One call to a very unusual hotline and everything that followed. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Ira talks about a priest who set up what may have been the first hotline in the United States. It was just him, answering a phone, trying to help strangers who called. (2 minutes)Act One: The Never Use Alone hotline was set up so that drug users can call if they are say, using heroin by themselves. Someone will stay on the line with them in case they overdose. We hear the recording of one call, from a woman named Kimber. (13 minutes)Act Two: An EMT learns he was connected to the call, in more ways than he realized. (16 minutes)Act Three: Jessie, who took the call, explains how she discovered the hotline. She keeps in touch with Kimber. Until one day, Kimber disappears. (16 minutes)Act Four: We learn what happened to Kimber after she called the line. (10 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.
Full Episode
A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. From WBZ Chicago, This American Life, I'm Howard Glass. Okay, so you call a hotline, and then a complete stranger tries to figure out how to help you. On the spot. That idea seems to have begun in the 1950s.
The first suicide hotline in the United States was created in the early 60s by a guy in San Francisco who was a priest and also a journalist. And it was just him answering the phone at first. Ads on matchbooks and sides of buses said, thinking of ending it all? Call Bruce. Which, by the way, was not his real name. His real name was Bernard Mays.
But of course, the power of anonymity is so important to any hotline. People would call, and sometimes he could help them precisely because he had no connection to their life at all. Like, they could say anything to him. In those pre-internet days, that was completely new, to harness that kind of anonymity, the intimacy of it, this way, over the phone.
These days, of course, there are all kinds of hotlines for people in all sorts of situations. Prayer hotlines, psychic hotlines, also hotlines for homework help, for new moms. There's a hotline for owners of three-legged dogs, and another one specifically for anybody who swallows one. You know those little round button batteries? That hotline also handles any kid who pushes it up their nose.
Today we're going to devote our entire show to one phone call that happened on one hotline. A very unusual hotline. And then we have everything that followed from that one call. It takes you inside this world that I think either you're already in this world or it's totally invisible to you. Like it's all around you. You don't even register that this world is there.
Mary Harris tells what happened. She's the host of Slate's daily news podcast, What Next? We first broadcast today's show last year. One quick note, some parts of this phone call might not be great for young children to hear. I suppose I'm going to give you this warning before mentioning that part about pushing batteries up your nose. But anyway, here's Mary with Act One, The Call.
The call in this story took place a few years ago.
Thank you for calling.
It's a call to a hotline of sorts, though one I'd never heard about before and was surprised to learn existed. This is the music you hear when you're waiting for an operator.
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