KAI WRIGHT: Hey, it's Kai. Before we get into the last episode of this season of Blindspot, I hope you’ll take a minute to reflect back on this series. Have you been moved by the stories you heard? Did the series help you think about HIV and AIDS differently? Did you learn something you didn’t know?

First off, if you can answer any of those questions, we want to hear from you: email us at blindspot@wnyc.org to let us know what’s on your mind. 

Second, the team here at WNYC Studios worked for months to bring you the episodes you heard in this season. We talked with community activists, doctors, scientists, social workers — just anyone we could find, to hear their stories about how this disease unfolded in our communities. We visited archives to hear old interviews and find log reports of people who have long ago died.

It takes a lot of people, time and resources to bring you this kind of journalism. For us here at WNYC Studios, one of the major sources of funding for that work comes from you.

So, if you've found value in what you heard (and you’re in a place to help), please let us know by supporting us with a contribution. To donate, go to wnycstudios.org/blindspot and click on Support Us. It's quick and easy, and it will really make a difference in helping us continue to bring you reporting that bears witness and tells stories that may otherwise be forgotten. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support.

[MUSIC]

KIA LABEIJA: So when I was in seventh grade, there was an AIDS assembly at my school. I remember walking to school that day and being like, really nervous. And being like, what's gonna happen? (laughs)

KAI WRIGHT: Kia Michelle Benbow was born in 1990 in New York City. Her mother and father found out they were HIV-positive three years later. Then they had Kia tested. 

KIA LABEIJA: I knew that I was HIV-positive since I was very, very young. Um, and even though I didn't really know what it meant, I knew that I had it. 

KAI WRIGHT: And her mom started speaking out. 

KIA LABEIJA: She was somebody that wanted to have a voice, especially as being, she was a mixed Filipino woman, you know, in Asian communities is very like, you know, like Asian people, we don't, we don't get AIDS. We're not like a part of that.

KAI WRIGHT: Kia’s mom didn’t want her to carry that kind of shame. She taught her daughter to be matter of fact about her HIV status. At least at home. But nobody at school actually knew about Kia’s status. So then that day, in seventh grade, when Kia walked into this school assembly, she discovered it was being led by one of her mom’s friends, an activist.

KIA LABEIJA: Who was, I knew throughout my whole childhood. And so for me, I was like, oh my god, it's Don, I was like really excited and I felt really comfortable, and it was like, this amazing moment. And he did, like, a kind of survey of the room. If you know someone who is Asian, stand up. And so like everybody mostly stands up, you know, if you someone who know someone who's gay stand up, if you know someone who is Asian and gay, and he’s describing himself at this point. By the time he got to, like, do you know anyone who's Asian and gay and HIV-positive, it was like very, not a lot of people. And then he just asked the question, is anyone HIV-positive? And I just naturally stood up. I got up and I was the only one standing up and I immediately sat down and I was like, what did I just do? And I started sobbing and everyone in my class is looking at me like freaking out and I was like terrified cause I was like, fuck, um, I wonder how are going to treat me now. But it was nothing but love. And after that, like, people knew me.

LIZZY RATNER: Did it feel like a relief at all?

KIA LABEIJA: It did. It felt like a big weight off of my shoulders.

EMILY BOTEIN: Do you remember telling your mother about?

KIA LABEIJA: Yes. I called her and I told her and she was so proud of me. She was like, you go girl. She was just so excited and elated and proud. And my dad on the other hand was like, don't ever do that again.

[MUSIC]

WARREN BENBOW: I don't know if she mentioned it.

KIA LABEIJA: I definitely mentioned it and you were definitely freaking out about it.

WARREN BENBOW: Oh, no, I don't remember. See there are things that I don't want to remember because they hurt my heart, so I just keep them out of my mind. And it usually, they come up in, uh, what's called the dark night of the soul, which is when you get into the bed to go to sleep and all these thoughts come up and you can't do anything about 'em because you're in the bed.

KAI WRIGHT: When Kia’s dad, Warren Benbow, told people he was HIV-positive, he did not have that same welcoming experience as Kia. It was 1993.

WARREN BENBOW: Worst thing I ever did. I told people. I called people. People would cross the street if I was walking down the street. People who I knew, or thought I knew, would stop communicating with me. A lot of people that I told in the beginning, they forgot, because I'm still here.

KIA LABEIJA: Mm-hmm.

WARREN BENBOW: And, so I just leave it at that and no one, no one that I know knows anymore. I mean you know, my friends know, a couple of them.

KIA LABEIJA: I know it's a very difficult thing to talk about and to think about, but …

WARREN BENBOW: Well, I won't be talking about this or thinking about this after this podcast. You know, I just put it back in the, uh, you know, in the back of my mind and, and, uh, I won't remember. 

KAI WRIGHT: This is Blindspot: the Plague in the Shadows: Stories from the early days of AIDS and the people who refused to stay out of sight. I’m Kai Wright. The debate that Warren and Kia are having about whether and how they wanna talk about their HIV status today is possible because they lived long enough to get treatment. They made it to that remarkable moment, in June of 1995, when the FDA approved a new kind of drug that changed everything. One year later, the number of people diagnosed with AIDS in the United States declined for the very first time. And a year after that, death rates plummeted by 47 percent. It was a climactic moment of victory for science. But science alone will never end this epidemic.

In this final episode of our series, Lizzy Ratner, our lead reporter, and myself, we’re going to sit with Kia and other people living with HIV and AIDS today who — despite their pain, their ambivalence, their frustrations, and their own desires to just be done with it — realize, they can’t be done with it. They’re telling us, none of this is over. And there is still so much to bring out of the shadows. 

KIA LABEIJA: It's been a really long time. Twenty years since my mom died. And not even just since she died, but since I had a conversation with her, since I held her, since I heard her laugh, you know?

ARCHIVAL TAPE: Hold the baby. Smile. Smile. Alright. Alright.

KAI WRIGHT: Unlike her dad, Kia is someone who’s keeping alive her family’s shared history with HIV and AIDS through her work as an artist. Her professional name is Kia LaBeija — she’s an image-maker, a photographer and a performer who has spent much of her life telling very personal stories. 

ARCHIVAL TAPE: (gasp) Hey!

KAI WRIGHT: Kia can still watch her mom on old video tapes she has. She’s young — just a baby — a little over 1, but her mom is singing and playing and reading books

ARCHIVAL TAPE: Uh oh. It's “Let's Go All Around the Neighborhood.” Oh boy. We read that one a million times. Now look at this page.

KIA LABEIJA: She was born in Subic Bay in the Philippines. On March 11th, 1957, and she passed here in Manhattan at Roosevelt Hospital, uh, October 19th, 2004. Kwan Bennett. Yeah, she was 47? 46? 47? Can't remember.

KAI WRIGHT: Kia’s entire family had made it to the medical victory of the late 1990s. But by the early aughts, the euphoria of that victory had begun to fade. For some, the treatment that could save your life also proved difficult. The drugs were hard on the body, there were side effects.

KIA LABEIJA: Back then there was like a lot of pills you had to take. And you had to take them in the morning, and you had to take them at night. For me, I always felt the side effects. So, nausea, fatigue, headache. Having to take those medications every day, especially when you're at that age, is really, really hard to do because you don't want to do anything at that age, you just want to do my thing. I was doing all types of shit, like flushing them pills down the toilet to be like, I took them! And then you're not really taking them. Um, yeah, it sucked.

WARREN BENBOW: And that was the deal with your mom. If she would've just stayed on those pills, she would only have to take one a day now. Instead of what? Maybe she was taking four or something like, or not taking four. But they were all in the cabinet. They're all in the, in the drawer. And it was, uh, it was upsetting, you know. The virus for me is under control because I take these medicines and, um, well actually it's only one medicine.

KIA LABEIJA: One pill once a day.

WARREN BENBOW: That's something.

KIA LABEIJA: Yeah.

KAI WRIGHT: Because treatment science didn’t stop. It kept advancing, finding new ways to limit the side effects, to reduce the number of pills you gotta choke down. But the year Kia’s mom died, in 2004, one in four people living with HIV in the U.S. were, for one reason or another, unable to stay on treatment. Some of that was about the drugs themselves: they didn’t work, or they just took much of a toll. And some of it, it is harder to understand.

KIA LABEIJA: I think a lot of people in my family, there is a lot of kind of not blame or shame, but this feeling of like, oh, she should have just, and I'm like, no. That was her choice. And for me, like, I'm the closest person to her, so nobody has more shit to say than I do.

ARCHIVAL TAPE: Where’s your butt?  Where’s your butt?  Butt. Very good, Kia.

KIA LABEIJA: And, um, I love her regardless, like, and I miss her to death, and I wish she could be here to see that one pill once a day, but she's not, and there's nothing we can do about that, except still love her, you know? She lived the life she wanted to live and she made a choice. And I need everyone to respect that choice.

KAI WRIGHT: I have tried to respect this choice. Someone I loved also decided he did not want to take the drugs that suppress the virus. And that was a difficult choice to grasp. But I know this: people who lived through the worst of this, were scarred, in ways most of us cannot imagine.

PHIL WILSON: I would say that there was not a single day that went by when there was not someone that I knew who was not dying, diagnosed, or in the hospital.

KAI WRIGHT: Phill Wilson has lived with HIV since 1981, the very beginning of the epidemic. He began to pour his grief into activism in the mid-1980s, and never stopped. Along the way, he buried his lover, and countless friends. And now in his late 60s, he’s finally begun reflecting on the mark it’s all left on him. 

PHIL WILSON: When I talk about HIV and aging, and for those of us who are, you know, at that point in our lives, I talk about post traumatic stress syndrome. You know, post traumatic stress syndrome, you know, is developed from primarily the Vietnam War or, young men going off to war. But if you think about that, in that scenario, people are in the battle theater, usually for, a tour is like a year long. Now people do multiple tours, but, but one tour is like a year long. For those of us who were in the HIV pandemic battle, that tour lasted for, you know, what, 30 years? 20 years?

KAI WRIGHT: How do you think that changed you Phill? Like, I mean, you know, I mean, you have developed this reputation as somebody who's so tenacious, would stop at nothing, and so we talk about those things heroically, but I wonder about the other side of that?

PHIL WILSON: I never experienced it heroically, and I'll just be honest in answering your question. It was because I, we were too afraid to stop, that if we slowed down, that we would just, you know, die.

KAI WRIGHT: Phill’s refusal to stop made a difference, particularly in convincing influential allies in the Black community to join the fight against AIDS. That’s where he put his trauma, until he could face it. Kia faced hers by making art. Just two years after her mom died, when she was 16 years old, Kia returned to the same hospital where her mom had gone many times when she was sick and where she ultimately died. She wanted to remember what happened there. And she had an idea: she would document the time. 

KIA LABEIJA: I had like a little Nikon Powershoot camera. And I started taking photographs of the hospital. Um, I took a picture of the first room that I saw her with the, like intubated. And I did it very, like, on the low. But the security guard knew me forever, so he just let me upstairs. He was just like, yeah, you can go upstairs. I was like, cool. And, for me, like it was more than just a hospital wing or a floor. There was just, there was something almost nostalgic and something almost happy. You know? To be like, oh, yeah, I hung out with my mom here, oh yeah, I hung out with my dad here. You know what? We were all together here. There was love here, regardless. I think that's the first time that I really understood the power of like what an image could do for you personally. I wasn't thinking about art or nothing like that. I just was kind of like, okay, I'm gonna hold onto this.

KAI WRIGHT: Since then, Kia has shown work at The Museum of the City of New York, The Whitney, at The Tate Modern in London. She had a solo show in New York City two years ago.

KIA LABEIJA:  For a while when I first started making it and I first started talking about it, I started to get tired and I started having that feeling of like, the story, it's a story, it's not my life. It's a story. Like, oh my God, when you Google my name, it says like, Kia La Beija, HIV, you know? And seeing that was like, it felt icky to me. And then I had a point where I was like, I'm gonna push it away. I don't want it anymore. I don't wanna make work about it. But now I'm like, no, I should be proud, I shouldn't feel ashamed of it, and I don't have to be scared of it, um, even though I am sometimes. 

KAI WRIGHT: For Kia, telling the story is a way of owning it. Through her story-telling, this podcast included, she reminds the rest of us that she is who she is — in part— because of HIV. 

Coming up, what it can really mean to carry the weight of the virus, both in someone’s body, and in our collective spirit.

KAI WRIGHT: You’re listening to Blindspot: the Plague in the Shadows.

[WHISTLE]

KAI WRIGHT: Valerie Reyes-Jimenez — the most positive woman we spoke to in our very first episode.

VALERIE REYES-JIMENEZ: I’m a positive woman. (laughs)

KAI WRIGHT: She’s spent more than 30 years fighting stigma as an AIDS activist and just by living out loud about her HIV status the whole time. Just a month before her husband died, in 1992, they were profiled in El Diario La Prensa, which was then the largest Spanish-language newspaper in New York. They “came out” as a young, HIV-positive Puerto Rican couple. And after he died, Valerie took the article …

VALERIE REYES-JIMENEZ: I printed out like, I don't know, 500 copies or something. And I put that in the funeral parlor. Instead of those little cards that say, you know, like, sunrise, sunset, born, died. I just decided to use that opportunity to, to put it out there. That no, he didn't die from cancer, or anything like that. And, and at the same time, I was letting people in the community know that I was a survivor. 

KAI WRIGHT: Valerie’s continued speaking out, including candid talk about how hard that “living” has been on her body.

VALERIE REYES-JIMENEZ: The aging process isn’t kind to anyone, even when you're healthy. But, um, when you have the virus in there, that prickly little, mean little virus in your body doing what viruses do. I just really believe that it does accelerate the normal aging process. I will tell you that my bones are jacked up. I've got bone spurs upon bone spurs. My mom is 18 years older than I am, but I have caught up to her already as far as like where I'm at with my, my body stuff. So, my arms are fairly thin. My legs are pretty thin. But this area, from like my neck on down to my pelvis, is pretty thick. Like this thick fat. I feel like I'm walking around with a 20-pound bag of rice on my chest. I feel like I'm hugging it really tight. That's exactly what it feels like.

KAI WRIGHT: But that bag of rice doesn’t do anything to dampen Valerie’s voice. 

VALERIE REYES-JIMENEZ: It’s alright to be HIV-positive. There's nothing wrong with being HIV-positive. Um, your neighbor could be HIV-positive. I can be your friend and be HIV-positive. As a matter of fact, I am your friend. Aren't we friends? I'm HIV-positive. 

VICTOR REYES: We're not having enough conversations. We're not getting enough of it.

KAI WRIGHT: We first talked to Victor Reyes because he was born at Harlem Hospital. He got treatment at Harlem throughout his childhood. Thirty-five years later, Victor is the director of an afterschool program at a grade school in Washington, D.C. He also does research at the Global Community Health Lab at Howard University. He wants to keep people thinking and talking about HIV. Which he says is just hard, still.

VICTOR REYES: There seems to be a lull. Doesn't seem like the conversation has grown since the start of the HIV epidemic, and, you know, if people are still dying from HIV, then that's a problem.

KAI WRIGHT: Victor has a son now — he’s under a year old — and he’s not sure what he’ll tell this kid about his own story of HIV and AIDS. On one hand, he doesn’t wanna pass the pain and fear on to yet another generation. 

VICTOR REYES: I mean, the goal has always been growing up to, if I ever got to this point, to give my child a better life than I had. I don't know, I don’t know if I want to put fear, I haven't thought about it enough, but I definitely want to educate him.

KAI WRIGHT: And yet, Victor also knows that one thing all the miracle science in the world can’t erase is stigma. And until that part is solved too, some piece of this epidemic will remain. 

VICTOR REYES: To me, stigma makes people hide. It prevents people from seeking help, seeking support. It destroys self esteem.

LIZZY RATNER: How have you dealt with stigma?

VICTOR REYES: Um, some of the conversations we've had revolves around innocence and guilty. You know, if you were born with it, you must have been then innocent because you didn't get it behaviorally. And if you got behaviorally, then you must be guilty of something. And that in itself creates a division within people in the HIV umbrella. As an example, for my wedding, my brother-in-law officiated our wedding. And he showed me what he wrote, and I thought it was perfect. The one edit I had on it, and I was disclosing, he wanted to, I said I don’t mind disclosing, and the only edit was that he started it with saying when I found out Victor was HIV-positive. And my only edit was: when I found out Victor was born HIV-positive. So I felt the need instinctively to protect myself and to let it be known that I was this quote unquote “innocent” person that acquired it prenatally and so this is who I am. That is even the stigma that I go through and that exists right? And I can honestly say that I don't know if I can change that. Because, believe that when I disclose, then the next question is, oh, how did you get it? Well, does it matter? There is no innocent, there is no guilty. Um, it's just the experience and how you support that person after that. You know, have the conversation shift from how did you get it to just how can I help you?

KAI WRIGHT: I told you in our very first episode, that HIV and AIDS is a social disease as much as a medical condition. We saw this epidemic way too late, and we stopped seeing it way too soon. We chose to look the other way, to wear blinders, so we did not have to pay attention to what was happening. 

DR. MARGARET HEAGARTY: What are you going to do with this? Or what do you hope will happen?

KAI WRIGHT: Margaret Heagarty, the woman who had spent two decades in charge of pediatrics at Harlem Hospital, asked me this question early in our reporting. And I tried to answer her. I talked about what it feels like when I hear people say AIDS is over.

KAI WRIGHT: And it just pissed me off. 

DR. MARGARET HEAGARTY: I can imagine. That would have pissed me off too. 

KAI WRIGHT: But I think I know how I would answer her more directly now: I want people to hear these stories, because there are nearly 40 million people living with HIV in the world today. There are more than a million new infections every year, and still 630,000 people died of AIDS globally in 2022.

Every single one of those deaths, and every single new infection is now preventable. That one pill a day that Kia and Warren talked about? We now know that if everybody with HIV could take that pill, it would suppress the virus in their system to the point that it is literally undetectable. Whatever else might kill them, it will not be HIV. Moreover, when the virus is undetectable, we now know it cannot be transmitted to another person. 

Science has done its job. HIV is, in some ways, just like any number of other health problems now — and that’s just it. Heart disease. Diabetes. Covid. The people who continue to needlessly struggle with and die from these and other illnesses — that’s not only a medical challenge, it’s a social one. We still choose, as a society, to allow HIV to exist.

KIA LABEIJA: Um, hi, this is Kia LaBeija at WNYC and I'm talking to my father, Warren Benbow. I, I sound pretty good, huh, Dad?

WARREN BENBOW: Yeah, pretty. 

KIA LABEIJA: It is important, to also, for people to understand me, it wasn't just like I had one parent in the hospital. I had two parents in the hospital. Sometimes at the same time.

WARREN BENBOW: I think I was the most, uh. I was in the hospital more than anybody else, and it's not really a lot of fun and, ’cause you don't know if you're gonna come out.

KAI WRIGHT: Kia was 14 when her mom died.

KIA LABEIJA: My brother describes Christmas as the saddest Christmas of all time because me and my dad were just like, it was devastating. Because it’s like, I'm losing my mom, my dad's losing this woman that he loves, and we're both trying to figure out how to deal with that, but also how to deal each other, which was not easy. ’Cause we were both grieving.

KIA LABEIJA: Alright. I wanna take a picture of you, Dad, ’cause this is a good angle. If you'll let me take your picture. 

WARREN BENBOW: Okay. 

KIA LABEIJA: Gotta gotta get you with your headphones with the WNYC.

WARREN BENBOW: Okay. Why don’t you just take it with the cell phone?

KIA LABEIJA: Because I want to take it with my real camera.

WARREN BENBOW: Oh.

KAI WRIGHT: My colleague, Lizzy Ratner, told Kia about a cemetery — a small island off the Bronx that’s said to be the largest AIDS burial ground in the United States.

LIZZY RATNER: (fades in) So the person who oversaw Hart Island at the time … (fades out)

KAI WRIGHT: Technically, it is in New York City. But it’s not easy to get to. It’s the largest public cemetery in the United states — over a million people are buried here. It’s where the dead are buried when they are unclaimed or unidentified, or cannot afford a private burial. It’s the city’s Potter’s Field. Almost all in mass graves. 

KIA LABEIJA: Oh, wow. 

LIZZY RATNER: Yeah. 

KIA LABEIJA: Can you go there?

[FERRY HORN]

FERRY OPERATOR: Happy New Year to everyone. Uh, this marks our first trip over to Hart Island. And it's cold.

KAI WRIGHT: Hart Island sits less than a mile off the edge of the Bronx.  Four days a week, this ferry takes trucks from the city’s morgues. And twice a month, loved ones can visit.  

FERRY OPERATOR: We hope this trip brings some closure.

KAI WRIGHT: Lizzy and Kia are one of those trips. 

LIZZETTE RIVERA: And we’re off! Vamanos …

KAI WRIGHT: Kia came to take photos of a woman who’s come here to visit her mother’s grave.

FERRY OPERATOR: Watch your step, guys! 

LIZZETTE RIVERA: Today I said I’m going to bring a picture, so everyone can see her. Let me put this here. This is my mama, my queen. 

KIA LABEIJA: Hi, beauty.

LIZZY RATNER: Oh my gosh, she's beautiful. And she looks so much like her. 

KIA LABEIJA: Wow.

KAI WRIGHT: Lizette Rivera’s holding a snapshot of her mom, Zaida.  Zaida’s hair is pulled back. She’s smiling and looks happy. 

LIZZETTE RIVERA: I remember, uh, her always doing her best. Even being so young, I remember always having clean clothes, I remember always going to school.

KAI WRIGHT: Lizette says her mom contracted HIV so long ago, there wasn't an AIDS test then.

LIZZETTE RIVERA: She did have a drug addiction. I would see the needles and stuff around the house.

KAI WRIGHT: The cause of death was pneumonia. She is in a mass grave, with about 150 other bodies.

LIZZETTE RIVERA: My mom is on top. I know that. 

LIZZY RATNER: Okay. Yeah. So I was gonna ask you …

LIZZETTE RIVERA: And they say her feet are here and then her head this way.

LIZZY RATNER: So you think your mom is just right here? 

LIZZETTE RIVERA: Yes.

KAI WRIGHT: Grass grows on top of the graves. They look like fields; a single white marker indicates where each trench begins. 

LIZZETTE RIVERA: It’s beautiful and it's serene. Now it's nice and open. Uh, there are lots of trees. Um, we're surrounded by water.

KAI WRIGHT: Sometimes Lizette brings her mother's favorite candies. Once she brought perfume. She tapes her mom’s photo to the grave marker.

LIZZETTE RIVERA: I have to take a picture, too. Oh, I love that. I really appreciate you coming out to spend time with me and mine. Oh, I love you momma! I wanna just, like lay out and just, she was so strong. Mm-hmm, so strong. I miss you, Mom. I love you every day. 

KIA LABEIJA: Do you mind if I, um, take a few more pictures? Is that okay with you?

LIZZY RATNER: Yeah.

KIA LABEIJA: I've been doing a lot of work about my experience growing up with HIV and losing my mom to AIDS. 

LIZZETTE RIVERA: I had no idea that we had that in common. 

KIA LABEIJA: Yeah. 

LIZZETTE RIVERA: I'm sorry for your loss. 

KIA LABEIJA: Thank you. Me too.

KIA LABEIJA:  I think a lot of people when they think about like grave sites or you know, where their loved ones are buried or graveyards, I think, you know, some people have this idea that it has a certain level of spookiness, but I always find these places to be very calm. You know, ’cause it's where people are resting.

LIZZY RATNER: Mm-Hmm.

KIA LABEIJA: And especially today, none of us really get enough rest, so to be able to be amongst those that, you know, have had these whole lifetimes before us, you know? And who are our ancestors and our loved ones and our guides, you know, it feels like the best place to take a breath. 

KAI WRIGHT: Breathe and remember. Remember who and what we’ve all lost to HIV, yes, but also remember the spirit that some among us brought to life. Something Kia said when she returned to her mother’s hospital room sticks with me: There was love here. Amid all the horror of the AIDS epidemic, some individuals managed to find that love within themselves: the staff at Harlem Hospital, Joyce Rivera in the South Bronx, Katrina Haslip inside a state prison.

The people we have met throughout this series: they each found love, and used it, to ease some part of the pain for their communities. They gave of themselves and they made a difference, often with little or no recognition. May we all learn from their brave leadership. 

Kia LaBeija took photos of many of the people in our series. To see those photos, go to blindspotpodcast.org.

And her dad, Warren Benbow, played drums on our original music. 

Blindspot: The Plague in the Shadows is a co-production of The HISTORY Channel and WNYC Studios, in collaboration with The Nation Magazine. 

Our team includes: Emily Botein, Karen Frillmann, Ana Gonzalez, Sophie Hurwitz, Lizzy Ratner, Christian Reidy and myself, Kai Wright.

Our advisors are: Amanda Aronczyk, Howard Gertler, Jenny Lawton, Marianne McCune, Yoruba Richen and Linda Villarosa.

Music and sound design by Jared Paul. Additional music by Isaac Jones. Additional engineering by Mike Kutchman.

Our executive producers at The HISTORY Channel are Jessie Katz, Eli Lehrer and Mike Stiller. 

Thanks to Miriam Barnard, Lauren Cooperman, Andy Lanset and Kenya Young.

This series would not have happened without the help of many people, including: Mike Barry, Robin Bilinkoff, Alan Black, Jon Campbell, Vanessa Cervini, Raymond Chan, Tali Chazin, Jacqueline Cincotta, Aaron Cohen, Mary Croke, Rex Doane, Andrea Duncan-Mao, Javed Ellis, Ricardo Fernandez, Dan Fichette, Lindsay Foster Thomas, Melissa Frank, Steven Gangaram, David Gebel, Emma Gordon, Caitlin Graf, Molly Hindenburg, Jason Isaac, Whitney Jones, Jennifer Houlihan Roussel, Melanie Hsu, KalaLea, David Krasnow, Theodora Kuslan, Andrea Latimer, Kareem Lawrence, Andre Robert Lee, Mei Lee, Rachel Lieberman, Cayce Means, Kristina Newman-Scott, Kim Nowacki, Bill O’Neill, Joe Plourde, Anne O'Malley, Maya Pasini-Schnau, Caitlin Quigley, Amy Pearl, Katya Rogers, Megan Ryan, Jennifer Sendrow, Wayne Shulmister, Tara Sonin, Bhaskar Sunkara, Irene Trudel, Liz Weber, George Wellington, Christopher Werth, Ryan Andrew Wilde, Lillian Xu and Ivan Zimmerman. Thanks to you all.

And again, we’d love to hear from you: email us at blindspot@wnyc.org to give us your feedback on the series. 

I’m Kai Wright — you can also find me hosting Notes from America live on public radio stations each Sunday. Or check us out wherever you get your podcasts.

And thanks for listening.