Push-Up Contest

Hey there, it's Avery here. Okay. A little housekeeping. I'm putting the final edits on my book and I'm working on the episodes for 2026. There's gonna be one a month this year, and I cannot wait to share them. I actually just got back from China, so I'm writing this at three in the morning. I'm so jet-lagged.

But wait until you hear the story that I found there. I'm very excited for that one. I'm also working with some of my favorite minds in fashion to develop new episodes and ideas, including a story about bras and how they work and whether or not we need them.

Poof. I need a little more time to get it all together. So I wanted to share a different podcast that I really like. This is also a story about bras, but with a very different perspective. This is a piece from Signal Hill, which is An audio magazine. It's such a smart concept. They publish all kinds of audio documentaries from all different contributors, long form reported work, short essays, reviews, poems. And it's packaged together in issues that you can subscribe to.

But I particularly loved this dispatch from their last issue. It's called Push Up Contest by Zoe Curland, and it's about how her dad designed a bra that changed the world. It's a delight. I'll have that for you after this little break.

Hey, it's Robin here from PRX, and I want to tell you about a brand new show in the Radiotopia family. An exciting partnership with our friends at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and fellow indie network Talkhouse. It's called Music Makes Us. And it's hosted by Cultural Icon, the legendary Kathleen Hannah, the frontwoman of Bikini Kill and La Tigra.

She sits down with revolutionary musicians like Shaka Khan, Olivia Rodrigo, and Hailey Williams of Paramount to speak about the things artists really want to talk about. Perfect lyrics, unforgettable shows, treasured artifacts, and even snacks. From the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Radiotopia, and Talkhouse, Music Makes Us. Out now wherever you listen to podcasts.

If your eyes are the windows to your soul and your glasses are the windows to your eyes, then it's pretty important to find your perfect frames. That's why at Warby Parker, we've made shopping for eyewear as easy and fun as can be. Peruse endless styles in our stores, or use our app to virtually try on frames and get personalized recommendations.

To find your next favorite pair of glasses, sunglasses, or contact lenses, or to locate your nearest Warby Parker store, head over to warbyparker.com. That's warbyparker.com. The ideal way to Get clothing is through a clothing swap. What could be better? Everybody brings their old clothes, one man's travel. Man's treasure, and you find some amazing new looks. Totally for free. The key is though, you gotta have some really stylish friends. This

Amazing new app comes in. It's called Lucky Sweater. It's basically a clothing swap app. Clothes. You just pay the cost of shipping. And the best part is, it's full of really stylish people. the perfect time of year to check in with your closet, swap what no longer serves you. Something new. Pay the cost of shipping. Truly. Lucky sweater. Join the Circular Closet Club by downloading the app at lunch.com.

com slash articles and get one week of Sustainer membership, which unlocks powerful features like all the swap group's search features that make it easier for you to find your dream grail. trade protection on all trades shipped in app. Articles. And now, push-up contest by Zoe Curland. Stop slamming your foot, and also you might want to just sit on your hands. I mean th the rings are collatery chattery. Don't okay.

I think you just took off eleven rings. Should be thirteen. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. Oh, fourteen. Thank you very much. Fourteen rings. And how many bracelets? One well, one, two, three, four.

This is my dad, Jeffrey Kurland. He's a costume designer for movies and he dresses like it. Patterned shirts, elaborate knitwear, scarves and pocket squares, vintage loafers, all of those rings you just heard, and bracelets and chains. He has wavy shoulder-length hair. His style is luxurious, timeless, and a little genderless, like Tilda Swinton as Orlando, or a Renaissance prince. Eclectic. F in a word.

I think probably is a best word. Today, for example, he's wearing a poncho, and I assure you, he's pulling it off. Probably the first thing that people notice about me is what apparel I happen to be uh wearing at the time. I grew up watching my dad use clothes to transform people into characters. They'd step in front of the trifold mirror under fluorescent fitting room lights.

As they moved, the reflective panels multiplied their bodies to infinity, making them into mythical multi-limbed creatures. And then he would slice them into pieces with his measuring tape, searching for golden ratios. Twenty eight, twenty three, twenty seven, or forty one, thirty-five, forty. Finally, he'd reconstruct them via textile, giving them contours they didn't come into the room with.

As a kid, sitting in the corner of the fitting room, I witnessed this transformation over and over again. My dad designed the costumes for some very iconic movies: My Best Friend's Wedding, Hannah and Her Sisters, Ocean's Eleven, Inception.

But of all of his movies, I have one very clear favorite. The movie came out in the year two thousand, but I didn't see it until a decade later. I was fifteen, curled up on the couch at a friend's house. It can be very harmful. So it kills people. Oh yeah. You're a lawyer? Hell no. I hate lawyers, I just work for them. We're going to have to spend a little time filling in the holes in your research. Don't talk to me.

I'm an idiot, okay. I think we got off on the wrong foot here. That's all you got, lady. Two wrong feet and ugly shoes. You gotta find a different Aaron Brockovich For the uninitiated, the movie stars Julia Roberts as Aaron, a dogged, whip smart, foul mouthed paralegal. who helps a small desert town in California take on an energy company that's poisoning their water. Why are there medical records and blood samples in real estate files? Would you mind if I investigate this a little further?

At the end of the movie, Erin handily defeats Pacific Gas and Electric in court and wins a three hundred thirty three million dollar settlement for the town, all while raising her three kids as a single mom. The whole thing is based on a true story. Aaron Brokovich is a real person who really did all that stuff. Watching the movie at fifteen, I swooned. Julia as air. Bit. Her take no prisoner's attitude, her smile. And notably. Her clothes. Leather, laces, gold belts, animal print, red.

Her curly blonde hair is gigantic, tossing around in the dry wind. Now that you're working here, you may want to uh rethink your wardrobe a little. Is that so? Well, it just so happens I think. And as long as I have one ass instead of two. I'll wear what I like if that's all right with you. And then there were her boobs.

Whether she's running circles around the dumb men trying to keep her from the truth, or deftly scaling the side of a swimming pool to fish out a dead frog, Erin's cleavage is just right there. It's basically a star in its own right, catapulting past the zip up neckline of a halter top, smashed together at the center of a corset, pole vaulting over the top button of a sheer leopard blouse. Some people write her off as a bimbo.

That's actually part of her power. What makes you think you can just walk in there and find uh what we need? They're called boobs it.

I was a late bloomer. At 15, I still looked 12, pre-alphabet chested, and I wished for boobs incessantly. Plus, as a teenager, I thought constantly, paranoia, about how to look amazing, and also how to look like I didn't care. In the golden glow of my friend's TV, I was mesmerized by Erin. I wanted to know how I could look like that. Be like that?

I'm thirty now, basically the same age as Julia Roberts was when she played Aaron Brokovich. Lately, I feel like I'm going through a new kind of puberty. After feeling for a decade like I'd largely escaped the fray of adolescence, I'm suddenly, once again, stepping from what feels like one life phase to another. No longer young, but not yet old.

There's something mushy and liminal about this age, the vague feeling of being at a turning point, like I'm supposed to be solid, crystallized, in some new identity that I don't quite understand yet. In this liminal moment, Suggestion is powerful. I'm not immune to the rhythmic push and pull of society slash culture slash the algorithm. Which is telling me I should be ageless, have a baby tomorrow, and adopt a meat only diet for some reason.

I see pictures of my friends getting married or somehow working from Tahiti or like looking really amazing in a hat. Not since I was fifteen have I thought this much about how other people might see me. Should I become a hat person? When I was a teenager, Erin was a vision of a shining adult future I could look forward to when I reached that point. But now I'm there, or here, rather. And I guess I'm still wondering, in some way, how to look like that, be like that.

You see Heron Brokovich, you see Julia Roberts, you have to transform that into that. That's just the job. And if you're good at it, you can do it. And if you're not, you can't. You're either good or you're not. I'm good. I am good. It dawns on me as I enter the Aaron chapter of my own life. Somehow I'd never actually asked my dad about the making of Aaron Brockovich. I don't know, when you were just saying like that you were transforming Julia into Erin, like where did you start with that?

The logical place was in the bust. The bust. It's the most noticed, probably noticed property of of of Erin when you s meet her. She features that and you see it. It's there and she's not ashamed of it, nor should she be. In nineteen ninety nine, Julia Roberts was known as this statuesque, classic, clean lines type of beautiful, sexy in an essentially flat chested kind of way.

To put it bluntly, she didn't really have the boobs for this job. Please note, though, that my dad would never call them that. You're so good at using words that are kind of not crass to describe bodies. Because I find bodies beautiful. I have no I have no reason to be crass about them. I don't think anything's crass about them, male or female. And I also have great respect for the actor. I mean you can't I would never say it, Julia.

Your boobs, I would just never do that. Because that's that's just inappropriate. It's a serious business. It was not a joke. We w we were trying to create something real. My dad takes his work extremely seriously. Boobs were not on the table. That would be anti real. But this was the 20th century. Push-up bra technology of the time was not up to the task. Regular bras didn't work. So my dad and his collaborator, seamstress Mary Ellen Fields, got creative.

We used everything there was out there. They made these little things called cutlets. they would use for people who had to have messectomies. They had gel in them, so they moved rather like a bosom. And so that was very helpful also. And then it was just the the bra itself, just the tightening and the pushing and the pulling and the filling and all of that. Folks it was pads on the side, pads on the bottom, Tight through the back and close in the front.

After much trial and error, hours in the fitting room, they got it. In the end, basically, her bosom sat on a shelf in the bra that that lifted it and pushed it together. Do you remember when people saw Julia for the first time in the outfits? Oh they loved it. Everyone was like Ha ha you know, just they thought it was great, you know, because it was a transformation. On screen, the bra did exactly what it was supposed to do. Well it's a wonderful scene when she goes to the

The Hall of Records. What can I do for you, Erin? Well, believe it or not, I'm on the prowl for some water records. And and there's a guy there and he doesn't want to show her the books, and she leans into the counter and she pushes her forearms. on her bus and she features it, she pushes it forward. You know, it would probably be easiest if I just squeezed back there and poked around myself. Would that be all right with you? Incredibly ample, uh large. And and it's perfect.

Well I'll call you if I need anything. Alright. Okay. Thank you. It's great. And she just used it there. She just naturally just did it. And that's what I wanted. I didn't want her to think about it. I wanted it to b I wanted her to feel like that was her.

Growing up, I knew that Aaron Brokovich was a capital B. ideal movie for my dad. It was a massive hit. Julia Roberts won her first and only Oscar for it. We had my dad's drawings of the costumes, framed in our house. But I didn't know how big a deal the bra itself was until I started researching this story. I found lots of footage of Julia Roberts on the Aaron Brokovich press tour.

She's asked about her cleavage in nearly every interview. There was cleavage, there was lots of cleavage. Lots of cleavage. Yeah. Here she is with noted sex pest Charlie Rose. Cleavage for dick. Cleave it for days. There was, of course, a slightly leering tone to a lot of these interviews, but Julia talked a lot about the bra on her own, too, even in more recent interviews.

like here on the Graham Norton show in twenty twenty three when she was asked about how she got into character as Erin. I just listened to um audio tapes of her being interviewed by the director and got myself a really um really beautifully engineered. Bra? I I remember. Yeah. That person saying I remember in the background is Cher, as in the mononymous singer actress Extraordinaire. Fabulous. So fabulous. The bra was such a sensation that it inspired knockoff.

A British lingerie designer started marketing Brokovich bras. And then she had the gall to claim that she had actually created the bra worn by Julia Roberts in the movie herself. Totally false, of course. My dad defended his honor to the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal. Was it funny to you that that even No, that's never funny. When someone tries to steal your thunder, that's not funny. I don't find that funny. After the movie, there was a push up bra wave that

The world. My dad shouldn't get all the credit for that, but it seems safe to say that he and that highly engineered Frankenbra were part of the upside. Gave way to butts for a time. It was around that time, the peak of the boob era, perhaps, that mine finally arrived. It must be said that they are the most average breasts in the world.

Ever since they showed up, I've felt completely ambivalent about them. They can be paraded out like party balloons or put away like socks in a drawer. They're malleable pieces of equipment, and they're not quite a part of me. And I've never invested much in bras. For the last few years I've seen them as a sort of blight on the bus.

a sometimes necessary evil. But as Aaron Brokovich resurfaces in my life, I'm starting to reconsider that opinion. Everything worked because that character was created from underneath. to feature what was uh what was on top. The character was created underneath. I love that. The character was created from underneath. I've heard my dad say this before, but this is the first time it really clicked for me.

In Aaron Brokovich, the bra was more than a bra. It was a place that this amazing performance of confidence, ease, paralegalic badassery could radiate out from. The message is clear. I need to buy a push up bra. How will this push up bra fit? How will it look? All answers will be revealed after the break. When I'm working on a big project, it is so hard to feed myself well. And it's not that I can't cook, it's just that

Think about what to eat and what to buy. So that means it's really hard for me not to like live on eggs and toast for dinner every night. Especially when your brain is busy with other things. That is why I HelloFresh. HelloFresh is a delicious, nutritious, sustainably sourced dinner ready for you to make right in. With over a hundred Each week you pick out what you want to make. It's got three menus here. Each meal has step-by-step instructions and pre-proportioned ingredients.

There's a sweet potatoes, there's a garlic, a lemon. And you can make your dinner in 30 minutes. It's delicious and healthy. Go back to whatever else you had to do. Life is hard and dinner is supposed to be the fun part. Get a little help. Hellofresh. Slash Articles ten FM to get. Free meals and Willignife, which is the

$144.99. Get that on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box, new subscribers only. Varies by plan. HelloFresh.com slash articles 10 FM Ask your most fashionable friend where they shop. And I promise they'll tell you the real real. The real reel is where I like to shop and sell.

And do you wanna know a fun little trick on the Real Reel? If you search as worn by, you will find clothes that celebrities have actually worn. I'm currently looking at a Prada dress that was worn by Karen. And it's$130. Nuts. The real reel is the most Ten thousand new arrivals daily. No one. Resale like the Real Real. And now get$25 off your first purchase when you go to the RealReal.comslash article. It's the real real dot com slash.

Articles to get your$25 off. Start shopping now at therealreal.com slash articles. This podcast. Yeah. Do you want to start a business? Charity or a group? Step of your dream. Making a website for it. And Squarespace. Start with a great looking website. Say you're selling something, Squarespace can help you create a beautifully designed online.

cases your brand and engages customers. And if you're starting, I don't consultancy you can add acuity scheduling to your Squarespace website which Breeze. Squarespace is there to help you do it. Go to Squarespace. dot com slash articles for a free trial. Offer code. save ten percent on your first purchase of a website or domain.

We are back with reporter Zoe Curlin's story about a bra that her dad designed that changed the world. Zoe is about to try on a push up bra of her own. Thankfully, to get this kind of bra now. One does not have to enlist my dad. Oh my gosh, this looks incredible. So today I'm trying the new Skims Ultimate Super Push Up Bra. The most flattering bra and the color?

Chef's kiss is the before and look at how full and naturally rounded looks after. Obsessed. Many thanks to the slew of influencers, mostly Australian for some reason, who turned me on to the latest in bra technology. Kim Kardashian's underwear brand, Skims, has apparently picked up where Jeffrey Curland left off. I placed my order online. fifty eight dollars plus shipping.

It comes in this kind of chic frosted plastic bag. It's like so modest. It's like, ooh, what's inside? What's inside is this Sort of pearlescent. nude bra. It's very smooth. It's very soft. It looks like Barbie boobs. The bra is sort of sexy, but also deeply sanitary, like your skin, but also not. It's pretending to be something essential and corporeal. You, but better. Exclamation point. Okay, I'm gonna try an I will take you with me. To do so. Okay, I'm walking over to the mirror. Nope.

Or yes, I don't know. The bra did do some kind of job pushing my flesh together and up. I showed my boyfriend the contraption breast apparatus. What do you think? By the way, he asked me to pitch shift his voice for anonymity. I thought it was gonna make them look big, but they kind of just look long. Long, long, long.

Hearing this reaction from totally anonymous focus group participant number one, I had an acute experience of body horror, imagining my long breasts animated like a Looney Tunes cartoon extending from my chest like headlight beams. Further and further, wrapping twice around the circumference of the earth. When I was studying film in college, I read a book by the film theorist Marianne Duan about femme fatales. She wrote,

If the femme fatale over represents the body, it's because she's attributed with a body which is itself given agency, independently of consciousness. In a sense, she has power despite herself. Walking around town with brought up boobs, I wasn't sure how to harness their power. In a tank top, they were enormous and felt like a malevolent parasite. Sentient puppets affixed to my body with their own thing going on.

I felt, on some level, slightly unreal, like I was looking at myself from the outside, watching myself like a character in a movie. What was her story? Truth be told, it seemed less like the intrepid exploits of a woman in stilettos fighting the power, and more like the tale of a sturdy lass working the barley fields, turning butter. Not exactly what I was going for.

When my dad told me the story of making the Aaron look, he'd said the hard part was making her feel real. And not just to the people watching the movie, but to Julia herself. Now I also had to create an Aaron Brogovich that was true to her, but also that Julia Roberts could perform, something that she a skin that she felt comfortable in also

I went back to the interviews with Julia and I felt like I could kind of hear what my dad was talking about. That Julia had to find a place between the real Erin and the real her. and get used to it. Your costume. I know everyone's talking about the the cleavage thing and all that. But uh you know the costumes now how m how fun for you uh to go into wardrobe every day and find out what you're gonna wear And what kind of comments were you getting from the crew?

Ha uh fun. I don't know, you know, a great there was a great sense of intrigue. I would walk in and kind of look at my bed every morning and go, hm, that's an approach. But then I got used to it after a while. Everybody got used to it. I wondered what that process was like for Julia. What had inhabiting that skin actually felt like? How had she done it?

I'm a journalist. I could just ask her. So I called her agency. Thank you for calling CIA. How can I help? Hi. I got in touch with an assistant. I'm an audio producer. Great. Okay. Can do. What is your email? Wonderful. Thank you so much. Bye. And then after weeks of attempting various communiques over email with an oroboros of ages. Assistant agents, costume designer, Jeffrey Curland and he's worked with Julia Roberts a few times.

I gave up. Of course Julia Roberts wasn't gonna call me back. Maybe, at long last, she was over talking about the boobs. I had been foiled in my quest, and I was sitting in my dejection when it hit me. What I really wanted to know wasn't what it felt like to be an actor, to put on a bra that turned me into another person. It was how to inhabit my own actual body. The Aaron Aura I was seeking didn't start with Julia Roberts. She, too, was copying someone.

I realized that I was calling the wrong Aaron.

And this time. When I called, the right errand picked up. Hi, it's nice to meet you. You too. Thank you so much for doing this. Sure. My pleasure. This is Aaron Brokovich, the real Aaron Brokovich, talking to me on Zoom. Her hair is swept up into a voluminous updo, huge, glittering smile, jangly bracelets, a black v neck top. She's sixty five and tanned, coming to me from what looks like a new agey home office, stone floors, leather furniture, a Buddha head next to her desk.

It kind of tripped me out to see the real Erin. When I pictured Erin Brockovich, I'd pictured Julia Roberts. Now here was this completely different woman. Aaron was, of course, very familiar with this confusion. She told me she was maybe more surprised than anyone when Julia Roberts was chosen to play her. I'm fun. I'm crazy. I'm that girl from Kansas. Cute, fun. I'm not statuesque.

I w I was thinking more along the lines of like, maybe Goldie Han. And I wonder when you saw her in her costume, what did you think? Seeing a weird mirror version of yourself. Well, when I first met her on set, I was getting hair and makeup done. Erin was there to shoot a cameo part in the movie. And I saw her in the mirror come in and she went through a door to the right. And she didn't know I was gonna be there.

So she came back out and walked behind my chair. I'm watching this in a mirror. And she stopped after she passed the chair and she turned around. And she's looking at me and I'm looking up, she goes, Hi, I I'm Julie. I go. Hi, I'm Erin and she goes, Oh, I'm so embarrassed. I don't even have my boobs in yet. So that actually happened. Then for the actual cameo.

The director, Steven Soderbergh, thought it would be fun to play into this mirror image thing. He'd asked Erin to play a diner waitress serving Julia Roberts as Aaron Brockovich. I'm like, yeah, no, I don't want to do this. He goes you're gonna do it. You'll be sorry if you don't. Um I don't always a light to be seen. I've been that way forever. So generally if I see a camera, I will turn.

My dad had stitched a name tag onto Aaron's diner waitress costume. I don't know what possessed him to do this. It feels almost diabolical, but it read Julia. It was weird because I'm Julia. Talking to Julia who's Aaron, it was like an out-of-body experience. In the bright lights of the movie diner, caught in a cameo she didn't want to be in, Erin experienced a split.

between herself and the person that the world would come to see as her. When you saw the costumes, when you saw the movie, did you feel like it was accurate? Do you feel like it It made sense. It felt good to me. The style felt good to me. It felt true to me. And it wasn't always one thing. I'm very eclectic with that. I was kind of surprised to hear how blase Aaron was about seeing what I considered to be the most iconic set of outfits in movie history.

I had this sense that Erin was really particular about what she wore, and that the costumes reflected that. But she told me that back in Hinckley that hadn't been true at all. I wasn't focused on outfits or wardrobes. You know, I'm very comfortable. In heels. I just am. Um I have a high arch. I got a tight calf, and so I am comfortable that way. Now, in many, many, many instances out in Hinckley, it is very hot. Hot is a human blow dryer. So the less I had on, the more comfortable I was.

I wasn't in the courtroom. I'm not the attorney. I was a person out there that was attached to the people, to the environment, and that's where I was. I was collecting hazardous waste. I was just comfortable in my shoes, but I would generally wear short shorts. The cleavage thing I get, the Brawl kind of conversation surprised me because

There would be many days out there. Actually, I didn't have on a bra. Uh, it's not like I was wearing see-through shirts, but I'd have on, you know, a t-shirt, a black t-shirt, short sleeved with shorts because I was hot.

It sounded like the way Erin dressed had always been natural to her. She wore what she liked, what worked. But she told me that after the movie, things started to change. You gotta remember I was 31 years old, 32 years old, when I began my work in Hinckley, I was pretty overwhelmed. I felt a shift of You're trying to now make a person into this idea of what you think somebody who's had a film made about them is supposed to look like, walk, talk, and dress and behave.

Not to be totally insane, but it sounds like Erin is talking about a version of the same thing that I'm experiencing. A slightly more dramatic situation than simply exiting young adulthood, obviously. But this idea of feeling like the person you were in. not exactly working anymore. You're suddenly more conscious of the way the world is seeing. Trying to look like a more polished version of yourself, trying to dress for the role you're supposed to be playing.

Um, okay, maybe I should cover up a little more, or I became more conscious. Well, maybe my skirt is too short, things like that started. Change for me. But then Erin told me about when she first saw the movie. I remember when I saw the film for the first time. I think it was a matinee. I went by myself and it was packed.

And I sat in the back of the room, nobody knew who I was, and to this day, half the world, you know, if they saw me, they're like, they have no idea who I am. I mean, I'm another person in life. I was amazed at the standing ovation in the theater, but I was listening to people. I was at the back against the wall and their comments. Oh my God, do you think she really did that? And then someone going, I think she really did. It's based on a true story.

I found this really moving, the idea that Erin walked into a movie theater alone, watched her life story play out, and could appreciate it from afar. Sit in the back row, sort of sanguine, and watch the people watch her. In my own life, I'm always trying to figure out if it looks right, if it is right, if it's right for right now. I'm rarely just sitting back watching the show. I'll tell you one thing. I I can now with more confidence than I ever had back then because so much was coming at me.

I'm absolutely will not ever feel bad about who I was and how I is about the result I got and the lives that it changed. I've learned from my dad that in costume design, every single thing on the screen has an intention behind it. You can close read a button if you want to. It'll provide some hidden piece of the story.

After a lifetime of watching my dad do his job, I think hard about what I wear, what story it's telling about me. Correct me if I'm wrong. I've always seen you know, your presentation, who you are, the way you dress, the way that you act is very authentic to you. But do you ever feel like you get up in the morning and you're like, I just don't want to be Jeffrey Carlin today. I just don't want to do all of this. Yeah. That's interesting you should say that.

Because I I I ha I do. I have those days when I wake up and I do I wanna put all the rings on? Do I wanna put the jewelry on? Do I wanna do I just don't. Yeah,'cause there are dates and I go, fuck, I don't I'm just tired. I don't want to slip all this stuff all over the place. Nobody I know wears clothes as well as my dad does. If he's wearing it, it works. And he moves with confidence, like he's delighting in being and looking exactly himself.

In this way, my dad actually reminds me a lot of Aaron, the real one. Yeah. But m most of the time it's such a natural thing for me to do just wake up and put it on. Yeah, and I like the choice. I can or I can't. I don't have to. Like if I don't put anything out and I come to work. It is always at least six people. They just want to know where it is. something or rather, like, where is it? That's good. If that makes them smile, it makes me smile too.

I always thought I'd work in the movies like my dad. But I don't. I'm a radio journalist in far west Texas. The light is golden. The wind is dry. In my job, I knock on strangers' doors to ask them about their lives, sometimes even about their water. I sit with them on their couches, at their kitchen tables, follow them out screen doors to Yards, crackling with dry heat. I have a big head of curly blonde hair. I have been known to throw on a heel and climb up.

It occurs to me that if you sat in the lamp, photo of the theater, if you squinted, it might look a little familiar. When my dad and I finish our interview, he puts his rings back on. One at a time. Uh the placing of the jewelry uh ritual is as old as time itself. It's very elegant. Aren't you shocked that I know exactly where to put Yes. That was bananas right. I know. That's yours, yes. You can go downstairs. Fabulous.

This story was reported, written, and produced by Zoe Curland, edited by Liza Yeager, Jackson Roach, Omar Etman, and Annie Rosenthal. Sound design and additional production by Liza Yeager. This is just one of the articles in Signal Hill, which is a fantastic audio magazine. The New Yorker actually called them one of the best podcasts of 2025, along with articles of interest. I couldn't agree with them more. Check it out at signalhill.fm and I'll see you soon with more regular episodes.