[RADIOLAB INTRO]

PAT WALTERS: Okay, I'm gonna make sure it's recording.

ROBERT KRULWICH: You gonna tell me something?

JAD ABUMRAD: I think I'm gonna tell you about diapers.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: So we order from Diapers.com all the time, you know, because we have these kids.

PAT: Is that what it's actually called?

ROBERT: It's actually called Diapers.com?

JAD: You guys don't know Diapers.com?

PAT: That's the actual name of the website?

JAD: My god, it's like such a part of our lives, I just figured...

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: And it's like all the crap that you don't want to have to leave the house to get, you know?

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JAD: Like paper towels? "Okay, Oh God, I have to go down the street to get paper towels." Well you can get it from Diapers.com, so we order...

ROBERT: Well how do you get...

JAD: Hey, this is Jad. Radiolab. Today, I want to play you an older story that we think is still totally relevant—actually, maybe more so now than when we played it originally. There's been, as I'm sure you've heard, a ton of stuff in the news over the last few years about the entire universe of companies and warehouses and people who work at these places behind the scenes to fulfill all of the stuff that we so effortlessly buy online, right? All of these harrowing stories about working conditions and unionization efforts, but back in 2016, we had a very unique opportunity to crawl inside the day-to-day experience of these workers.

JAD: And given how ubiquitous online ordering is now, we just found ourselves thinking back on that story. So we're gonna play it for you, and if you stick around to the end, you'll hear kind of an amazing update from the reporter on this story. And we'll just leave it at that for now. So back to the original conversation.

ROBERT: Like, how would you get paper towels delivered promptly?

JAD: I'll tell you. This is exactly what—this is exactly the crux of this story. It's a simple story, in that we would order these giant boxes of shit from diapers.com, and they would appear second day, three days later. And then one day, Karla orders it and it appears the same day.

ROBERT: The same day?

JAD: Yeah. And now, every time that we click 'submit' on this thing, it shows up, like, three hours later! A huge box of stuff.

ROBERT: You must be only blocks from the worldwide headquarters of diapers.com...

JAD: Even if it were blocks, I was like, if someone asked me to pick up that stuff at the corner deli, it would take me all day.

PAT: [laughs]

JAD: And somehow it shows up, like, in just a few hours! And I—I just, I began being like, "What the hell happens after you hit submit?"

GABRIEL MAC: It's like magic. It's so wonderful. And that's the future, dammit!

JAD: So what ended up happening, is I was thinking about this in a sort of passive way. And as often happens, things sort of converged, and I ended up reading this article by a writer our producer, Pat, ended up interviewing.

PAT: Yes. His name is Gabriel Mac. A totally badass investigative reporter, reported from war zones and natural disasters all over the world. And several years ago, he wrote a story for Mother Jones magazine, where he actually got himself hired at one of these internet retailer warehouses.

GABRIEL MAC: And they're called third-party logistics contractors. Or 3PLs, that's what they call them in the biz. And they basically handle all the goods that you order off the internet.

PAT: So when you order something off the internet, you're actually probably dealing with a company that's not the company that you think you're dealing with.

GABRIEL MAC: And maybe you think there's robots that just make these items show up at your house within a few hours of you ordering them.

PAT: But as Gabriel would come to find out, a lot of the time...

GABRIEL MAC:  That's not how it works!

PAT: Not even close. And we'll start at the beginning. When you're sitting on your couch and you hit submit. Your order bounces off some servers and ultimately gets funneled to a warehouse.

GABRIEL MAC: Just a giant warehouse. If we were rounding, we would say it was a million square feet. So...

PAT: What is a million square feet? Like how many football fields could I fit in there, or...?

GABRIEL MAC: It would be a lot.

PAT: About 17. So just imagine a huge airplane hangar 17 football fields long filled with people.

GABRIEL MAC: There's thousands of us. And all I can put us regionally is west of the Mississippi, because we can't say for legal reasons where we were.

PAT: Left half of the United States.

GABRIEL MAC: Yes, I was hired as a picker. And pickers' jobs are basically to run around this cavernous warehouse and find the crap that you ordered off the internet. So basically, you're day is you arrive at the warehouse, you put all your stuff in the lunchroom, because you can't take anything except the clothes on your backs into the warehouse.

PAT: Soon as they walk in, all the pickers are handed little computers.

GABRIEL MAC: We get our little scanners. You have a handheld scanner.

PAT: And it's on the little screens of those scanners that the orders that you make sitting on your couch, actually appear.

GABRIEL MAC: It pops up like, "Go to this section, this region, this shelf, this unit, find a Malibu Barbie."

PAT: Go.

GABRIEL MAC: And it tells you how many seconds that you have to get there. Like 15 seconds, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10. And it counts down.

PAT: It counts down?

GABRIEL MAC: So the minute the item...

PAT: Like a literal...

GABRIEL MAC: It counts down.

PAT: Oh my gosh!

GABRIEL MAC: [laughs] Yeah. And so it pops up 15 seconds, 14, 13, 12...

PAT: It's like boop, boop, boop.

GABRIEL MAC: Right.

PAT: Did that scanner that you use make sounds?

GABRIEL MAC: Fuck. I'm almost positive it did.

PAT: Can you imitate it?

GABRIEL MAC: [laughs]

PAT: Like what...

GABRIEL MAC: Beep. Beep. Beep. It's like that.

PAT: In any case, you're standing in the middle of 17 football fields, you've got 15 seconds to find the region that has the shelf that has the bin that has the Barbie.

GABRIEL MAC: And then scan it.

GABRIEL MAC: Beep.

GABRIEL MAC: Put it in a little plastic tote, and then the little plastic totes get sent on conveyor belts, and they get carried away into some other magical area where people put it in boxes and send it to your house.

PAT: And as soon as you've done that.

GABRIEL MAC: The next item will immediately pop up, and it'll say, "Go to this section, this region, this unit, find a dildo," let's say. Because there are lots and lots and lots and lots of people ordering dildos on the internet, apparently. And so, you have 40 seconds.

GABRIEL MAC: 39, 38, 37...

GABRIEL MAC: To make it to the bin with the dildos in it.

PAT: Which could be a football field away.

GABRIEL MAC: You go as fast as you can.

PAT: Find the dildo.

GABRIEL MAC: Scan your dildo.

GABRIEL MAC: Beep.

GABRIEL MAC: Put it in the tote. Next item pops up. Find an olive oil mister.

PAT: Do you remember specific names of things?

GABRIEL MAC: There were a lot of vitamins.

GABRIEL MAC: Beep.

GABRIEL MAC: Male enhancement pills.

GABRIEL MAC: Beep.

GABRIEL MAC: Lots of iPad things.

PAT: Really?

GABRIEL MAC: Oh my God, there's so many things that you can put on and around an iPad. Like an iPad cover.

GABRIEL MAC: Beep.

GABRIEL MAC: Carrying cases.

GABRIEL MAC: Beep.

GABRIEL MAC: Protective cases.

GABRIEL MAC: Beep.

GABRIEL MAC: A stand that you can put your iPad on so it works like a computer screen.

GABRIEL MAC: Beep.

GABRIEL MAC: And handheld—like iPad glove thing.

GABRIEL MAC: Beep.

GABRIEL MAC: Dildos and iPad accessories are like the most popular items that I picked, for sure.

PAT: Did you ever find a dildo that goes around an iPhone?

GABRIEL MAC: [laughs]

PAT: That would be like...

GABRIEL MAC: No!

PAT: ...the perfect internet thing.

GABRIEL MAC: I'm sure it's in there though. You know, you don't really have time to even look at what you're doing. There's like a second where your brain is like, "Why does this product exist? Why does this product exist? Why does this product exist?" That's sort of like a whisper all the time in the background, but for the most part, it's kind of a blur.

GABRIEL MAC: Video games.

GABRIEL MAC: Beep.

GABRIEL MAC: Baby food.

GABRIEL MAC: Beep.

GABRIEL MAC: Diapers.

GABRIEL MAC: Beep.

GABRIEL MAC: Paper towels.

GABRIEL MAC: Beep.

GABRIEL MAC: Who is ordering paper towels?

PAT: Yeah.

GABRIEL MAC: On the internet. Like, who's the person who is doing this?

JAD: Um...

ROBERT: [laughs]

GABRIEL MAC: And I was hired as a picker because of my youth and my fitness.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GABRIEL MAC: Which is to say that I'm not in my 70s. Because there were a lot of people in the place who were in their 60s, in their 70s, in their...

PAT: Really? That old?

GABRIEL MAC: Oh yeah. This is like old white ladies.

PAT: Gabriel says when he talks to people about this, most of them assume the warehouse is full of, like, young Mexican people. But in fact, he says, where he worked it was mostly white people. And most of them are older than him.

GABRIEL MAC: I was 32, 31 at the time.

JAD: Wow.

GABRIEL MAC: That's why they gave me a job where you run around a lot.

PAT: Actually, on one of the consent forms he had to sign before he was hired...

GABRIEL MAC: It said that we were gonna walk 12 miles a day. But going into it, I was like, "Yes! Picker!"

PAT: [laughs]

GABRIEL MAC: I was actually really excited. You know, you get some exercise. Right now, my job, if I'm not out, like, actively reporting, I just sit on my ass, right?

PAT: Right.

GABRIEL MAC: And type and stuff. So I was like, "Score!" Like, you know?

PAT: Yeah.

GABRIEL MAC: I'm gonna do a good job. And I didn't think it was gonna be my favorite thing in the world, but I thought it would be interesting and challenging and I would do a good job. And I was so wrong about all of those things.

PAT: First of all, in this warehouse, and again, we can't say which one it is, nothing was organized the way you'd expect it to be. Like if you're looking for a dildo, it might just be in some random box.

GABRIEL MAC: This is like a bin full of crap.

PAT: Thrown in with a bunch of other things.

GABRIEL MAC: You know, it was so—there's a bunch of batteries in there. And—and iPad anti-glare cover. And then there's ten CDs, you know, whatever.

BRAD STONE: Products seem haphazardly stored next to each other.

PAT: And that's by design, according to this guy, Brad Stone.

BRAD STONE: I am the author of The Everything Store.

PAT: Which is a book that looks specifically at...

BRAD STONE: Amazon. There's actually some very sophisticated software that is governing Amazon fulfillment centers.

PAT: What happens is, say the warehouse gets a shipment of 17 dildos in, and instead of taking those dildos to, like, the dildo section, the computer will figure out how much shelf space, or bin space, those dildos need and where in the warehouse those bins are. So it might say, "Let me put four dildos over here, and three over there."

BRAD STONE: The invisible hand that orchestrates the symphony that is Amazon's fulfillment center is called the mechanical sensei.

PAT: The mechanical sensei.

BRAD STONE: And it not only tracks, you know, where to put items. It tracks what the most efficient routes are for the pickers to go through the shelves in the shortest amount of time.

PAT: Like, imagine you sit down and order 14 products at one time. What the computer does, is it will farm that order out to 14 different pickers in different parts of the warehouse.

GABRIEL MAC: Beep, beep, beep.

PAT: And then it will coordinate the timing so that each picker is grabbing the item, putting it on the conveyor belt, in a certain order, so that all the products arrive—foom—to the same box, at the same moment. It'll make sure that box is just big enough, but not too big. It figures out when to get those boxes on trucks and when those trucks should leave. And eventually, if you believe Jeff Bezos, the sensei will send out fleets of tiny helicopters that will deliver your packages to your doorstep at lightning speed, no humans involved. So yeah, for the moment, most of the time saving they're gonna get is making the human pickers pick faster. Because if you think about it, once the packages get on trucks...

GABRIEL MAC: The truckers are still gonna have to follow the speed limit. But there's no OSHA laws about how fast you can make people work inside the warehouse.

PAT: And the way you make those people fast, at least in the warehouse Gabriel worked in, is by treating them like drones.

GABRIEL MAC: For example, you're digging through the bin and you see lots of other stuff, but not the thing that you're looking for. So these scanners assume you're an idiot and you just aren't seeing it. Like, you can't swear to the scanner that it's really not there. So you have to scan every item in the bin to prove that it's not there.

JAD: Really?

GABRIEL MAC: This—yeah, the one time this happened to me—I mean it happened to me a bunch of times, but one of the times, it was like 30 individually-wrapped batteries in this bin. And so I have to scan every single one.

GABRIEL MAC: Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

GABRIEL MAC: Before my scanner will let me go on. But I'm not given extra time to do that. And my—you know, my scanner, the whole time, is like...

GABRIEL MAC: 3, 2, 1, 0.

GABRIEL MAC: Now it's counting the seconds that you're late.

GABRIEL MAC: 1, 2, 3, 4...

PAT: Does it go into the red, or something?

GABRIEL MAC: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10...

GABRIEL MAC: Yeah, so you know exactly how late you are, and you're trying to scan your stupid olive oil mister.

PAT: Gabriel says within the first few hours of his first shift, a supervisor walked up to him, said...

GABRIEL MAC: "You're only making 48 percent of your goal." Because you're supposed to be picking something like 170 items per hour.

PAT: 170 things an hour?

GABRIEL MAC: Yes.

PAT: Wow.

GABRIEL MAC: It was the first time in my life, because I am an overachieving nerd from the Midwest, I went to Catholic school, you know?

PAT: Yeah.

GABRIEL MAC: First time in my life somebody came up to me and was like, "You're doing a really bad job."

PAT: Yeah, yeah.

GABRIEL MAC: And I was like, "Me?"

PAT: But the third day, he says, he was doing a little better.

GABRIEL MAC: It was like 50 percent, 50 percent of my goal. I asked my supervisor at one point, you know, "Can I pee?" Just like, in the middle of the day. And he was like, "Of course, this isn't China! But it's gonna hurt your numbers."

PAT: So he thought, "Screw it."

GABRIEL MAC: "You know what? I'm not gonna pee, I'm gonna hold it."

PAT: 'Til lunch.

GABRIEL MAC: The minimum shift is 10 and a half hours, and in that 10 and a half hours, you have 29 minutes and 59 seconds for lunch.

PAT: They tell you that? Not 30 minutes?

GABRIEL MAC: If it's 30 minutes. They told us that, if it's 30 minutes and 1 second, you get docked points. And if you get docked enough points, you get fired.

PAT: Especially if you're new.

GABRIEL MAC: They told me when I got hired at the temporary staffing agency, they had videos about it, they had people walking around telling you, "You cannot miss any time or be one minute late at any point during your first week of orientation." And so to sort of illustrate this point...

PAT: He says that during his orientation...

GABRIEL MAC: The lady leading our training says, you know, "Take Brian."

PAT: She points to a guy in the back of the room.

GABRIEL MAC: "Brian used to work here and then his girlfriend had a baby so he missed a day and he was fired. Because it doesn't matter if you have doctor's notes, or baby pictures, or whatever it is. There are no exceptions to this rule." And so Brian had to go back to the temporary staffing agency, go back through their application process, get hired by them, clear a new drug test, and go back through the training that he had mostly, you know, already done. And now he's sitting in this group with us. And the lady's like, "Welcome back, Brian. You know, everybody, don't end up like Brian."

PAT: So Gabriel says, when you finally make it to lunch. You finally pee.

GABRIEL MAC: You just shovel food into your face while you watch your watch. And occasionally, in between chewing...

PAT: People talk.

GABRIEL MAC: And everybody is asking each other, "Why are you here?" Which is like, you know, in prison. And we actually found—and we actually fact-checked this because I was like, "Do people in prison really always ask each other what they're in for?"

PAT: Right, or is that just a thing we...

GABRIEL MAC: Or is that just in movies?

PAT: Yeah.

GABRIEL MAC: And we fact checked it, and I asked this guy who'd been in federal prison, and he was like, "It's the only conversation people are having."

PAT: Gabriel remembers the people at his table were like...

GABRIEL MAC: "I got laid off. I used to be an accountant. I used to be a store manager. I used to work in a restaurant."

PAT: All over the place.

GABRIEL MAC: Everybody was something else in another life.

PAT: Gabriel says on one of his last days, he came back from work.

GABRIEL MAC: Yeah, I came home from work, took a bath, trying to sort of soak out some of the soreness so that I would be prepared and ready to wake up again, and do it all over, and make my numbers, which I, you know, was still failing to make.

PAT: Mm-hmm.

GABRIEL MAC: And I—I was Skyping with one of my friends, and he was like, "How's it going?" And I was like, "They fired this guy because he had a baby, and people are terrible, and..." Yeah, I cried about it a little bit. I hadn't realized, really, how mean this system was. Not just that it was tiring, and not just that it hurt your body, but that it was—it was mean in every way, at every turn, that it possibly could be. It kind of punched me in the face a little bit.

PAT: Coming up, I visit an Amazon warehouse. We'll be right back.

[JAD: Science reporting on Radiolab is supported by Science Sandox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.]

PAT: Hey, welcome back. I'm Pat Walters. This is Radiolab. So it used to be that when you ordered something off the internet, it would take, like, a week to show up. And obviously, in the last few years that's changed. Now you order something and it shows up the next day or sometimes the very same day, even though the shipping is totally free. And before the break, we heard from a reporter named Gabriel Mac about the cost of that speed. Gabriel embedded in one of the warehouses that shipped out the crap that we order on the internet. And what he found there was pretty grim.

PAT: Hello, hello, hello.

PAT: Not too long after I talked to Gabriel, I went home for the holidays, which just happens to be near one of the biggest Amazon warehouses on the East Coast.

PAT: Just outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania.

PAT: And we should say, again, Gabriel did not necessarily work at an Amazon warehouse. But talking to him had gotten me curious. This is a warehouse that, in July of 2011, made some really big headlines, because the temperatures inside the warehouse had gotten so hot that people had started to collapse from heatstroke. And rather than put in air conditioning or send people home, the warehouse, instead, just had local paramedics wait outside and cart people away. And once the news broke, Amazon did install air conditioners, but I was curious to see if things had changed. And based on the people that I met...

PAT: Do you work here?

PAT: ...like, before I got kicked out.

PAT: I'm a reporter and I'm just...

PAT: It's kinda hard to tell.

PAT: What do you do, if you don't mind me asking?

WOMAN: I'm a picker.

PAT: You're a picker?

WOMAN: Mm-hmm.

PAT: This woman who I met in the parking lot told me that she'd been working as a picker for about a month.

PAT: Can you describe what the work is like?

WOMAN: Well, it's easy for me. Everybody has their own opinion, but I have lost a lot of weight. Like, I like it.

PAT: You like it?

WOMAN: Yeah, I like what I do.

PAT: And when I went into the lobby of the building.

MAN: Yeah, it's fantastic.

PAT: I met this guy, who told me he was the warehouse DJ. That during the holiday rush, the company would move him around to different departments depending on, like, who needed motivation.

MAN: You know?

PAT: Oh.

MAN: Yeah.

PAT: Like, you DJ?

MAN: These people take care of their people here.

PAT: Yeah?

MAN: I did karaoke shows, we did dance contests.

PAT: Wait, like—like while people were at work?

MAN: Yeah. They're dancing in place, they'd do the cupid shuffle, or do some crazy, like, chicken dance, like doing stuff like, you know?

PAT: Yeah.

MAN: And I play everything from, you know, Christmas songs, to funk from the '70s, to cha-cha, to Metallica, Bollywood music.

PAT: Yeah.

MAN: There's some old Indian women that were packing the boxes and stuff. And there were, you know, everything. Jamaican, reggaeton.

GABRIEL MAC: That sounds awesome!

PAT: [laughs]

GABRIEL MAC: I mean, we did not have a DJ or a karaoke contest, which I would have won, for the record.

PAT: [laughs]

GABRIEL MAC: I mean, I like karaoke more than almost anyone. But that's not gonna fix the main issue, which is that they're working these people like draft horses.

PAT: Although, that woman I talked to seemed to dig it.

GABRIEL MAC: Well, not every—not every person that I worked with hated it. I mean, there were a lot of people who made their numbers and they made their numbers every single day. And there were people who made over their numbers, and I don't even understand what was going on with that, but they were very matter-of-fact about it. That's fine.

ROBERT: Well, maybe, I was thinking this is a talent. Like—like maybe, if you try to become a lacrosse player and you're just not very speedy and you don't like physical contact, that that's not a great sport for you. And you should play golf.

GABRIEL MAC: I mean, I'm from the Midwest, you know? I'm hardy, work-stock. I was a mover.

JAD: [laughs]

GABRIEL MAC: For years, and years, and years. Like, when you call people and they have to come to your house and put all of your crap in boxes and then load all the boxes onto trucks, and then move them to another place, that was my job for years. So I do...

JAD: So, I mean, do you order off the internet now? I mean, after having done this? Do you—have you—have you sworn off of it?

GABRIEL MAC: I try—I try not to order anything off the—I don't actually buy that much stuff. But certainly—I mean, no, I'm not like ordering my paper towels off the internet, if that's what you mean.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: No, I don't know who would do that. That's ridiculous.

GABRIEL MAC: [laughs] Can you imagine that I thought that it was novel, that I was fulfilling an order for online paper towels at that time? Like I wouldn't—you—that's not the reaction you would have now. And I was like, "What jerk!" When I was working in a warehouse it was like, "Who is doing this?"

JAD: [laughs]

GABRIEL MAC: And I imagine this is partly why you guys are re-airing this now, right? The only thing anybody does, who doesn't have to go out into the world and work, is sit at home and order things.

JAD: Oh my God.

GABRIEL MAC: On the internet.

JAD: I know! But now it's like everybody orders everything and it just comes.

GABRIEL MAC: Yeah.

JAD: I feel like we have tipped headlong into the world that we were—we were looking at in this story. And now that is just the world, unfortunately.

GABRIEL MAC: Where else—where else do paper towels even come from? People don't even know!

JAD: [laughs] No, I know. They just come from the internet.

GABRIEL MAC: [laughs]

JAD: [laughs] So this is Gabriel Mac. And we brought him back into the studio for a bit of an update.

GABRIEL MAC: So I mean, I talked to you seven years ago.

JAD: Yeah.

GABRIEL MAC: And obviously, I didn't—you know, I did a bunch of stuff in the intro. But the last, like thing, like voice-related thing that I did was—I was on The Daily, you know, the New York Times podcast.

JAD: Yeah.

GABRIEL MAC: In late 2017. Was just about 15 seconds before I started transitioning.

JAD: Oh, wow.

GABRIEL MAC: So—and that was it. So it's been three and a half years and I've been sort of like—feels like I've been in, like, voice hiding, a little bit, if I'm being totally honest. So...

JAD: It's like it's interesting, because I was thinking about the—I mean, just to what you were saying about not just the story that we did, but like, that all of these stories you've made, and books, and awards, and now you're this new person with a new name.

GABRIEL MAC: Well actually, can I stop you there?

JAD: Yeah.

GABRIEL MAC: The new, that's the thing that I find people saying with some frequency.

JAD: Okay.

GABRIEL MAC: Whole new person.

JAD: Yeah.

GABRIEL MAC: But I'm the old person. But I'm the old person.

JAD: You're the old person.

GABRIEL MAC: Yeah, it's like, becoming—to me, I mean, I will only speak for myself here. Although, it's not, in my experience, a rare feeling about this. Transitioning isn't about becoming somebody new, it's about becoming somebody old, like your old iteration that you just couldn't embody before. So.

JAD: Yeah, no, so that does—that does make sense. But I guess I'm wondering, like, because you've done—you have all this work that you created before you transitioned. I mean, you won all these awards and you had these, like, amazing magazine features. But that all had a different name associated with them. So do you, do you think about having to reclaim that work in some way? Because it was done under a different name?

GABRIEL MAC: I mean, as this conversation totally proves, like, that work lives. Like, it still lives and it still breathes. And it gets reissued, or rediscovered.

JAD: Yeah.

GABRIEL MAC: All the time. So it's not like it's just sitting somewhere in a vault, in which case I'd be like, "Whatever." You know? But it doesn't. It's still alive. And this, actually, this piece that we're talking about, this Radiolab piece?

JAD: Mm-hmm?

GABRIEL MAC: It's probably the one I think of the most often because of how I introed and IDed myself.

JAD: Hmm.

GABRIEL MAC: Where in the first whatever 15 seconds of my talking, I identified myself as a lady reporter, which I frequently did.

JAD: Yeah.

GABRIEL MAC: It was yeah. It's a lot. But I think about it all the time, actually. This interview, specifically.

JAD: Oh yeah. We cut—we obviously cut that from the original. So it's not in there anymore. But what is telling to me, is that when I was thinking back to this piece, I could kind of remember the beats of the piece. But what I really remember, for some reason, was you IDing yourself as a lady reporter.

GABRIEL MAC: Really?

JAD: For some reason that, like, sticks in my head. I was like, "Oh." Well, would that—it's interesting to me that that sticks in my head. That means something. So let's talk about it.

GABRIEL MAC: Maybe, maybe you have a trans spidey sense that you, like, somewhere deep in your subconscious that you're not even aware of.

JAD: [laughs] Maybe, I don't know.

GABRIEL MAC: I'm serious! Like maybe that stuck with you as something in the universe and in your body was just like, "Flag that for later." [laughs]

JAD: [laughs] Yeah, like, just, "Noted, file that away." So...

GABRIEL MAC: [laughs] Something's happening here, I don't know what it is..."

JAD: Yeah.

GABRIEL MAC: "...But in seven years, I'll figure out why something in my bones was like, hmm..."

JAD: [laughs] I mean, it could be, I don't know.

GABRIEL MAC: Yeah, I have remembered that always. Always.

JAD: Mmm.

GABRIEL MAC: I actually talk about the fact that I did it in the intro to my new book.

JAD: No way!

GABRIEL MAC: That's how—no, that's how much of a—because to me, that's like how clear it was that I was really grasping this identity. Like it's a completely ridiculous answer to...

JAD: Oh!

GABRIEL MAC: ...a perfectly straightforward question that somebody asks me. "Who are you?" Like, saying—calling yourself a "lady doctor" is a commentary...

JAD: Yeah, right.

GABRIEL MAC: ...on the stupid patriarchy. It just is. In the shortest, most efficient way that you could possibly issue one, right? So, there were layers of that happening. But I mean, you're right, like, the gender of the person who reported this story is not particularly relevant to the late capitalist, internet, third party, logistics industrial complex dystopia that we live in. That—that is the true story.

JAD: Well, let's go ahead and have you re-ID yourself. Tell us who you are and what you do.

GABRIEL MAC: It's gonna take me a minute. It's a big—I'm having a moment.

JAD: Okay.

GABRIEL MAC: You can't see me because my camera is off.

JAD: Yeah, but take your time.

GABRIEL MAC: I'm sitting here having a moment.

GABRIEL MAC: [sighs] Maybe I'm gonna be the first person who cries through their ID. [laughs]

JAD: Oh yeah.

GABRIEL MAC: But I'll finish it. Would I be the first person?

JAD: I think so. Yeah.

GABRIEL MAC: I like that you have to think about it, though. [sighs] My name is Gabriel Mac and I'm a writer and investigative reporter, and a human person.

JAD: Thank you to writer/reporter, Gabriel Mac, and producer, Pat Walters. I'm Jad Abumrad.

[LISTENER: This is Casey, calling from Fort Myers Beach, Florida. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.]

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Jonathan Chan calling in from Singapore. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co hosts. Suzie Lechtenberg is our executive producer, Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachael Cusick, David Gebel, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Sarah Qari, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. With help from Shima Oliaee, Sarah Sandbach and Corinne Leong. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly and Emily Krieger.]

 

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