic ticket that you're not a woman, imagine what it does to that person.

Margaret has given up on competing in track and field at the international level. So have other runners I spoke with for this series who have found it impossible to keep training when they have no idea if they'll be able to compete again. Piochny, the athlete's rights advocate, is in touch with 38 women affected by these rules, not just in track and field, but in other sports, too. And all of this is happening because elite sports remain committed to that original division. Men over here, women over there. Here's Allison Carlson, who worked tirelessly to get the chromosome tests abolished in the 1990s. Humanity is messy, and sports is asking for humanity not to be messy. They're trying to find a definitive standard or measure to make humanity less messy for the convenience of sports. Sports are binary. Human bodies are not. So what do we do? There are a lot of answers to this question. Each one has pros and cons, so let's run through them, shall we? One option is do what World Athletics is doing now. Ask some women to regulate their body's chemistry to be allowed to compete in the female category. And some athletes who aren't impacted by these rules don't mind them.

We reached out to as many non-DSD track and field athletes as we could think of. Trying to see if any of them would speak to us about these rules. Nobody would. Here's Celestine Caroni again.

A lot of people from early on tended not to really speak their mind on record. So on record, nobody will tell you they're cheating. No, no, no. But the undertones you got and the whispers were that, No, this is tantamount to cheating.

And if we do keep these regulations in some form, there's a big question we haven't tackled yet. At what age should this testing and regulation begin? Here's Dr. Casey Orozco-Pour, a medical resident at UCLA and intersex Health Specialist. At what point do you look at someone's genitalia and run their blood? Do you do it at the middle school level if someone's really good? How good do they have to be before you check their genitals? A second option is to allow for regulations, but based on more appropriate science. This is what the International Olympic Committee says it believes should be done. In 2021, the IDOC parted ways with World Athletics and effectively said it was getting out of the business of regulating DSD athletes. That year, the IDOC published a set of principles for sports federations on how they should tackle the issue. It emphasizes words like fairness and inclusion, while leaving it up to individual governing bodies, like World Athletics, to make their own sport-specific rules. But it says those rules should be evidence-based, and the data should be gathered from a population consistent with the athletes who are being regulated. Reading between the lines, the IDOC seems to be suggesting World Athletic Science isn't good enough because most of the data didn't come from DSD athletes competing at the elite level.

Still, a set of principles can only do so much. Madelyne Pipp works for the IDOC as an inclusion Specialist. She once raced against Caster Semenya, and she says the IOC's position is a balancing act.

On the one hand, the IDOC framework insists that any policies that are put in place should be based on appropriate evidence, and at the same time recognizes that.

Appropriate evidence is really hard to come by. I asked Madelyne if the IDOC would ever step in to stop World Athletics from enforcing rules that don't meet IDOC standards.

You need the sports-specific knowledge to be able to identify how you're going to go about defining what you consider to be fair and meaningful competition.

I think it's not really feasible for the IDOC to to be able to decide for each sport, actually, what the eligibility rules should be. Some athletes I met in my reporting said they felt abandoned by the IDOC. Here's Max Amali.

Yes, it's very frustrating because they're the head of sports. They're the one to protect us. They have to stand for us. They know we are being violated, but they don't act on that, and that is not good at all. I'm very be pissed off with them.

Another option is to simply not do any of this. We could let athletes like Max and Christine compete as they are and allow for whatever advantages might exist to just be one of the many advantages that one athlete might have over another. Here's Calvin Cheringa, a radio reporter in Namibia.

A scorpion It stings. Why should you want to inject it with something that stops it from stinging? That's the nature of a scorpion, to sting. Christine Boma is a bullet. Why then would you want to ton down on the speed of that bullet? It was designed to move at that particular speed. So Live with it. Accept it and move on.

So far, all of these solutions have still operated within a world where sports stay separated by the sex binary. But there are also solutions that people have proposed that break that. One of them is to create a third category. Sometimes you hear about this as a category for intersex competitors, other times you hear about it as a category for trans competitors, and still other times you hear about it as a category for non-binary competitors. Some people suggest just throwing all three of those groups together into this other space. Some of the athletes impacted by these policies have supported this idea, saying basically, Fine, sure, whatever. I just want to run. But other folks have argued that this isn't a real solution. Here's Franky De La Creta, a journalist who covers sports and gender. If we're putting a third gender category, we are essentially forcing people to out themselves either as intersex or trans just to compete, and I don't think that should be required. And Franky says it's not just about ethics. It's also about just baseline practicality. The trans athletes and intersex athletes who are competing at this very, very elite level are really small in number.

In a team sport, you may not even have enough people at the elite level to field a whole team. They just don't exist. The last solution, and perhaps the most radical, is to simply end the sex binary in sports altogether. I think that we are so limited that people's imaginations won't even let us go there. What does it actually look like to blow up the way sports are organized and imagine something different? These solutions all try their best to tackle this big question, what is fair? We talk about fairness and inclusion as if they are diametrically opposed things, but I don't think that they actually are. I think the other question we need to ask is, fair to whom? Throughout this series, we've skirted around a topic that you've almost certainly heard about in the news, trans athletes. The athletes I followed in this series aren't trans. Advocates for athletes with sex variations say that it's important not to conflate the two groups. But there is also some overlap in this discussion. Who gets to race in the women's category, and who doesn't? Right now, DSD athletes are allowed to race with these restrictions, but trans women are no longer allowed to compete in elite track and field at all, no matter what their testosterone levels are.

World athletics officially banned them a year ago. Here's Cee C. Telfer, the author of Make It Count: My Fight to become the First Transgender Olympic Runner, talking about the day the ban was announced.

I was sleeping. I got a call from my manager, and he said, It's not good. Right then and there, I knew what it was. My heart broke because it was also on International Transgender Day of Visibility, March 31st. So it was more like a slap in the face.

And while there might be different rules governing trans and DSD athletes, Cici points out that they do have some things in common. Both groups are constantly under extra scrutiny, and both groups just want to run.

We didn't ask to be born this way. All we asked for is accommodation and inclusivity, and we're trying to find a place for ourselves and where we belong. I'm doing this to live and to survive. This is why I'm doing this, because I love it and it makes me free, and I want to do it at the highest level that I can possibly do it.

There's an interesting here, and it's something that I've noticed a lot in reporting on this story. Sometimes you hear advocates for trans women in sports argue in favor of policies that limit testosterone because many trans women are already doing that. For them, it is gender-affirming care. But those exact policies are the ones that are causing harm to athletes like Christine and Max. You have this situation where these two groups are almost pitted against one another. At the same time, there is a lot of confusion about the differences between trans athletes and athletes with sex variations. Some people I spoke with say they think World Athletics is contributing to that confusion.

In the Court for Arbitration of Sport in 2019, the federation has tried, explicitly through their lawyers, to link together the question of trans and the question of DSD, using it as a narrative of there is a threat, and we need to protect the female category.

This is Sylvia Campareci, a bioethicist at King's College London. She argues that World Athletics has conflated trans and DSD athletes. One reason people argue that they are doing this is because if the organization were to let DSD athletes run without any regulations, it would be harder for them to maintain a ban on trans women athletes, because Because in the logic of World Athletics, they're basically the same. They're both, quote, biological males.

I think that was a strategic move on their part to say, If we don't regulate DSD, we We end up with having trans athletes competing in the female category and winning all the medals.

I asked World Athletics to respond to this allegation, but nobody there replied to my many questions, and the organization declined to do an interview for the series. I've spent the last 10 years thinking about this story, in part because it has so many compelling wrinkles. So many people I've come to care about, so many twists and turns. But I think the reason I spent so long trying to tell this story is because it forces me to grapple with how we try and impose order on a messy, confusing world. Where I live in Northern California, there's a bird called a red-schafted flicker. It gets its name because when it's flying away, you can see reddish feathers. On the East Coast, there is a very similar bird called the yellow-shafted flicker, which shows yellow feathers when it flies away. Otherwise, these birds look and sound basically the same. And they are the same. They're so similar, in fact, that they can breed and create a hybrid bird that has orange-colored feathers. Birding books now consider this one species. It's now called the northern flicker. And I've spent the past few months trying to see one. Because this bird has come to symbolize something for me.

Oh, are you my bird? You're big enough. Where'd you go? Dang it, where are you? Today, most people think that the yellow shafted flicker and the red shafted flicker should be considered the same species. But for many years, some birders said, No, they're different colors, so they're different. In science, we say that people are either lumpers or splitters. Lumpers are more interested in what links things, what brings things together, the things we might have in common. Splitters are more interested in differences, what makes one thing separate from another. What was that? There's not necessarily a correct way of doing things. In some cases, it's useful to focus on the differences. In other cases, those differences don't really matter. It depends on your goal, the question you're trying to answer. Charles Darwin himself wrote about these two approaches in a letter in 1857, saying, It is good to have hair splitters and lumpers. But sometimes, lumping or splitting, based on genitals or chromosomes, or testosterone, causes suffering. All in an effort to create neat categories, when in reality, there's just a continuum. You have to ask, how much suffering is worth allowing and who's, in the name of categorizing.

We started this series with a fable, and it's tempting to end with one. Once there were sports, and all was good. But we're not going to do that, because fables are, by their nature, simple. There is a clear villain and a lovely little moral arc And in the end, a straightforward answer. This story, and our world, is a lot more complicated than that, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. There is joy in the chaos, wonder in the spectrum. If we let ourselves embrace the bigger, weirder, more interesting world out there, we get to be excited when we see a bird, no matter what color its tail feathers are. That's a flicker. That's a flicker. That's flying over that way. God, I see it. God, damn it. Did you see it? I saw it. I did. Okay, good. It was flying from there to there. It was flying from there to there, yes. Yes. We did it. We did it. For four and a half seconds, we saw a flicker. That's silent. And that's it. That's Tested. If you want to learn more about anything you heard on this show, follow along with these athletes as they keep trying to compete, hear about whatever happens with that court case, see behind the scenes content for my reporting, all of that good stuff, you can go to tested-podcast.

Com. Tested is written, reported, and hosted by me, Rose Evalet. And I have been working on this series on and off for 10 years now. Spent eight years pitching this story and five traveling around the world to report it, which means that on top of the normal credits, I have a lot of people to thank. So buckle up. If you are a credits listener, boy, do I have some credits for you. Dusted is edited by Allison McAdam and Veronica Simmons and produced by Osi Lena Goodman, Andrew Mombo, and Reina Cohen. Additional development, reporting, producing, and editing by Lisa Pollack, who worked on this show with me unpaid for many years before we found a home for it. Sound designed by Mitra Kaboli, who made musical magic happen. Our production manager is Michael Kamel, who made sure everything actually got done on this show. Anna Ashtay is our digital producer. The series was mixed by Robert Rodriguez. Fact-checking by Dania Suleiman. Long-lived fact-checkers, the unsung heroes of journalism. Our intersex script consultant is Hans Lindahl. Archival research by Hilary Dan. Our cross-promo producer is Amanda Cox. Our video producers are John Lee and Evan Agard. Our project manager at NPR is Lindsay McKenna.

Translation and interpretation in this series was provided by Vanessa Nikolai, Rosina Crosman, and Jerome Sokolowski. The tested episode's specific art is by Danny Pendergast. Thanks to Laura Rojasaponte for production and administrative support. Special thanks for this episode to Max, Christine, and Hank, who fielded endless texts and phone calls from me over the course of this project. And to Ed Young, who helped me see that flicker after I failed to find one several times. Tested would not exist without the help of so many academics, lawyers, scientists, archivists, and more who helped us track down documents, understand stand studies and lawsuits, and explain history. Thank you to Diego Giraud, Laura Freeman, and the rest of the team at the Olympic Studies Center, Amanda McRory at the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee Archives, the Library and Archives Canada, and Chris Zolo, and the rest of the team at the Medical-Historical Library at Yale University. Thank you also to Lindsay Piper, whose book about sex testing was an invaluable resource throughout this project. Special thanks also to Adayanj Igebusi, Bradley Anna Walsh, Leon Baham, Sydney Bauer, Andy Brown, Anastasia Bussis, Dan Diamond, Jake Elsis, Sonia Eric Hyman, Myron Janel, Paul Van Gaal, Sharon Kinnehansen, Kathy Isham, Beth Jacobs, Evans Cothenbu, Ben Ketili, Soundworks Recording Studio, Third Wheel Podcast Studio, Elaine Tanner, Samu Macharia, Gordon Mac, Debbie Meyer, Frank Montgomery, Ivan Ransky, Celia Roberts, Seema Patel, Helga Schultz, Erastus Semeno, Sam Sharp, Vivian Topping, Zari Van and Michael Waters.

When I said that I talked to a lot of people for this show, I was not lying. Thanks also to those who spoke with me off the record. You know who you are. At CBC, Chris Oak and Cecil Fernandez are executive producers. Tanya Springer is the senior manager, and Arif Nourani is the director of CBC Podcasts. Leslie Merklinger is the executive director of CBC Podcasts. At NPR, Katie Simon is supervising editor for Embedded. Irene Noguchi is executive producer. Legal support from Micah Ratner and Adam Zisman. Tony Caven is the managing editor of Standards and Practices at NPR. Colin Campbell is NPR's Senior Vice President, Podcasting Strategy and Franchise Development. At Bucket My Production Company. Our web producer is Joanna Thompson. Legal support from Quin Harody and Beverly Davis. This series was created with support from a New America fellowship. And special thanks to you for listening all the way to is very impressive. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc. Ca/podcasts. Com.