852: Pivot Point

Speaker 1 Support for this American Life comes from ATT. You know that feeling when someone's already looking out for you before you even need it?

Speaker 1 ATT brings that kind of reliability to your connection with the ATT guarantee. Staying connected matters.
That's why ATT has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right.

Speaker 1 That's the ATT guarantee. Terms and conditions apply.
Visit ATT.com slash guarantee for details.

Speaker 1 A quick warning, there are curse words that are un-beeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org.

Speaker 3 When Kirk and his wife MJ evacuated their house in LA on the second day of the fires, they could see the flames up the hill from their backyard.

Speaker 3 They packed the car full, got their seven and eight-year-old kids inside with a family cat, hit the road. And Kirk started recording.

Speaker 4 Okay, now I know it's scary.

Speaker 5 Did this happen

Speaker 3 He records his kids a lot. I just had a feeling like

Speaker 3 this

Speaker 3 is an important moment.

Speaker 5 Can we just turn on to like a song like by the Beatles?

Speaker 5 Rock band, okay? Sure.

Speaker 5 Not like Word of Kings, because I don't really want to listen to rock music.

Speaker 6 Okay, but let me can I just say

Speaker 4 something?

Speaker 5 I don't really want to listen to rock music when

Speaker 5 our house is gonna

Speaker 4 be careful.

Speaker 3 It's Kirk Johnson.

Speaker 3 He's been on our show before,

Speaker 3 talking about his experiences in the Iraq War, among other things. He thinks of himself as somebody who can usually handle a moment of crisis.
But he admits he made mistakes in the car.

Speaker 3 He didn't bring the family tortoise, an animal he says his kids have ignored for over a year. It lives in a giant crate outside the house.

Speaker 3 In the car, he realized how upset his son August was about that.

Speaker 7 But they drove.

Speaker 3 Looked at wind speeds and wind directions, made a guess about where it might be safe, booked a hotel, And things were feeling a little calmer in the car.

Speaker 3 Daddy, can you tell us one of your kids' stories you haven't told us?

Speaker 10 Yeah, that's a good idea, I guess.

Speaker 3 That's August, asking Kirk to tell a story from his childhood, which he does sometimes. Kirk grew up with chickens, goats, and animals.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 6 Did I ever tell you the story about...

Speaker 6 I think I did when my...

Speaker 6 When my horse got sick.

Speaker 4 No, you don't told us that.

Speaker 6 I used to have a horse named named Joe.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I like to think Christian. I'll just make his last name Biden, okay?

Speaker 6 Joe Biden. Joe Biden.
Joe Biden, the horse.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 6 Mamie and Gramps went to visit Uncle Soren in Russia. They were far away, and they left me home alone.
I was like

Speaker 6 14 or 15.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 one day

Speaker 6 I

Speaker 6 went down to check on Joe one morning before school and he was lying on the ground like he was kneeling down, which is not a good sign for a horse.

Speaker 6 And I didn't know what to do. And so I went to school and then I came back and I was really nervous and Joe was still lying on the ground.

Speaker 6 And every day I was like trying to get him to eat food and stuff and he wasn't eating anything. And so you know what I did? You know what my best idea was?

Speaker 6 I started digging a grave next to Joe, like a big hole, a little bit every day, so that if he died, there would be a big hole right next to him. That was my smart idea.

Speaker 6 And then Mimi and Gramps got home, and they're like,

Speaker 6 What are you doing? I was like, I'm digging a grave for Joe.

Speaker 6 And they're like, why don't you just call the veterinarian? And the veterinarian came and gave him a shot, and he was totally fine. But after that, Joe kind of looked at me a little funny.

Speaker 3 What was the moment you realized, oh, this is not the right story for this moment?

Speaker 7 Well, when I realized it was

Speaker 6 a creature that I was

Speaker 6 a beloved

Speaker 6 pet of ours that I was convinced was about to die.

Speaker 3 And digging a grave for.

Speaker 6 But halfway through, I realized, oh, God, I'm getting them right into death and dying and uncertainty about how to handle a situation.

Speaker 6 How do I get out of this?

Speaker 5 I don't really want to talk about like a dying grave.

Speaker 6 Sorry. Oh, yeah, okay.

Speaker 6 Let's do it. Sorry, I shouldn't have told the Joe.
I just, Joe, Joe, like, I rode that horse all the time.

Speaker 3 Kirk and his family were lucky. And before I was like so many families in Los Angeles right now, they're now back in their home.

Speaker 3 The tortoise is fine.

Speaker 3 But in that moment, when it was so unclear what to do,

Speaker 3 and he and his wife MJ were trying to pretend that things were going to be fine when they really had no idea at all and were scared they were not going to be fine.

Speaker 3 When his brain searched for a story to tell the children, this one with the horse is the one that popped up.

Speaker 6 And if I really think about it, that story is about

Speaker 6 decision-making without enough information. I didn't know what to do.

Speaker 6 And the best idea I came up with was just impossibly stupid. But yeah, the moral of that story is like

Speaker 6 sometimes you choose poorly.

Speaker 3 These kind of moments, when you feel the earth shifting underneath you and you just have to figure out what you're going to do in this new reality, that's what our show is about today.

Speaker 3 People with different pivot points in their lives between what was and what's about to happen. From WBEZ Chicago, it's this American Life.

Speaker 7 I'm Aaron Glass.

Speaker 3 Stay with with us.

Speaker 11 Support for This American Life and the following message come from Recorded Future. Every day, millions of cyber threats compete for attention, but only a few truly matter to your business.

Speaker 11 Recorded Future cuts through the noise with actionable intelligence. That's why they're trusted by major corporations and organizations around around the world.

Speaker 11 They foresee spotting the signals that others miss and acting before threats become crises.

Speaker 3 Recorded future, know what matters, act first.

Speaker 1 Support for this American life comes from BetterHelp. Most FSA dollars expire at the end of the year, so it's time to use them or lose them.

Speaker 1 With BetterHelp, you can invest those funds in taking care of your mind with online therapy. Join today and you can be matched with a licensed therapist in as little as 24 hours.

Speaker 1 Visit betterhelp.com/slash T-A-L to get 10% off your first month.

Speaker 3 This American Life, Act 1.

Speaker 3 Who's Laughing Now?

Speaker 3 So, we start today with this story about somebody who's been thinking a lot about one particular pivot point that the world might go through. Nancy Updike went to meet him.

Speaker 10 Got a question for you out there listening. Have you ever had a bloody nose?

Speaker 10 I ask because I got a bloody nose recently when I went to do an interview with a British comedy writer and director named Armando Yannucci.

Speaker 10 He made the TV show Veep for HBO, now Max, with Julia Louis Dreyfus playing vice president.

Speaker 10 He made a movie called The Death of Stalin, a comedy somehow, about the battle for succession in the Soviet Union after Stalin died. And he made a movie that I especially love called In the Loop.

Speaker 10 about the lead-up to a war that isn't identified as the Iraq War but seems a lot like the Iraq War. Also a comedy.

Speaker 10 Armano Yannucci gets called prescient a lot, but I think of him not so much as prescient as in tune. He follows the news.
He is paying attention to now.

Speaker 10 Veep got into aspects of the political culture in Washington in a way no other show did. The epic pettiness, the unglamorous maneuvering.

Speaker 10 I am always interested to see through his work what he finds funny and relevant and sometimes frightening in the world.

Speaker 10 So I went to London to interview him about one of his new projects, a new play, which I will get to, but right now all you need to know is that I came to the interview as a fan, straight up.

Speaker 10 I didn't hide it, but I didn't lead with it either. We were both there to do our jobs.

Speaker 10 I was told I would get an hour with him. To be safe, I was 15 minutes early, and while I was waiting, I got a bloody nose.

Speaker 10 I got the bloody nose while I was standing in the living room type room somewhere upstairs at the Noel Coward Theatre in London.

Speaker 10 A room that has a white carpet and white upholstered chairs and a silver upholstered couch. I pulled a bunch of tissues from my bag.
Pretty much I always have tissues.

Speaker 10 And I was holding a pile of them to my bloody nose. Normal, it happens.
I get bloody noses sometimes. Then I ran out of tissues.

Speaker 10 So I started using paper towels from the kitchenette that was attached to the living room. And it was a lot of blood.

Speaker 10 So I had a big wad of paper towels pressed to my nose, trying not to drip on the white rug, when Armando Yannucci walked through the kitchenette and into the living room.

Speaker 10 He and the publicist were concerned. He said, Do you need a few minutes? He understood about bloody noses.
The publicist said, Would you like to use the toilet? I said, Yes, that would be great.

Speaker 10 Thank you so much. I am so sorry about this.
Where is that toilet? And I went to the bathroom to wrap this mess up.

Speaker 10 And I had what seemed to be a rolling series of bloody noses, or one big one that had many phases. I don't know.

Speaker 10 But what I do know from sad, gross experience is that a bloody nose means there's a clot somewhere high up in my nose that needs to come out for the bloody nose to stop.

Speaker 10 So I was trying to blow my nose and blow the clot out, and it took me some time to realize that as I was doing that, unsuccessfully, I was spraying tiny droplets of blood all over.

Speaker 10 The sink, the toilet seat, the floor, the mirror, the wallpaper, the wallpaper. I started wiping everywhere, like it was a crime scene.

Speaker 10 And I rolled up a tight little roll of toilet paper and stuck it up my right nostril to catch the blood. That's what I do at home when I have a bloody nose and no one's looking.

Speaker 10 And the little roll of toilet paper filled with blood. and fell on the floor as I was wiping the floor.
Had to roll up another one, that filled with blood.

Speaker 10 Roll up a new one, take out the old one, repeat, repeat. I went through an entire roll of toilet paper and had to start a new one.

Speaker 10 So I was pacing around this little bathroom with toilet paper in my nose, looking for tiny blood drops and muttering to myself, you gotta wrap this up, wrap it up, wrap this up.

Speaker 10 And time was passing. So I started thinking, maybe I could interview Armando Yannucci with rolled up toilet paper sticking out of my nose.

Speaker 7 Or

Speaker 10 maybe I could stick a really tiny bit of toilet paper far enough up my nose that he wouldn't see it, but it would still block the blood.

Speaker 10 This nosebleed went on for half an hour. It was a full-on anxiety dream come to life.

Speaker 10 And Armando Yannucci's movies and TV shows are full of awkward scenes that happen on the job, a person trying to do a serious thing and getting thwarted by something dumb and embarrassing, like a pair of squeaky shoes.

Speaker 10 In one of his movies, an assistant secretary of state starts bleeding from her teeth in the middle of a meeting.

Speaker 10 And what usually happens in these scenes is the person just gets pounced on, mocked, without mercy by their colleagues or rivals or the press. Any vulnerability or misstep is noticed and weaponized.

Speaker 10 But Armando Yannucci, the real person, in real life,

Speaker 10 did something completely different.

Speaker 10 I walked out of the bathroom, not even sure the interview was still possible. So much time had been lost.
And he said, with perfect grace, I'm not in a rush.

Speaker 10 He and the publicist, Nada, simply put the whole thing behind us. Nada said, look, he's got a photo shoot in half an hour, but he can come back after that.

Speaker 10 Armando said, We'll talk for a while, and then I'll go and come back, and we'll talk more.

Speaker 10 It was like he waved a wand over me and said, you had a nightmare and now it's over,

Speaker 10 which is the opposite of what happens in his new play.

Speaker 10 I wanted to interview Armando because his work is so good at capturing things about now, about the present.

Speaker 10 And I saw that he was doing a stage version of an old Cold War film, Doctor Strangelove, by Stanley Kubrick.

Speaker 10 And I found it alarming that this was his next project. I mean, it's a comedy, but the last scene is Nuclear Armageddon and the end of the world.

Speaker 10 So what did he see in it that spoke to him about now? Why choose that particular story out of all possible stories at this moment?

Speaker 10 Well, part of the answer to why now is someone asked.

Speaker 7 Well,

Speaker 8 Doctor Strangelove is one of those films that that it's always been in my top five movies of all time.

Speaker 10 Ladies and gentlemen, Armando Yannucci. Yeah, it was only afterwards.
We got a call from the director and co-adapter of the play, Sean Foley, who asked Armando, did you want to work on it with him?

Speaker 10 And Armando quickly said,

Speaker 10 yes.

Speaker 8 I think it's the best dark comedy film ever made. I'm a huge Kubrick fan.

Speaker 8 The other reason I said yes was because, and this was several years ago, at the time, climate change was becoming

Speaker 8 a much more stark reality there was a kind of a sensation of if we don't do something immediately about this the world isn't going to come back from it that sense of us as a you know collective species still being unable

Speaker 10 to uh save ourselves from our own behavior Us as a species being unable to save ourselves from our own behavior is the plot of Dr. Strangelove.

Speaker 10 The entire story lives in the minutes right before the world pivots, from a planet full of life to a deathscape of ashes and poison. The story is, an American general goes quietly nuts.

Speaker 10 He's a conspiracy theorist who believes commies are poisoning America through fluoridation.

Speaker 10 To stop that, he sends U.S. bombers off to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
When reasonable people on both sides realize what's happening, they try to stop it. The U.S.

Speaker 10 president gets so desperate that he gives the Soviets the information they need to shoot down the planes.

Speaker 10 But one bomber gets through anyway, triggering a cascade of nuclear bombs to fire automatically, destroying the world.

Speaker 8 Everyone

Speaker 8 on stage realizes there's a good chance the world might end, but they can't quite admit it. It's like a very slow-motion car crash that you're watching.

Speaker 8 And everyone's caught up in it, but unable to, because of their own desire to retain their own status and to prove their point over the enemy, leading to annihilation.

Speaker 10 More than any one-to-one correspondence with the news now, there's a feeling to Strange Love that I found familiar. A sense that enormous danger is looming.

Speaker 10 but we're also wading through a sludge of ridiculousness.

Speaker 10 I feel some level of dread dread all the time for a while now. And I had a hunch, based on Armando's work, that he might have a similar feeling.

Speaker 8 Oh, absolutely. Yeah, dread.
Yes, I think we're all anxious about something, but for each person, it's a different thing. Or we can't quite put a finger on it.

Speaker 8 There's just a cumulative atmosphere of dread and foreboding, but not quite knowing what.

Speaker 10 I mean, was it a way for you to channel, to sort of organize or contain your own dread

Speaker 10 as a project?

Speaker 8 Oh, absolutely. It's a way of articulating it.
It's a way of processing it. It's a way of dramatizing it.

Speaker 10 Once I got an answer to, why make Strange Love Now?

Speaker 10 We moved into a meandery but very enjoyable conversation about how to confront your dread these days. Because I am taking suggestions.
And Armando's work is something I've returned to again and again.

Speaker 10 And what I'm thinking now is that, especially with his movies and with Strange Love, I come for the comedy, but maybe stay for the dread.

Speaker 10 So we talked about how do you go about making comedy out of catastrophe and fear.

Speaker 10 You've said that people underestimate comedy, which I agree, especially about things that are sort of big and terrifying. But make the case.

Speaker 10 What do people underestimate its ability to do that you feel like, no, no, it's best, it's best at that?

Speaker 8 I'm not arguing comedy is better.

Speaker 9 Or better.

Speaker 8 It just gives you another way in. And I think comedy,

Speaker 8 I think it, it just allows you to open up your mind a bit. It's,

Speaker 8 you know, if you find yourself laughing at something and then asking yourself, should I have laughed at that? Or, well, well, if you've laughed at it, then...

Speaker 8 You should. It's spontaneous.
I think that's why I think that's why autocratic leaders hate jokes about themselves.

Speaker 10 Spontaneous, they can't control it or predict it.

Speaker 7 It's out of their hands.

Speaker 8 You know, they like stuff where they could tell you what to do.

Speaker 8 You know, and comedy allows what might otherwise feel a forbidding and inaccessible theme.

Speaker 8 It allows you that entry point.

Speaker 8 You know, before making the death of Stalin, I went back and watched

Speaker 8 The Great Dictator.

Speaker 10 The Great Dictator is a movie about Hitler that Charlie Chaplin put out incredibly in 1940.

Speaker 8 So not even with the benefit of hindsight, right in the middle of it.

Speaker 8 And he treads this line between high comedy, fantastic, memorable comedic moments like Adenoid Hinkel, the dictator, just playing with a globe, picking earth up in his hands and dancing with it.

Speaker 8 And then scenes set in the Jewish ghetto, which are not funny, not meant to be funny. And it's this balance between the funny and the tragic.

Speaker 8 And I knew when going into the death of Stalin, that's what I wanted to do.

Speaker 8 And I said to everyone when we started filming, I said to the crew and to the cast, it's a comedy, but we must also be mindful and respectful of what happened to the people.

Speaker 8 We're not making fun of the fact of the deaths that they and the punishments they we're making The comedy comes from those inside the Kremlin. And I was holding those two

Speaker 8 kind of tones and moods simultaneously.

Speaker 10 Armando pulls it off because he doesn't skimp on either the bad in the death of Stalin or the comedy. The bad is quite bad and the funny is really funny.

Speaker 10 And one way I've noticed that he keeps those two moods aloft at the same time in many of his his projects. He often focuses on people who work together.

Speaker 10 In the death of Stalin, there's this intense rivalry among the men around Stalin, all jockeying for power after he dies, scheming and whinging and flailing.

Speaker 10 That workplace power struggle is what made Veep so funny, too.

Speaker 10 In the Strange Love play, The president and his advisors are in the war room, gathered around a ludicrously large circular table, mostly arguing.

Speaker 10 And one guy, a guy you may know from your own job, keeps throwing out bad ideas in a loud voice, in a sort of Roman Roy, I'm the only one being real here, way.

Speaker 10 For instance, he argues that maybe the thing to do is to lean into this attack the U.S. has launched.

Speaker 10 Not bring back the bombers that are on their way, but send more planes with more bombs, try to win this war, rather than try to stop it. It all makes sense under something called Plan R.

Speaker 14 It would remove all uncertainty if we pre-taliate.

Speaker 14 Pre-tally what? Pre-taliate. I think this is a new word.
See, conventionally, if the Russians attack us, our only option is to re-taliate. Plan R gives us a second option.

Speaker 14 We pre-taliate before they even think of taliating.

Speaker 14 Nuclear pretern, sir, in a nutshell, it's bulletproof.

Speaker 10 Pre-taliate isn't in the Strange Love movie, but it was built out of logic that is in there and that Armando and the director and co-adapter Sean Foley expanded and riffed on.

Speaker 8 You know, I've spent the last, whatever,

Speaker 8 several decades examining politicians, their speech, and

Speaker 8 how they use rhetoric to disguise or to

Speaker 8 pretend something is not what it is and so on.

Speaker 10 But Armando says sometimes you really don't need to riff or invent. Sometimes comedy is just sitting there, waiting to be picked up, like a $100 bill on the sidewalk.

Speaker 8 You know, in the film, it opens with the Air Force gate saying, Peace is our profession. I thought that was a gag.

Speaker 9 I thought Kubrick made it up.

Speaker 8 In the archive, you come around, there's the photo. It exists.

Speaker 10 This is in the Kubrick archive, he says.

Speaker 8 He saw this photo of an Air Force base with Peace is Our Profession written on it.

Speaker 8 So again, he's taking what's true and just putting it in, you know.

Speaker 10 Yeah,

Speaker 10 Pieces Our Profession shows up a bunch of times in the movie along with other sort of funny sight gags of just the way things are labeled and i thought i thought pieces our profession was over the top i thought oh it's too much i know and it was real it was real i know i know and and that's where you just think

Speaker 8 you don't have to embroider it you know if what is true makes the point,

Speaker 8 then make that point with the truth. You know, with the death of Stalin, as we researched the story, we kept finding more and more stories that were just absurd, but actually happened.

Speaker 10 Like a scene that ended up in the movie about Stalin's son, Vasily.

Speaker 8 Vasily was high up in the Soviet Air Force. He was over-promoted.
He was drunk. He was in charge of the ice hockey team.
He sent them to a tournament in an ice storm.

Speaker 8 He was warned there'd be a danger to the flight. The flight went down.
He lost the ice hockey team. He was too scared to tell his father.

Speaker 8 So he just recruited like friends of friends for a new team who were terrible. And that's such a bizarre story, but it says so much about

Speaker 8 even his son was scared of him. And

Speaker 8 that's what I was saying. It's all about the truth.
You know, it's the truth of what people really felt at the time.

Speaker 8 How can we get to that, that uneasy feeling they had at the bottom of their stomachs for years that they might be rounded up and taken away in the middle of the night.

Speaker 10 I've now seen Doctor Strangelove a bunch of times, the movie and then the play, and every time I think, so

Speaker 10 no one wins in the end.

Speaker 10 The bad ideas don't prevail. Nothingness prevails.
It's shocking.

Speaker 10 Many times in my life, I've looked back at a specific moment and thought, oh right, that was before,

Speaker 10 before I knew that, before this happened.

Speaker 10 But it's much more unsettling to experience now

Speaker 10 the moment you are currently in as that before time.

Speaker 10 To look around and feel that you will look back on this moment as one that came before so many losses or changes or hardships.

Speaker 10 Dr. Strangelove, the play, gave the audience a chance to, sure, laugh,

Speaker 10 but also to feel that dread, to see ourselves as living in a time before,

Speaker 10 before

Speaker 10 something.

Speaker 10 It's not clear what.

Speaker 10 Nuclear bombs have a narrative advantage that way. They have one iconic image associated with them.
A recognizable brand of destruction. What is the right image for what's on our horizon?

Speaker 10 Or mine, I'll just speak for myself, my dread. I re-watched the movie and saw the play during the hottest year on record, in the summer before the U.S.
presidential election.

Speaker 10 I'm writing this story, wondering how much of Los Angeles is going to burn, and whether there's going to be a nationwide ban on abortion, mass deportations.

Speaker 10 I don't have a picture in my head to focus on. It feels more like a play.

Speaker 10 A lot of dialogue, and I'm experiencing it live.

Speaker 3 Nancy Updyke, this producer on our show, the stage version of Doctor Strange Love, which by the way stars Steve Coogan in several different roles, is playing at the No Coward Theatre in London through January 25th and will be in Dublin from February 5th to February 22nd.

Speaker 3 Act 2, The View from the Dugout.

Speaker 3 So, one of the things that seems likely to change once Donald Trump is again in the White House is U.S. policy toward Ukraine.
His Vice President J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance has called for an end to aid to Ukraine and described a peace plan that basically lets Russia keep the territory it's gained.

Speaker 3 Donald Trump has been vaguer about his intentions, but he's been a skeptic of continued aid. He has said many times that he was going to end the war in 24 hours.

Speaker 3 We wonder what it's like for Ukrainian soldiers who depend on U.S. arms right now to see all of this at this pivot point and how they're imagining what's going to happen next once Trump takes office.

Speaker 3 Our producer Valerie Kipnis spoke with a bunch of people on the front lines.

Speaker 15 The first soldier I want to tell you about is Sergey. He's a former vegan chef from Kiev.
He'd quit his job to join the army a year ago. He's really proud of the fact that his unit recycles.

Speaker 15 When I asked how he described what his unit looks like when they're in action, he said, like hobbits in a bunker, hobbits with mortars.

Speaker 15 Sergey told me that it's a strange feeling to live in this moment of time before things might change.

Speaker 15 Everyone around him believes in anything and everything all at the same time.

Speaker 15 There's nothing that's not in the realm of possibility.

Speaker 4 Definitely it felt like and still might feel like

Speaker 4 time has stopped. Time has stopped and something needs to happen.

Speaker 2 Like right now you're living in the part of time that's stopped.

Speaker 4 Definitely, definitely. Everything simultaneously like with this, everything is real.
Everything might be real. Everything might happen

Speaker 4 so like

Speaker 4 there is no reason why tomorrow or in a week like a whole Europe and

Speaker 4 UK and US

Speaker 4 might not decide behind closed doors and just provide Ukraine within with a decision to stop like military funding and of course that would

Speaker 4 be a huge impact like

Speaker 4 on our ability to keep on fighting.

Speaker 4 Oh, one second, one second.

Speaker 8 Let me let me hear if you hear it.

Speaker 4 So, there is an air alert going on, like if you can hear the signal.

Speaker 7 Whoa, yeah,

Speaker 3 what does that mean?

Speaker 4 There might be some air attack, like be it drones or a missile or like something like this.

Speaker 15 Do you have to go hide somewhere, or what do you do?

Speaker 4 No, I'll go brew

Speaker 4 myself a cup of tea, maybe.

Speaker 15 That's how long this war has been going on. Long enough that there's an air attack, and you go brew yourself a cup of tea.

Speaker 15 When Donald Trump won the election, Sergei was sitting in a dugout on the front line. That's basically just a big square hole in the ground, 100 square feet, like in World War I.

Speaker 15 Five guys all huddled together.

Speaker 15 That night, they just finished firing at the Russians, sat down to rest when one of the guys in his unit went on X, saw saw the news that Trump was winning, and read it aloud.

Speaker 4 He went all like,

Speaker 4 oh, this guy wins, and if he wins, he will

Speaker 4 end all the help to Ukraine, and we are basically screwed. We went in the full discussion of how

Speaker 4 the American democracy works, like bringing up Wikipedia pages.

Speaker 4 We spent around three hours of our night time

Speaker 4 just

Speaker 4 by talking, talking, talking about

Speaker 4 what the president in America has a power to do.

Speaker 15 Could Trump just stop the war unilaterally? Stop sending aid they'd already promised? And what's the deal with the House and the Senate? Did he need their permission?

Speaker 15 Sergey and the other soldiers dug and dug for answers. And here's where he came down.

Speaker 15 He concluded that Trump wouldn't have the power to reverse the aid Biden had already promised all at once, which isn't exactly true, but that's what he told his unit.

Speaker 2 Did you feel like it was your job to sort of calm everyone down?

Speaker 4 Maybe calming in a way that

Speaker 4 I don't want my crew member

Speaker 4 to feel their heads with

Speaker 4 like

Speaker 4 downgraded morale for like next five days. We need to be going hand in hand.
for our mission.

Speaker 15 These kinds of conversations have been happening on the Ukrainian frontline for months now. Not all the time, but here and there.
I talked to 10 people in a variety of positions on the front.

Speaker 15 They all laughed when I asked about Trump saying he could finish the war in 24 hours. Of course, they remembered the first time he said it.

Speaker 15 They remembered where they were, what they were doing, but they didn't think much of it except for the fact that Trump was a showman and that this was all part of his act.

Speaker 15 But even so, that didn't stop them from wondering, what in the world might he mean? mean?

Speaker 15 Same thing happened a few days after Trump won the election in November. Joe Biden approved Ukraine's use of long-range missiles.
The soldiers were excited. They'd been waiting for this for years.

Speaker 15 But then, Donald Trump said that he thought launching long-range missiles into Russia was actually a big mistake.

Speaker 15 One soldier told me that he was on the front line, just finished shooting mortars, when he heard what Trump had said. And he looked at his crew like, what? What does this actually mean for us?

Speaker 15 Will they actually take away the approval they just given us?

Speaker 15 Another soldier who told me about trying to read the tea leaves of American politics is Vitaly, a drone operator.

Speaker 15 He's from a region of Ukraine that's been in the fight against Russian occupation since 2014. Vitaly has been fighting this war on and off since he was 24.

Speaker 15 As a drone operator, he spends hours sitting in a bunker watching monitors. He's got two screens in front of him.

Speaker 15 One is a live feed surveillance of the front line, and the other, his phone, social media, group chats, the news, one right next to the other.

Speaker 9 Oftentimes, we talk in the evenings while looking at the monitors because there's not much action during the night.

Speaker 9 The Russians usually start moving early in the morning before the sunrise.

Speaker 9 These conversations are meant to pass the time

Speaker 9 because now it's winter and the night is long

Speaker 9 and you have a lot of time to kill, in fact.

Speaker 9 Because war is not always action. War is very often sitting put for a long time.

Speaker 15 They talk about how Trump, the candidate, could be against funding for Ukraine. But Trump, the president, might not be.

Speaker 9 Sometimes we'll just be sitting there in our positions in the basements, and someone will say that Trump doesn't actually care about any of this, or us, and that he will make a deal with Russia at whatever price is most favorable to him.

Speaker 9 Then, there's the people who will say that Trump actually understands everything and will try to talk to Putin.

Speaker 9 And Putin will not want to come to an agreement and will not want to give us any territory.

Speaker 9 And so, Trump will realize that there can be no agreement with Putin and will instead provide us with lots of new weapons, thanks to which we can win.

Speaker 15 Vitaly told me he actually finds this last scenario pretty convincing. Other times, he's less optimistic.

Speaker 9 One day, I was sitting looking at a monitor, my phone next to it, just scrolling, and there was Trump's tweet.

Speaker 9 And then I turn and I tell my fellow serviceman, hey, take a look.

Speaker 9 There's Musk, who considers a visionary, but Musk writes such offensive things about Ukraine.

Speaker 15 Elon Musk has said there's no way that Putin will lose. and he pitched the Ukraine quote-unquote peace plan on X, which would cede Crimea to Russia.

Speaker 9 And now he's going to be sitting in Trump's administration.

Speaker 9 Maybe he'll be different as a politician when he gets some experience.

Speaker 9 One of the guys in the unit said, My brother has a test.

Speaker 9 If I had known this guy would be a part of this, I would have convinced him not to buy it.

Speaker 15 Trump's victory has cracked open a space for conversations that were once totally off limits. I heard about a moment like that from Artem, a soldier with a big personality.

Speaker 15 R Tem's a volunteer fighter in a unit that calls themselves Peaky Blinders. He helps prepare ammunition for drones.
He calls himself the candy maker.

Speaker 15 Rtem's a big believer that the war is nowhere near ending. Trump or no Trump, funding or no funding.
But a few weeks ago, Artem went out with his commander, Zelizniak, and another guy in his unit.

Speaker 19 In the evening, we went out to a hookah lounge and sat down to relax with our brothers in arms.

Speaker 19 We were sitting at the table together with Czirz and Zalizniak in this cafe where we ordered ourselves some dinner and the guys ordered a a hookah as well. I don't smoke hookah, but they do.

Speaker 19 That was when our conversation began.

Speaker 19 When the waiter took our order, Zaliznyak looked up, deep in thought. He then turned his eyes to Chirsh and began to ask him some questions.

Speaker 15 Chiz is a soldier in Arten's unit.

Speaker 7 He asked Chirz, if the war ends,

Speaker 7 what would you do?

Speaker 19 They started to speculate what events would unfold, who would travel, who would do what,

Speaker 19 basically pouring out their hearts to one another.

Speaker 15 Artem couldn't believe that he was hearing his fellow brothers in arms talking about what they would do after the war ended. Going to travel, going back to their normal civilian lives.

Speaker 19 I told him I didn't believe it.

Speaker 15 To hear a fellow soldier even whisper the possibility that the fight could be over is still not something Artem's used to.

Speaker 15 The party line of any Ukrainian soldier, of any Ukrainian really, is that they'll fight to the end and the fight may never end. Expressing any sort of doubt feels almost unpatriotic.

Speaker 15 But I talked to a Ukrainian expert who's in contact with many high-ranking officials in the army, who told me that while many soldiers remain die-hard and committed to keep fighting till the end, another group, which is growing, is made up of people who are getting increasingly weary of this war.

Speaker 15 Ukraine's recently suffered a series of setbacks and defeats, and the expert says this group likes that Trump is someone who will change things up.

Speaker 15 Artem thought about this moment with his commander for a while. What did he meant by that? Did he actually think this war would end? Artem told me this.

Speaker 15 A few days later, in the midst of heavy bombardment, he studied his commander's face. He looked like he was all in.

Speaker 15 And so, RTM decided that his commander didn't mean what he said. He told me he'd figured it out.
His commander didn't actually think the war was ending. He was just testing his unit.

Speaker 15 The truth is, these guys don't think about Trump all that much. They've got other things on their minds.

Speaker 15 One soldier told me that when you're in the rear, far from the front line, it's easy to imagine all the possibilities of what could happen next.

Speaker 15 But when you're on the front, it's like all of that collapses into this one linear logic: the weapon in front of you, the tank next to you, the amount of ammo you have left, the present, no before, and no after.

Speaker 15 Those are the moments he said that feel the greatest for him. When he just does what he can with what he has,

Speaker 15 when he's not speculating about what will be

Speaker 3 Valerie Kipnis is a producer on our show. She reported this with help from Anastasia Mazova.

Speaker 3 Coming up, the power of a simple photograph in a moment of uncertainty. That's in a minute, Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

Speaker 1 Support for this American Life comes from GoodRX. Cold and flu symptoms got you down? Find relief with GoodRX.
You can save an average of $53 on flu treatments.

Speaker 1 Plus, save on cold medications, decongestants, and more. Easily compare prescription prices and instantly find discounts of up to 80%.

Speaker 1 GoodRX is not insurance, but works with or without it and could beat your copay price. Save on cold and flu prescriptions at goodrx.com slash T-A-L.

Speaker 1 Support for this American Life comes from Indeed. Hiring isn't just about finding someone willing to take the job.
You need a person with the right background who can move your business forward.

Speaker 1 Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes with Indeed sponsored jobs. Receive a $75 sponsored job credit with Indeed sponsored jobs at indeed.com slash American.

Speaker 1 Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, do it the right way with Indeed.

Speaker 3 It's this American Life from Ira Gloss today on our program. Pivot point.

Speaker 3 On this weekend before a new presidency begins, we have stories of people living in the strange and often unsettling in-between moment when you know things are right on the cusp of big, big changes.

Speaker 3 We have arrived at act three of our program, act three, period peace.

Speaker 3 So when we're discussing this week's theme as a group here at the radio show, one of our coworkers, Susan Burton, started talking about a year-long pivot point.

Speaker 3 It lasts 12 months that many of our listeners have either gone through right in the middle of now or will go through.

Speaker 3 Quick heads up, Susan describes some bodily stuff in here. Here she is.

Speaker 20 I got my first period when I was 10, and then I continued to get it for the next 40 years.

Speaker 20 I didn't get it every month. There were exceptions, blackout dates, pregnancy, breastfeeding, anorexia.

Speaker 20 But for most of the 40 years, each month my period would come and I'd open a calendar and mark the anticipated date of my next period with a TK, like a forthcoming fact in a piece I was reporting.

Speaker 20 Sometimes I would get my period and not have tampons, and then I would go online and order enough tampons so that I would never run out again.

Speaker 20 And then suddenly I was about to turn 50, and I understood I would never get through all the tampons I had ordered.

Speaker 20 What was the first day of your last period? asked the nurse at the gynecologist's office.

Speaker 20 Okay, I said, I mean, I think it was sometime last month, like August, but it's hard to tell. I'm at that age, you know, like I was kind of bleeding all summer.
Not in an alarming way, just

Speaker 20 it was hard to tell.

Speaker 20 You are officially in menopause once you go one full year without a period. So I was not there yet.
I was in perimenopause.

Speaker 20 During peri, my period had first come a lot, every 18 days. Over time that changed, 60 days between periods, then 90.

Speaker 20 I'd start thinking, this is it, and then I'd get my period again, and the clock would restart.

Speaker 20 Congratulations, a friend said to me one day when the counter reset to zero. She was kidding, but that was the feeling.

Speaker 20 Perry was a safe zone, and I wanted to stay there. What made Perry a safe zone was simply that it was not menopause.
It was still the before time.

Speaker 20 Perry may have been a safe zone, but it was not a safe harbor. During it, I'd had the common symptoms you hear about and other things you don't.
Frozen shoulder, which was just what it sounded like.

Speaker 20 Migraines I managed by digging my fingernails into my forehead.

Speaker 20 There were remedies for some of the symptoms, but what I tried or didn't is not what I want to get into here. My point is that I'd already been through a few rocky years.
Years of accelerated aging.

Speaker 20 I felt startled by how quickly my face was changing. According to the internet, this was on me.

Speaker 20 There was a punitive quality to the phrase, sun damage.

Speaker 20 But the promise was that once you were officially in menopause, you would feel better because things would slow down and your moods would level out. You would come into your own.

Speaker 20 You would give a shit less. In menopause, you would be sanguine.
And yet I wasn't eager to get there.

Speaker 20 All along, I'd had so many fears about menopause. A short list of those fears might start with my associations to the word.
dry, wiry, papery.

Speaker 20 I was scared of what would happen to desire, like how much of it I would feel.

Speaker 20 The messaging on this was positive. Women in menopause can still be sexy and still want sex.

Speaker 20 But the celebrities of menopause were hot and liberated. And you hardly heard from the regular women, who maybe did want less.

Speaker 20 And that was the information I was looking for, how it felt to still be sexual, but to have the volume just turned down a bit. Because that was what I suspected was most true.

Speaker 20 I didn't know yet. I wasn't there.

Speaker 20 But I thought I might be closer than I'd ever been.

Speaker 20 That period I'd had in August, light, persistent. I had a feeling it would be the last one.

Speaker 20 My bet was that once the hand on the clock circled through the year, that would be it. I would officially be in menopause.

Speaker 20 September, October, November, December. No period.
Still in the before time.

Speaker 20 It was sort of like not wanting to move into a new decade, like wanting to linger in the last months of being 29, 39, 49,

Speaker 20 or 9.

Speaker 20 Even as a child, I'd had a sadness about aging, not wanting to cross into the double digits of 10.

Speaker 20 Getting a period at 10 was early, very early, in 1984.

Speaker 20 I'd felt horror at that advancement. Now I recognized that this was happening again.

Speaker 20 As the year ticked on, now January, now February, I found there were things I missed about menstruating. There was a stillness in my body without it.

Speaker 20 I missed the cycle, which began each month with a low, flat mood and then continued with the rising action of ovulation. That mid-month surge of energy, some of it erotic.

Speaker 20 I missed the elevation and mood.

Speaker 20 March.

Speaker 20 Earlier in my life, fearing pregnancy, I'd willed my period to come. But it wasn't like that now.
I wasn't pulling down my underwear and hoping.

Speaker 20 April, May.

Speaker 20 I was still in the before time, though I was increasingly accepting of the idea that I would soon be in menopause, testing it out in my head.

Speaker 20 Maybe this is partly because a whole new generation, millennials, had discovered perimenopause and once again were shining up the scruffy territory we Gen Xers had claimed.

Speaker 20 Advertisers had gotten there too, and now it seemed like everyone was talking about menopause, but most of them were not talking about it the right way.

Speaker 20 And this is probably always true.

Speaker 20 No one is ever talking about your own menopause, about exactly what it means to you.

Speaker 20 June, month 10.

Speaker 20 By now I was traveling without any supplies. There wasn't going to be an emergency.
There wasn't going to be another period stain.

Speaker 20 For years I dealt with period stains. kneeling by the washing machine, spraying stain remover into a seam, or looking at the back of a skirt and wondering if it could be saved.

Speaker 20 But there's one stain I've never been able to get out. A stain on the pink upholstery of one of our dining room chairs.

Speaker 20 I sat there one early summer morning. For me, a singularly important morning.
A book I'd written had been published. I sat there in a nightgown, reading a glowing review.

Speaker 20 I could feel that I was getting my period, but it didn't matter. A dream of my life was coming true.
I wanted to sit there in it. I didn't want to move.

Speaker 20 Now that stain is there and I've tried to lift it, but it won't come out. And I don't mind that it's there.
It's a marker of a moment of bliss and of an earlier self too.

Speaker 20 One whose body still did that.

Speaker 20 For so many years I tried to manage my period, make it invisible, get rid of evidence.

Speaker 20 Now this strange, possibly even repulsive, kind of preservation.

Speaker 20 But it's a stain that makes me remember the feeling of the world opening up before me.

Speaker 20 July came, and then it was August again, and it was official. One full year.

Speaker 20 Is it too Pollyanna to say that I actually did feel the world opening up?

Speaker 20 There had been something trying about wanting to stay where I was.

Speaker 20 Once I crossed the threshold, there was no more resistance, and I was moving forward again.

Speaker 20 When I went for my physical, my doctor said, What was the date of your last menstrual period?

Speaker 20 August 2023, I said.

Speaker 20 Menopause, she said, with an exclamation point, like menopause, the musical,

Speaker 20 like a curtain rising on a new stage.

Speaker 3 Susan Burton is an editor on our show.

Speaker 13 Act 4, Since You've Been Gone.

Speaker 3 So, show today is about people at a pivot point, and one entire community in that situation is Altadena, California.

Speaker 3 It's one of the towns around LA that's so devastated that for most of the last week and a half, nobody was allowed in. It's been surrounded by National Guard with barricades.

Speaker 3 One of our producers, Miki Meek, talked to somebody who stayed at her house. The fire stopped about a block away.
And in the first days of the fires, came up with a mission for herself.

Speaker 13 Vanessa Pratt is a nursing student, 25 years old, lives with her parents in the home she grew up in.

Speaker 13 In those first few days after the fires, She realized people who'd evacuated didn't have a way to figure out if their homes were still standing or not.

Speaker 21 And I remember I was just sitting and thinking like,

Speaker 21 well, one thing we've been doing is driving around. So maybe like something I can do to help is drive around and take pictures of these homes.

Speaker 13 So she went onto a community Facebook page for Altadina and posted this message.

Speaker 21 So I said, hello, everyone. Our home and family is all okay and safe.
That being said, we are behind the barricades.

Speaker 21 We are more than happy to drive around and take a picture for any person who would like to see their home or God forbid, what is left of their home. Please let me know the address.

Speaker 13 And then how fast did you start getting responses?

Speaker 21 So I started getting responses pretty quickly, probably like five, ten minutes after I posted it.

Speaker 21 And then when they shared the address, they write something and they say, oh, I brought my children home to that house. I've had people say I was born in that house.

Speaker 21 Actually, I had somebody say my grandma was born in the house. I was married in that house.

Speaker 13 54 people messaged her their addresses. She wrote them down into a notebook, and then she and her dad got into their old Toyota minivan and started driving.

Speaker 21 See if I find that Prius melted.

Speaker 13 Vanessa in the passenger seat and her father driving.

Speaker 17 Okay, that one is on the left side, just a few.

Speaker 13 That's their dog Shelby, panting on her father's lap.

Speaker 3 Look, it's here somewhere, where?

Speaker 17 On the right side? I think it's this.

Speaker 7 They mentioned it was this one.

Speaker 13 They got to 10 houses on their first day, but it took them almost four hours.

Speaker 13 Altagina is a small place. The whole thing's only about nine square miles.
But the streets were blocked with downed power lines and fallen trees.

Speaker 13 When they did get to an address, Vanessa would snap a photo and text it right away.

Speaker 21 The goal is to get the photos as quick as possible without delay to these people about their homes, because you can imagine the agony of somebody sitting in a shelter not knowing.

Speaker 13 So how many people have you responded to so far?

Speaker 21 We've done about 41, and I think we have another seven or eight today.

Speaker 13 And then of those 41 that you've been able to check on, like, how many are still standing?

Speaker 21 Less than half.

Speaker 13 Less than half.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 21 Yeah, less than half.

Speaker 13 What is that?

Speaker 10 Can you just explain the process to me of it's difficult.

Speaker 21 So when the house is there, I send the picture and I don't say anything because there is no words needed.

Speaker 21 Usually I get a thank you. When the house isn't there, that's when it becomes a little bit more challenging.
Some people will send me, hey, can you send me the status of my home?

Speaker 21 I know it's probably gone, but it would be great to know what the situation looks like.

Speaker 21 And then there's the ones that are like, I have no idea if you could send me a picture. And those are the hard ones because

Speaker 21 you know you're the one who's going to break the news.

Speaker 21 And so I just, I send a picture and I say, I'm so sorry for your loss, is usually all I say. And they usually respond with something.

Speaker 21 And then I'll follow up with, I wish I could do more to help. Like, I wish there was something else I could do to help.
You know, you can't, there's not much you can say if somebody's lost their home.

Speaker 21 and then i've also had like the occasional like after i send the burnt house they'll send me photos of the house prior i remember one of the houses that they sent that burned oh my god it was you know really burnt and they sent me a picture the house was beautiful i mean it really was that one was hard yeah how did you respond back What a beautiful home.

Speaker 21 I'm so sorry. I mean, it really was.
It had a beautiful garden.

Speaker 22 Like, I'm looking at the picture now.

Speaker 21 It's like

Speaker 21 a dark brown roof.

Speaker 21 The house is like off-white, and the yard has

Speaker 21 like bushes, and the bushes have like pink, small pink flowers.

Speaker 21 They had like a bench on the outside of their house, and it's like a red bench, which really goes with the house, honestly, because it really complemented the color of the house.

Speaker 21 It made it stick out, you know.

Speaker 13 A few days after the fire fire started, when it was still only 3% contained, she and her father were trying to get to an address at the end of a cul-de-sac.

Speaker 13 That one house took them a couple days to get to. They kept trying different roads in.

Speaker 21 Every way had a tree, a huge tree that fell in the middle of the road blocking it. And I said, this is going to be the one that I'm not going to be able to send a picture for.

Speaker 21 And I was just, you know, and I saw the person, she had a family, and I was like, oh my God, like, I'm like telling my dad, like, we need to see what we can do. Like, we need to try, you know.

Speaker 13 On their fourth attempt, they finally got closer to the address, but encountered another tree blocking the road. Suvanessa got out of the car and started walking.
She sent me the video.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 13 Around her were tarred trees and electrical poles dangling from power lines. The bottoms burned completely off.

Speaker 22 I'm like walking under the poles and like going in between wires. Like I couldn't figure out which house it was.
I mean, it was that that area was like like demolished.

Speaker 22 Like it looks like somebody dropped a bomb in that area.

Speaker 21 And like, there's nothing. There's not even

Speaker 21 like when you, you know, when you go to a house and you see like those, those house numbers on the curb?

Speaker 21 It was so bad that those house numbers were like non-existent.

Speaker 13 The rubble was still smoldering. And all she could see were remnants of stone walls and chimney columns, a burned out station wagon.

Speaker 21 But it was just like, I'm going to make a general video and just like, hopefully I hit the house.

Speaker 21 And I sent that one and I told the person, like, please let me know if I am getting your house because I'm here now and I can get another picture or get another video if needed.

Speaker 21 And they said, no, that's perfect. Like, you got it.

Speaker 13 One of the last messages I got from Vanessa was a rare, bright moment in this terrible time.

Speaker 10 Oh, my God, she's going to.

Speaker 10 So take a picture here and walk there and take the other one.

Speaker 13 She and her dad found a house still standing.

Speaker 17 Wonderful.

Speaker 7 Right?

Speaker 10 But go through that gate so we can pick

Speaker 3 Miki Meek is a producer on our show.

Speaker 3 I wish I could say

Speaker 3 it would all

Speaker 3 be alright.

Speaker 3 It'll all be alright.

Speaker 3 I wish I could tell you

Speaker 3 it would all

Speaker 3 be fine.

Speaker 3 It'll all be just fine.

Speaker 3 But let's go

Speaker 3 only rolls downhill.

Speaker 3 These things,

Speaker 3 they'll be what they will, what they will.

Speaker 3 Roller Program is produced today by Emmanuel Jochi.

Speaker 3 People who put together today's show include Thea Bennon, Dana Chivis, Michael Comete, Angela Dravasi, Cassie Howley, Hana Jaffe Walt, Henry Larson, Seth Lind, Catherine Raymondo, Stone Nelson, Nadia Raymond, Ryan Rummery, Alicia Shipp, Laura Sturcheski, Lily Sullivan, Christo Sotella, Marisa Robertson Texter, and Diane Wu.

Speaker 3 Our managing editor Sara Abduraiman, our senior editors David Keskenbaum, our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry.

Speaker 3 Special thanks today to Tasya Prussiaseva, Erik Charimella, Katerina Sergatskova, Michael O'Hanlin, John Witzfield, Bennett Epstein, Vanessa Martinez, Ron Glynn, Jeanette Marantos, and Hannah Fry at the LA Times.

Speaker 3 The actors performing the English translations for the Ukrainians in Act II of our show today were Alexander Foreman and Ross Pella.

Speaker 3 This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, to become a This American Life Partner, which gives you bonus content after you're listening.

Speaker 3 Hundreds of our favorite episodes of the show that are going to show up right in your podcast feed. Go to thisamericanlife.org slash LifePartners.
Your subscription also helps keep our program going.

Speaker 3 Thanks this week to Life Partners Cece Chen Ming Fei and Colette Spriggins. Thanks as always to our Brigham's co-founder, Mr.
Tori Malatia. You know, he's been taking a figure drawing class.

Speaker 3 His drawing is pretty good, except for the hands. He does the shoulder, upper arm, forearm, all great.

Speaker 3 And then gets to the end of the arm, and it's always.

Speaker 8 We can't quite put a finger on it.

Speaker 7 I'm Aaron Glass.

Speaker 3 Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

Speaker 12 This message comes from NPR sponsor, Capella University. With Capella's FlexPath Learning Format, you can set your own deadlines and learn on your schedule.

Speaker 12 A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu.

Speaker 12 This message comes from Jackson. Let's face it, retirement planning can be confusing.
At Jackson, we're working to make retirement clear for everyone, starting with you.

Speaker 12 Our easy-to-understand resources and user-friendly digital tools help simplify your entire experience. You can have confidence in your retirement with clarity from Jackson.

Speaker 12 Seek the clarity you deserve at jackson.com.

Speaker 12 Jackson is short for Jackson Financial Incorporated, Jackson National Life Insurance Company, Lansing, Michigan, and Jackson National Life Insurance Company of New York, Purchase, New York.