809: The Call
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
A quick warning; there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. From WBZChicago to this American life on Hourglass. Okay, so you call a hotline and then a complete stranger tries to figure out how to help you on the spot. That idea seems to have begun in the 1950s. The first suicide hotline in the United States was created in the early 60s by a guy in San Francisco, who was a priest and also a journalist. And it was just him answering the phone at first, adds on matchbooks and sides of buses, said, "Thinking of ending it all? Call Bruce." Which, by the way, was not his real name. His real name was Bernard Mays. But of course, the power of anonymity is so important to any hotline. People would call and sometimes he could help them precisely because he had no connection to their life at all, like they could say anything to him. And there's pre-internet days that was completely new to harness that kind of anonymity, the intimacy of it, this way, over the phone. These days, of course, there are all kinds of hotlines for people in all sorts of situations. Prayer hotlines, psychic hotlines, also hotlines for homework help, for new moms. There's a hotline for owners of three-legged dogs and another one specifically for anybody who swallows one, it's going to, you know, there's little round button batteries that Hylenosa handles any kid who pushes it up their nose. Today, we're going to devote our entire show to one phone call that happened on one hotline. Very unusual hotline. And then we have everything that followed from that one call. It takes you inside this world that I think either you're already in this world, or it's totally invisible to you, like it's all around you, you don't even register that this world is there. Mary Harris tells what happened. She's the host of Slade's Daily News podcast, "What Next?" One quick note, some parts of this phone call might not be great for young children to hear. I suppose we could have given you this warning before mentioning that part about pushing batteries up your nose, but anyway, here's Mary with that one, the call. The call in this story took place a few years ago. It's a call to a hotline of sorts, though one I'd never heard about before and was surprised to learn existed. This is the music you hear when you're waiting for an operator. The woman taking this call, her name is Jessie, she's a nurse, and she's taken thousands of these. Let me get my book, "Kimber, I've never called you before, I'm glad you called." Have you called us before? No, this is my first time. I just heard that we have yesterday and I don't want to use that myself. Okay, so what do you go, what do you go and use, "Kimber and Harry, you don't use it?" I'm in Jackie Harlan. Okay, probably sent all, probably sent all, okay. The hotline is called, "Never use alone," and the idea is, if you're going to inject heroin or do a speedball, something like that, and there's no one around, you can dial them
Transcription truncated.