Donalda McGeachy shares how she, at age 101, is still learning to overcome new challenges. Then Max talks with Lois Lowry about how writing books for young adults has helped her prepare for her own death.
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transcription
[PRE-ROLL]
[OPENING MONTAGE]
Madeleine Albright: I know this program is 70 Over 70, but I really wish I were younger. I wish I was 70…but, I am ready!
[THEME MUSIC STARTS]
William: I’m 72 years old.
Paula: I’m 75, miraculously enough.
Sandy: I am 83 years old.
Betty: I am 88 years old.
James: You know, I’m here at 92.
Lucia: I’ll be 94 in May.
Donalda: I’m 101 years old.
Donalda McGeachy: I'm Donalda McGeachy, I'm 101 years old, and I live in Toronto, Canada.
[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]
Donalda: At 101, I have found Bridge extremely helpful for me. Number one for me is the sociability, but the second is the challenge.
[FADE IN MUSIC]
Donalda: As I aged, I've found that it was harder and harder to keep up friendships because all the-the friends of my own age were dying, but I found that playing bridge you always have different people for opponents, so you-you're always meeting new people and making new friends, really. I'm the oldest of anybody that I play with, basically they're probably in their 70s and 80s. And I feel that I am the oldest, but it doesn't make any difference. We're all the same at the bridge table.
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
Donalda: I-I also play bridge because every hand challenges you. It keeps you alive and motivated and you have many things to think about. You have many rules and many ways of playing a hand. And you don't have a perfect answer to every hand, but every challenge has to be answered. But it just takes experience and some time to work and understand what the game is about. And that's important.
[MUSIC ENDS]
Donalda: Well I think the thing is our life is just a matter of challenges in this world. The depression was terrible. The drought in Saskatchewan was terrible, and the Second World War was five years, and aging is just another challenge. Everybody in their 80s and 90s pretty well has a problem with memory. We start losing names or we start losing words. But, I just play bridge and feel that I live day by day and handle whatever comes up.
[THEME MUSIC FADES IN]
Donalda: The challenges and the pleasures and recognition of we have to live with what is. That's the game [laughs].
Max Linsky: That was Donalda MacGeachy, and from Pineapple Street Studios, this is 70 Over 70, a show about making the most of the time we have left. I'm Max Linsky.
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
Max: My guest this week is Lois Lowry.
Lois is the author of more than 40 books for adults and kids. And she’s best known for The Giver, her 1993 young adult novel about a world in which people never experience pain, suffering or loss.
[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]
Max: But in exchange for that comfort, they miss out on art, culture, emotions — the hard but beautiful parts of life.
The book is surprisingly dark and direct. It's about memory loss and the burden of growing up. And it’s about death, which comes up again and again in Lois's work. Nearly 30 years later, she still hears from a reader almost every day about what The Giver has meant to them.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Max: I wanted to understand how she can talk to young people about topics that so many of us spend our lives avoiding. And I wanted to know how writing about death for so long has prepared her for this stage of her life.
Lois Lowry is 84 years old.
INTERVIEW
Max: Lois Lowry, thank you so much for doing this.
Lois Lowry: My pleasure.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Max: I have to tell you, I was so excited to talk to you because The Giver is like an all time favorite, although I hadn't read it in probably, I don't know, 20 years. And I thought I had it figured out, you know what I mean? [Lois laughs] Like, I thought--I thought I had it all-all sorted it out and then I reread it this week and it's hard to say that the book was different, but my experience of it was completely different.
Lois: Of course! Yeah, and much as I'd like to tell you, you're unique and I'm sure you are in many ways, I do have to tell you that I hear this again and again from people who, as adults or even old adults, uh, have read that book and thought, oh, my goodness, this isn't what I read when I was 13.
Max: Well, you don't-you don't have to worry about that. I'm actually a completely generic person. But what is the-the thing that people usually tell you about what's changed?
Lois: I think when people are adults, meaning they're no longer kids in school, they see more and more now parallels to their world today, the world of politics. I don't think kids get that so much. Nor do they need to. That will come to them soon enough. But, uh, you know, adults read it as dystopian and many adults, myself included, feel as if they're now living in a somewhat dystopian world. So I think that's, uh, that's the change.
Max: Did you feel that way when you wrote it, that you were living in a somewhat dystopian world?
Lois: I don't think so. Its very--I'm trying to think when I wrote it, you said you read it 20 some years ago. It was published, I believe, in 1994. If it was published in ‘94, I wrote it in ‘93. OK, in ‘93 we had just concluded what we now have to sadly refer to as the first Gulf War which took place in 1991. Not many people would be able to tell you off the top of their head what year was the first Gulf War, but I can do that because I remember it very well, because I had a son who was a fighter pilot and who was over there in the Mideast in that F15 during the first Gulf War. And my son had survived that experience, but I was very aware of how he might not have. He lost friends in that war. But anyway, now I'd forgotten what you had asked me. Was I thinking about dystopia? I was thinking about all the things that in my world at that time were troubling. I lived in Boston at the time on Beacon Hill. I could look out my window and see homeless people and I actually was making a list of things that trouble me. I don't know if I called it that, but that's what it was. And I wrote homeless people, war-- because we'd just been through one-- poverty, crime, traffic. It was a long, long list. And then I tried to create a world in which none of those things existed. But, uh, when I sat down to write that book I did not start out to write about a dystopia. What actually had captured my interest and became the propelling force of that book, at its outset, was the whole concept of human memory.
Max: Yeah.
Lois: And that's because my father at the time was 88. Although he did not, to my awareness, have Alzheimer's, he was losing bits of his memory. And when I went to visit him one time, he was in an assisted living place. I became aware for the first time that he didn't remember my sister. I had been the second child. I had a sister three years older. I had an album with me, visiting my father, and there was a picture of me, probably two years old, with my five year old sister, and he looked puzzled. And then he said, “That's your sister. I can't remember her name.” So I told him her name, which was Helen, and he said, “Whatever happened to her?” And I had to tell him, “she died, Dad”...because he had forgotten that. And so when I began to think as I was driving my rental car back to the airport to go home, what if there were a way we could just obliterate the kinds of memories that make people sad or scared? And that was the start of that book.
Max: What was that moment like for you when he didn't remember?
Lois: It was shocking, I think. And then I was very sad for him. On the other hand, how comfortable he was that he had forgotten the most painful event of his life, the death of his first child. It was puzzling. It made me think a whole lot and that's always a good thing. But it was a painful kind of awareness.
Max: I can imagine and I think part of the reason I'm asking is I'm interested in the moment where a moment that painful turns into art, you know. Like most people don't have the next turn of the wheel, where in the, uh, rental car going back to the airport, you start thinking about a book idea.
Lois: Oh, well, I think that's the way a writer thinks, at least I do. I shouldn't try to speak for others, but everything or anything can be a trigger. And particularly if you begin your thought with, well, what if, you know, this has happened, but, geez, what if this had happened or this were possible? And that's what propels a story along. So for me, thinking in that way might be a way of averting the sadness of a moment. The fact that I can morph it into something creative is very satisfying.
Max: When you were thinking in the rental car about that story, was it, like um, was it utopian, the idea that there would be this place where you wouldn't have to think about things that were hard?
Lois: It was vaguely utopian, but for me at least, a story or a novel always has to begin with the characters. So once I had that vaguely utopian thought, my next and more important thought was who am I going to put into this place? Most often, because I'm female, it's a girl. And this particular time--and now I'm wondering, was that because I had been with my father...I don't know--but this particular time it was a boy who appeared to me. And that's why the main character in that book was a boy. What most captured me was the creation of and then the following of, uh, the boy.
Max: I want to talk a little bit about, um, how your books have been received in the world. Your books, particularly The Giver, are among the most banned books in American history. Has your feeling about that-has that changed over time?
Lois: What has happened over the years is that it's become very tame now in contrast to books that have much more controversial material, which The Giver doesn't have. I didn't like having to deal with it. It was a losing battle to try to argue, and it didn't serve any purpose. And it never worked. People had their minds made up. You know, schools, librarians in particular, sometimes during-there is a week in their calendar called Banned Books Week. And so kids learn about book banning and then they sometimes write me letters. And I point out to them that the book The Giver, which is the one they most write about when they're talking about censorship, is a world where there are no books. And it's been because good hearted people wanted to protect their children, which is always the case. And so at some time prior to the time of The Giver somebody would have said, you know what, we don't have wars anymore, so let's get rid of all the books about war so our kids don't have to read about that. And a lot of books would disappear and then somebody would say hey don't have cancer anymore, a lot of books would disappear. And eventually this boy Jonas lives in a world where there are no books. He also lives in a world where there's no art and no music. So it's a world that's been deprived because people have tried so hard to protect their children and in doing so have done enormous damage.
Max: And they're protecting themselves.
Lois: I think they are. Yeah, yeah.
Max: Or they're trying to.
Lois: Yeah.
Max: So it's been 20 something years since I read that book. It's also been 20 something years since you wrote that book. Do you have a different relationship to it now?
Lois: Oh, I do, for many different reasons. One is that it has become so wildly popular that I still have to deal with it every single day.
Max: Like, for example, right now.
Lois: Well, okay, right now [Max laughs]. Yeah, that's true. But earlier on this same day, I was answering an email from a teacher in Brazil about The Giver. Sometimes it's a--
Max: Do you resent it at all? Having to talk about it?
Lois: No, I don't know. I-I'm very honored by it. What I love most really is a letter from a child, and of course, nowadays it's always an email who has been deeply affected by something I've written in a way that will change or that the child thinks will change his or her life. That's what makes my heart beat a little bit. The feeling that gives me that I'm not obsolete, that I haven't outlived my purpose. But, uh, I resent it when it is a school assignment and when a kid emails me and says, “please list all the similes and metaphors in The Giver” [Max laughs]. I need this by Thursday.
Max: Right. Here's a list of 15 questions, could you fill this out so I can put them into my paper.
Lois: I get those. Yeah. Yeah, but most of them I'm very touched by and so I spend a lot of time answering and I sometimes enter into lengthy relationships with these people because of that book.
Max: And are you still learning things about the book from those conversations, or is your view of it fixed?
Lois: You know, I have not gone back and reread it probably in years. I feel as if I've reread it because I hear so often about it, but I have not actually sat down and reread every page. But I do think I would now relate more to perhaps the old man in the book. Not that when I wrote it, I didn't relate to a 12 year old, but maybe now I feel more like the old guy [Max laughs] hoping to impart some wisdom...or not [both laugh].
Max: Hearing you say that makes sense to me in part because, you know, the book is about loss in so many ways.
Lois: Yeah.
Max: And I think talking to children about loss is really, really hard and I guess maybe you make it look easy, but I-I wonder how you think about that. How do you approach talking to kids about things that are hard in general, but-but about loss in particular?
Lois Lowry: I one time I got a letter, a very thoughtful letter from a parent and my recollection is that it was from a father. Most often those who write on behalf of their kids tend to be mothers, but this was a father and he was concerned about a book I had written long ago, long before I wrote The Giver. And it dealt with some painful things. And his child, as I recall, was eight years old. And he was concerned that his child was reading this troubling book. And when I replied to him, I didn't I don't have the letter here, I'm just trying to remember, but I would’ve said that reading books for kids, perhaps for adults as well, but we don't have as much to look forward to, to be aware of, to guard against, as kids do with a long life ahead of them. And books are a way that they can rehearse what their reaction will be to things.
Max: Hm, to think of it as practice-- preparation.
Lois Lowry: Yeah, preparation is a better word than practice, I think. Practice seems kind of routine.
Max: Yeah, practice is kind of boring. Yeah.
Lois: Like, uh, tossing your football. But yes, rehearsal and-and preparation, because we're all going to face terrible things in our lives. And it's also a way of consolation. It's a way of having company in those sad times. I think the book often provides company for what can be very lonely journeys, even for the most gregarious kids [yeah] who never shut up and have a pack of friends and they all dress alike and talk alike. Inside, they're very lonely often, particularly in regard to, uh, momentous things. And a book can provide that kind of needed companionship, I think.
Max: Were you a gregarious kid?
Lois: No, I was-I was a loner. I still am. But interestingly, uh, I have always remembered my childhood as me, the introvert, on the sidelines watching, very observant, watching everything take place, interested in everything, but not a participant. And one time, I went to visit a cousin who lived in Philadelphia and she had some old home movies [Max laughs] and she got them out. And there I was, age eight, perhaps at a birthday party. And I was being just as raucous and gregarious and obnoxious as every other kid there and yet if you had asked me my memory of that birthday party I would have said I sat in the corner and watched. So memory is elusive, I think, and not always accurate.
Max: What do you make of that? What do you make of that gap between the way that you would have remembered it and what you saw on video?
Lois: Hmm, interesting question. Well, I guess I think both things are accurate, but the video--you say video-- it was actually a home movie, 32 millimeter thing and a projector. It was that long ago. But I think it's the tape, the video, or the movie that's shallow and superficial. And the memory is, if not more accurate, at least, uh, more eloquent and more felt.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Max: I'm so glad I didn't, uh, try and end your sentence for you there, because I never would have come up with eloquent. [Lois laughs]
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[[MIDROLL]]
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Max: Helping kids rehearse for difficult moments, or particularly for death, has it changed the way that you process loss yourself? Is it rehearsal for you as well?
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Lois: It probably is. I have just completed a book which is not yet published.
Max: Congratulations!
Lois: Oh, thank you. It deals with two separate characters, both young, one a 13 year old girl, one a 16 year old boy, and both of them die. And so I was going over today, the copy edited manuscript and rereading the way I had written each death because it seemed, of course, such an important element in the book that I wanted it to be exactly right. And I realized, as you asked the question, that in both cases they were accompanied at the end of their lives, each of these children. And that seemed important to me in the writing of it. And it was confirmed in my rereading of it that they were not alone. I think dying alone is probably the most, uh, tragic of circumstances. And of course, that has happened in this past year to so many people. My husband, whom I call my husband, though we're not married, but he had covid a year ago and he was 10 weeks in the hospital...
Max: Wow.
Lois: And I could not visit him. I would talk to him on the phone and sometimes it was hard to understand him because of drugs, you know, the drugs he'd been given. And it was such a feeling of horrible separation. Now, again-- see I always forget the question because I start meandering and wandering.
Max: You're doing fine. You're doing absolutely fine. Can I ask you about those-those 10 weeks?
Lois: Sure. Um, anything specific?
Max: I mean, well, in that-that amount of time in the hospital, I mean, he must have been very close to dying.
Lois: He says...he said he was within two days of calling it quits. And when I said, what do you mean by that? He said he was going to ask for hospice to take over and he was going to stop eating and drinking so that he would die. He was not on a ventilator, so he was breathing okay, but he was very, very ill. And so he had come to terms with it that the end was approaching. And it turned out not to be fortunately. But, uh, he...yeah, it was something we both were thinking about at that time.
Max: Yeah, did he talk to you about that at the time?
Lois: I think he referred to it. Talking was very difficult for him, so we couldn't--even though we could talk on the phone, it was very difficult. So our conversations were not profound. They were more like, have you had breakfast yet [both laugh], you know. So, no, we didn't have an opportunity to talk in depth about that, although had the circumstances been different, we would have been able to. And we have since and perhaps we had before then, I don't know, ‘cause we had each lost spouses and we have each lost a child. So-so certainly death had been part of our existence. The acknowledgment of it, the dealing with it. So it was not a subject that we veered away from.
Max: Right. What was it like for you is such a ridiculous question, but as someone who has had spouses die and a child die and has written about death in the way that you have, like…. I don't know. Was there anything about your own response to the idea that he might die that surprised you?
Lois: I don't think so. I think, but in part that's because I-I'm now 84. So I was 83 when this was happening last summer. I had been-I'd been there before.
Max: You-you'd rehearsed?
Lois: I'd rehearsed. Yeah. And not only through my own experience, but again through books that I had read, I think.
Max: Were you scared?
Lois: No, I don't think I was. I was sad. I mean we all know our lives our going to end, but in that past year, and still now, the circumstances of the endings are-are not what we expected. I mean, we all have a kind of, I suppose, a romantic idea of, oh, you know, I'll be lying on my bed and maybe there'll be a candle lighted and someone will sing to me. I don't know. Maybe [laughs] There was a time when Yo-Yo Ma was a neighbor of mine. I-I..he could come in and play the Bach cello suites as I breathe my last --
Max: Yeah, you prepaid, so he'd come over.
Lois: [laughs] But of course it doesn't happen that way. And when Howard last year was close to it, it was not happening that way. When my son died, it was a plane crash. You know, no way you can prepare for that. And so I think we create a fantasy about it and-and it very rarely takes that form.
Max: Do you find yourself thinking about that- that moment for yourself? Did you find yourself thinking about Yo-Yo Ma coming over?
Lois Lowry: [laughs] If I think about dying--and I actually don't terribly often because I'm extremely healthy at the moment, thank goodness-- I guess it would be only with the hope that it wouldn't be in some terrible nursing home or that it would be in the kind of circumstances that the way one'- one would wish one's life to end, maybe with your kids there holding your hand or even though it's not Yo-Yo Ma, they could they could play the the Brahms cello concerto for me. Uh, so it's a kind of romantic thinking, if I do any thinking about it or on the opposite end of the spectrum, the kind of practical thinking that one at my age has to do, which is have I reminded my son where the papers are with the will and, you know [laughs], all of that stuff, should I give my passwords to my kids so they can get into my computer? All of that. Practicalities.
Max: Have you had those conversations with your kids?
Lois: Yeah, yeah. My kids know my wishes for my-my...my death, not for my death, but what to do with my body and that kind of thing. Yeah, so I have no problem talking with my kids about that.
Max: Mm hmm.
Lois: My kids were readers and I think they read the kind of literature that gave them the kind of awareness that you're speaking of. And I can remember an anecdote. My son Ben, who was a lawyer and sold his law firm and became a baseball umpire.
Max: [laughs] Amazing.
Lois: So he’s interesting guy. Yeah. But he was 7 years old and he had a pet rabbit and, uh, he had taken his rabbit out of its cage and was playing with it in the front yard. And a neighborhood dog, inappropriately named Pal, came dashing over and grabbed the rabbit. Ben rescued the rabbit from the dog, but he came in the kitchen and the rabbit was in his arms and it was clearly not going to make it and I told him that. I said it looked to me as if Barney, the rabbit's name, Barney Bunny, was going to die. And he nodded and he left the room and I heard him go upstairs carrying his rabbit. And I went up after a while and looked and he was lying on his bed with his bunny. And he had the blankets around the chin of the bunny and his ears spread out on the pillow. And Barney died there with him lying beside it. And later he told me that the reason he had taken Barney upstairs in that way is because--you can picture a seven year old saying this. It's because of page--and I've forgotten the page number, so I'll make one up-- page 107 in Charlotte's Web. And I went and got the book and we looked up the page together. He said, it's the saddest sentence I ever read. And the sentence was “no one was with her when she died”.
Max: Wow.
Lois: And for a seven year old to understand the profound sadness of that, speaks to the genius of E.B. White, who wrote the book. And for it to have affected a little boy so that he-he lay down beside his rabbit while it died and then later, I should add, of course, had a burial ceremony and put up a little cross made of popsicle sticks which said on it, here lies Barney Bunny, lover of carrots and beloved friend of Benjamin Lowry [Max laughs]. But anyway, back to the topic of books, uh, kids-kids do retain that.
Max: Lois, you've brought up dying alone several times already in this conversation, and, uh, I hope it's OK to ask you about this, you can tell me that it's not. But in your memoir, you wrote about your son, Gray, the pilot who died, and his last words, which were on the radio, were to...
Lois: Oh, yes, I can tell you what the--yes
Max: Yeah yeah. Go ahead.
Lois: H- he was flying--and I only know this because in the aftermath of that, two officers came to my house with stacks of papers of the results of the investigation of his death, and they had the recording of his voice on the--I started to say the car radio, but you know what I mean. In the microphone in the plane to the control tower. He was flying in formation with another pilot. And I think it was 10 or 12 seconds before his plane crashed and he died, he knew that that was about to happen. And he said to the other pilot, you're on your own. Now, pilots have explained to me that that wasn't him making a profound philosophical statement. It was logistic. The other pilot was supposed to do exactly what he did was following him. And so we had to release the pilot from that obligation because he knew his plane was going down. But I have, of course, often thought of those words because they mean so much more than don't crash with me. And-and the fact I wrote about in that book was essentially where we'r-we’re all on our own.
Max: Yeah.
Lois: But we're surrounded or we surround ourselves, thank goodness, with people we love and care about and in our help to the end. Although I will say and this is veering into a different topic, but semi-related, at my age, I'm 84 and Howard is 88 and we are finding now, as everybody our age does, that our friends are starting to die. And just within the past couple days, I entered into an email correspondence with a stranger who wrote to me, a writer, and she's 32 years old, but we found that we have profound things in common. When I wrote to her last, I said, I'm glad I found you as a friend. And I said to Howard after that, we need to get young friends [Max laughs] because we don't want to be the last guys standing.
Max: Need to find more people to connect to.
Lois: Yeah. Of course I value being on my own. I told you already that I'm an introvert. I didn't mind being quarantined because I like being alone. I minded that my husband was in the hospital, but-but I have no trouble being alone at my desk. I can't think of any place I'd rather be. I'm sure there are people who have a lot more problem with that than I do. So I'm fortunate that way. But I think it's important also that I did include the connectedness because that's been an important part of my life, the people with whom I've surrounded myself.
Max: And now those people are starting to die.
Lois: Some of them are. The only reason I mention it is because within the past couple of months, we've lost several good, good friends. And they've- they've been in their 80s. So it's not a tragedy, but it's a loss. It's more of a loss to us than to them. I think they've all of them lived fruitful, productive, successful lives. And so to have them gone leaves a hole in my life, but it's it's it's the part of the way things are. You can't change that.
Max: And that's the way you would feel about dying yourself.
Lois: I hope I would leave a hole in some people's lives [both laugh].
Max: Well, all of the young friends that you will have made, you know.
Lois: Well, working on that. Working on that. Yeah. Plus, I have grandchildren and maybe eventually I'll have great grandchildren and, uh, I hope and assume they will miss me. I'm not sure I've been a source of great wisdom to them.
Max: I find that hard to believe.
Lois: Nor will I be a source of great money falling in their laps when they die. Everybody hopes for the mythical rich uncle [Max laughs]. But I think, you know, they've loved me. I've loved them and we'll miss each other.
Max: But it's not a thing you're fearful of.
Lois: No, no, not at all. I'm fearful, as everybody is, of the mechanics of--maybe that's the wrong word. The logistics. You know, you don't want to die in the hands of a bad nursing home attendant, things like that. But you try to ward that off by by preparation, I think.
Max: Do you feel prepared?
Lois: Not entirely, uh, but I'm working on it.
Max: What's left to do?
Lois Lowry: I don't know [laughs], I-you know, there are probably parts of that that you can't entirely prepare for. You know, some of it is going to be unexpected. And I guess what you have to do is make yourself smart enough and wise enough to deal with the unexpected.
Max: Well, I can ask you these, um, existential questions about death all day, but I guess my last question is just like. What's your relationship to your own memory now? Having had memory play such a complete and total role in your work and in your life, like...
Lois: I think if there's one thing I'm frightened of as I get older, it is loss of memory. So far, even though while having this conversation, I have told you I can't remember what question you asked me that does not mean my short term memory is gone. It just means I have too many thoughts going on at the time. But so far, my memory is intact. My creativity is intact enough. And if those things continue, of course, I hope that my physical health doesn't fail, but it's my mind and my creativity that I don't want to lose. And if that-that would be the thing I fear that loss.
Max: One of the things that's so scary about it with memory is that if you- if you lose it, you don't know that you've lost it, right?
Lois: I think from observation, there is a period of time when you do know and that's got to be the worst because you know-you know what you've lost and you know what's coming and you're caught there and you can't-can't get out of that.
Max: The things you can't rehearse for.
Lois: Yeah, yeah. So that's what I fear most.
Max: Hm.
Lois: Now, do you do this with all your interviews, going to death?
Max: Uh, I try to. Not everyone is as comfortable talking about it, though.
Lois: Uh huh, yeah.
Max: I’m um...I’ve done no preparation. Is my-is my-is my hunch. I’m not at all prepared.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Lois: Well, neither am I. So it makes for a good conversation.
CREDITS
Max: 70 Over 70 is a production of Pineapple Street Studios and produced by Jess Hackel.
Our associate producer is Janelle Anderson. Our editors are Maddy Sprung-Keyser and Joel Lovell. Research and additional reporting by Charley Locke.
Our mixer is Elliott Adler, and Jenna Weiss-Berman and I are the executive producers.
The theme song is Like a Dream, by Francis and the Lights, and the music you’re listening to right now is by Beverly Glenn Copeland who is 77 years old. Original music by Terence Bernardo. Additional music by Noble Kids, and music licensing by Dan Knishkowy.
Our cover art is by Maria Kalman, who’s 72 and our episode art is by Lynn Staley, she’s 73 and also my mom.
Thank you, Donalda Mcgeachy. And thank you, Lois Lowry.
I'm Max Linsky. Thanks for listening!
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