Allison Behringer

Allison Behringer is the creator of Bodies. Follow her on Twitter here. Follow Bodies on Twitter here.

What inspired Bodies?
The inspiration for Bodies came from my own medical mystery story, which I tell in the first episode of Bodies, “Sex Hurts.” As the title suggests, sex became painful for me and I couldn’t figure out why. It took a number of doctor appointments, a lot of frustration, and eventually, a suggestion from a friend before I figured out that birth control was causing the pain. And along the way, I learned firsthand a bunch of the ways that our healthcare system lets us down and all the information about our bodies that we just don’t know. I wanted to create a show where people could get information about their health and that would help people feel less alone and less shame when going through a health challenge.

How has Bodies changed since it began?
In the first two seasons, we stuck pretty closely to a medical mystery story format. In season 3, we broadened the format. This allowed us to cover stories that didn’t necessarily have a “medical mystery” story structure, but were still character-driven stories about bodies and the ways that race/class/gender/etc shape our health. I’m thinking about our episode “Do Less Harm,” which is about the opioid overdose epidemic and the leader of an underground harm reduction organization and “Not Your Average” which is about a controversial new treatment for people with achondroplasia dwarfism.

What has making Bodies taught you about the world?
When we interview our main participants for Bodies, we really go deep. And going deep with people has shown me again and again how so many people have been through hard stuff. And a lot of that suffering is because we live in a system that can be downright brutal for women, marginalized genders, people of color, disabled people — you name it. At the same time, one of the great privileges of making Bodies is also getting to see people actively make meaning from their struggles and share that meaning-making with our listeners, so that other people feel less alone. 

What are the elements to a perfect Bodies story?
Because Bodies is so character-driven, one of the most important elements is a great main participant (aka “main character”). They need to be willing to “go there” and be vulnerable, reflective and self-aware. They also need to be good at telling their own story. A Bodies story must also investigate and/or critique an aspect of our healthcare system (e.g. racism in the beauty industry, ableism in big pharma, shame and STIs), so we look for personal stories that can illuminate those structural issues.

Do you have a favorite episode of Bodies?
It’s really hard to choose one favorite, because all the episodes and the people in them have become special to me…BUT, if I had to choose a few: “Not Your Average,” “Do Less Harm,” “Not Tested on Human,” and “Not This Again.”

How do you write and report your stories?
We spend a lot of time researching, reporting and pre-interviewing potential participants  before we decide to move forward on a particular story. For example, for season 3, we wanted to do an episode about STIs and after preliminary research, we decided that we wanted it to be about an older adult and herpes. From there, reporter Kalaisha Totty reached out to people on social media and Reddit, and then we pre-interviewed 5 people. From there, we decided on a person named Kelly (who is hilarious, wonderfully self-aware and a great storyteller). Since this was pre-vaccine COVID era, we mailed Kelly a recorder (the tiny, but mighty Zoom Hn1) to record herself. Over a couple days, we interviewed her in 2-3 hour chunks. From there, we pulled selects (the best tape) and started writing narration around the tape. Simultaneously, we were reading studies about herpes and interviewing experts for background information. The rest of the process was all about making drafts and getting many rounds of feedback from our story editor and over the course of many, many drafts, honing in on what the story is and how best to structure the story. This became our episode “Something Extra.”

Thanks, Allison!