The Girlfriends S6/E7: Which Side Are You On?

0:11Speaker 1:Whispers. That's how it starts. They're being exchanged between a few American airline stewardesses in galleys and operation rooms across the country. The small group of conspirators are murmuring about a rebellion. A coup d'etat of sorts. As those grumblings get louder, the stewardesses realize they need to call a meeting. In secret. Duh.

0:42Speaker 2:Only by invitation would you be going.

0:45Speaker 1:American Airlines stewardess Pat Gibbs is tapped on the shoulder by one of the women. A rebel named Carol.

0:53Speaker 2:And she said, you know, they really need you. You have the experience now. You know enough that you can help.

1:04Speaker 1:After all, it's the mid-1970s, and Pat has been working for AA for more than a decade. For the majority of that time, she's been involved in the union. She knows the job backwards and forwards, and she knows the machinations of upper management pretty well, too. Pat boards an early flight from her base in Dallas to attend the clandestine meeting in Los Angeles.

1:33Speaker 2:We had to do it in this person's apartment. I walked in and sat down and kind of looked around. They had a sign-in sheet that we were doing, and everybody said, if you want to put your home number, go ahead. If you don't want to, don't.

1:52Speaker 1:The women are being cagey about recording their attendance because they've gathered to float a radical idea, something that could have serious ramifications. They're there to discuss leaving their current union, the TWU. The TWU is run by men and encompasses hundreds of thousands of transport workers. But the stewardesses in L.A. announce they want to form a new union.

2:22Speaker 2:A new union run by us.

2:26Speaker 1:How did you react at that moment when you learned what the idea was?

2:30Speaker 2:I thought it was a difficult idea to pull off, but we thought it would change everything for us, that it would give us stronger bargaining power. We were dreaming that we would be able to achieve getting rid of the weight issues, getting rid of these discriminatory policies that the airlines use to control us.

3:01Speaker 1:These dreams are intoxicating for someone like Pat, who'd felt sidelined by the men in the TWU. After they'd let her down in contract negotiations a few years earlier, Pat had figured they'd never truly advocate for what the stewardesses want. She's riding high on just the idea of breaking away from this patriarchal organization. But then reality brings her down to earth.

3:30Speaker 2:I knew what the stakes would be if it didn't happen. We would all be kicked out of the TWU, brought up on like treason for going with another union or thinking about that.

3:46Speaker 1:Just announcing they wanted to form a new union would mean Pat would lose her current union position, something that had become so central to her identity.

3:56Speaker 2:But we felt like with enough power and, you know, enough members to back us on this, it could happen and that we could make significant changes.

4:11Speaker 1:The handful of flight attendants at the meeting spend the day weighing the pros and cons.

4:16Speaker 2:We had enough people there that if we all agreed to do this, we could go back and start recruiting others to join us.

4:32Speaker 1:The conspirators look at each other. Then they take a vote. Hands start popping up like prairie dogs. It's settled. They would try to form.

4:44Speaker 2:A new union.

4:48Speaker 1:And they land on a name for their new group, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, APFA. The word professional isn't in there by accident, by the way. It's a klaxon. These flight attendants have had enough of being treated like temporary, easily replaceable workers. They are professionals, and they want everyone to know it. But there's a crucial obstacle. something they have to do to even hold an election, deciding between founding their new union or sticking with the TWU. They need to get the majority of the American airline stewardesses to declare that they're on their side by signing a card.

5:36Speaker 2:You have to have at least 50% plus one card saying... I want to be in this other union. It says, I hereby authorize the Association of Professional Flight Attendants to be my collective bargaining agent, and I wish to have an election. And you have one year from when you start the organizing. The date on the first card triggers the start date.

6:22Speaker 1:The stewardesses in L.A. take a deep breath. They have one year to convince thousands of their colleagues to dissent against one of the most influential unions in the country.

6:34Speaker 2:Most of the meeting was concentrated on how are we going to pull this off. I'm somebody that is single-minded. If you're going to do it, you have to do it.

6:53Speaker 1:From the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts, this is The Girlfriends, Season 6, Flight or Fight. This is your host speaking, Nell McShane-Wolfhart.

7:05Speaker 2:I've got you.

7:08Speaker 1:I've got you. I've got you. I've got you. I've got you. Episode 7, Which Side Are You On? For decades, Love Field was the main airport servicing the Dallas, Texas area. But in the winter of 1974, a new facility opens its doors. These days, DFW is like most airports. You're surrounded by a cacophony of overhead announcements, Starbucks espresso machines, and children screaming with the pitch and vigor of a boiling kettle. But in the 1970s, this place was all elegance.

8:27Speaker 1:Pat remembers her first impressions.

8:30Speaker 2:The airport was awesome to walk into.

8:34Speaker 1:It was.

8:35Speaker 2:All clean, smelled clean, windows were clean, you could see out, you know, so it was quite impressive.

8:43Speaker 1:The first commercial flight that lands here is greeted by two fire trucks spurting arches of water in a kind of liquid guard of honor. For a stewardess like Pat, the facilities are a definite upgrade.

8:57Speaker 2:You were very happy to be going out of a nice airport and not some rinky-dink little.

9:04Speaker 1:Place Then there's the most futuristic feature, the Air Trans system. These are those computer-operated trains that whisk people from terminal to terminal. These days, yeah, they're whatever. But in the 1970s, you might as well have been boarding a spaceship. And the stations became a campaign ground for Pat and the other stewardesses who wanted the new independent union, APFA.

9:36Speaker 2:We would start in the Air Tran building and we would put like stickers, vote APFA. We'd put them on their columns in the Air Trans.

9:49Speaker 1:This was probably vandalism and definitely against management's wishes.

9:54Speaker 2:We would many times hop on the AirTran when we saw management coming. So they would then have to get on the AirTran and try to catch us. And then we could catch the next AirTran out. It was like a cat and mouse type thing.

10:19Speaker 1:After Pat and her band of sticker-wielding rebels begin spreading the word about APFA, it doesn't take long for the TWU to find out. And after 12 years of working in the union and its subsidiaries, Pat gets a letter. She's been turfed out.

10:36Speaker 2:I didn't care that I had been kicked out because I resigned my membership to begin with when I started working for the other union.

10:47Speaker 3:To be clear.

10:48Speaker 1:Pat broke up with the TWU. They didn't break up with her.

10:52Speaker 2:Exactly.

10:53Speaker 1:Sidebar, if you haven't already overdosed on union acronyms, you're going to get another hit. As you heard in the last episode, the stewardesses were once part of a union called ALSA. That was a subsidiary of the TWU. By this point, ALSA has broken up. And now the American Airlines flight attendants are clustered under a local chapter of the TWU called Local 552. But all you need to know is that Pat and her comrades want to break away from the TWU entirely to make their own independent union that they're in control of. The flip side of being in TWU exile was that Pat was now liberated to fully dedicate herself to promoting the APFA. The clock was ticking, after all. She and the other APFA supporters had just 12 months to get more than 50% of the stewardesses to sign their authorization cards. It's time for the rebels to get creative.

11:57Speaker 2:We set up union headquarters in this area. building that I owned and we had the 1-800 phone there and you could make your recordings. It was like on a tape.

12:13Speaker 1:The APFA stewardesses bought a 1-800 number and sat the phone atop some old boxes in their makeshift office. If you called in, you'd hear a message. I imagine it like Welcome to the APFA Hotline, where we tell you about the various sins of our TWU overlords. Press 1 to hear why they still haven't secured us single hotel rooms on layovers. Do you want to share a room with another stewardess forever? Press 2 to hear why we still have to be so skinny. And 3 if you want to know why the TWU isn't doing a damn thing to help pregnant stewardesses who have been fired.

13:00Speaker 2:We had a yellow sheet that became our union newsletter. There were lots of negative cartoons drawn about the TWU, and we would always depict the males leading that union as cigar-chomping. You know, if you put your mind to who is the most evil-looking person you can think of that's male, you would conjure up these photos and They were very effective.

13:33Speaker 1:It was one of these newsletters that first alerted American airline stewardess Susan French to the idea of an independent union.

13:41Speaker 3:We didn't have the internet then, so you relied on papers. There'd be like papers in your jump seat. When you'd go to flip down your jump seat, there'd be like some campaign flyer.

13:51Speaker 1:The new union catches her attention because, at heart, Susan is a nonconformist.

13:58Speaker 3:I graduated from high school in 1969, which is the same year as Woodstock and the Summer of Soul, Stonewall riots. I consider myself, and I still do, like a true hippie, flower child, anti-Vietnam War protester.

14:18Speaker 1:After seeing the APFA flyer, Susan is intrigued by the idea of a new union for American airline stewardesses like her. She wants to know more. Then she finds out that Pat Gibbs is coming to her base, Chicago.

14:33Speaker 3:I was in one of the hotels by the airport. They had one of those gigantic meeting rooms. It was packed. I don't think we had thousands of members in Chicago, and probably hundreds.

14:50Speaker 2:We had to convince people what we had to gain. So I put together... this slide presentation and it was set to the music of 2001 Space Odyssey.

15:07Speaker 3:There was music and maybe some sort of video and, you know, her standing like Rocky and jumping up and down.

15:15Speaker 1:Like doing sort of like Rocky, like hands above the head, cheering.

15:19Speaker 3:Yeah, she was very dramatic.

15:24Speaker 2:I depicted all these images male unions, the horrible part, how they controlled your union.

15:32Speaker 3:We really needed to be independent. Fuck those guys. They've taken advantage of us forever. And we were never going to get what we needed to make the job into a real career unless, you know, we were in charge. She was really, really impressive. I mean, she was this Little short person, but her personality just boomed throughout that union. I mean, you knew you were dealing with a force. It was like a little mini Winston Churchill.

16:11Speaker 1:With the thundering of Pat's voice matched only by the Space Odyssey timpani, Susan is captivated. This is the union she wants to be a part of. a union run by the stewardesses. Who better to decide their fate than themselves? It won't be easy. But, like the quote misattributed to Winston Churchill, if you're going through hell, keep going. Or, like Rocky said, it ain't about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.

16:48Speaker 3:I remember being really impressed and just thinking, yeah, this is the way to go. I had a sense that the momentum was definitely there. It was just the vibe.

17:01Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.

17:02Speaker 2:Jinx.

17:03Speaker 1:Yes.

17:03Speaker 2:Exactly.

17:05Speaker 1:After Pat's presentation concludes, she wipes the back of her hand over her dewy forehead, and she implores the stewardesses in attendance to join her movement. She tells them, Here are the cards.

17:18Speaker 2:They'll be at the back of the room. Before you leave, be sure you sign one.

17:23Speaker 1:Along with some others, Susan scribbles her name on a card. Then Pat bundles them all together and takes them to APFA's informal headquarters, her apartment.

17:34Speaker 2:We would meet at least once a month. We'd go over the cards, organize them, but we didn't always have all the cards there because the cards would come in to the different bases. So we had to rely on calling our counterparts saying, how many cards did you get today? Oh, well, you know, we got 20 or we got five or we got none.

18:05Speaker 1:As the months roll by, Pat is always preoccupied with the idea that they're not going to get enough cards signed.

18:13Speaker 2:All the time we would be thinking that.

18:19Speaker 1:So, Pat keeps on grinding, returning to Dallas-Fort Worth Airport to canvas. But one day, while proselytizing for the APFA, uniformed police officers approach Pat.

18:36Speaker 2:They were saying I was threatening them if they wouldn't sign a union card.

18:42Speaker 1:Coming up, Pat's in handcuffs. As 1976 turns into 1977, Pat's in full campaign mode, rushing to get enough authorization cards signed, the loud tick of the one-year countdown echoing in her ears. One of the most effective spots to promote the new union? The airport.

19:24Speaker 2:I was at the airport campaigning where the flight attendants would come in and get on the tram to go to the terminal. And we would be in there trying to have cards signed.

19:41Speaker 1:One day, Pat's there, laying out her APFA spiel to the passing flight attendants.

19:47Speaker 2:I was there, you know, talking to them, giving them cards and everything. And then the police came and they said, can we talk to you? There's been a complaint about you threatening people here in the parking lot. with tire chains and crowbars, and they're afraid. So I said, what are you talking about? Do you see any tire chains? We would never do that.

20:26Speaker 1:The police aren't buying it.

20:29Speaker 2:I was the one that was basically taken away to have further questioning about my activities.

20:38Speaker 1:They arrest Pat take her to Irving Police Station, and smush her fingers into black ink to print her. They quizzed Pat on her union campaigning. She says everything she's done is above board.

20:54Speaker 2:I'm sure I got put in the record, but I didn't get thrown in jail.

21:02Speaker 1:It took some time, but the police eventually say Pat's free to go. But she's rattled. These accusations are totally phony.

21:11Speaker 2:That was to try and get us off the airport property by spreading these rumors.

21:17Speaker 1:Who called in the police?

21:19Speaker 2:I don't know, but I think management made the call.

21:24Speaker 1:It could have been management, but it did cross Pat's mind that maybe someone else had called the cops. Someone from the TWU.

21:35Speaker 2:We weren't exactly... All friendly then.

21:39Speaker 1:Right.

21:39Speaker 2:Because it was competing unions.

21:43Speaker 1:Whoever it was, it's clear to Pat that she's under attack. It's starting to feel like there are enemies everywhere.

21:51Speaker 2:We got major pushback from the loyalists to the TWU.

21:56Speaker 1:These are the American Airlines flight attendants who want to stay affiliated to the TWU. Like Brian Haggerty.

22:04Speaker 4:We were against leaving the TWU.

22:07Speaker 1:If you're a perceptive listener, you might be thinking, wait a minute, that's a man.

22:13Speaker 4:It never occurred to me to become a flight attendant before 1972, I would say.

22:20Speaker 1:Indeed, Brian was part of one of the first generations of male flight attendants.

22:25Speaker 4:In 72, I did a couple of trips and I saw a Pan Am flight attendant, a male flight attendant. And I thought, you know, hmm, that's interesting. I never thought that there were male flight attendants.

22:39Speaker 1:A quick note on how Brian became a flight attendant and TWU loyalist. For decades, airlines across the U.S. practically never hired men. That was until... 1967, when a male truck driver from Florida, who had ambitions to serve as an airline steward, sued Pan Ams. He alleged that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the near-total ban on hiring male flight attendants constituted sex discrimination. Eventually, the court sided with the truck driver and compelled the airlines to consider hiring everyone, regardless of gender. And all of a sudden, aboard planes around the U.S., serving coffee and handing out meals were... men. That's how, by the early 1970s, Brian found himself buttoning up his perfectly starched American Airlines uniform.

23:44Speaker 1:With time, Brian eventually became a TWU union rep and even became chairperson in Washington, D.C. He wanted to improve the wages and working conditions for all the flight attendants. But he noted the particular plight of women at the hands of management.

24:00Speaker 4:I felt like they were being horribly mistreated. And it wasn't just some of those obvious things like the weight standards or grooming. It was just the general attitude that these women shouldn't be getting paid as much as they're getting paid, which wasn't much. And we want them out of here before they start getting 30 and ugly and fat.

24:23Speaker 1:Brian thought the TWU would help deliver the flight attendants from the evils of these misogynistic policies. But it was a far from perfect arrangement. To Brian, it seemed like the TWU union leaders, all men, also treated the flight attendants like shit.

24:42Speaker 4:Talking down to them like the cockpit does and like management does. They just didn't treat them like equivalent labor leaders. They talked to the flight attendants like, you gals need to, you know, tow the line and we'll try to get you more money. But then they'd turn around and they'd help the mechanics. They'd help the cabin workers and all the other unions on the property that were predominantly male unions. But when it came to the flight attendants, they fell short.

25:13Speaker 4:They would say, well, we're not going to be fighting the weight standard. That's something that we can't really fight. They fell down a lot.

25:20Speaker 1:It was these shortcomings that had inspired some of the stewardesses, like Pat Gibbs, to try to set up their own union, the APFA. Brian didn't know anything about the campaign until the spring of 1976. That's when he attended a seminar on grievance training in Washington with two other flight attendants, Tommy and Becky. There, he was introduced to two of the APFA rebels.

25:52Speaker 4:So I met them, and then that's when Becky and Tommy said to me, be careful of those two. You're talking to them. You're being friendly with them at lunch. And they are very strong APFA supporters. They're against the TWU. And so that made me more curious to want to know them better and find out why they were so much wanting to desert a large union in order to become a small union.

26:21Speaker 1:Brian decided to hear them out.

26:24Speaker 4:Basically, bad-mouthing the male dominance of the TWU and how they hadn't for years supported the things that we wanted.

26:35Speaker 1:They made compelling points. Brian had seen it himself. But in the end, he sided with the TWU. Why?

26:51Speaker 4:A bigger union was better than a small union because you have a union of 100,000 members that will support you if you have to go out on strike. That's a lot bigger than your 5,000-member union of women. A little tiny union isn't going to be able to do anything. A big union with lots of money and lots of muscle is going to be more effective, and this company only listens to muscle.

27:19Speaker 1:Freaked out by the momentum of the APFA movement, Brian started campaigning against independents. trying to get the American Airlines flight attendants to rip up the authorization cards instead of signing them.

27:32Speaker 4:I could convince the Washington flight attendants because it was a small base and everybody knew me, although there were some senior women there that vehemently disagreed with me. And I said, well, if it was a bigger union, I might agree, but 5,000 flight attendants, they can be replaced in two or three months.

27:49Speaker 1:Brian was worried that if the new union were in place, management would do a cull. a mass firing, and then hire new, more compliant flight attendants.

28:00Speaker 4:The women could, very frankly, be easily replaced. They're not as technically qualified as pilots, say, or a mechanic who has to fix the engines. The flight attendants basically take care of nice things inside the cabin. And the only time their safety issues come to bear is on the rare occasion that there's a crash or a fire or a heart attack or something like that. But most of the time, they just look like cocktail waitresses.

28:28Speaker 1:As people like Brian started their own lobbying, Pat became aware of the growing opposition to her rebel alliance.

28:37Speaker 2:As we progressed in the organizing and as TWU saw that it was taking on legs, that it was probably going to be something they needed to be concerned about, then it stepped up the pressure on everyone. The TWU got the company to allow them to set up a table in the operations area so they could hand out literature and talk to the flight attendants. So I threw a fit about that and I said, hey, if they're in there, we get a table too.

29:23Speaker 1:Pat was facing resistance from the TWU, from management, and from some flight attendants. And then the crusade against Pat takes another form, in flyers distributed to the stewardesses. Susan French remembers one of them. and how they targeted Pat.

29:42Speaker 3:Well, I mean, first of all, she didn't look anything like a flight attendant. She looked real butch. She had real short hair, didn't wear makeup, certainly didn't wear heels. So, yes, people gossiped about her, you know, her sexuality, her butchiness in the flyers.

30:00Speaker 1:Oh, they would mention that in the flyers?

30:03Speaker 3:Yeah, they would like hint things like that.

30:06Speaker 1:The campaign just got personal.

30:10Speaker 3:Flight attendants can be like pretty down and dirty.

30:28Speaker 1:There's a popular saying in Dallas. In Texas, we have two seasons, hot and hotter than hell. One day in 1966, years before the APFA campaign, Pat steps out of the airport and feels her skin scorched by the sun. This day is definitely in the latter category. She winces at the radiating leather of her car seat as she slides in, turns on the motor, and starts driving home.

30:59Speaker 2:It was a 1965 Mustang convertible. And of course, I had the top down. It was in the summer.

31:12Speaker 1:Along the road, Pat sees someone walking and recognizes her. It's another stewardess called Anna. She'd been born in Europe and had been a model in Milwaukee before taking to the skies.

31:26Speaker 2:I had flown with her. Several months before this, I saw her, you know, walking, and I thought, God, it's hotter than hell. Why are you walking? So I pulled over and said, would you like a ride home? And she said, oh, yeah. And so she got in the car, and she had on, like, a real lightweight summer dress, and she had blonde hair and blue eyes, lots of makeup, very attractive hair.

31:58Speaker 1:Pat gives Anna a ride home.

32:00Speaker 2:And she was German. She wanted to know if I wanted a beer. I said, well, okay, I'll try it. And then she said, are you in a relationship with anyone? I said, no. And so she said, would you like to kiss me? And I said, yes, I would.

32:26Speaker 1:Pat and Anna lean toward each other. Pat feels her heart jump.

32:36Speaker 2:It was like, oh, wait a minute. This is opening a door that I probably should have opened a long time ago, although I was still denying it to myself. I did, you know, spend the night there with her. Then I, you know, I said, well, I'd like to see you again. And she said, yeah, that's fine.

33:02Speaker 1:The pair became an item. And they got close. Both of Pat's parents suddenly died within the space of a fortnight. And Anna was Pat's rock. But their relationship was strictly under wraps. After all, it was a time when the American Psychiatric Association still listed homosexuality as a mental disorder.

33:24Speaker 2:People weren't ever openly gay. Now, I mean, that was just like totally taboo. Imagine going back in time and walking in to some of your friends. Oh, by the way, I'm a lesbian. You want to go out? I guarantee you my friends would have said no and don't mention it again. It wasn't acceptable socially.

33:52Speaker 1:Pat especially didn't want it to get out at work. Galley gossip is legendary. Flight attendant rumors? They travel faster than a supersonic jet.

34:02Speaker 2:Having to face your own preferences is very hard when it's in a job that is strictly based on heterosexual sex, which is basically stewardess job. They weren't advertising anything. Hey, if you're a recent lesbian, come here and interview. We've got lots of you.

34:27Speaker 1:No, the airlines were advertising a very particular message.

34:31Speaker 4:The airstrip is brought to you by Braniff International.

34:35Speaker 3:Who believes that even an airline hostess should.

34:39Speaker 1:Look like a girl. Like in this all-time classic from Braniff International... The premise of so many commercials for so many airlines was that male businessmen could ogle the female stewardesses. Literally commodifying heteronormativity. Pat coming out as a lesbian and a stewardess in the 1970s was almost like someone with dog allergies running a pet store. Borderline an oxymoron.

35:07Speaker 2:It was very hard. I did go to a psychiatrist for about a year. and dealt with the issue of my sexuality. And he said, I can't tell you what you need to be. That's up to you. And so I thought, well, maybe I should go out with some guys, figure it out if I really am gay or not. So I started going out with this one guy. We dated for quite a while. And he said, I would really like you to have a longer-term relationship with you. Well, ding, ding, no, that's not going to work for me. The fact that that happened just kind of told me, you aren't straight.

36:00Speaker 2:And I went and told him, you know, we can't get married. We can't have that relationship. I said, because I'm not attracted mentally to men. Physically, it's different than mental. I said, if you don't have a mental connection with the person, what do you have? Well, you just have sex. What's the point? You can have sex with yourself.

36:27Speaker 1:Well, you can't argue with that. By the time the APFA campaign had rolled around in 1976, Pat had broken up with Anna, but settled into her sexuality. She was still private about it at work, though.

36:41Speaker 2:I started realizing that my opposition would use it sort of as blackmail against me.

36:50Speaker 1:And as you heard from Susan French, TWU advocates did weaponize homophobia to undermine the APFA. Not Tommy or Brian, but others would insinuate about her sexuality in propaganda. At the time of the APFA campaign, Susan was married to a man and had had basically no contact with queer life. Then she gets a chance to meet Pat in person with a group of flight attendants at Susan's base, Chicago.

37:25Speaker 3:I thought it was a pretty fun evening. I guess a lot more fun than everybody else thought it was.

37:31Speaker 1:Less fun for Pat, perhaps, because it was at this meeting that Susan asked Pat about the rumors.

37:37Speaker 3:And I do remember like just flat out confronting Pat on the gay thing. And I mean, I didn't mean to be offensive and I didn't realize I was being offensive. But I was like probably that blunt about it.

37:51Speaker 2:I think she was blunter by saying, are you gay?

37:59Speaker 1:Coming up, it's decision time. As the year of campaigning draws to a close, will Pat and the new union get enough stewardesses to sign their cards?

38:13Speaker 2:I was quite nervous. We knew we were running out of time.

38:18Speaker 1:Meanwhile, Pat has to make a decision about coming out at work. And the relationship between Susan and Pat takes a turn. This is a question for both of you. Can you tell us about the moment that your relationship became romantic? That's on the season finale of The Girlfriends, Flight or Fight. The Girlfriends, Flight or Fight is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit novel.audio. This podcast is hosted by me, Nell McShane-Wolfhart. The senior producer and writer is Saskia Collette. Our editor is Joe Meek.

39:05Speaker 1:The assistant producer is Bella Saltiel. Production management from Cherie Houston and Joe Savage. Fact-checking by Fendall Fulton. Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Daniel Kempson. Original music by Sholto. The Girlfriends theme was composed by Nicholas Alexander with vocals by Gina Walters. Music supervision from Nicholas Alexander and Saskia Collette. Field production from Rob Upchurch. The series artwork was designed by Christina Leemkuhl. Novel's Director of Development is Selina Mehta.

39:40Speaker 1:Willard Foxton is our Creative Director of Development. Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan are Executive Producers for Novel. Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etor are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts, and the marketing lead is Alison Cantor. Special thanks to Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson.