Anita Rao
00:02
The closest I ever came to getting a tattoo was almost 10 years ago. I had recently moved back to North Carolina, and it felt like everything in my life was shifting faster than I could keep up. I was living with a significant other for the first time, learning how to work in live radio, becoming a dog owner, and re-establishing my community. I felt energized but unmoored. And getting a tattoo felt like it could be grounding. The things that felt most clear to me were that I wanted to explore my evolving relationship with feminism and get more deeply connected to my Indian identity. I spent many hours doodling various versions of potential images that can represent these two things, only to conclude that none of them were quite right. To get a tattoo, for me, has always been something that required complete certainty. But if my 30s have taught me anything, it's that certainty is an illusion. And looking back, I kind of wish that I let myself mark that moment with all of its imperfections. This is Embodied. I'm Anita Rao.
Anonymous Listener 1
01:15
All my tattoos tell a story. And that story is that my world got turned upside down, and I didn't really know how to deal with it. I guess I started getting tattooed to mask how I was feeling. Outside, I thought I started to look much stronger and tougher than I felt inside. It was like a suit of armor that I could just have and walk around with. It was a form of healing and I love my tattoos because they remind me of that journey.
Anonymous Listener 2
01:48
They really make me feel empowered and protected. I have a collection of overlap designs on both hands. And they are all done by friends of mine from different parts of the world. And they make me remember that I don't walk alone.
Anonymous Listener 3
02:05
One that I have on my right shoulder cap is of a pomegranate. It is cut through with the vineyard and a flower, and out of the flower it says, in script, "gorge," short for gorgeous. Now, I really struggled with my body image. Constant criticism of being too thin, too big. And I wanted to put on me a pomegranate which represents a bountiful of blessings. But at the same time to have a message that every time I saw it and I said, "Hey Gorge," I would kiss myself on my right side of my shoulder to affirm my body as it is, as beautiful as it is.
Anita Rao
02:54
So many of y'all had tattoo stories, and the resonance of this topic is backed up by some data. Close to half of Americans between the ages of 30 and 49 have tattoos. As compared to just 13% of people 65 and older. But just because more of us are getting tattooed doesn't mean that everyone's tattooed bodies are treated the same way.
Beverly Thompson
03:17
In order to keep your tattoos gender appropriate in this kind of feminine trajectory, they're supposed to be small, cute and hidden.
Anita Rao
03:24
That's Beverly Thompson. She is someone who thinks a lot about tattoos, and has a lot of tattoos. She's a sociology professor at Siena College in New York. But long before she started interviewing other people about their tattoo experiences, she was exploring tattoo culture on her own terms.
Beverly Thompson
03:44
Growing up in Washington State in the 90s, I was coming of age, becoming a rebellious teenager. And so, this was at the beginning of riot girl music and new evolution of punk rock music. And so this is definitely a vibrant culture where tattoo culture really took off in the United States.
Anita Rao
04:04
So you got your first tattoo when you were 17, on your right hip, and it was a matching tattoo with your boyfriend at the time. Tell us the story about that tattoo and how the one that you got was different from the one that you went into the shop asking for.
Beverly Thompson
04:18
While I did get a high quality tattoo at a high quality shop, it was based on this relationship insecurities. And after that I really started to explore, you know, feminist identity a lot more and feminist culture. And so my other tattoos started to evolve more to express my political orientation.
Anita Rao
04:38
The tattoo artist convinced you to not get the "Beverly plus person forever," though, right? [Laughs]
Beverly Thompson
04:43
Yes, I wanted to spell out our entire names and say we're going to be together forever. And so, you know, I speak to lots of young folks as a college professor, of course. And so my role is to just, you know, think about a tattoo image for at least an entire year. If you can hold on to it that long, then go ahead. But, you know, we are evolving. We're always evolving as people. And so our tattoo collections are just going to reflect that. And they're just not going to be the perfect, beautiful bodysuit.
Anita Rao
05:15
So tattoos are culturally main stream. Like, what does it mean to be heavily tattooed to you? Like, what makes you cross that threshold from being someone who has tattos to someone who's being heavily tattooed?
Beverly Thompson
05:27
Yeah, we can understand that tattoo culture has been symbolized very — in a gendered way. And so it's historically, in the United States, just associated with masculine subculture. Sailors, bikers, those kinds of stereotypes. And so for a woman to collect tattoos, I mean, first of all, we're supposed to be paying attention to trying to make ourselves more feminine, more beautiful. And so to cross that line is when you start to get social static. So, your tattoos are larger, they're more visible, they're not pretty imagery like flowers, but it's something considered revolting, like a snake or a skull. And so when you start to cross that line is when you get this kind of social blowback from strangers on the street that ask you about your tattoos or make rude comments about how they don't appreciate you decorating your body in such a manner.
Anita Rao
06:28
Beverly formally entered the world of tattoo scholarship with an article published in a 2011 anthology. The collection actually featured a photo of her own back, which is entirely covered and colorful art. She realized quickly upon dipping her toes into his academic world, that while many other scholars were writing about why people chose certain tattoos, not as many were looking at how being tattooed shapes people's lived experiences. So Beverly conducted a big ethnographic study. She interviewed 70 Different women identified folks across multiple generations who were tattoo artists or tattoo collectors. She learned that their experiences and their tattooed bodies intersected with almost every facet of their identities.
Beverly Thompson
07:13
And so what we see now in the tattoo culture is it's just a lot more fragmented and specific. It depends on really what kind of micro niche you exist in as far as your culture and your occupation, your school you go to and stuff like that. And so for Asian Americans in particular, which you know, I am, I'm Chinese American. A lot of our parents generations are immigrants. And so it's just heavily stigmatized around tattoos in Asian cultures. It's highly associated with criminality. And so they see, you know, their children getting tattooed is kind of, you know, what America does to your children. That this is terrible, and it wouldn't be accepted, you know, back in the motherland. But what I thought was interesting is I did actually go to the motherland, which is Hong Kong for me. And when we listen to our parents stories, I mean, that's from their childhood. And so of course, these places are evolving just as we are. And there's a thriving tattoo culture in Asia, in China, in Japan. But for my participants, the Asian American collectors, they actually went to the most extreme lengths to hide their tattoos from their family, from their parents. And some of them did, in fact, get disowned from their family. So it's a real issue that has a real impact.
Anita Rao
08:32
I know that that's also something that hits home for you. Your father passed away, but he lived into his 90s and he only saw a couple of your tattoos—
Beverly Thompson
[Laughs]
Anita Rao
08:43
despite the fact that you have many. So, talk to me about that and how hiding them from him shaped your relationship with your tattoos?
Beverly Thompson
08:51
Yes, I thought it was a bit ironic too. My mother is from Hong Kong. She's born in 1946. She's also passed away. But my father is, you know, a White man from Nebraska. He was born in 1926. And so just imagine the historical context and and geographic context of his life. Of course to him it's sailors, you know, from World War One or World War Two on the coastal cities. And so it's really hard for either of them to really understand my association and love of tattoo culture. But yeah, it's ironic that, you know, my Chinese mother did accept my tattoos, but it was my father that I really had to hide them from. And so he did see my first two tattoos, but he hated it. He hated that my best friend at the time was a tattoo artist. And so I never showed him another tattoo again. And that means I wore long sleeves around my father for the next 20 years.
Anita Rao
09:46
Including your wedding day, right?
Beverly Thompson
09:48
Including my wedding day. I had to — the entire wedding dress was oriented around covering all my tattoos, which was a feat. So, I had to wear a little jacket and everything. And even one of my tattoos is of my father, a portrait of him. But he never saw that.
Anita Rao
10:05
As someone who is nearing the finish line of the wedding planning process, and at that stage of making sure I'm actually comfortable and happy with everything I'm going to wear, I cannot imagine the added stress of a tattoo covering operation. But many of you tattooed folks probably can. Because you've had to think about similar things for a job interview or day to day professional life. The landscape around tattoo policies has been slowly shifting in this country. In 2022, local legislators in New York City introduced a bill to prohibit employment, housing, and public accommodation discrimination on the basis of having a tattoo. But for now, employers in the US are still legally allowed to prohibit certain types of body art. The US Army, for example, says you can't have tattoos on your face or throat, and those on your neck and hands must be small. Beverly has been examining the experiences of tattooed people in the workplace for a while now, but only more recently turned the lens on herself and her own profession of academia.
Beverly Thompson
11:10
I have covered them for the majority of my career. And the thing is that this level of profession, there's not a handbook on how you're supposed to dress. You're just supposed to know better. You're supposed to look around and fit in. And so knowing that there's a small handful of people that control your professional trajectory, you just want to be cautious and be careful. And so I have, of course, this stereotypical image of what a professor is supposed to look like. And that's my father. And so I have basically worn suits my whole career and really tried to hide who I was as a person in order to get these promotions. And now that I'm a full professor, and I don't have any more hoops to jump, I can be myself more. But it's, you know, I'm in the — in the middle of my life now. And so I really regret that I had to really hide who I was my whole career.
Anita Rao
12:06
Tattooing has been part of numerous world cultures dating back centuries.
Beverly Thompson
Right.
Anita Rao
12:11
And I know that you've written about some of this early history, and I'd love to hear a little bit about some of the early encounters between Black and indigenous cultures and colonizers that shaped tattooing.
Beverly Thompson
12:24
Yeah, definitely tattoos have been around since the dawn of humankind and cultures. And so in the American tattoo history, it kind of looks at this — the colonizers, the white European sailors that go off into the world and discover indigenous folks that are tattooing themselves. And so in the 1800s and the mid 1800s, you have these expos where, you know, humans are put on display with their tattoos and their cultures and so on. So it's very exotified in that level. And then you have Christian Crusaders and religious folks that go out and really try to stamp out this kind of cultural practices.
Anita Rao
13:11
There is so much more to explore about the historical evolution of tattooing, and the many ways colonizers stole and then attempted to erase indigenous tattoo practices. A tattoo artist who has educated themselves on this history, and publicly acknowledges how it informs their own work is Joey Ramona. Joey lives in Toronto, and grew up in a culture that has its own very complicated relationship with tattooing.
Joey Ramona
13:41
I think the experience of a lot of Jewish people is growing up learning that tattooing was done as a form of violence to our ancestors, and therefore it carries a really heavy stigma. So, naturally, a lot of people around me in my family felt an aversion towards tattooing. And I do remember becoming really interested in tattoos for a couple of reasons. But one of them being that there was a girl in my summer camp cabin, and she was 13 and she had a tattoo. And I was obsessed with her. She was so cool and so smart. And she was, like, the first punk rock person I met and she had this little tattoo and I thought to myself, "I have got to get a tattoo." And when I went home and told my mom, she became visibly panicked. And she said, you know, at some point she wanted a tattoo and my grandfather basically said, "Absolutely not. Like, you will not exist in my home if you have a tattoo." And it was actually my dad — and my dad's not Jewish, he's Irish from Northern Ireland — and he said, "Oh, you know, I don't know. I think tattoos are kind of cool" And my mom just shot him this look, like, "You did not just say that." And actually my mom kind of started to come around after that. I ended up getting tattooed when I was 14. My mom and I kind of struck up a deal. So, I was pretty lucky that my immediate family came around pretty quickly. But I know that is not the case for a lot of other people in my position.
Anita Rao
15:20
Four years after getting that first tattoo, Joey was still enthralled with tattoo culture. So much so that they responded to a help wanted sign in the window of a tattoo shop. That job application led to an interview, which led to a job as a receptionist, and eventually, as a tattoo artist. Joey is now in their late 30s, and has been working at various tattoo shops ever since. Along the way, they've continued to explore their Jewish identity through tattooing, both on other people's bodies and their own. Including one of the Yiddish word: doikayt. Which means "hereness".
Joey Ramona
15:57
The tattoo was really special to me. I actually did it on myself, which I also felt was an important step in the process. So basically, that word, it means "hereness". And it is a nod to a movement within Judaism called Bundism. And it's basically a labor based movement that sort of originated in Eastern Europe in the early 1900s. And basically, the ethos is that Jews belong wherever they are. And that feels really important to me, because we are a diasporic people. And it also is really important in terms of my current Jewish activism when it comes to supporting Palestine because it puts emphasis that our homes are wherever they are, and not a nation state that requires the subjugation of other people. So it's a pretty weighted turn. But it's also a term that I wear really proudly, made by my body on my body.
Anita Rao 16:55
Yeah.
Joey Ramona 16:56
And then I bring the symbol with me everywhere I go.
Anita Rao
16:59
There are a lot of other symbols that show up in a number of your tattoos. I really enjoyed looking through your Instagram account and noticing some recurring imagery. Some of it is these small houses, which I'm going to ask you to talk about. There's a lot of really beautiful kind of folky floral patterns. I'd love to know a bit about the recurring images that you choose to use in collaboration with other Jewish folks who are exploring new parts of their Jewish identity.
Joey Ramona
17:28
Yeah, absolutely. So the little houses are my interpretation of shtetl houses. And a shtetl is a small, predominantly Jewish village throughout eastern Europe. Post Holocaust, they do not exist anymore. So I really felt like making a different version of this for us to carry is like bringing the shtetl alive again, and bringing it with us wherever we go, so that we have this home for ourselves both theoretically and in our own bodies. And then the folk flowers were actually taken pretty literally from a lot of the Judaica that I noticed, in my own family, in other people's families, things they have lying around. Like a menorah, ketubah — which is like a marriage certificate — adorned with all of these really beautiful flowers. And there's also an aspect of, you know, feminism to that. And, like, a lot of the people who painted and embroidered these florals were women. And that skill was never really acknowledged as the artistic skill that it was. So that was a little nod to the skill of that craft.
Anita Rao
18:41
So there's some stuff that you're doing that's very literal, repeating imagery that you've seen on other things. But there's a lot of what you do that is subversive, and playing with assumptions about gender assumptions, about the body. And I'd love to know a bit about your journey to doing these more subversive tattoos and how it parallels your own journey with your own gender identity and relationship with your physical body.
Joey Ramona
19:10
Tattooing really helps you create the body that you want. Basically, I've used the expression "build-a-body" when it comes to tattooing, because you can really take charge of how your body is being seen, which is something that a lot of gender non conforming folks struggle with, I think, myself included. But as my journey started to develop, and I started to understand that I don't identify with the gender that I was assigned at birth, tattooing really became a way to express my unique experience with gender.
Anita Rao
19:46
I would love to close by taking you full circle back to
Joey Ramona
19:50
Sure. [Laughs]
Anita Rao
19:50
that early conversation with your mom about getting your first tattoo and how there was a little bit of pushback and some worry on her part. And then at one point, I think in 2018, your mom actually walked into your tattoo shop to get her own tattoos. So tell me that story and the significance of the tattoo that she got.
Joey Ramona
20:12
She actually had been tattooed a couple times prior. But she came in and she wanted me to do a tattoo. And so I said, you know, "Of course, yes." And the tattoo was a memorial tattoo for my aunt, my dad's sister, who tragically passed away from cancer. And one of the things that she loved was birds, specifically robins. And when the family was gathering, after her passing, we noticed that there were robins in the backyard, and that really felt special to my mom. So I tattooed, I think it was seven, the seven little robins on my mom's upper arm. And it was really special and sweet.
And of course, my mom's really funny. At one point, she turned to me said, "Joey, you're hurting me." And I was like, Mom, I'm really sorry. But that's kind of necessary.
And then at the end of the process, you know, I bandage up my mom, and I said, "Thank you so much. This really means a lot to me." And she went, "So what do I owe you?" And I was like, "Mom, you've got to be kidding. There's absolutely no way I'm going to charge you for this tattoo." Being the wonderful person that she is, she sent this huge spread of bagels and schmear and fixings to have a nice Jewish lunch for me and all my staff, which I thought was really sweet. And so very Jewish mother of her.
Anita Rao 20:58
[Laughs]
Anonymous Listener 4
21:47
One tattoo that I have that I really like is a Street Fighter tattoo on my bicep. I don't mind it if someone asks me what it means or what it is. If someone knows this Street Fighter character and notices it on my bicep, and it's a conversation starter, great. That's awesome. I didn't get it for anybody else. I got it for myself because I like it. But I'm always nice if someone else likes it as well, or we have something to talk about now that we have in common.
Anonymous Listener 5
22:16
My most recent tattoo is of a tool called a trephination tool, which was used to give very crude lobotomies to people. I got this tattoo because for me a trephination tool and the act of getting a lobotomy is sort of representative of events in our lives that scramble our memories, scramble our conception of self, scramble our emotions, and changes forever. And I've encountered a lot of times in my life that, for better or for worse, have resulted in a change of heart, a change in mind. And so a trephination tool, even though it kind of has a controversial history, I think it speaks volumes about our need to kind of delve into what it takes to change our minds about things.
Anonymous Listener 6
23:13
My tattoos help paint the story of the things that I value the most. So I have tattoos that speak to freedom, faith, liberation. I think it's a great way to start conversation and just get people engaged, and you really see the humanity of people once you realize that you have more in common than not.
Anita Rao
23:33
The most common reasons adults in the US get tattoos or to honor someone or something, or to make a statement about what they believe in. But what if you can't get the tattoo you want because your local tattoo artist doesn't know how to work with your skin.
Oba Moori
23:49
I'm a darker skinned man, I had a really big problem. First thing was that the people who were at the shops that I went to were all-White shops, and they didn't even pretty much want to speak to me. Anything that I asked for it was always why they can't instead of why they could.
Anita Rao
24:03
That's Oba Moori. He's the owner of Push tattoo studio in Wilmington, Delaware. And if you're a reality TV fan, you might recognize his name as a former participant on the show Ink Masters.
His bad experiences seeking tattoos were off-putting because of their overt racism, but also their inaccuracy.
Oba Moori
24:23
I have been an artist my entire life. I was raised by artists. My mom was raised by artists. So I know things about color concepts and all those things and it didn't make sense the things that they were telling me. I didn't find out till later that they just didn't want to tattoo me because I was darker skin and they didn't understand the aspect of me enjoying a tattoo because of the low contrast between my skin in the ink.
Anita Rao
24:45
That sounds horrible and definitely not a welcoming space to be doing something that is pretty intimate and you're putting a lot of trust in the person who's doing it. So then, you — you had these experiences but then you also had this person who was really encouraging you to get into the industry. What was the thing that pushed you across the decision line to decide that you did want to start tattooing yourself?
Oba Moori
25:08
So, my mentor was the first Black tattooer in our state. He is the first Black tattoo shop owner in our state. And he had been asking me for eight years did I want to apprentice. But I was, like, a little bit — I was, like, a little bit nervous about it. Because one, there was barely any Black representation. I think he might have been the only Black person working at the shop that he owned at the time.
Anita Rao
25:28
Wow.
Oba Moori
25:29
So I didn't want to be a part of a industry that made people who were like me, Black and gay, feel uncomfortable. But after — after a little while of him asking me over and over again for eight years, I finally realized that it would be a good idea for me to do it because I would be able to give more people like me opportunities once I learned how.
Anita Rao
25:48
And you had been an artist and drawing since you were two years old, even. And so [you] had this really long understanding of color and form and design. And you do a lot of portraiture tattoos. I would love to know a bit about how you got started doing those in particular and what it's like to tattoo a portrait on someone's body.
Oba Moori
26:09
So all my life, I've always drawn people. I think my mom said around six, she would draw something, and I would draw something. And then she said after a while she would draw something and I would draw something better. Just having magazines around the house, like JET magazine and stuff, I would start drawing those covers. Then I really fell in love with fashion around like 13, 14. So I would get all the old Vogue magazines and draw all the models from the magazines, like, over and over again. And I think that was like a prerequisite to me doing this. But I really love portraits because portraits are one of those things that I feel like a lot of people, like, have anxiety over and I don't have any. You are literally looking at a picture and just repeating it on to something else, it involves me not thinking very much. Like. [Laughs]
Anita Rao
26:51
Yeah, and it's — you have something to look at and you also know that there is a lot of emotion behind it often because a lot of people are getting memorial tattoos and the people—
Oba Moori
26:59
Yes.
Anita Rao
26:59
that are getting on their bodies are really important to them. And there are a lot of people who come into this process of getting a tattoo who have some concerns about the part of their body. Maybe even choosing to get a tattoo there to embrace something they've long felt some discomfort with. I'd love to know how you work with people who are getting tattoos that are maybe motivated by some kind of difficulty in their relationship with their physical body and how you set up a space that feels comfortable for them.
Oba Moori
27:28
I always think about the very first person that I tattooed, who had an issue with their body. They had cutting scars up their arm. And I think I was 31 at the time. I didn't even know what they were. I said, "Hey, are these cuts?" And he goes, "Yes, I was a cutter." A you know, while he was explaining to me, I'm on my phone googling what it was because I had no idea. And he wanted to get a poem down the lines that he had cut on himself.
Anita Rao
27:56
Wow.
Oba Moori
27:56
And he wanted it really small and I tried to talk this — I tried to talk him out of them being really small. He was like, "I don't care if they feed together, I just want them to be there because this is one of my favorite poems and it reminds me to not do this." And that was during my apprenticeship, I'm pretty sure. He still comes to me to this day. And he thanks me every single time. He's like "You don't know what you did for me by putting these words here really reminded me to not cut myself ever again. And I also talk to youth about it too."
Anita Rao
28:25
Oh, wow. That's a really powerful connection—
Oba Moori
28:27
Yeah.
Anita Rao
28:27
and something that shows that the relationship does develop over time. And now that you are I mean, you're working in a space where there are still not very many tattoo artists of color generally, and especially in your area. What are some of the biggest misconceptions that you have to help people work through who maybe have gotten pushback about tattooing darker skin? And how do you help them understand what their possibilities for tattooing are?
Oba Moori
28:51
I am so honest with them. My first thing for people is you have to go off what color you are. All of us as Black people throughout the diaspora are — we're not the same color. So whenever someone comes to me, I'm telling them the honest truth. I'm like, "Okay, so, basically, you're this color brown, and this color brown is just orange. We're not going to put blue on you because blue or orange or compliment colors, and they are going to turn black in your skin. I know that because I put a blue tattoo on myself to see what would happen and it turned black. So I always tell people, like, from the experience that we have. I have girl — a young lady who works at my shop, her name is Anna, and she specializes in only color. She will give me so much feedback because, like, my color theory is from painting. Her color theory is from tattooing. Those two things coming together is so great because it really helped both of us understand what can be done in a human skin, and what will age perfectly in them too.
Anita Rao
29:17
So you've been doing this work for some time now you've owned your own shop since 2017. And I'd love to know kind of where you are in your journey as an artist after all of this. I guess what's maybe an example of a piece that you feel like has been a really exciting artistic challenge that you've been able to work on in your tattoo work?
Oba Moori
30:04
Well, you know what, I recently did a portrait of a young man who passed away. He was 18, I did it on his aunt's arm. And she was so worried about, like, getting his smile correct. And I'm like, don't worry about it. You picked me because all of my tattoos look exactly like the picture. I'm going to get his smile absolutely the best that I can of my abilities.
And me and her sit there and we talked the entire time. She never looked at the tattoo. She said she didn't want to look at it while it was getting done. She stood up, and she stood in front of the mirror, and she burst out in tears. And she's like, "I look straight at his face into his smile." She was like, he has this little dimple next to his smile that she always looked at throughout his life, and it was there in the tattoo. She was like, "This is perfect." And she cried for the next 10 minutes.
And you know me, if I see somebody crying, I'm gonna probably join them, which I did. Whenever anybody gets emotional over something that I do, I think that's the most special connection that I can have with them. And when I see them in the streets, at the mall or anything, they still show them to me. They're still so excited about them. And I'm like, "Thank you so much for, like, allowing me the honor to put this on you and for you to carry this with you to the rest of your life."
Anita Rao
31:22
Before I sign off, I want to share a note with you all from some former Embodied guests. Andrea Lytle Peet and her husband, David. You met them at our podcast about terminal illness and romance. Andrea was diagnosed with ALS in 2014. And since then, tattoos have become an important symbol.
David Peet
31:42
This is David Peet in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Andrea Lytle Peet
31:45
And I'm Andrea Peet.
David Peet
31:48
And Andrea, what's tattooed on your forearm?
Andrea Lytle Peet
31:51
Eight Swallows. One for every year living with ALS.
David Peet
31:59
ALS is a terminal illness, right? And it usually kills people within two to five years of diagnosis. So why is it important to you to get a tattoo of a swallow every year?
Andrea Lytle Peet
32:10
The birds are my — so living almost nine years with this disease reminds me to be hopeful for the future.
David Peet
32:24
You're gonna get a whole sleeve of them?
Andrea Lytle Peet
32:27
That's the plan.
Anita Rao
32:36
You can hear more of Andrea and David's story in the full podcast episode Fated, which we'll link in the show notes.
Thanks so much to Andrea and David and all the other listeners who contributed to this podcast: Je'Jae, Blake, Chuck, Aleah and Jarrod.
Embodied is a production of North Carolina public radio WUNC, a listener supported station. If you want to lend your support to this podcast, consider a contribution at wunc.org now.
This episode was produced by Paige Perez and edited by Amanda Magnus. Kaia Findlay, Paige Miranda, and Gabriela Glueck also produce for our show. Skylar Chadwick is our intern and Jenni Lawson is our sound engineer. Quilla wrote our theme music.
Thank you so much for listening to Embodied and hey, if you like the show, please spread the word in your own networks. Word of mouth recommendations are the best way to support our podcast, and we'd so appreciate your support. Until next time, I'm Anita Rao, taking on the taboo with you.