The Gondolier

Summary

Radiolab – "The Gondolier" (June 15, 2017)

Podcast: Radiolab (WNYC Studios)
Hosts: Jad Abumrad, Robert Krulwich
Reporters/Producers: Kristen Clark & David Conrad
Main Guest: Alex Hayden

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Episode Overview

"The Gondolier" explores the complex, deeply personal story of Alex Hayden—a transgender man who spent nearly a decade known around the world as the “first female gondolier” in Venice. Combining classic Radiolab storytelling and investigative journalism, the episode dives beneath the surface of an international media sensation to reveal a tale about identity, history, and the struggle to define oneself in a world determined to define you.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Story Behind the Story

• Opening context: Reporters Kristen Clark and David Conrad become interested in Alex Hayden after overhearing a story about a female gondolier in Venice—a supposed 900-year first (03:05).
• The media had widely reported Alex as the first woman to break into Venice’s male-only gondolier tradition, but offered little detail about the person behind the headlines.

2. Meeting Alex: Defying Expectations

• Upon reaching out, Alex insists reporters spend a full week with him to see the real Venice and his lived reality (05:12).
• First impressions: Alex is portrayed as enigmatic and exacting, dictating the terms of the encounter, immediately establishing that this will not be an ordinary interview.

3. The Media Narrative vs. Alex’s Lived Experience

• The press had universally cast Alex as a gender barrier-breaking heroine—but few quoted him directly or explored more deeply.
• Alex resists the media narrative, rebuffing repeated questions about being a female pioneer:

  "It's an old story...it's all set already. Why keep repeating what’s already done?" – Alex (09:14)

4. A Moment of Realization: Alex’s True Identity

• During an off-the-record dinner, Clark and Conrad realize Alex is a trans man.
  • A subtle cue comes from Alex's girlfriend and a photo exhibition that uses male pronouns, prompting the reporters to ask directly (13:00).
  • Kristen Clark:

    “Alex is a he. Is Alex trans? Like, oh my gosh. Alex is a transgender man.” (14:03)

• This brings up powerful questions about media narratives, gender identity, and the intersections of personal and public storytelling.

5. Alex’s Early Life and Struggles

• Born in Germany, Alex knew he was a boy from as young as three (17:20).
• Family background:
  • Parents (both doctors) were unsupportive, tried to “correct” his behavior, then eventually ignored him (18:45).
  • Alex felt acute distress and alienation, running away at 15 and finding his way in Hamburg’s red-light district.

6. Coming to Venice and Being ‘Discovered’

• Alex is transfixed by the gondoliers when he arrives in Venice for a film location job (21:39).
• Quickly becomes an apprentice, integrating into the gondolier community by adopting their mannerisms and humor (23:22).
• The “best time” of his life—finally feeling a sense of belonging.

7. The Media Frenzy and Public Gender

• Journalist Consuelo Turin sees Alex rowing, insists his story is important, and publishes an article against Alex’s wishes—framing him as a woman breaking into a men-only world (24:46).
• The press coverage ignites a gender war:
  • Gondoliers feel betrayed, many turn hostile.
  • Feminists and women rowers try to recruit Alex as a symbol of their cause, which Alex finds alienating and inaccurate (31:58).

8. Gender, Belonging, and Community Conflicts

• The episode explores how women rowers saw Alex as a feminist icon, but Alex didn’t relate:
  • “When I’m in a group of women… the minute they think I am one of them, it doesn’t amuse me anymore, and I feel uncomfortable. I’m a little alien there … When I’m with the boys, I feel comfortable.” — Alex (42:28)
• The city, the gondolier guild, the feminists—all want Alex for their narratives; few ask who he really is.

9. Legal Battles and International Celebrity

• After failing the formal exam (perhaps due to corrupt, patriarchal structures), Alex’s case and the ensuing lawsuit draw any global headlines (29:17).
• Alex eventually finds a loophole: working for hotels rather than as a licensed gondolier; new legal restrictions are passed, then overturned in court.
• International press continues to label him the “first female gondolier,” a role he reluctantly, strategically markets to survive (46:55).

10. Trapped by a Public Narrative

• For almost a decade, Alex lives with a split: publicly “prima gondoliera,” privately out to friends.
• Alex’s therapist compares his predicament to being “in a cage” (49:04).
  • “I cannot change a label with twenty years of history… it’s a label.” — Alex (48:44)

11. Coming Out as Himself

• Nearing 50, dealing with menopause, Alex's discomfort with public misgendering intensifies:

  “I was more and more every day unhappy about people telling me I was a she, not a he… I can't hear this anymore. This is so wrong.” – Alex (51:28)

• Begins testosterone, undergoes top surgery in San Francisco, and decides to publicly come out as a transgender man (52:16).
• Posts on his website:

  “After holding myself back for three decades, it's time for me to depart from my wrong body. I am not changing who I am. I am becoming who I am.” (53:49)

12. Uncertain Future

• Returns to Venice unsure how his new openness will affect his life and job (54:18).
• Embraces the future, though fears (and accepts) new battles may be ahead:

  “I don’t want to do another battle, but if I have to, I will, because I hope I can at least help one person out there.” — Alex (56:05)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On media reducing complicated identity to a headline:

  • “Almost a thousand years of all men, men, men… and then one day you get a woman.” — Jad Abumrad (03:33)
  • “This is a very frequent journalism problem. Like, you become boring to the person you’re interviewing and you start flailing.” — Robert Krulwich (09:29)

• On feeling at home among gondoliers:

  • “It was really like, maybe the best time of my life.” — Alex (23:22)

• On misgendering and public perception:

  • “You are, like, in a cage. This is like a cage for you. You can’t get really out of this… I’m tired.” — Alex (49:04)

• On finally taking hormone therapy:

  • “After six hours, I get the first smile on my face in nearly a year.” — Alex (52:16)

• Final message to listeners:

  • “I don’t want to do another battle, but if I have to, I will, because I hope I can at least help one person out there.” — Alex (56:05)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:52 – Episode theme introduced by Robert Krulwich
• 03:05 – 05:13 – How David and Kristen heard about Alex/the project beginnings
• 09:14 – Alex resists typical media questions about gender
• 13:00 – 15:42 – Reporters realize Alex is a transgender man; reflect on implications
• 17:20 – 19:00 – Alex’s childhood and early experiences with gender identity
• 24:46 – 27:15 – The first media article and backlash from gondoliers
• 29:17 – 34:34 – Exam failures, legal disputes, and feminist calls for solidarity
• 41:00 – 43:55 – Alex’s views on gendered community
• 46:55 – 48:44 – Life and work as “prima gondoliera”; using the label to survive
• 49:04 – 51:53 – Feeling trapped and coming to terms with his public persona
• 52:16 – 53:49 – Testosterone, surgery, and public coming out
• 54:18 – 56:05 – Uncertain future and Alex’s message of hope

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Tone & Style

The episode is candid, reflective, and at times, quietly heart-wrenching—balancing investigative rigor with the intimacy and complexity of individual experience. The voices of Alex, Kristen, David, and the various gondoliers and activists reflect humor, frustration, pride, and vulnerability.

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Conclusion

Through compassionate, deeply reported storytelling, "The Gondolier" examines how a person’s true self can be lost, distorted, or commodified by public narratives—and what it means to reclaim that self against all odds. Alex becomes both more than and other than the media’s “first female gondolier,” offering listeners a powerful meditation on gender, identity, and survival.

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Recommended for:
Anyone interested in stories of gender identity, media narratives, tradition, community outsiders, or the complexities of self vs. society. This episode provides a nuanced, unforgettable perspective on what it means to be seen—and to truly see oneself.

Transcript

[Robert Krulwich]

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[Kristen Clark]

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[David Conrad]

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[Alex Hayden]

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right.

[Kristen Clark]

You're listening to Radiolab Radio Lab from wnyc.

[David Conrad]

See?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yep. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab.

[Robert Krulwich]

Today we have the story of just how hard it can be to be who you actually are when it seems like the entire world is doing its best to make you who you actually aren't.

[David Conrad]

Well, I guess I could. I mean, this could be too many details, but the story starts for us.

[Jad Abumrad]

With reporter David Conrad.

[David Conrad]

So for me, it was back in late 2014. I was living in Philadelphia as a grad student.

[Jad Abumrad]

And at the time, David was applying for jobs. And one of the jobs he was applying for was at a radio show that was doing a series about international women's issues.

[David Conrad]

And so I had this on my mind, and I was taking a bus to the university and I just overheard somebody talking about their recent trip to Venice.

[Jad Abumrad]

And of course, the classic tourist thing to do when you go to Venice is to take a ride on the canal boats, the gondolas, you know, go down the canal, maybe someone sings you a famous song. It's very romantic. Any case, the person sitting on the bus next to David was telling their.

[David Conrad]

Friend that they had taken a gondola ride with this first ever woman gondolier in Venice.

[Alex Hayden]

Yeah.

[Kristen Clark]

And then we were, like, poking around and we realized, like, how.

[Robert Krulwich]

But how did this become a we?

[Kristen Clark]

No.

[Robert Krulwich]

Who are you?

[Kristen Clark]

I'm Kristen.

[Jad Abumrad]

Kristen Clark, also a journalist and radio producer. And she and David are partners and collaborators.

[Kristen Clark]

I mean, and this is what was interesting is like, we realized, like, how big a deal it is to be a female gondolier. This is like. It's like a 900-year-old tradition.

[Robert Krulwich]

900 here.

[Kristen Clark]

Yeah.

[David Conrad]

All men.

[Kristen Clark]

Yeah, all men. And it's always passed father, son, father, son, father, son, or like uncle, nephew, down the line.

[Robert Krulwich]

So this is like. This has been no ladies now. No ladies then, no ladies ever.

[David Conrad]

No ladies in 900 years.

[Jane Caporal]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Just think about that for a second. Almost a thousand years of all men, men, men, men, men, men. And then one day you get a woman.

[Robert Krulwich]

Right. As a headline. Woman breaks through 900-year-old glass ceiling.

[David Conrad]

I thought, that sounds like a good pitch.

[Alex Hayden]

Are you kid.

[Robert Krulwich]

That was like God kissed you in the lips.

[David Conrad]

Yeah, exactly. It sounded like the perfect empowerment story, I guess.

[Alex Hayden]

Yeah.

[Kristen Clark]

And so we were kind of just like, googling it. And like, it's all over the media.

[David Conrad]

It seemed like every outlet from the Guardian to the New York Times to the Financial Times to the Cedar Rapids Gazette to.

[Jad Abumrad]

Made it all the way to Cedar Rapids.

[David Conrad]

Yeah. To newspapers in Germany and China and Australia. And they all. All the articles laid out the same basic story. It was this Algerian woman from Germany named Alex Hayden showed up in Venice 20 years ago, got around a gondoliers association that never wanted to see a woman become a gondolier, and eventually became the first ever female gondolier of Venice. The whole thing, of course, sparking this giant gender war. But that was sort of it. Pretty much the headline and a picture was the story. Many of the articles didn't actually have all that many quotes from Alex. And so for me, it sounded like a great, simple opportunity to go back and tell a deeper story. Yeah.

[Kristen Clark]

Just like, who is this person? Why would somebody be so held on getting into this club that just so clearly does not want them?

[Alex Hayden]

Yeah.

[Kristen Clark]

So we. We emailed Alex.

[David Conrad]

Just, we're interested in your story. We're wondering if you might be willing to spend a few days with us this summer. And I was hoping it would just be like, yes, I'm happy to meet with you for a couple hours, and that would have been great, but we got an email back right away that said, if you come do this story, you have to spend a week with me.

[Robert Krulwich]

A week?

[Jane Caporal]

Yeah.

[Kristen Clark]

And then there are all these questions about, like, who we were as journalists, what our purpose was, and what a bunch of demands. You have to stay in the city. You can't stay in, like, one of the suburbs in Margare, even though it's cheaper. Like, you have to be in the city. I want you to hear these sounds at this time. I have a vision for things.

[Robert Krulwich]

Did you have the sense that there was something a little odd?

[David Conrad]

Yeah. And, I mean, the message was definitely, I want to tell a different story.

[Jad Abumrad]

Did you have any idea what that meant?

[David Conrad]

No idea, but we had that echo. I had that echoing in my head.

[Kristen Clark]

All right, do you want to switch backpacks, since I gave you the. I gave you the heavy one.

[David Conrad]

So we flew to the Venice airport, took a bus to City Center.

[Kristen Clark]

I was really fast.

[David Conrad]

We stepped off the bus, and you could smell the salt in the air from the Grand Canal. And it was kind of raining a little bit. It was around midnight.

[Kristen Clark]

We're kind of, you know, getting our bearings, grabbing our bags, and we look up and across the parking lot.

[David Conrad]

There's Alex standing under a lamppost, just leaning against it with a cigarette smoke.

[Kristen Clark]

Kind of curling up into the light of the street lamp.

[David Conrad]

Short hair, dark. It was slicked back.

[Robert Krulwich]

Do you think you were in a Fellini movie?

[David Conrad]

Honestly, I didn't know what to think. This person was legit under a lamp, smoking.

[Alex Hayden]

Hi. How are you? I'm good. Good. Excellent light travel so quick.

[Kristen Clark]

Up close, Alex looked taller than I expected. The strong build, kind of a face that was a little weathered, like someone who works outside all day on the.

[Alex Hayden]

Water, finishing quite late. So when you called, I just finished, so. Oh, perfect. How was your flight?

[David Conrad]

It was good. It was long. It was, you know, we flew to Moscow first, which is.

[Kristen Clark]

And since it was late, we made a plan with Alex to meet up at 5:45pm the next day on the steps of La Fenice Opera House.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay. Beautiful little opera house.

[Alex Hayden]

Yeah. I was rushing out to find you, so I left all the mess in the gondola. Usually it's not like.

[Kristen Clark]

So anyway, the plan was to go out on a gondola ride, which was.

[David Conrad]

One of Alex's demands in that first email.

[Alex Hayden]

Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

So we.

[David Conrad]

We walk around the corner to where the gondola is parked, and, oh, my.

[Alex Hayden]

God.

[Kristen Clark]

The boat is Just like shining.

[Alex Hayden]

So the gondola was made for three people.

[David Conrad]

Long, narrow, jet black.

[Alex Hayden]

This was where the Nobel couple was sitting.

[Kristen Clark]

Antique cushions, golden trim.

[Alex Hayden]

And over there, there was a servant sitting.

[Kristen Clark]

Alex had had it about 12 years.

[Alex Hayden]

Was already quite an old boat when I got it.

[Kristen Clark]

Yeah, it had a name.

[Alex Hayden]

This is called Pegasus.

[Kristen Clark]

Pegasus.

[David Conrad]

And you choose it? Yes, yes, of course.

[Alex Hayden]

All right, so if you want to come in.

[Kristen Clark]

So we climb into the boat.

[Alex Hayden]

Perfect. Sit in a little angle there.

[Kristen Clark]

And Alex stands at the back holding the oar. And we're down, sitting in the lower seats, kind of just like pointing out the microphone up. Alex, I know you were just telling us how annoying it is when people snap pictures. Is it okay if I take photographs every once in a while?

[Alex Hayden]

No.

[Kristen Clark]

You came here to study it first.

[Alex Hayden]

No, that's not what I said.

[Kristen Clark]

And it was pretty much immediately clear you came here. I mean, that it was not going to be an easy interview.

[Alex Hayden]

You came here when you studied.

[Kristen Clark]

I know, I know. But I was wondering.

[Alex Hayden]

You need to do a lot of practice.

[David Conrad]

Yeah. We had a notebook full of questions and things that we had pulled from all these articles we'd read that pretty quickly became useless.

[Kristen Clark]

What I was asking, though, is. And whenever I asked about being the first female gondolier, the first woman in 900 years to do this.

[Alex Hayden]

Oh, it's an old star. What's that? You can really read that everywhere on the net. I mean, so you know, such an. Over and over and over and over. It's all set already. Why? We need to repeat things which are already done.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is a very frequent journalism problem. Like, you become boring to the person you're interviewing and you start flailing.

[David Conrad]

Exactly.

[Alex Hayden]

And we were, we were like, you don't have anything.

[Kristen Clark]

Why are we here?

[Robert Krulwich]

How? What do you do?

[David Conrad]

You know, we just thought maybe we should just be quiet, probably.

[Kristen Clark]

We are about to make the tightest turn I have ever seen in a 30 foot boat. We moved away from the tourist centers of the city and into these smaller canals. As we go around these tight turns, Alex would sing out to let the other boats know that we were coming.

[Alex Hayden]

So here we have a crossway. This is why I shout out my direction in order to avoid accidents, because you cannot hear the gondola arriving.

[Kristen Clark]

You know, we go under these beautiful archways, past hidden gardens.

[Alex Hayden]

You don't necessarily need eyes in order to appreciate a gondola tour. Every channel has a different sound. Sometimes you have a lot of birds singing, Sometimes they fly in your face. So this is a beautiful entrance. Here, I wanted to show you.

[Kristen Clark]

At one point, our gondola cut through this rectangle of light shining from an open kitchen door.

[David Conrad]

It was nice. I mean, this side of Venice was unexpected and really beautiful, but the whole time we were sitting on our notepads, and we were definitely quietly panicking.

[Alex Hayden]

Well, you know.

[Kristen Clark]

I didn't know this.

[Alex Hayden]

At the time, but I thought, there's some. You know, I was like, they're maybe a little too young.

[Kristen Clark]

I think Alex was testing us.

[Alex Hayden]

It may be a little bit too. We don't have enough experience. Experience. Maybe that was my concern. But I like the. I like the enthusiasm, and I like the. There was an honesty, which I liked. Did you ever figure out what you.

[Jad Abumrad]

Were being sussed out for or what was going on there?

[Kristen Clark]

N. For sure, not on the boat. But we. We actually made plans to go out to dinner that night.

[David Conrad]

And considering how the boat ride went, we thought at this point we should return to square one and leave the recorder at home.

[Alex Hayden]

Right.

[David Conrad]

And just try and have a conversation.

[Kristen Clark]

Anyway, we sit down outside, and very few people are in the restaurant. We're the only table outside they had to open.

[David Conrad]

And when we got there, too, we should say, we met Alex's girlfriend, right?

[Alex Hayden]

Yeah.

[Kristen Clark]

And we're making. I think we're just kind of making small talk. And. Yeah, it turns out. Turns out Alex's girlfriend is a photographer, and she'd done this photo essay of Alex. And the photos are really striking. Like, one of them, Alex is just, like, drowning under the water. There's one that's just, like, Alex's back is to the camera.

[David Conrad]

This ripped, muscular back.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Kristen Clark]

Like, arms splayed, like, looking out the.

[David Conrad]

Window over the city of Venice, Venice's lone defender.

[Kristen Clark]

Just, like, so badass and, like, kind of like superhero style. So we were just chatting about the photos and asking Alex's girlfriend, like, you know, tell me a little bit more about what inspired you to take these photos. And, you know, like, small talk, friendly stuff. And she kind of was like, you know, it was just. It's so strange. You know, we thought it was so clear. Like, the photos were so, like, they emphasized every masculine quality on Alex's body. We, you know, in our artist statement, you know, we used all of the male forms in Italian, you know, like Louis, which means he, instead of le, which means she. But everybody at the photo exhibit was like, oh, must have been a typo, or you made a mistake. And she was like, which is funny because I'm Italian, so I should know. And I was like, oh, pronouns. Louis, he, Alex. She used he.

[Alex Hayden]

He.

[Kristen Clark]

Alex is a he. Is Alex trans? Like, oh, my gosh. Alex is a transgender man.

[Jad Abumrad]

Whoa. What did you. What did that mean to you in that moment?

[Kristen Clark]

What I thought that meant was Alex was probably born in a body that he didn't identify with.

[David Conrad]

Yeah. I mean, mine was. I didn't think Transgender. I didn't think. I thought, Alex is a guy. Of course Alex is a guy.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really?

[David Conrad]

Yeah. I wasn't surprised. Were you surprised? No, I wasn't that surprised. I mean, I was. I'm not saying that the pronoun thing isn't accurate.

[Kristen Clark]

I would say that, like, flipping into he, not a thing. Like, it was like, Alex is. Alex is a he. Alex is he. He is sitting at the table with us, Alex and his girlfriend. Very quickly, it was like, him. I'm looking at him, and then I start thinking about the story that we had come here to tell. That was about all of the women, things that she had done. Her.

[Jane Caporal]

Her.

[Alex Hayden]

Her.

[Kristen Clark]

Her woman, hero, heroine, first female in 900 years, international symbol of female power. You start think. And it's like, those things are really hard to square in your head. This real person is also these stories. And how did that happen? What has it been like for 20 years to be inside of that story when you're actually a man?

[Jad Abumrad]

After who knows how many articles have been written about Alex, this is the first time that he is publicly telling his story as a man. And so we should probably just stop for a second and talk about pronouns, because this is really important for many transgender people. In moments when Alex was publicly understood as a woman and was getting international press for it, we've decided, with Alex's permission, to only use his name or his title of first female gondolier. While some of the people interviewed for this story were unaware that Alex is transgender and do use female pronouns or do refer to him as a woman, we. When we're talking about him, we will only use male pronouns.

[David Conrad]

So after that dinner, we made plans for the next day on his motorboat, and he would just take us to a quiet spot, and we would talk. Was the agreement on the water? On the water.

[Alex Hayden]

Shut up. Stop it. Pasta. Eh. La, la.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay, and how does that begin?

[David Conrad]

A lot of false starts.

[Alex Hayden]

Well, I don't know.

[David Conrad]

Maybe I can ask. Has everybody. Has anyone ever asked you what gender pronoun you prefer?

[Alex Hayden]

No. Never. Never happened. Ever.

[David Conrad]

So after getting some of the basics out of the way, Alex kind of started at the beginning.

[Alex Hayden]

Well, you know, it's a long Story I was born transgender.

[Kristen Clark]

This is in Germany. Alex tells us he was born with a female body, but at a pretty early age, knew himself to be a little boy.

[Alex Hayden]

I knew already before I went to school with three years, I was standing on the toilet to pee inside.

[Kristen Clark]

Alex says that for him, he had the sense even when he was three, that there should just be something on his body that wasn't there.

[Alex Hayden]

Yeah, Yeah. I was praying for a penis every night. My parents knew about it.

[Kristen Clark]

His parents were actually both doctors.

[Alex Hayden]

They knew, but they. They were not supportive. You know, I heard them. You know, they were talking about all the weird stuff I did, how he.

[David Conrad]

Would rip the arms off of his Barbies, coloring them like, you know, with.

[Alex Hayden]

A black pencil and, like, destroying them.

[David Conrad]

Or the way Alex dressed himself.

[Alex Hayden]

When there was a swimming lesson in the school. I was there only with little pants, or you call them a base suit for boys. And, you know, I was, of course, very aggressive as a child.

[David Conrad]

A lot of fights.

[Alex Hayden]

You know, I got quite. I was quite violent as a kid. So now I can laugh about this. But, you know, it was a drama at home. It was a drama. The constant try of my mother to get this behavior out of me.

[Kristen Clark]

Alex says pretty early on, his parents basically gave up on him.

[Alex Hayden]

They ignored me as much as they could, which was, you know, in a way, it was saving me because I could wear whatever I wanted, could do whatever I wanted.

[Kristen Clark]

And then when Alex was 10, a little brother was born.

[Alex Hayden]

And that was a shock. That was a terrible shock because basically it confirmed that my mother wanted desperately, a boy, but she didn't accept me as her son. That's what it was.

[Kristen Clark]

Alex said, basically, you know, that was the first time he saw what, like, it should look like, basically, when a parent loves their kid.

[David Conrad]

So when he was 15, he ran away from home.

[Alex Hayden]

I escaped to Hamburg. And in Hamburg, you have a huge district called Sao Pauli where they have all the prostitutes and, you know, all the bad things. And that's exactly where I went.

[Kristen Clark]

Some people kind of took him under their wing, got a job, kind of figured out how to take care of himself.

[Alex Hayden]

I got lucky, but I know also very unlucky stories, but I got lucky.

[Jad Abumrad]

Did he ever think about transitioning to a male body?

[Kristen Clark]

He says he thought about it at.

[Alex Hayden]

One point, but in the 80s, when I was 15, the opportunities you have had to become a man were very, very poor.

[Kristen Clark]

In particular, if you wanted to go down the road of surgery.

[Alex Hayden]

What I can remember from my family was constant talks about how operations went Wrong, how they went wrong and what went wrong. And so for me to go in a hospital to do an operation, this is not going to happen.

[Kristen Clark]

And, of course, many transgender people don't end up having surgery. But anyway, after Hamburg, at some point, Alex fell into filmmaking and ended up in San Francisco working in the film industry. And so 1996, he got involved in a production that sent him abroad to go scope out locations for a film that was going to be shot in Venice. So shows up in Venice in 1996.

[Robert Krulwich]

How old is he around at this point?

[Kristen Clark]

29, I think.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, so he's older.

[Kristen Clark]

He's not a kid at this point. Originally, he's just supposed to stay a few days. Kind of just enough time to do some research and scope things out. But somewhere along the way, he sees these guys rowing their boats down the canal. And for reasons he can't entirely explain, he's just transfixed.

[Alex Hayden]

I was fascinated by this kind of board, and I was fascinated by the rowing style that you roll forward so you actually see where you're going. So I was just fascinated, and I just wanted to try it out myself.

[Kristen Clark]

Eventually, Alex ends up actually meeting a gondolier and asks, like, do you think I could do this? And he actually ended up down at the gondola station as an apprentice. Did they ask you why you wanted to study?

[Alex Hayden]

I remember the first. I was introduced by the head boss of the group. Okay, so this is Alex. She's gonna be our mascot.

[David Conrad]

Because they saw Alex as a woman, and there had never been a woman gondolier.

[Alex Hayden]

Most of them thought for sure this was like a kind of a joke. There was a very old one who later said, now we have a gondolier with tits.

[David Conrad]

For the first several months, Alex says he basically just picked up after the guys.

[Alex Hayden]

You were the busboy for everybody, so you needed to clean their boats and to ship out the water like, 10, 20 times a day.

[Kristen Clark]

He says it's really backbreaking, grueling work for somebody that everybody sees as a woman. You'd think this would be, like, the worst place on Earth.

[David Conrad]

But, you know, actually, those first months in the city, just kind of with the boys, dirty jokes.

[Alex Hayden]

I thought, this is great.

[Kristen Clark]

Alex knew all the gondoliers, nicknames, walked and talked and acted like them and cursed in the same way. And he says he felt like he was part of this tradition of learning from these old guys who are mentors to him.

[Alex Hayden]

It was really, like, maybe the best time of my life.

[Kristen Clark]

It was like he was home.

[Alex Hayden]

And then the trouble began.

[David Conrad]

It started with the journalists. This is reporter Consuelo Turin. We met in a noisy cafe.

[Kristen Clark]

It all started in 1996 with a translator, when Consuelo was a collaborator of Nuova Venezia.

[David Conrad]

She was a cub reporter in Venice working for a very politically progressive newspaper. And she was out looking for her.

[Robert Krulwich]

Big story, and she runs into our. How do they encounter each other?

[Alex Hayden]

Aviva Vista, Alex.

[Kristen Clark]

Consuelo saw Alex at one of the gondolier stations, and she was like.

[Alex Hayden]

Whoa.

[Kristen Clark]

Obviously, this struck her attention. It looked to her like there was this woman rowing among men and, like, seeming to kind of blend right in, was attracted by this vision, unusual vision for Venice.

[Alex Hayden]

So she observed her.

[Kristen Clark]

She said, I camped out for, like, a whole morning and basically just watched Alex's behavior.

[David Conrad]

But Alex didn't want to talk.

[Alex Hayden]

I told him, I can't talk about it.

[David Conrad]

Told her, basically, I'm just a student. They're teaching me. Don't make this into a thing.

[Kristen Clark]

Consuelo said, listen, I recognize that you don't want to talk to me, that you're apprehensive, and that this might be difficult, and I get that this might even damage your reputation with the other gondoliers, but this is an important story. You're a pioneer. I can't ignore you.

[David Conrad]

And so Consuelo said, there are two options. I'm gonna write the story no matter what. So you can either talk to me and we can do the story together, or I can write what I think.

[Alex Hayden]

That was the offer. You know, I said, it can't go out now. And she said, it will. It will.

[Robert Krulwich]

And why wasn't Consuelo persuaded that she should wait?

[Alex Hayden]

Well, there were journalists coming from all over the place.

[Kristen Clark]

You know, I think the story was gonna get out there, and somebody was gonna write it.

[Jad Abumrad]

And Alex never sort of stopped and was like, listen, Consuelo or whoever, let me just tell you the real story.

[Robert Krulwich]

The way out of this is to speak. And yet he stays quiet.

[Kristen Clark]

Right.

[Jad Abumrad]

Do you have a sense why?

[Kristen Clark]

I mean, so just to kind of give, like, some, like, data points that might be helpful in understanding kind of where we were. So we're talking 1997. Just to give you, like, a corollary thing. Where we were in our discourse around LGBT issues was, like, Ellen Degeneres, I think, that year.

[Alex Hayden]

This is.

[Kristen Clark]

This is so hard. But I came out on her show. I think I've realized that I am. I can't even say the word.

[Alex Hayden]

Why can't I say the word?

[Kristen Clark]

And, like, shortly after it was canceled, Caitlyn Jenner was just a few years ago. Like, we didn't even really have a grip on what transgender was. That wasn't a conversation that we were having in public. Can you imagine what it would be like to be like, guys, guys, guys. Don't worry, though. I'm actually a man. That wouldn't have gone over so well with the dudes at the gondola station.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, yeah. So what ended up happening after Consuelo and Alex had the showdown about the article?

[Kristen Clark]

Well, a couple days later, Alex was on the way to the gondola station.

[Alex Hayden]

I found it in the newspaper shop.

[David Conrad]

The headline.

[Alex Hayden]

Una donna svida y condolier. Una donna.

[David Conrad]

A woman is challenging the gondoliers.

[Alex Hayden]

So I was like, oh, my God, this is gonna be hell.

[Kristen Clark]

So it's in the newspaper stand. Alex shows up at the gondolier station, and of course, there's a big hello.

[Robert Krulwich]

A big, unfriendly hello.

[Kristen Clark]

Yeah, just like a. Oh, hello, gondoliera.

[Alex Hayden]

Those boys, they got really, really angry. They were like, we do everything to teach you well, and. And, you know, now you're challenging us.

[Kristen Clark]

Alex says a lot of the gondoliers stopped talking to him. They wouldn't even let him wash their boats.

[Alex Hayden]

And then, you know, of course, then there were the ones who said, ah, I told you in the beginning, blah, blah, blah.

[Kristen Clark]

Told you she was just gonna blab to the press.

[Alex Hayden]

A woman is not a good thing. The whole thing, you know, was like a little stone becoming a huge, huge thing.

[Kristen Clark]

By the way, this is right. This is coming right before Alex is about to take the very first exam.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, no.

[Kristen Clark]

There's actually a series of exams, and it gets a little complicated. But eventually, anybody who wants to be a gondolier has to take this rowing test.

[David Conrad]

And by all accounts, Alex was good.

[Kristen Clark]

Like, we talked to the guy who was the head of the Gondoliers association at that time.

[Robert Krulwich]

Alex. Ay.

[Kristen Clark]

This guy, Fulvio Scarpo, was like, alex.

[Robert Krulwich]

For me, is more good. The other main gondolier, and this is the head of the guild.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Kristen Clark]

And we also talked to this legendary rower named Franco Crea. And he was also like, alex is better than most of the guys. So anyway, Alex takes the test, and.

[Alex Hayden]

I failed the exam, which wouldn't have been.

[Kristen Clark]

That by itself wouldn't have been such a big deal because a whole bunch of people fail the first examination. But the thing was, there was a feeling that, like, something deeply unfair was happening.

[David Conrad]

According to Consuelo, a lot of people Started to think maybe the fix was.

[Alex Hayden]

In because there were other boys there who failed, who were better than other boys who did not fail.

[Kristen Clark]

Alex says suspiciously, pretty much all the people that passed were sons of gondoliers or from gondolier families because they have.

[Alex Hayden]

Had the right last name. So then I got angry. I got a lawyer.

[David Conrad]

Alex thought this was going to bring attention to how corrupt the license practice is, how corrupt this association is.

[Alex Hayden]

I wanted that the exam is repeated for everybody.

[Kristen Clark]

And this lawyer was negotiating. And the Gondoliers association was like, if we let everyone retake the test, that will basically be admitting that we favor certain families over other families.

[Alex Hayden]

That was exactly what I wanted.

[David Conrad]

But it's not what they wanted.

[Kristen Clark]

They said, we don't want the bad press of this. But then, and this is another moment, according to Alex, where his story just gets hijacked.

[Alex Hayden]

My lawyer negotiated without my permission, according.

[Kristen Clark]

To Alex, without telling him. The lawyer, together with the Gondoliers association, dug up this old law that says because Alex is a woman. I mean, he's not, he's a man. But they thought he was a woman. And this law says that as a woman, he had the right to take the test again, this time with women judges in the boat. When she came back and said, okay, here's what we're gonna do. Do you remember what you said?

[Alex Hayden]

I was pissed. I was very upset. That was not what I wanted. Has nothing to do with man or woman.

[Kristen Clark]

Do you think she was your champion because she identified with you?

[Alex Hayden]

Yeah, for sure. It was not my story. It's her story.

[David Conrad]

But unfortunately for Alex, as soon as the lawyer did that, it became everyone's story.

[Alex Hayden]

Oh yeah, because the press there. When was it?

[David Conrad]

In the next two months. Every paper in town was writing about it.

[Alex Hayden]

Suspended by a gondolier's examination.

[Kristen Clark]

Alexandra Mrs. Texan that gondola banned from foreigners.

[David Conrad]

Then the story went global. Germa catches a crab in her beat.

[Alex Hayden]

To become Danny's first woman gondolier. Sexists SING first female gondolier girl Gondolier.

[Robert Krulwich]

Fights a male tradition Failed Gondolier blames chauvinism.

[Kristen Clark]

And then things escalate into a full blown gender battle. The gondoliers are of course super pissed because of all this press that they're getting. We talked to a couple of key like gondolier guys.

[Alex Hayden]

Alexandra Haye.

[Kristen Clark]

Well, no, they have some thoughts and feelings about him.

[Alex Hayden]

She had to pass a test. She didn't. It's a disaster.

[Kristen Clark]

Alex says at one point things got so bad.

[Alex Hayden]

That was One of them who was saying, you know, gonna wait for you in a small little street with a knife. I'm not gonna kill you or I'm gonna. So I grabbed the guy and I said, where's your knife? I'm here. Get it out. You know, do it. That was one episode. There are many others.

[Kristen Clark]

So on the one side, Alex said he has gondoliers wanting to knife him.

[Alex Hayden]

On the other, it was terrible, because then feminism kicked in.

[Kristen Clark]

Alex said he had all these women rushing in to save him.

[Jane Caporal]

Where do you want me to lie?

[Kristen Clark]

Because they thought he was a she.

[Jane Caporal]

We read in the paper that she had tried to take the test and had failed and had called foul, saying that the Venetians were mean and, you know, sexist and wouldn't let women become gondoliers.

[Kristen Clark]

This is Jane Caporal. She was active in the community of Venetian women rowers at the time.

[Robert Krulwich]

What women, by the way? Like, there aren't any.

[Kristen Clark]

Well, so there weren't any women gondoliers at that time, but there's a whole community of female rowers. They have teams and they race.

[Jane Caporal]

I've been doing Venetian rowing for over.

[Kristen Clark]

20 years, and being a female rower.

[Jane Caporal]

In Venice was very difficult.

[Kristen Clark]

Elena, this woman rower I was talking.

[Jane Caporal]

To last week, I was with my.

[Kristen Clark]

Rowing partner, was like, I'm routinely, when I'm out on the water, like, old men yell at me and say, hey, what you doing?

[Jane Caporal]

Return back home in the kitchen cooking or cleaning your house. Why are you here? So you know, you're just a contorno. You're just a side dish.

[Kristen Clark]

They both told me, when it comes to racing, there's a big discrepancy in the prize money.

[Jane Caporal]

The men are getting, like, four times as much prize money as the women. We are now trying to convince the city of Venice, who gives prizes, that we are like men. We are not less than them.

[Kristen Clark]

Here are all these women who have been, you know, incrementally busting their ass to try to be taken seriously in the sport.

[Jane Caporal]

We are here. We can do this.

[Kristen Clark]

And when they saw this press about Alex fighting the gondoliers, they reached out.

[Jane Caporal]

I sent one of the other consiglieras down to speak to her. You know, come to our club and come and work with us and help us out. Help us teach people, you've got your back. But she wasn't interested.

[Alex Hayden]

No, of course not.

[Kristen Clark]

Because to Alex, there are two problems.

[Alex Hayden]

First of all, you cannot compare the gondolier rowers with the racing rowers.

[Kristen Clark]

There are two different styles of rowing. And second of all, the sense I got was that it was kind of like, I don't want to roll with you. You guys all wear matching white skirts. Like, not my thing.

[Jane Caporal]

So I remember there was a lot of resentment.

[Jad Abumrad]

You're a woman.

[Jane Caporal]

How can you be one of us in this battle for equality?

[Alex Hayden]

Some people, they see me and then they are convinced that I'm a feminist, that I am one of them. And I'm.

[David Conrad]

And all of this comes to a head in October of 2004, when Alex has to retake the test. And this time with champion women rowers in the boat judging him, there was.

[Alex Hayden]

A lot of pressure.

[Kristen Clark]

Everything about this test is supposed to be a secret. The location of the test, the path that Alex is going to row.

[Alex Hayden]

I've had no clue where we're going to go.

[Kristen Clark]

But suspiciously, as Alex stepped into the boat, he noticed that there was a huge crowd lined up all the way down the canal.

[Alex Hayden]

Gondoliers and their friends, and they're shouting and yelling. People were screaming all kinds of swear words and all kinds of go home. I cannot imagine the hate.

[Kristen Clark]

He had female rowers in the boat glaring at him. There's press lined up along the entire.

[Alex Hayden]

Way, plus the tourists, plus everybody. And it was full of people. I felt like I'm in a ring. I tried to block it all out because I needed to do an exam. I wanted to do a good performance, And I wasn't able. It was hell. One of the worst, worst days of my entire life. I really don't. I don't wish that to nobody. That was real hell. Hello, this is David from Berlin.

[Kristen Clark]

Radiolab is supported in part by the.

[David Conrad]

Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information About [e-mail] Radiolab is supported by BILT.

[Kristen Clark]

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[Kristen Clark]

I'm Alex Honl, professional rock climber and founder of the Honl Foundation. I wanted to let you know about a brand new season of the Planet Visionaries podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. This is the podcast exploring bold ideas and big solutions from the people leading the way in conservation. Join me in conversation with the likes of climate champion Mark Ruffalo, biologist and photographer Christina Mittermeier, and one of the most successful conservationists of our time, Chris Tompkins. Join us on Planet Visionaries wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Krulwich]

When the flu is keeping you up at night, don't try to tough it out. Knock out your flu symptoms with NYQUIL Intense Flu. You got this. It provides powerful relief of your flu symptoms so you can sleep well through the night. NYQUIL Intense Flu the Nighttime Sniffling Aching aching fever Best sleep with a flu medicine Use as directed. Keep out of reach of children.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krulwich, this is Radiolab, and.

[Jad Abumrad]

We return now to a story from Kristin Clark and David Conrad about Alex Hay, transgender man who became somehow the first female gondoliera in 923 years and thus an international feminist hero sensation.

[Robert Krulwich]

And so we now find Alex being painted by everybody in town in colors that he doesn't particularly agree with.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, and what's interesting, according to Kristen, is just how easy it is to do that to someone.

[Kristen Clark]

Okay, so I'll tell you. As we were doing the interviewing and the reporting, I'm like. I'm feeling like I have a good grip on Alex's story. I'm feeling like, oh, man, I know what it feels like to be inside of a narrative that feels really icky. And so I feel like I'm kind of getting it, and I'm, like, understanding the full Alex. And, like, it's about all of these other things that have nothing to do with gender. So Alex's story isn't about gender at all. And for me, that made sense because I was like, in my life, gender has been a box. Like, even when you're in the right. Even when you're in the right box, gender is a box. And it can feel shitty to be in that box. And so I was like, yeah, let's bust open those boxes together. We're gonna show, you know, we're gonna show people who you are, Alex. But then we would have these moments where I would be like, hmm, wait a second. Like, one night when we were in Venice, we were, like, trying to park our boat on the way to a restaurant. And this guy is trying to parallel park his boat. And Alex is kind of sitting there, like, chuckling at him. And you can hear David chuckling in the background. And so the two of them are, like, joking about it. And then Alex says he drives like.

[Alex Hayden]

A woman, like an old lady.

[Kristen Clark]

And I was like, you know, and kind of rolled my eyes at it. But then later at the dinner, he was like. He was like. You know, though, like, I don't really think that, like, a real woman could do this job. And he was, like, all, like, macho about it.

[Alex Hayden]

Yeah, I remember you were shocked that I was saying such a macho thing. I remember that. No, of course. You are very right. Woman can do everything. Everything. But this job. This is going to be very tough because it's a real cruel community. Ambience is very cruel and rough.

[Kristen Clark]

But when you said. But when you said that, I got so. I was like. I was so frustrated. And it was because I think I was attached to the idea of it being equal, you know? I mean, I was. I was just, like, super confused. Like, I don't know. I just. I just wanted to know what you think.

[Alex Hayden]

Don't tell me what you want to know exactly.

[Kristen Clark]

I'll admit, in the moment, I asked a kind of clumsy question. Do you feel. But it was just because you seemed to be almost, like, prodding me, you know, having fun and winking at David. And do you feel like you're fundamentally on a different team from me?

[Alex Hayden]

Okay, I am on David's team, but you can't see that because you identify with me. But that is not. I can't help that. How can I explain it to you? Let's put it this way. When I'm in a group of women, for example, and they start to talk, I feel uncomfortable. The chatting they have, I call it chicken chat, is not really my cup of tea. You know, I like it. It can amuse me. But the minute they think that I am one of them, it doesn't amuse me anymore, and I feel uncomfortable. I'm. I'm a little alien there, because they think I am one of them, and I'm not. When I'm with the boys, I feel comfortable. If it is a nice group of boys, which I like, then we have the same type of humor and, you know, the same stupid jokes about women.

[Kristen Clark]

For Alex, I think what was really striking is that whatever it is that makes him feel comfortable being seen as a man but not as a woman, it runs very deep for me.

[Alex Hayden]

There is a difference between men and women.

[Kristen Clark]

Not everybody or even every transgender person would feel this way. But the way that he sees it, if there were no differences, there would.

[Alex Hayden]

Be no wish to do transition, and there would be no transsexuality and things like that if it would be the same, but it isn't. Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

So you were seeing him as like, a gender doesn't matter kind of icon, and he was saying, actually, it does matter.

[Alex Hayden]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Can I just ask a simpler question? When does he actually become the first female gondolier?

[Kristen Clark]

Well, so Alex couldn't get one of these 400 or so special gondoliers licenses because he failed the Test.

[Alex Hayden]

But in 2005, I open up my own business.

[Kristen Clark]

He figured out that if he partners up with businesses in town, like hotels, he can actually row for them privately.

[Alex Hayden]

At the time, I was looking at all the laws, and I found that it was possible to open up my own business without having a license. So I did.

[David Conrad]

And so for years, he was just kind of doing this quietly.

[Alex Hayden]

Then Alexandra, she's not a gondolier. She's not a gondolier. She works for a hotel.

[David Conrad]

Some of the gondoliers began to notice that Alex was rowing passengers without a license, and of course, they didn't like it. She didn't pass a test saying, like.

[Kristen Clark]

You can't do that.

[Alex Hayden]

She's not part of our team, does not have A driver's license.

[Kristen Clark]

You have to be a member of this organization. You have to have a specific license.

[Alex Hayden]

In order to practice what we can say. She's not a gondolas driver. I got some threats, verbal threats and damaging the gondola and things like that. All kinds of stupid little bullshit. So when they understood they cannot threaten me this way, then they pressured City hall to change the law.

[Kristen Clark]

City hall basically said, like, you can't row. You can't row a gondola with tourists in it without a license.

[Robert Krulwich]

And the law passed and was signed, and it became the real law.

[Kristen Clark]

Yeah. And so one day, Alex is out on his boat, and he just gets pulled over and basically is told, you're breaking this new law.

[Alex Hayden]

And so I wanted to defend myself. So we went on trial in court.

[David Conrad]

It was Alex, his one lawyer. City hall and the Gondoliers association, there are four lawyers.

[Alex Hayden]

Four lawyers. I thought, you know, this is a lost case. Any already. But City hall lost.

[David Conrad]

City hall fights back.

[Kristen Clark]

Case goes to the highest court in the land.

[Alex Hayden]

They're lost again in front of a court with me, a little stranger from out of nowhere.

[Kristen Clark]

Now, technically, the decision just said hotels can provide for their customers the way that they need to. So if they want to hire a chauffeur who happens to row in a gondola, they can do that. But what that actually meant was that now, for the first time, Alex could be considered a gondolier.

[Alex Hayden]

That was a huge deal. Massive. Along the canals, a woman paddles against the tide. New York Times came in. Woman takes on Venice gondola cartel. Chicago Tribune came in. First female gondolier rocked the boat. And Le Monde came in.

[Kristen Clark]

So this is where we get all of those articles we read before we came to Venice.

[Alex Hayden]

This story went all over the world.

[David Conrad]

And in every single one, the message was the we have our first woman gondolier.

[Alex Hayden]

So that was something. It was unstoppable. I could not go in there and say, excuse me, you know, I'm not really, you know, identifying. No, it was gone. Okay. It was done.

[Kristen Clark]

Alex, at this point in 2007, doesn't have any other income except for being able to market himself through hotels and eventually online.

[Alex Hayden]

And so, of course, I need to have a website.

[Kristen Clark]

People are actively seeking out this person who has broken the gender barrier and become the first female gondolier in Venice.

[Alex Hayden]

So it would have been stupid to try to go against all this was already written.

[David Conrad]

So Alex decides to make his email, his Facebook page, and his website all prima gondoliera. Or the first female gondolier. I'm wondering if creating a website with that name, did that feel like you taking control of that narrative, or was that narrative taking control of your decision on that website?

[Alex Hayden]

It has nothing to do with what I want. It's a label, you know, I cannot change a label who has, you know, 20 years of history. Shut up.

[Kristen Clark]

Alex told us he was talking to his therapist one day at this transgender center they have near Venice.

[Alex Hayden]

And she said, you are, like, in a cage. This is like a cage for you. You can't get really out of this. You know, it's. It's a difficult situation. It's a very difficult situation, but I'm tired.

[Kristen Clark]

By the time we met Alex, he'd been living almost 10 years like this, you know, just kind of between these two stories. At night, out to his close friends, but by day, giving these tours as the first female gondolier in Venice.

[David Conrad]

And every few months, every new tourist season, these headlines would just regenerate. First female gondolier. First female gondolier. First female gondolier.

[Kristen Clark]

And when we left Venice, that's kind of where we left him. Kind of hanging in the middle of that. And the impression that we got is, maybe that's just gonna be how it always is for him.

[David Conrad]

But then.

[Alex Hayden]

It's quite a while we didn't see each other.

[Kristen Clark]

So fast forward six months, we get an email from Alex. He says he's in San Francisco. I think things have been happening in your life.

[Alex Hayden]

Yeah.

[David Conrad]

He had some news.

[Alex Hayden]

Well, you know, I. I remember when we were sitting. When we were last talking in Venice, and we were sitting on the terrace, I remember that I was already in. I knew there was something coming, but I. I wasn't sure what. It was a very difficult year. I was kind of depressed, which, you know, I'm not a depressed person usually. And so I was hanging out. I was not moving much. I was hanging out on my sofa, and I was trying to think. And I was. More and more every day, I was unhappy about people telling me that I was a she and not a he. I don't know why. I got completely intolerant before. I was like, I don't care what they say to me. I care that they are nice. And now I was just like, I can't hear this anymore. This is so wrong.

[David Conrad]

Alex was about to turn 50 at this point, and it turns out that part of what was happening was that he was beginning to go through the early stages of menopause.

[Alex Hayden]

I was hot. I was tired, sweat Breaking out for nothing.

[Kristen Clark]

After fighting with the gondoliers, fighting with the feminists, this was like a final insult.

[Alex Hayden]

So I have this idea that hormones might help with how I feel. I start to take the testosterone that was on the 7th of November, which after six hours, I get the first smile on my face in nearly a year. Like, you know, I felt good, and the mood swings, they stopped. Yeah. So I'm. Now I'm like, I knew me because I was looking in the mirror every day, and I was like, who is this monster?

[Kristen Clark]

He decided to fly to San Francisco, meet with a doctor.

[Alex Hayden]

Some people wait like two years or three years before they start to do a surgery. I wanted to do it now because for me, it was something like now or never. So now I'm here in San Francisco. I've had top surgery on the 24th. That's about four days ago. And I wanted to start this year with a body which is confirming me. People see me as the first woman in gondolier, and that means something for many people. It's not fair to them. So, you know, I need to. I needed to say something. I changed on the Facebook side, I changed the name. Now it's Alexei Gondola Tous. And I did already a statement on my old website. There is a statement.

[Kristen Clark]

It says, dear guests, colleagues and friends, after holding myself back for three decades, it's time for me to depart from my wrong body. I am not changing who I am. I am becoming who I am.

[Jad Abumrad]

And is he back in Venice now?

[Alex Hayden]

Yeah. Huh.

[Jad Abumrad]

And do you any sense of what that's gonna mean for his job or his life?

[Alex Hayden]

I have no idea. I have no clue. I don't know how my voice is gonna be in a month. It should drop. I have no idea how my face is gonna look and my body's gonna look in two years, three years from now. We all leave it as a surprise. No idea. That's scary.

[Robert Krulwich]

Thanks to reporters Kristen Clark and David Conrad. Also thanks to Alexis Ungerer and Sommer. And of course, a huge thanks to.

[Jad Abumrad]

Alex for sharing a very difficult story with us.

[David Conrad]

Are you worried about what the responses might be to it?

[Alex Hayden]

Oh, my God, David. I'm a warrior. You think this is boring me? I've been to worse.

[Kristen Clark]

I guess I remember, like, when we were sitting out on the balcony, you had said something like, I don't want to do another battle.

[Alex Hayden]

Exactly. I don't want to do another battle. But if I have to, I will, because I hope that I can at least help one person out there.

[Jad Abumrad]

This story was Produced by Annie McKeown and Molly Webster with help from Kristen Clark. And we got reporting and translation help from Valentina Powers, Florence Ursino, and Ann Marie Somma. We had original music from Jeremy Bloom and Alex Overington.

[David Conrad]

Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

And on a very different note, very belated note, we would like to take this moment to say goodbye to our.

[Alex Hayden]

To our.

[Jad Abumrad]

Our longtime reporter, producer Brenna Farrell.

[Robert Krulwich]

Not only goodbye, but like, thank you, times 50. Thank you to the 50th power.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. Brenna has been with us for many years, and I think with the station for over a decade, I'd probably believe, and done every single job that you can imagine. And so, Brenna, we here at Radiolab and the whole station are going to miss you very, very much.

[Robert Krulwich]

We already do and still do and do even more. Like.

[Alex Hayden]

Stringamo shile spa le novesant.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right. I'm jad abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm robert krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thanks for listening.

[Kristen Clark]

This is kathleen herring calling from funny river, alaska. Radiolab is produced by jad abumrad. Dylan keefe is our director of sound design. Soren wheeler is senior editor. Jamie york is our senior producer. Our staff includes simon adler, david gebel, tracy hunt, matt kielty, robert krolwich, annie mcewen, lateef nassar, melissa o', donnell, arianne wack, and molly webster, with help from valentina boginini, soham power, nigar fadali, phoebe wang, and katie ferguson. Our fact checker is michelle harris.