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https://www.mendeley.com/download-desktop-new/

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Access Mendeley features from your browser - without the need to install any software.

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This is where you will be giving your peers a score after each debate.

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Study UK Facebook Live event for European students - 2 June

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Study UK Facebook Live event for European students - 2 June

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Join us for this Facebook Live event for European students on 2 June at 12pm to get answers to all your questions about studying in the UK.

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ANSWERS The British Parliamentary Format game(1)

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Refer to this guide when writing your list of references at the end of your essay

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Bibliography Examples and Types Made Simple

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Creating a bibliography can sometimes be a daunting task. With these examples, learn how to write types of bibliographies in a simple, stress-free way.

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Optional reading that could be useful for your essays after the holidays - very helpful for understanding Oscar Wilde's views on art

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Podcast related to today's lesson: you might find interesting

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Podcast related to today's lesson: you might find interesting

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Revisionist History is Malcolm Gladwell's journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood. Every episode re-examines something from the past - an event, a person, an idea, even a song - and asks whether we got it right the first time. Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance.

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Revisionist History Podcast - Malcolm Gladwell Podcast - Pushkin Industries

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Revisionist History is Malcolm Gladwell's journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood. Click now to listen to the Revisionist History podcast on Pushkin Industries.

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The Importance of Being Earnest, Conformity and Resistance

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The Importance of Being Earnest, Conformity and Resistance

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The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) by Oscar Wilde_ Conformity and Resistance in Victorian Society

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The Importance of Being Earnest - PDF copy

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The Importance of Being Earnest - PDF copy

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Discussion questions - while watching Oscar Wilde

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Lesson 1 worksheet Oscar Wilde_Mr Chambers' class

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decay of lying extracts for summarising and feedback

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Lesson 1 worksheet Oscar Wilde anna adapted

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INFO SLIDES Public Speaking Competition 2021 B1 B2

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Descriptors for Public Speaking Competition 2021

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Mr. Chambers' class: Presentation timetable

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Mr. Chambers' class: Presentation timetable

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Uni Prep Première - IELTS Writing Part 2

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a. Question types, introductions and conclusions

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a. Question types, introductions and conclusions

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a. Writing task 2 - Question types_introductions_conclusions.DOC

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b. Writing Task 2 - Topic sentences and controlling ideas

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c. Writing Task 2 - Question analysis and essay planning

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b. Writing Task 1 - Different types of graph

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d. Writing Task 1 - Introductions and Overviews

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g. Analysing a model answer about a process diagram.DOC

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Ms. Murray's class: Presentation timetable

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Ms. Murray's class: Presentation timetable

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Use this guide to make sure that your presentation title is relevant and specific enough and prompts use of sources.

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Please complete this form with your name, date, presentation title and sources (links to at least 3 articles or other media consulted) and hand it to your teacher a week before your presentation.

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Choose one of these essay questions and write a complete first draft of your essay for homework, following the step-by-step instructions in the "planning an argument essay" guide. Please type your essay and make sure it is double-spaced so that your teacher has room to write comments. Write between 500-600 words (Ms Murray's group - I said max 1,500, but you can take 500 as minimum), and bring your first draft to the next lesson on the 6th January. (Ms Murray's class, please print your document and bring it with you).

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Essay - The Flaws and Human Harms of Animal Experimentation

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Essay - The Flaws and Human Harms of Animal Experimentation

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This is the full text of the essay that we analysed in this week's lesson.

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Essay - The Flaws and Human Harms of Animal Experimentation

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Find yourself writing too much? Struggling to get your essay down within the word limit?
Here's some helpful tips.

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Follow this step-by-step guide when planning and writing your Frankenstein essays.

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Argument Essay Writing workshop - handout

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socratic seminar scoring guide for peer evaluation

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Download Frankenstein, or the beauty and terror of science”, Henk van den Belt (2017), Journal of Geek Studies (in the next post down on this Padlet)

§
§Read the sections “A failure of Care and Responsibility” (begins pg. 5) to the end of the article (pg.11) and answer these questions:

§In what ways does van den Belt disagree with the conclusions and analysis of Halpern et.al.?

§What do you think of his critical reading of their analysis of Frankenstein? Which article do you agree with more? Why?  (use quotes to back up your opinion)

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19th November

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Different types of criticism matching online

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While reading the foreword to Frankenstein (see below to find the pdf)  take notes on how the foreword discusses the following ideas:

•How concepts of patriarchy link to motivation, work and science

•The role of women in the 18th/19th century

•The history of the scientific and philisophical views on female reproduction

•John Locke’s theory of the Tabula Rasa

•Rousseau’s views on the relationship between society and the individual

•How Mary Shelley was a pioneering writer

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A Brooklyn couple's daughter was due to be born in April, to a surrogate in Ukraine. Then the virus struck.

Ben and Abbie Rosenberg's relationship got its start the old-fashioned way. Not their initial meeting-that happened on Jdate, a Jewish dating site-but their courtship, which took place mostly in writing. They were both living in New York at the time, but Abbie, an event planner, was on a business trip, opening a restaurant in Miami, when Ben first messaged her. Then Ben went to visit family in Israel. They exchanged Jdate messages, which turned into e-mails, texts, Skype sessions, and, finally, synchronized viewings of "The Colbert Report" while talking on the phone. By the time they met in person, a month later, "we were already friends, and were on our way to falling in love," Abbie recalled. Ben pulled his car up alongside Fort Greene Park, and Abbie got in the passenger seat. They held hands and talked for so long that the engine died.

Three years later, they were married and trying to have children. They were both thirty-eight. The desire to procreate had crept up on them. Abbie, who is petite with dark-brown hair, was running events at Chelsea Market, a fancy mall in Manhattan. Ben, who has a close-cut beard, was managing a small group of properties in Queens. Their friends were having babies; Abbie said, "Suddenly, we just knew this would be the next step for us-becoming parents." But Abbie had trouble getting pregnant. There were medical issues-she had a uterine fibroid removed-and she underwent a series of fertility treatments, all of which failed. After years on the roller coaster of in-vitro fertilization-endless visits to doctors, ovulation-tracker apps, disappointing phone calls-they threw in the towel. "I was, like, 'Forget it. I just want to be a mom. Let's adopt,' " Abbie said.

A friend connected them with an adoption agency in Texas, and they flew down for a weekend orientation. There, they learned about the complexities of the endeavor, including the fact that, in some open adoptions, the birth mother chooses the adoptive parents. At some agencies, the whole process is also wrapped up in Christian, pro-life beliefs. They watched a video of a teen-age girl weeping as she handed her baby over to a set of adoptive parents. On their way back to New York, Ben said, "This doesn't feel right for us. Let's not do this." They still wanted a baby, but their next step was unclear. Their doctor had previously recommended that they try gestational surrogacy-hiring another woman to carry their biological child-but the process would cost more than a hundred thousand dollars, which was more than they could afford. At one point, a friend's sister had agreed to carry the baby for a nominal fee of twenty thousand dollars. They had travelled to New Mexico, where she lives, for the medical procedures, but two embryos had failed to implant.

One night after their trip to Texas, Abbie was hosting an event at Chelsea Market when one of the guests, a chatty Latvian man, told her about a friend of his who was having a baby through a surrogate in Ukraine, where the process costs a fraction of what it does in the United States. Abbie's ears perked up. She grew up in Massachusetts, but her family has Ukrainian roots; "My mom was always making chicken Kiev," she said. She joined a Facebook group called Intended Parents Surrogacy Support Ukraine, where she found couples from all over the world-India, Australia, the U.K.-trading notes. A few weeks later, the Rosenbergs signed up with a small reproductive agency in Ukraine called New Hope, which matched them with a surrogate, a thirty-year-old woman who lives outside of Kyiv. It was the woman's second job with the agency; Abbie said, "I found it encouraging that she was coming back for more, so to speak." By August of 2019, the surrogate was pregnant with the Rosenbergs' baby, a girl whom they'd decided to name Odessa, for both the Ukrainian city and the hero of Homer's "The Odyssey." Although they never met in person, the two women developed a friendship via Facebook messages. They shared pictures of their cats and of their mothers, whom they'd both lost that year. Abbie said, "We'd cry together over chat."

Odessa was scheduled to be born, by C-section, on April 24th, and the Rosenbergs planned to arrive a month early, to prepare. By March, COVID-19 was making headlines. Abbie and the surrogate exchanged anxious messages. "I'm very worried about you," the Ukrainian woman wrote, after seeing a news report about the virus in New York. But flights were still running between J.F.K. and Kyiv, and no one was sure how serious the situation was. Abbie said, "We were, like, 'It's going to work out.' " Instead, the opposite happened. Public gatherings were cancelled. On March 9th, Abbie was laid off, along with the rest of her team, shortly before the city's shelter-in-place order went into effect. Countries around the world began issuing travel restrictions. "We were watching in awe," Abbie said. On March 15th, Ukraine closed its borders. Flights to Kyiv were cancelled.

The Rosenbergs frantically e-mailed Julia Osiyevska, who runs New Hope, but, like everyone else, she was at a loss. When she contacted the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the Rosenbergs' behalf, she told me, "The first word from the officials was, like, 'Maybe they'll open the border up in September.' " What had begun as a minor tragedy-the Rosenbergs might not be there for their daughter's birth-started to seem like an emergency. Under Ukrainian law, healthy newborns are only allowed to stay in the hospital for twenty-eight days. Osiyevska was willing to take Odessa home after that, but the maternity hospital said that she could only be discharged to her legal parents. The director of the hospital suggested an alternate plan: when her term was up, Odessa would be transferred to a nearby orphanage. The hospital would rent out a wing where nurses would care for babies born to surrogates, and no visitors would be permitted, owing to COVID-19. "This is when I finally started crying," Abbie told me. "We were, like, what do you mean 'an orphanage?' "

The Rosenbergs were not alone. As the virus spread, and travel froze, parents around the world suddenly found themselves separated, by thousands of miles, from newborns who were, in fact, their biological children. Commercial surrogacy is growing more popular, thanks to a number of converging factors: advances in reproductive technology, a wave of restrictive adoption laws, the rise of gay rights, and the fact that women in developed countries are waiting longer before having children, leading to more problems with fertility. But it's also illegal in most of the world, including in almost all of mainland Europe. Opponents of the practice argue that it makes surrogates vulnerable to exploitation, especially if they are poor, and creates risks for the children. (A few countries, such as Australia and the U.K., permit surrogacy if it's not done for payment.)

As a result, every year, thousands of would-be parents travel abroad, to the handful of countries where surrogacy is legal. One of the biggest destinations is the United States, which has cutting-edge reproductive technology and the most permissive laws: both same-sex couples and unmarried people can have children via a surrogate. But the price tag is out of reach for many people, and, in the past decade, Ukraine has emerged as a cheaper alternative. Ukrainian surrogates give birth to several thousand babies every year, the majority of whom have foreign parents. The country has around fifty reproductive clinics and numerous agencies that act as middlemen, matching couples with egg donors and surrogates.

COVID-19 threw this system into chaos. There are no official numbers on how many babies were stranded around the world. Robin Pope, an Oregon-based lawyer who represents intended parents, estimates that at least two hundred babies were stuck in the U.S., cared for by an improvised network of surrogates, relatives, baby nurses, and Good Samaritans. She told me that the son of one of her Chinese clients is still in the care of his surrogate mother. "The dad can't get a flight out, and his baby is almost five months old," she said. According to Ukraine's human-rights ombudsman, at least a hundred and twenty-five babies have been stranded in the country since the pandemic began.

The problem there made headlines when the country's largest reproductive agency, BioTexCom, released a video showing forty-five screaming newborns lined up in trolleys under the chandeliers of a hotel ballroom. The company had transformed the hotel, which it owns, into a giant nursery for babies who were awaiting their parents. A handful of nurses circulated among the children, feeding and cuddling them. "We show babies to their parents online and our managers arrange video calls," one of the nurses said, in a voice-over. "It's heartbreaking to see how the parents miss their little ones." The video set off a fierce debate in Ukraine about the country's surrogacy industry. Several politicians called for a ban on the service for foreigners. Mykola Kuleba, the country's commissioner for children's rights, lamented that Ukraine had become "an international online store for babies." The video also revived criticism of BioTexCom: the company was involved in one notorious case where a set of parents abandoned their baby in Ukraine after she was born with health problems. In 2019, the company's director, Albert Tochilovsky, was briefly placed under house arrest, following allegations of child trafficking, document forgery, and tax avoidance. (A spokesperson for the company noted that the director was not convicted, saying, "He was charged, but the investigation didn't find any evidence.")

Osiyevska, the director of the Rosenbergs' agency, New Hope, was dismayed by the BioTexCom video. "The image"-of the industry-"was really bad," she told me. Osiyevska runs a much smaller operation than BioTexCom, but her agency's situation was still overwhelming: besides Odessa, she was responsible for four babies with due dates in April and May. It might take months for their parents to collect them. "It was a nightmare," she said. "I wanted to die." She didn't feel comfortable putting them in the care of hired nannies, as some agencies were doing. "What if there's a medical problem, and, God forbid, the baby dies?" she said. "Who is responsible?" She came up with a backup plan: if the Rosenbergs couldn't get to Ukraine within twenty-eight days, she'd have Odessa transferred from the maternity hospital to a public hospital in Kyiv. This was only marginally better than the orphanage. Marjorie Rosenthal, a general pediatrician at the Yale School of Medicine, told me that most babies who stay for weeks or months in a hospital or nursery setting will "probably be totally fine, especially if they're going home to loving parents." But the newborn brain develops through interaction with a caregiver. "Everyone worries that if the child-to-caregiver ratio gets too big, and their needs aren't being met, or they're not interacting, it increases the risk of developmental problems," Rosenthal said.

On Facebook, intended parents were exchanging panicked messages. The first hurdle they faced was bureaucratic: getting a visa to enter Ukraine while the country's borders were closed. This was made more difficult by the fact that some countries, such as Australia, had closed their visa offices amid the pandemic. Intended parents in countries with governments that oppose commercial surrogacy were also finding it difficult to travel. The Rosenbergs didn't have this problem, but it was still hard to override the travel ban. In April, they began keeping a vigil, staying up all night so that they could call the American Embassy in Kyiv the minute it opened. Officials were sympathetic, but not especially helpful. "They didn't really know what to tell us," Abbie said. They branched out, contacting "anyone who knew anyone" in government: a friend who'd once worked for Chuck Schumer, a colleague with a connection to Chelsea Clinton, some relatives of Ben's who claimed to be lobbying Jared Kushner. Eventually Ryan Lehman, a staffer in the office of Sean Patrick Maloney, a congressman from New York State, took pity on them and began calling government agencies on their behalf.

The next challenge was logistical. Even if the Rosenbergs got the paperwork, they had no idea how to get into Ukraine. There were no commercial flights going in or out of the country. One set of parents in the Facebook group, a Swedish couple named Anneli and Navid Diehl, had gone on nationally broadcast news to talk about their inability to get to their child. A wealthy Swede saw the story and hired them a private jet. At one point, Abbie recalled, the Rosenbergs got in touch with some wealthy Israeli relatives of Ben's, who were very enthusiastic about flying private during the pandemic. "They're saying, 'Just do it! It's twenty thousand dollars. We just flew to a wedding in Kyiv,' " Abbie said. Sadly, the relatives didn't offer to hire them a jet.

Finally, the Rosenbergs heard about someone who could help: an Australian man named Sam Everingham, the head of a Sydney-based nonprofit called Growing Families. Normally, Everingham hosts conferences for people interested in international surrogacy. Now he was working as an unofficial travel agent for around ninety desperate parents who were trying to get to babies in Ukraine, the Republic of Georgia, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, and the United States. One set of parents, from Australia, had travelled to Tbilisi in February, with their thirteen-month-old, to attend the birth of their triplets, to a Georgian surrogate. When the pandemic arrived, the couple found themselves stranded in an Airbnb apartment with all four children for three months, trying to get the newborns' birth certificates from closed government offices. Rules also mandated that there be one adult travelling for every infant, but their family could not fly in from Australia to help. They found another Australian couple flying from Tbilisi to Melbourne who agreed to travel with their children. "They spent two days in the air with the infants on their laps," the mother told me.

By comparison, Ukraine was easier. Everingham told the Rosenbergs that, although there were no flights going to the country, there was a way in: the country shares a border with Belarus, which had become something like Europe's Lake of the Ozarks during the pandemic. The country's strongman President, Alexander Lukashenko, refused to take any precautions to prevent the spread of the virus. He played in a public hockey game, where he told a reporter, "There are no viruses here. Do you see them flying around? I don't see them either," and advised citizens to stay healthy by going to the banya and drinking "forty to fifty millileters" of vodka per day. (The country's COVID-19 cases have subsequently spiked.)

For the parents, this was a good thing. Ukraine had left a few checkpoints on its land border open. Everingham was having his clients fly to Minsk, spend a night in a Belarussian hotel, and take a car to the border, where, with the right permissions, they could enter Ukraine. There was just one catch: the taxi drivers couldn't take them over the border. Everingham's clients had to traverse a one-kilometer stretch of highway-a no man's land between the two countries-on foot. It was an onerous journey, but Everingham said that a number of his clients had made it into the country this way. The Rosenbergs paid him two thousand dollars to arrange their trip. Another American from the Facebook group was making the journey ahead of them: Joel Leinecke, from Loomis, California, whose third child was scheduled to be born to a Ukrainian surrogate in late April. On April 15th, Leinecke emailed the Rosenbergs that he had successfully walked into Ukraine. He'd been carrying baby gear and a large lump sum of cash-payment for the surrogate-stuffed into secret pockets in his socks and underwear, along with, he noted in the e-mail, "a big ass knife, just to make myself feel better." He'd made it to the hospital for his daughter's birth. His wife, Michelle, told me, "We're adventurous, but, man, this is the most adventurous we've ever been."

Early on the morning of April 25th, the Rosenbergs emerged from their Fort Greene apartment into a silent city. The pandemic was near its peak. Like most New Yorkers, they had barely left the house during the prior month. "I was scared to go get quarters for the laundry machine in my building," Abbie said. But they had to get on a plane. Odessa had been born a few days earlier, on April 21st. Every few hours, they took out their phones to gaze at a photograph that Osiyevska had sent, taken by nurses in the maternity hospital. "They'd tied a little kerchief around her head," Abbie said. "She looked like a little babushka."

Just twenty-four hours before they left, they'd received an e-mail with a coveted document: a letter from the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, giving them permission to enter the country through Belarus. Few Americans were receiving such permissions, and, when they arrived at a deserted J.F.K., an Air France staffer made a few calls before checking them in. Their first flight, to Paris, was near-empty. At Charles de Gaulle airport, people were walking around in Tyvek bodysuits. But the plane to Minsk was packed with jovial Belarussians, who, like their President, seemed unconcerned about the virus, shouting across the aisles. "It was like being at a family dinner that we weren't invited to," Abbie said.

One of Everingham's drivers met them in Minsk, and drove them to Novaya Guta, a military checkpoint on the border with Ukraine, surrounded by lush forests. The border gates were closed. Soldiers with bomb-sniffing dogs stood watch. The driver deposited the Rosenbergs a few feet from the gates, where they joined a small mass of travellers hoping to cross into Ukraine on foot. A group of Eastern Europeans just ahead of them were turned away. The border agents examined the Rosenbergs' paperwork-entry letter, passports, copy of their marriage certificate-and waved them through. They headed down the empty highway that led to Ukraine on foot, pulling their suitcases behind them. They looked like tourists who had been beamed into a post-apocalyptic future. Birdsong rang out from the surrounding trees. Gravel crunched beneath their feet. They were both wearing surgical masks, and Ben had seventy-five hundred dollars, in cash-payment for the surrogate-crammed into the cargo pocket of his pants.

Ukraine was enforcing its mandatory quarantine, requiring people to download a tracking app by which the state could monitor their movements. The Rosenbergs waited out the two weeks in an Airbnb in Kyiv. On Sunday, May 10th, Mother's Day, they took a taxi to the maternity hospital. Two Ukrainian nurses wheeled out a pink trolley carrying Odessa. She was three weeks old, wrapped in a white sheet, and wearing a pink hat. She looked around the room eagerly. "There's our baby," Ben said. Abbie told me that, during their ordeal, she hadn't allowed herself to get too attached to the thought of her daughter. "I had to keep a little distance from her, or I would have gone crazy," she said. "The moment I met her, it was like a puzzle piece. We had her. We could exhale." The Rosenbergs flew home with baby Odessa ten days later, on one of the first commercial flights out of Kyiv. On the plane, they saw Joel Leinecke, who was returning home with his baby, EmberRaine.

In recent weeks, the crisis has started to ease. Ukraine has reopened its borders to foreigners, and, on June 10th, BioTexCom, the Ukrainian agency, staged a press conference, inviting cameras to witness eleven couples, from Spain and Argentina, meeting their babies for the first time, in the Hotel Venecia. Pope, the American lawyer, said that many of her clients travelling to the U.S. have retrieved their babies but are now unable to return home, because they can't get passports for the newborns. The State Department is processing an enormous backlog of applications. "I'm telling people that they might have to wait six months," Pope said.

So far, Everingham has helped to unite fifty newborns with their families. He is still fielding calls from frantic parents-especially Americans, who are subject to travel bans because of the U.S.'s high infection rate. "Cross-border surrogacy has always been fragile, logistically and legally," he said. " COVID-19 has just made that a heap worse." He was hoping that the crisis would cause governments to rethink their surrogacy laws. "We'd love it if they'd put laws in place so you could do surrogacy domestically, and not be forced to travel abroad to have a child," he said. But, if not, he predicted that intended parents will keep travelling, no matter the risk. He had already started another side business running the logistics of embryo-shipping, for couples hoping to start the process this summer. He told me, "What I've always been amazed about is the incredible lengths people will go to create family."

The Rosenbergs are spending the summer in Great Neck, with Ben's parents. Odessa recently started to smile. "She's got the longest fingers and toes," Abbie said. "She's very vocal-she's always making noise. And she's a ferocious eater." They were unsure what the next chapter in their lives would look like-whether they would continue to live in New York, and whether Abbie would get her job back. But they hope to take a vacation to Ukraine one day, with their daughter. They want to visit the city of Odessa, and meet their child's surrogate mother, with whom they are still in touch. "We'll be back," Abbie said. "We've got people to see. We've got unfinished business."

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The Stranded Babies of the Coronavirus Disaster

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A Brooklyn couple's daughter was due to be born in April, to a surrogate in Ukraine. Then the virus struck. Ben and Abbie Rosenberg's relationship got its start the old-fashioned way. Not their initial meeting-that happened on Jdate, a Jewish dating site-but their courtship, which took place mostly in writing.

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Podcast on questions related to surrogacy and reproduction

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Podcast on questions related to surrogacy and reproduction

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Jad here. So, uh, next week we're gonna launch a new miniseries here on Radiolab from Molly Webster. Molly is somebody who, if you've listened to the show for a while... Like you know her voice, you know her vibe, she's been reporting mostly science stories here at Radiolab for about five years. She's begun to host the show on occasion. And, uh, next week she's gonna start up a month long series about the seemingly ordinary, but in truth utterly bizarre and magical and deeply weird and ethically fraught, business of humans making more of themselves.

Jad Abumrad:

Now this is a beat that evolved over time for her. And I thought, um, as a prelude to Molly Town let's, uh, play one of the big foundational stories that got her and all of us thinking about this whole world. Uh, I'm not sure that we've ever spent so much time and energy and money, frankly, reporting a story as the one you're about to hear. Those of you who have heard this, check back in with us in a week. For those of you who haven't, I think this is actually one of the best things we've ever made. In any case, here it is. And next week, it's on.

Hey, wait, you're listen- (laughs). Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radiolab... Lab. Radio from WNYC. Yep. (laughs)

Jad Abumrad:

Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

Robert Krulwich:

I'm Robert Krulwich.

Jad Abumrad:

Molly Webster:

Oh, am I allowed to talk?

Jad Abumrad:

Molly Webster:

Oh, I'm Molly Webster. (laughs)

Robert Krulwich:

You just graduated. (laughs)

Jad Abumrad:

Join the party, Molly, join the party. And, uh, today we have a... I don't know, we have a birth story.

Robert Krulwich:

We're calling this birth story because that's what it is. The- we're gonna tell you about babies, who were very recently born. And who, one day, will turn to their parents and say to them, "Tell me how I got here. Like, like what's, what's, what's-"

Jad Abumrad:

"What's my story?"

Robert Krulwich:

"What's my story?" And the parents in this case will say, "Well..."

Jad Abumrad:

"That's complicated."

Robert Krulwich:

That's... Yeah. This is one way the kids will hear what we're, you're about to hear, and they'll go, "Really?"

Jad Abumrad:

It's a collaboration with a, a team of reporters in Israel called Israel Story, they are a group of folks who do sort of long-form reporting and storytelling. They've been doing it in Hebrew for three years. And they are in the middle of their first English language season right now, and-

Robert Krulwich:

Which we're gonna be in.

Jad Abumrad:

Exactly. And, uh, this is, uh, two producers that we work with in particular, Maya Kosover and Yochai Maital. And, uh, this story begins with Maya.

Maya Kosover:

Okay, it was party. We were all dancing. Israeli music in the middle of Jaffa.

Jad Abumrad:

It was her birthday. We were at her apartment and this guy Tal...

Maya Kosover:

Tal was dancing with his partner.

Jad Abumrad:

These are friends of yours?

Maya Kosover:

Yeah, Tal is kind of a megastar in the deaf community in Israel 'cause he translates the news in the TV to, uh, deaf people, to sign language.

Jad Abumrad:

Oh, wow. So, he's like the little guy in the corner of the TV.

Maya Kosover:

Jad Abumrad:

And his partner?

Maya Kosover:

Jad Abumrad:

Amir or Amid?

Maya Kosover:

Jad Abumrad:

Maya Kosover:

He's a psychologist that works especially with children that are autistic.

Jad Abumrad:

Huh. Anyway, they're at the party.

Maya Kosover:

So, we were dancing all together and then, uh, Tal was, "Oh my god, maybe it's going to be the last party that I'm in 'cause I'm going to be a parent. And not only a parent, I'm going to be a father for three." And then-

Jad Abumrad:

Maya Kosover:

We were like, "Oh my God, three babies?"

Jad Abumrad:

Maya Kosover:

"How's that going to happen?"

Jad Abumrad:

And it turns out how that was gonna happen. Is a... whew, it's a crazy story involving uh, four countries-

Molly Webster:

Three women.

Robert Krulwich:

Two guys and, and-

Jad Abumrad:

Three babies-

Robert Krulwich:

Jad Abumrad:

As we mentioned.

Robert Krulwich:

Molly Webster:

Planes, wait, jet planes-

Robert Krulwich:

Molly Webster:

Robert Krulwich:

Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Molly Webster:

At least four languages?

Robert Krulwich:

Yes. Oh, yes. All that.

Jad Abumrad:

But we should, we should go back a bit to the beginning.

The first thing that I saw in Tal is, is, uh, is his ability to be a father.

Jad Abumrad:

This is Amir.

Molly Webster:

Molly Webster:

Because, um, he was a good man, you know, he was very, uh, gentle and, and really an adult, uh, uh, to be the family. I don't know how to describe it.

Mench. [crosstalk 00:04:21]

Molly Webster:

And, but did you see that, like, on the first meeting or was this, like, four months in?

My career is established to work with autistic people and to take notice for every sign of, of communication and, uh, and to understand other people and to analyze them. So it was really immediate, I say.

Let's say after two or three times, you say, okay, eh, I want children. So are you interesting?

I wrote a manifesto about my future, what I want to do, what I want to do in my career. It's kind of my vision and I gave it to him and I said this and this is what I want. (laughs)

Jad Abumrad:

Sign at the bottom please.

Yeah. It kind of was a contract. It's like, this is what I want. If you want to join me, eh, so let's do it.

So let's do it.

Jad Abumrad:

And Tal, what was your reaction to the, to the manifesto?

I like it. It's look like someone who want a future.

Robert Krulwich:

Did your own parents have any, either of your parents have any views about that? Saying don't, do or this is weird? (laughs)

Jad Abumrad:

Suffice to say their families did not approve, especially when it came to the idea of them having kids. Now, how to have those kids. That is a question.

Yochai Maital:

Basically there, there are two options. If you're a gay couple and you want to have kid, there used to be three options.

Jad Abumrad:

That's Yochai Maital from Israel Story. Here is how he and Maya laid it out for us. Option one, which is now not as much of an option.

Yochai Maital:

You could adopt a kid from a third world country.

Jad Abumrad:

But he says over the last few years what happened is that those third world countries figured out who was adopting their babies and one by one they banned it for gay couples.

Maya Kosover:

Yochai Maital:

The second option, which is becoming very, very popular in Israel is sort of the new family. That's what it's called in Hebrew, at least. Sort of, getting together with another woman who wants to be a mother but doesn't have a father. And then they do a joint parenthood.

Jad Abumrad:

They all live in the same house?

Yochai Maital:

No, the mother lives separately and it's, kind of, like divorced parents that get along really well.

Maya Kosover:

They sign a contract before the process and everything is like in the contract.

Jad Abumrad:

Tal and Amir said that early on, uh, they tried this route.

Eh, Tal, got the, an offer from one of his friend to do the co-parenting, but then I spoke with Tal and ask him, "Listen, it's very important for me to have a baby of my own and with my sperm."

Eh, and I said to Amir, "I want to try, but I don't care if in the end we have only one baby in your sperm, so it will be my baby the same."

I think, I was more stubborn about it than Tal.

Jad Abumrad:

Amir couldn't really explain why it was so important to him, just that it was important to him. But reflecting on it later, Maya from Israel story, put it this way.

Maya Kosover:

It's very Jewish and Israeli. I mean, if you're are not in the Israeli mainstream, if you are gay or if you are different and you'll have your own baby, it's like a signature of being part of the game, you know?

Jad Abumrad:

Whatever the reasons, uh, Amir and Tal talked it over and then they went back to this woman, Tal's friend who had offered to do the co-parenting...

And we asked her if she can, uh, obligate to us to bring two children, one of, eh, of Tal's sperms. And one of my own.

Jad Abumrad:

In the end, she said...

Jad Abumrad:

And at this point a year had gone by.

So then we've decided that maybe the best option will be...

Yochai Maital:

Option three is, is surrogacy.

Jad Abumrad:

Meaning, of course, if you're a gay man, that you take your sperm, take some eggs from a woman, put your sperm in those eggs into the womb of a second woman who carries the baby to term.

Yochai Maital:

But surrogacy is illegal in Israel.

Maya Kosover:

Only for gay couples, yeah.

Jad Abumrad:

In Israel, if you're a hetero couple, you can use an Israeli woman as a surrogate. But if you're gay, you can't.

Yochai Maital:

So there's a big problem. But that problem also creates a big demand. As you can imagine, there are quite a lot of gay couples in Israel and so the company's sprang up basically offering international brokering of sperm, eggs and, uh, ovaries.

Maya Kosover:

Babies outsourcing.

Jad Abumrad:

[foreign language 00:08:41] You can see this play out every year at these conferences in Israel conferences.

Yochai Maital:

Conferences where they get prospective parents together.

We are here for our first time in Tel Aviv.

Jad Abumrad:

So it's this big room of people.

Yochai Maital:

Several hundred people.

Jad Abumrad:

Pretty much all gay men.

Pardon me for not being to speak Hebrew very well, or at all. Shalom.

Jad Abumrad:

Basically what happened to these conferences is that surrogacy agencies will get up and, basically, sell their products.

We now offer a surrogacy in, uh, Mexico...

The United States...

Anybody been to Fort worth? Very nice place. You can go see a basketball game, you can go see a baseball game.

Jad Abumrad:

These agencies will find women in all of these places who will serve as the surrogate for your child. And depending on which country you choose and whether or not you provide the donor eggs, or they do, or a million other factors. The costs will vary.

We offer very competitive prices. For example, $36,000 complete start to finish in Mexico, $38,000 in Thailand

Anywhere from $65,000 to $85,000, $150,000. It could be that much.

That's excluding the donor, of course, but we have a good selection of donors including, um, Jewish donors as well.

Yeah, you have session with the lawyers, you have session with the families, you have session is with doctors.

Jad Abumrad:

Tal and Amir went to two of these conferences, successive years, and coming back from the second one.

We take a calculator and you start (laughs) to think how we can make it. Raising money, money, money.

Jad Abumrad:

They figure if they go with a company that does surrogacy in the U.S.

It's probably going to cost $150,000 or...

Robert Krulwich:

Is that lawyers and-

Lawyers, the hospital...

The sperm delivery, uh, the egg donor. There is a lot of people that we need to pay

Jad Abumrad:

And he says keep in mind when you pay that money, you are not guaranteed a baby.

You'll buy a process.

We don't buy a baby.

One of our friends did this kind of process and they spent five times and they still didn't succeed.

Robert Krulwich:

Jad Abumrad:

Yeah, they figured with that kind of risk doing in the U.S. was just too expensive. And so they started looking at surrogacy agencies which operate in India and Nepal.

Because over there, you can do the same thing and it will cost you about $60,000.

Robert Krulwich:

So, it's almost half price.

Almost a half price, Yeah.

Jad Abumrad:

Now, one of the tricky things, according to Yochai, is that in 2013...

Yochai Maital:

India, basically, outlawed surrogacy.

Maya Kosover:

For gay couples. I mean, if you're a straight couple, you can do surrogacy in India.

Jad Abumrad:

But not if you're gay.

Yochai Maital:

Also in Nepal, by the way, Nepal also outlawed surrogacy.

Jad Abumrad:

Effectively the cabinet said, if you are a Nepali woman, you cannot be a surrogate, period.

Yochai Maital:

But there's, sort of, a loophole. Indian women are allowed to be surrogates in Nepal, but just Nepali women aren't allowed to be surrogates in Nepal.

Jad Abumrad:

So what ends up happening is this really strange situation.

Maya Kosover:

It looks like it puzzle.

Jad Abumrad:

These agents in Northern India will find Indian woman, move them across the border into Nepal, take them all the way to Kathmandu, where the surrogacy agencies have set up shelter houses and work with local hospitals and clinics. Maya says for Tal and Amir, the decision to do it this way was not easy.

Maya Kosover:

They, they had, like, different opinions.

Tal had the bigger issue with the moral concept of this process.

Maya Kosover:

Amir was. like, this is the thing that we need to do. I want to be a father.

Maya Kosover:

Tal was... It was very hard for him.

I thought if it's, it's immoral to do... things like that. To use another woman to give me a present like that and, and I know she will never will see this baby anymore.

Molly Webster:

Is it immoral, because you're essentially, like, just using a woman's body or?

Uh, yeah. You can say it.

Maya Kosover:

He felt like he's using other people. Bad luck for his own good.

Jad Abumrad:

Maya Kosover:

She has no choice. She's not doing it out of freedom. She's just doing it for the money and maybe it's not morally okay that we'll use this weakness.

Jad Abumrad:

Tal and Amir went back and forth on this for months. And eventually the argument that won the day was this. That if they're going to do it, they're going to do it with this agency called Lotus, which, to their understanding, paid the surrogates $12,000. I mean the surrogates were actually paid in Indian rupees, but that would be the dollar equivalent. $12,000. Now for a rural woman in India, that is a massive sum of money. They figured this won't just help her survive, it will change her life. She'll be changing their life and they'll be changing hers.

Maybe this was, um-

Kind of like comfort.

Yeah, they get money, they can change their life, they can buy a house, they can send their, her children to school, eh, to learn in the university. When I thought and understand it's will be life changer and it's not, uh-

Exploiting.

Exploiting her. So I agree.

Jad Abumrad:

At the start of the whole process...

Maya Kosover:

One of the main issue was to pick the egg donor.

Molly Webster:

And, like, who are these women? Like where do they come from?

They're from the Ukraine.

Molly Webster:

They're all Ukrainian. What is that? That is not a country I expected to be thrown into the mix of countries.

Yochai Maital:

The reason the eggs are from Eastern Europe are generally because uh-

Maya Kosover:

They're white.

Yochai Maital:

Because they're white. So it's like cheap white eggs.

Jad Abumrad:

Cheap, white eggs. Wow (laughs) that's quite a phrase.

So you have, like, a website and you see a lot of pictures of woman and then you need to choose the most, eh-

It's like Jdate.

Jad Abumrad:

Jewish online dating service.

Yeah. I think it was the most straight-y-ish act that I did in a very long time.

Jad Abumrad:

Oh, straightest, basically.

Molly Webster:

Oh because you're picking out a lady.

Jad Abumrad:

Yeah, how did you decide which criteria you wanted in a, in a donor mom?

Oh, the first one was height.

Jad Abumrad:

You wanted someone tall?

Molly Webster:

Why, why was height your first one?

Because it's, uh...

It's more easy to, to live when you're height.

Molly Webster:

Maya Kosover:

She has these sick eyes.

Jad Abumrad:

They showed my a picture.

Maya Kosover:

Light brown hair and she has this nice nose. It was, you know, very strange.

It was very uncomfortable to choose. For me, it was very, eh, [foreign language 00:15:12]

Yochai Maital:

Is there a genetic, uh, improving-

Molly Webster:

Oh [crosstalk 00:15:18] like a eugenics.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, eugenics.

Robert Krulwich:

Jad Abumrad:

Now since Tal and Amir had each one at a baby with their own sperm, they told Lotus...

Maya Kosover:

We would like to rent two wombs, one of each sperm and to try to use, like, two surrogate mothers.

Jad Abumrad:

Lotus said "Fine, that's gonna run you..."

"About 50, $60,000 each pregnancy."

Jad Abumrad:

Again, no guarantees. So Tal and Amir, they give Lotus their sperm in little cups. Lotus freezes the sperm, sends it to a hospital in Nepal, the Ukrainian woman, the egg donor, is flown to Nepal. Her eggs are harvested somewhere along the way. Two North Indian women are moved across the border into Nepal. Finally, the doctors at that Nepali hospital take the Israeli sperm inject it into the Ukrainian eggs, create some embryos and they implant those embryos in the wombs of the Indian surrogates. Four countries, one baby. A few months go by, they get the news that both surrogates are pregnant. The process worked. One is pregnant with twins, three babies in all. They're sent sonograms, pictures of the surrogate's pregnant bellies.

I, all the time, look on the picture of her, all the ultrasound pictures, all the time looking on my cell phone in the picture.

Jad Abumrad:

'Cause Tal says there wasn't really much he could do. 'Cause for three or four or five months, not much happened. Until, six months in...

Six o'clock in the-

Six o'clock in the morning. Dana from Lotus call us and, uh, Amir was answer the phone and they hear him say, "Okay, they're okay?" I wake up and say, "What?" Because it was too early, uh-

Jad Abumrad:

About eight, uh, eight weeks ahead.

Jad Abumrad:

Wow. The surrogate who was carrying twins had given birth.

I was cry a lot.

Jad Abumrad:

This was the surrogate carrying Tal's baby, which turned out to be two babies.

Jad Abumrad:

And were you on the plane the same day as getting that call or?

Uh, day after. We fly from Tel Aviv to Istanbul. And from Istanbul to Kathmandu. It was very crazy day. Then Gail, uh-

Jad Abumrad:

This is one of Tal's friends, who was also in Nepal for surrogacy.

Took me to the hospital and, wow. I, I was shocked because Gilly was so tiny.

Jad Abumrad:

Gilly was 3.8 pounds. His brother Yuval, 4.8 pounds.

And, uh, yeah, I, I was very scared to, to touch him.

Jad Abumrad:

He says he expected the twins to stay the hospital for a month. But the nurses were like, "Nope, going home tomorrow."

I thought, I don't have enough time to think because I understand tomorrow, I need to take them home and to be alone and I never take care of any babies. So I said, I said to the nurses, "Teach me out to feed him." And, uh, after three days, I took them home.

Robert Krulwich:

So where was the surrogate during these days? Was she at the hospital?

I think she was in the hospital. Yeah.

Because she had the ceasarean surgery.

I was ask if she's okay and if she needs something. They said, "You cannot see her until she signed all the papers and then you can see her."

Molly Webster:

The papers hadn't been signed.

Yeah, because we need that. She's giving up all her maternal, eh, rights. And if she doesn't want to sign this paper, we can lose the baby.

Jad Abumrad:

The laws on this get crazily complicated, but basically they needed Israel, India and Nepal to all recognize that they were the uncontested parents and hanging in the air was the recent case in Thailand, which is all over the news, where the surrogate after the baby was born, changed her mind.

Blake and his husband believed this surrogate decided to try and keep the baby because she found out they were gay.

We had the little bit of anxiety, let's say, if they will going to know that their baby's going to grow in the house with two dads.

Jad Abumrad:

Any case, Tal is in Nepal with the twins. Amir is back in Tel Aviv. A couple of weeks go by and then...

Tal called me and said, eh, Mozal Tov, you're dad.

Jad Abumrad:

The second surrogate had given birth, one baby.

And, day after, Tel Aviv to Istanbul. And from Istanbul to Kathmandu.

And then it was very, very, very nice that we went, eh, only us with the babies. Like, no parents, no friends, no phones.

No phones, no work.

To be the first, eh, eh, blocks of our relationship with the babies. [foreign language 00:20:43]

Jad Abumrad:

And for the next month they lived in an apartment in Nepal, just them and their three babies. [foreign language 00:20:56] Learning to be dads and waiting for the paperwork to be done. Now the paperwork, incidentally, is a beast because after the surrogates sign away their rights, the babies have no nationality. And then they're suddenly illegally in the country. So then the guys have to take a DNA test, send it to Israel, get it verified. Then they've got to get a passport for the babies. Then several sets of visas need to be gotten. And all of that means, multiple trips to the Israeli embassy. And it was on one of those trips that they learned something.

It was really weird because we went over there with our, eh, kids to get the passport and over there there was another surrogate from a different agency.

Jad Abumrad:

An Indian woman. And standing next to her was in Israeli woman who happened to speak Hindi.

And we just, like, you know, out of curiosity, we asked her to ask the surrogate in Hindu, eh, how much is eh, she's getting.

Jad Abumrad:

For the whole process.

But the surrogate was very shy.

Yes. Not very delighted to speak about the money.

Jad Abumrad:

Which made them even more curious. So they persisted.

And then, eh, we discovered that-

She get only $3,000 U.S. dollar or something like that.

Yochai Maital:

$3,000 for the whole pregnancy.

Jad Abumrad:

Amir was like, "Wait a second."

In the agreement, $12,500 supposed to go to the surrogate.

Jad Abumrad:

That was at least his understanding. Now this was a different woman from a different agency and this was just one woman's account. But still...

Robert Krulwich:

In your narrative, you've described that you thought that the reason that this was okay to do the surrogacy is because you were, the phrase you used was, "This will make a change in the life of the woman that we're paying."

Yes, a life changing sum of money.

Jad Abumrad:

So Maya says they walked away from that meeting.

Maya Kosover:

Wondering if they should do something in Israel.

Jad Abumrad:

You know, call the agency at the very least. Say, "Hey, we heard some rumors, I'm sure they're not true, but what do you think?"

We started to ask question, but then-

Jad Abumrad:

Literally the next day....

Horrendous scenes of death and destruction from Nepal today. After a powerful earthquake that started outside Kathmandu. The death toll is now over 5,800 nearly 14,000 were injured.

Officials say it is the most destructive earthquake to hit Nepal in more than 80 years.

Jad Abumrad:

The death toll would ultimately rise somewhere between 7 and 10,000. Maya says she was in New York, uh, in a meeting and she gets this voicemail from Tal [foreign language 00:23:52]

Maya Kosover:

And he was shouting, "An earthquake just happened here. We saved the babies and we got down to the street where half naked, we don't know what to do." And he's crying over there and then it suddenly stopped. They, he lost the connection. Mm. It was, uh, like, 12 hours with no connection to them. We didn't know if they're alive or not. You know, everything was unknown.

I don't know how but Tal took his cell phone and we just ran barefoot.

Jad Abumrad:

Amir says they ran out of the apartment, down the street, half naked, holding the babies and the phone. On the way, they ran into their friend Gail, who had four babies, another other couple, who had two babies.

We are in the street and we're, uh, nine babies. [foreign language 00:24:53]

Jad Abumrad:

They actually shot a video on Tal's phone. You see Tal only in shorts. A bunch of other couples holding babies and they're all literally standing on a pile of rubber. As they're standing there, a guy with a badge walks by.

You all are policeman? Hello? You are from the American embassy? We are Israeli citizens. We have here nine, nine babies. We need help, please. We don't have food for the babies. Thank you.

You need to go from this place very quickly to go from here.

So they took us in to the embassy.

Robert Krulwich:

The U.S. embassy or the Israeli embassy?

No, Israeli embassy.

Yochai Maital:

They went to the Israeli embassy, and the Israeli embassy, sort of, went into emergency mode.

Gave us a some blankets.

Yochai Maital:

And they put up, put out tents.

Jad Abumrad:

And shortly after, the news cameras arrived. And Tal...

Yochai Maital:

Tal is, uh, Tal is... He's, like, in the media and stuff because he's the, he's the sign language translator. And so he realized that he doesn't have any way of communicating back home that he's alive.

Jad Abumrad:

So Yochai says, uh, Tal shoved his way in front of one of the television cameras [foreign language 00:26:09] and started signing.

Maya Kosover:

12 hours after the, the earthquake.

Jad Abumrad:

Maya says she got a call from her partner back in Tel Aviv.

Maya Kosover:

And she said they're on the news now. I can see Tal speaking sign language to his parents saying everything is okay, they are alive. The three babies are with them and they're waiting to the rescue team to come and take them.

Jad Abumrad:

But what the is also captured was this scene that hadn't really been grasped yet.

Robert Krulwich:

Oh, this whole thing has been going on kind of quietly. You have an international earthquake. Everybody's watching the television. And in the middle of the story they're like 10 Israeli babies and gay people.

Jad Abumrad:

It wasn't all, it was more than 10 babies.

Yochai Maital:

Yeah, it was, I think, 24 babies.

Molly Webster:

Yochai Maital:

Molly Webster:

Yochai Maital:

Because there is another agency that also...

Molly Webster:

It's, like, all of a sudden you realize there's this pipeline of babies.

Yochai Maital:

Molly Webster:

Moving from Nepal to Israel.

Yochai Maital:

Jad Abumrad:

Maya says when the images of those 24 babies splashed across Israeli TV screens...

Maya Kosover:

Was, like, the first time that the surrogacy was, uh, discussed in the Israeli media such way.

Jad Abumrad:

She says, a huge debate broke out.

Maya Kosover:

One side of the argument was, okay, we are using women and it's, it's unmoral. And from the other hand there was like, okay, in Israel for gay couples, they don't have a lot of choices, I mean.

Jad Abumrad:

And everyone was asking, what do we do with all these babies and the surrogates?

Maya Kosover:

There was, like, a huge argument in the Israeli media about the questions of there are women that are waiting to, to give birth and we need to bring them to Israel to, to give birth here because the fathers are here.

Jad Abumrad:

So they would fly the women to Israel, have the baby and then fly them back.

Yes, they was stuck about it.

Yochai Maital:

Yeah, they talked about it, but I don't know, I think that legally they could not do that.

Molly Webster:

Well because that just, it feels like kidnapping a lady.

Yochai Maital:

Yeah. And so what, what happened was that very quickly Israel sent over a search and rescue and medical aid delegation.

Jad Abumrad:

And all the babies and their parents...

Yochai Maital:

They were basically just all put on a plane and, sort of, the process was expedited and they just brought everybody over to Israel.

Back in Israel, a parade of newborns. They will celebrate together, knowing the medical stress they'd been through. And very much aware of that many in Nepal are still going through it.

Jad Abumrad:

So what happened to the surrogates? Um, any idea?

Maya Kosover:

They checked with the agency, what is the situation with the surrogate mothers? And the answer was that two of them are back in India already. And they weren't there in the earthquake.

Jad Abumrad:

And what about all the surrogates who were in Nepal but hadn't given birth yet?

Maya Kosover:

Yeah, I mean about them. There's a big question. I mean, no one knows. There were, like, a worried fathers in Israel.

It's terrifying. All my thoughts and my prayers are for the surrogate mother and for the unborn child.

Jad Abumrad:

Tal and Amir made it back to Israel with their babies. They were fine, but there was still a lot of questions.

Robert Krulwich:

And if I were one of you guys, I would still be wondering, after all these, both of these women gave you, as you point out, a remarkable gift. Both of you believe that, you hope rather, both of you hope that that gift was well rewarded and was life changing. But both of you don't know at this point, you're just a little suspicious, that maybe wasn't. And don't you have this funny feeling, you need to find out whether they got paid what you thought you'd paid them?

Yes. Like, this is why we're so glad that we made the connection with you guys and we heard that you can.

Find them, maybe.

Jad Abumrad:

So we started a kind of a whole new leg of the story.

Molly Webster:

Hi Molly. Can you hear me?

Molly Webster:

Yes, I can hear you. Ooh, I hear some other things too.

Oh, what do you-

Molly Webster:

Actually it might just be static on the line, but it kind of sounded like the ocean

I just switch up the fan. Just give me a second.

Jad Abumrad:

Our producer, Molly Webster, was able to track down a reporter in India, Nilanjana Bhowmick. And she asked her if she could find those surrogates.

Okay, so you had given me a name, right?

Molly Webster:

Lotus. Lotus has got a representative in Nepal. I actually call that person in Nepal and they did tell me the location of the clinic. And I spoke to the doctor and she said that "Yes, I will put you in touch with one of the surrogates." And the next morning, we were supposed to touch base again, but then you know, she just totally went incommunicado. That's been the same day I opened my mail and there was a mail from Israel, you know, them asking me like just like to stop the search for some time. And I was, like, I was so near them.

Jad Abumrad:

As far as we understand, what happened was that the doctor contacted Lotus, Lotus contacted Tal and Amir saying, "Call off the reporters, you're putting these women's lives in danger. If someone in their village sees a reporter hanging around, they'll know those women were surrogates. That's not something these surrogates want people to know. Stop." Here's, uh, here's my understanding, and you guys correct me if I'm wrong, is that we, we had, had asked someone to look for them. And that person got kind of close and then word got back to the agency. And that's created some pressure for us to change and, you know, that's really what we're sort of staring out right now is how to respond.

We heard that there is a real threat on their life because of the culture, of the society that they live in. One of them was Muslim. I don't know if, if, if the Muslim society is going to accept the fact that she carried the pregnancy to a gay couple and-

And to Israelis.

And to Israelis.

Molly Webster:

Robert Krulwich:

So that's a very, very weird, very delicate-

Jad Abumrad:

We don't want anything that may hurt, eh, the surrogates.

Jad Abumrad:

Well, I mean, we want to tell this story. We definitely don't want anyone to get hurt, but I do feel like we have an ethical obligation to hear from the women who do this. If not the specific women in this case, then people who represent their experience to whatever degree it can be represented. It would be, it would feel wrong for that to be a voice that we don't hear.

I don't know. It's like, eh, it's for us, it's, it's, uh, we don't want that anybody will contact our surrogate. And if it says that it's not going to be without the story, so let's [inaudible 00:32:39], because it's not worth it for us.

Jad Abumrad:

Okay, understood. Understood. We won't make any further attempts to contact those two, those two women.

Jad Abumrad:

Just so we're all clear. I think what I'd like to do is to continue to pursue people who have been in similar situations, but are not in any way connected to those two women, or to you guys.

Okay. I mean, again, we need, uh, only make sure that, eh, nobody's going to be hurt.

Jad Abumrad:

Absolutely. Absolutely. That's where we left things with Tal and Amir. And then, uh, and then the story changed a lot. That's coming up.

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Jad Abumrad:

Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

Robert Krulwich:

I'm Robert Krulwich.

Molly Webster:

I'm Molly Webster.

Jad Abumrad:

This is Radiolab and we will return now to our collaboration with Israel Story, producer is Maya Kosovar and Yochai Maital. Uh, the story of Tal and Amir and their three babies. Now, that's how it started for us. It was a story of two guys trying to have some kids, but around the point of the earthquake, uh, the story really shifted for us. I mean, as it did for the entire world, really.

Robert Krulwich:

Because we'd been concentrating the tale so far on the fathers, but with 24 some odd babies, that's an awful lot of women...

Jad Abumrad:

Who had to carry those babies.

Robert Krulwich:

So what could they be thinking? What is the story about them?

Jad Abumrad:

How are they feeling about this transaction? Uh, how much are they getting? Will it actually change their life? These are some of the questions we had. We gave those questions to Molly and she sort of ran with it.

Robert Krulwich:

Molly Webster:

Yeah. So in the months after the earthquake, I guess you could say the, like, the political situation in Nepal changed. How everyone started looking at surrogacy changed. Once everyone saw these pictures of all these babies outside the Israeli embassy being put on airplanes and sent back to Israel. It just cracked open this huge debate, not just back in Israel but in Nepal, in India, even internationally. Basically you had groups coming out and saying like, you know, the feminists were saying this is exploitation and we're just using these women for their wombs. And there were op-ed articles about should we be shifting women across borders? Is this way you want to do surrogacy? And then, sort of, the next thing that happens, uh, like three weeks after we talked to Tal and Amir, is that Nepal actually decided to ban surrogacy.

Robert Krulwich:

Completely?

Molly Webster:

Completely for both straights, for both same sex couples, foreign couples, local couples. And for, for Nepali women couldn't do it. And Indian woman couldn't come into their borders and do it.

Jad Abumrad:

No more surrogacy, no more loopholes.

Molly Webster:

No more surrogacy, no more loopholes. But then the confusion was that they banned surrogacy, but there were still, uh, pregnant surrogates on the ground. And so they sort of existed in this gray zone, um, and in the midst of that was when we went out to try and find surrogates.

Molly Webster:

In Nepal, all the surrogates are kept in what are called shelter houses, which are just like houses that, um, agencies rent out that have a lot of pregnant women.

Robert Krulwich:

Even thought this is banned, they're still, they still have these-

Molly Webster:

Yes, they still have the houses. Like, the rumors are that they moved the houses further away from the city center, like attract less attention. And so we found a Nepali reporter

Bhrikuti Rai:

I'm Bhrikuti Rai and I am a freelance journalist based in Kathmandu.

Molly Webster:

Uh, to go, uh, try and get into one of these shelter houses.

Bhrikuti Rai:

So the shelter house is actually quite far from the main city center. Almost half an hour or 40 minutes drive from Kathmandu. It's on a, on a hilltop because these are the outskirts of Kathmandu where new settlements have just started. Uh, so it was actually a school building, which they turned into a shelter because I think the school had left after the earthquake. The moment I reached the first floor, I was so surprised. It was very noisy. A lot of children playing around. And turns out a lot of women bringing their young children if they're too young to be left alone.

Molly Webster:

Bhrikuti Rai:

Molly Webster:

And how many women were there?

Bhrikuti Rai:

There were around I think 20 or 22 women there.

Molly Webster:

20 or 22 women on the first floor of this building.

Bhrikuti Rai:

Molly Webster:

This shelter house was run by another Israeli agency, so not Lotus, but a different one. And uh, we're guessing that most of the women were carrying babies for Israeli couples.

Bhrikuti Rai:

And at least the women I saw who outside the room or who had the doors open, they seem to be around thirty to early forties.

Molly Webster:

Bhrikuti Rai:

Yeah. But I mean, the first time I saw, I saw the first woman I talked to [foreign language 00:38:04] she was wearing like a mustard color sadie. I think she had some bangles. All the women had some bangles in their hands and [foreign language 00:38:14]

Molly Webster:

She said she was 36 years old [foreign language 00:38:20] from Kolkata [foreign language 00:38:24] she has two girls. [foreign language 00:38:28] Bhrikuti asked, "How old are your girls?" And she said, "8 and 12." [foreign language 00:38:31] And then Bhrikuti asked, like, "Why are you doing this?" And the woman said, [foreign language 00:38:40] "Oh, I'm doing it for them."

Bhrikuti Rai:

It's because, you know, we have a lot of financial problem. My husband is a rickshaw driver and we don't make enough. And [foreign language 00:38:52] she worked as a maid in Delhi

Molly Webster:

And ultimately, she said she had no other way to raise money for her daughters to get married because [foreign language 00:39:02] in Hindu weddings, the bride's family pays off the groom in the form of a dowry. And the plan was to use the money from surrogacy for the dowry. [foreign language 00:39:13] She'd been in Kathmandu for three months. So she was in her first trimester [foreign language 00:39:17] And when Bhrikuti asked her [foreign language 00:39:19] does she know who the baby is for. [foreign language 00:39:28] She said, no. [foreign language 00:39:30] But she knows it's not hers.

Molly Webster:

[foreign language 00:39:36] And actually, all the women that Bhrikuti talked to were very, very clear about this. [foreign language 00:39:41] This is a job. [foreign language 00:39:48]

Bhrikuti Rai:

The second women I talked to-

Molly Webster:

30 years old, also a maid in Delhi, also two daughters.

Bhrikuti Rai:

She looked all dressed up. She was already, too, as if she were about to leave somewhere and then I realized, "Okay, her husband is here."

Molly Webster:

She had just given birth and she put the job sentiment pretty plainly. [foreign language 00:40:02] So she said, and I'm translating here, [foreign language 00:40:09] "I will give gladly, I will give the baby from my wound. If I will think this is my baby, then how will it work? I have two children. I cannot take this child home. I will have to give, I have no sadness, no problem."

Molly Webster:

Anytime Bhrikuti asked these women, "Are you conflicted? Will you have trouble giving the baby up?" She always got the same answer.

Bhrikuti Rai:

[foreign language 00:40:36] They always say that we would happily give away the child and one of them even said [foreign language 00:40:40] "If the baby comes out right now, I'll just give it right away drag away." And then she laughed.

Molly Webster:

Did you get a sense that these women didn't want it known that they were doing this?

Bhrikuti Rai:

Um, I mean some of them did and some of them didn't because some women were like [foreign language 00:40:59]

Molly Webster:

They said like, "Now that I'm here, my neighbors, my family, everyone knows." And then when Bhrikuti asked her [foreign language 00:41:07] do they have an opinion? Is it right or wrong? She answered, "No, I'm here for the money. So I would not listen to any opinions. If it was wrong, I would not come here."

Bhrikuti Rai:

But some of them were like [foreign language 00:41:27] why would I tell anyone? You know, there was one particular woman...

Molly Webster:

32 years old...

Bhrikuti Rai:

Very cheerful, nail polish on and she had, like, this pink lipstick on.

Molly Webster:

She said, "People in my village simply do not believe these things. That one can have children by getting injected or taking medicine. They won't believe this."

Bhrikuti Rai:

She kind of do parallels with how some of the people in our village had done something similar when they bred cows or fishes. She said, like, "Maybe they'll understand but my family will not understand."

Molly Webster:

She says [foreign language 00:42:04], "I have told lies to them."

Jad Abumrad:

So how much in the end of that do they make?

Bhrikuti Rai:

I asked them [foreign language 00:42:13]

Molly Webster:

How much money do you get here?

Bhrikuti Rai:

I talk to four women and the figure was the same [foreign language 00:42:19]

Molly Webster:

Jad Abumrad:

Shat does that mean in dollars?

Molly Webster:

So if you do the conversion, um, today it's a $5,300 U.S. dollars. And the way it works is that they get paid a small amount of money every month that they're pregnant. And then at the end they get a lump sum. Bhrikuti says that for these women, at the end of the pregnancy, that lump sum...

Bhrikuti Rai:

Is like, let's say around 2 or $3,000.

Molly Webster:

Which is the amount that Tal and Amir heard outside the embassy.

Bhrikuti Rai:

The total sum that they have when they go back home is quite, you know, it's not a lot.

Jad Abumrad:

So $5-ish-000 dollars is what you're hearing.

Molly Webster:

Jad Abumrad:

Wow. That's a difference.

Molly Webster:

To sort of see if this was a number that was just coming out of that shelter house or if it was something that was, like, the going rate, I guess. Uh, we talked to six surrogates who are in India, that same rate, around $5,000 kept coming up. And we did hear a range from one surrogate. Um, and this was about a friend of hers. Uh, we heard as low as a thousand.

Jad Abumrad:

A surrogate getting only a thousand dollars for a pregnancy?

Molly Webster:

Hello? Hello. This is Jerusalem calling.

Molly Webster:

Hi, this is New York answering.

Jad Abumrad:

Ultimately, we took this information back to Tal and Amir, because this was originally their question.

Robert Krulwich:

Let's talk about the money part now.

Molly Webster:

Yeah, all right, so the last time we talked to you, you thought you were paying your surrogates $12,000.

Molly Webster:

Uh, around ish. We've been off reporting and it seems like the number that's coming up most consistently for what surrogates are reporting as their rate is $5,300 U.S. dollars.

What. [foreign language 00:44:14]

It's too low. Really?

Molly Webster:

I want to cry.

Molly Webster:

We explained to them that if you actually look at the contract, the line that looks like it's payment straight to the surrogate doesn't actually say this is payment for the surrogate. It says this is payment to surrogacy services. And it's sort of, like, once you add in that second word, it opens the door to all kinds of things.

She's getting less than half. Its very, its like, you feel like suckers.

So who get the money?

So who got the money?

Molly Webster:

That question, it hung in the air for a few weeks. Until...

Dana Magdassi:

I have around seven minutes before I go into something. I'm just in my car now...

Molly Webster:

I was finally able to talk to Dana Magdassi, who is the head of Lotus, which is the agency that Tal and Amir used in Nepal. She had just, the morning I talked to her, she had just flown from Nepal to Israel and I caught her in a car, on her way back to the airport. And she was going to fly off to Australia. And I asked her, how much do the surrogates actually get paid?

Dana Magdassi:

I can tell you truly that I work in Indian and Nepal since 2010, and I cannot tell you exactly how much a surrogate holds in her hand at the end of the procedure because we don't transfer the funds to the, uh, surrogate herself.

Molly Webster:

She's saying she has no idea. And the reason she has no idea is because, uh, she said this and other agencies I spoke to said this, is that when you're working on the ground, in foreign countries, under the umbrella of surrogacy, you are dealing with a lot of middle men. And the middle men have middle men, and there are sub-middle men. The, the, the people who find the women in India, who get all the paperwork done, who get them to the border, who get them over the border, who then bring them to [inaudible 00:46:15], someone meets them in Kathmandu, gets them to the shelter house. And all those people, they need to get paid.

Dana Magdassi:

I, I truly can tell you that I truly don't know after the agent, you know, how much the surrogates, they have in their hand. We don't come and ask the agent exactly how much goes for her compensation, exactly how much goes for her, uh, allowance. We don't go into that. I can tell you that-

Molly Webster:

Well I guess I was thinking about, I would feel conflicted as the head of an agency, to be, like, "I think the money is going to some people? But I just don't know, like..." I think that would niggle at me.

Dana Magdassi:

Yeah. Well that's the good thing that you're doing what you do. You're not doing what I'm doing.

Molly Webster:

Dana Magdassi:

Because, uh, you, you know, you can't look at the whole world and say, okay I'm going to make it, uh, brighter. I cannot deal with all the problems in the world. We're trying to give them as much as possible.

We paid the money for this woman gets life. And, and now we understand it's not exactly like that.

It's not right.

Robert Krulwich:

I mean, that real... I think the deep question here, underneath, after everything is, is over, is when, when we do a generous thing, like, we give people families who couldn't have families before, but that becomes a business. Is there something about the business of making a family that is always going to be a little troubling? And there are no perfect ways to do this? Or is there a way to pull this off in some... I, I just don't know.

I mean, like, I still have three more embryos that they're in the freezer in Nepal. I don't know if the next time I will not do the process, maybe, in the state.

Molly Webster:

The U.S. is, like, an entirely different surrogacy scene, which we're just not going to get into here. But the interesting thing that, uh, that, uh, Dana said and, and the head of another agency, was that they think that in the next, like, five to ten years, the U.S. will be one of the only countries where surrogacy is still happening.

Dana Magdassi:

Things are closing down. Most of the things are closing down.

Molly Webster:

So obviously Nepal has a ban, Thailand, it looks like, uh, in a few days after this piece comes out, that India may ban it for foreigners. Cambodia, there's rumors that they're about to ban it. And even in Canada, there are talks of new restrictions on surrogacy. And this is, these are bans, like, not just for same sex couples but, uh [crosstalk 00:48:58] hetero couples, single people, everybody.

Jad Abumrad:

Oh whoa. And the main reason for all these bans and restrictions is, is worries about, uh, exploiting women?

Molly Webster:

Jad Abumrad:

I feel weird about that, a little bit, though.

Robert Krulwich:

Jad Abumrad:

Because if you're, if you're trying to, if you... As we heard, these women are making a business decision, whether or not we agree with it, that's an entirely separate thing. They're, it seems like they're making a decision and were going to take it away in order to protect them. Feels, I don't know.

Molly Webster:

It's funny because at times, it also feels, it... you just think, okay, these women can decide how they're going to use their own bodies.

Jad Abumrad:

Right, its a little bit, like, a little bit like the abortion debate.

Molly Webster:

Mm-hmm (affirmative) it totally is.

Robert Krulwich:

But, but by the same token, its, its not wrong for a society to say, "Hey, there's certain things we just won't allow. We won't give you that choice because we, we find that the choice itself is, um, is wrong."

Molly Webster:

Mm-hmm (affirmative) I mean, its fair. But, like, one of the arguments against banning it, is that, is that there's still, uh, demand for surrogacy. And that that's not going to go away. And so it just pushes-

Robert Krulwich:

To the underground.

Molly Webster:

This system underground. And so, uh-

Robert Krulwich:

And that way its a lot like abortion.

Molly Webster:

And that way its a lot, you know, shadier.

Jad Abumrad:

Molly Webster:

Um, but the other thing was, is that then Bhrukuti actually went and talked to the women about, like [foreign language 00:50:18] what this job does for them. Like, okay, so its not the crazy amount of money we thought it might have been. Its $5,000. Like, what does that do for you? [foreign language 00:50:30] One woman said-

Bhrikuti Rai:

That, you know, when I get this money, I'm going to go back home and start something on my own [foreign language 00:50:40] start a small shop, you know, my own little enterprise.

Molly Webster:

The other women...

Bhrikuti Rai:

All of them wanted to use this money to build a house, [foreign language 00:50:52] buy some land.

Jad Abumrad:

Can you buy a plot of land in New Delhi for five grand?

Molly Webster:

You definitely cannot get a plot of land in New Delhi for five grand. But what these women do is they take the money and they go back to their original village. And they use it there to buy a small plot of land. And that's totally doable and its actually no small feat.

Bhrikuti Rai:

Having ownership of land is so important in our society in South Asia.

Molly Webster:

Once you own land, in South Asia, it raises your, um, socioeconomic status. Its something that's passed down through generations. So you're, like, creating something for your family. And if you're one of the women that, maybe, already have land, the thing you can do with that $5,000 is build a house on it.

Bhrikuti Rai:

That's a very small, like, mud house or, you know-

Molly Webster:

Keep in mind, like, these women, their day jobs are all maids, right? And so they make less than $100 a month.

Bhrikuti Rai:

They said that had it not been for this, I mean, they would have never, I mean, probably never own this much money at, at a single chance.

Molly Webster:

But more than that, like [foreign language 00:51:47] when you go into this, or at least when I went into this, the thing that I expected to see was, like, okay, these are poor desperate women that are being forced into this, like, right? They've been dragged across the border. And I think the thing that I was surprised to see, when I looked at the transcripts was that even though these women don't have a lot of options and, yes, they are poor, they had chosen to do this. Out of the limited options they had, they had looked at them at all and they thought, like, this is the thing that I'm going to do to get what I want. It felt like these women were making a choice.

Bhrikuti Rai:

I, I asked them [foreign language 00:52:22] What if you're given a chance to go abroad, lets say to Dubai or Qatar, because a lot of women from India and Nepal, they go there. One of them said that, you know [foreign language 00:52:29]

Molly Webster:

Like why would I do that?

Bhrikuti Rai:

That would be very far away.

Molly Webster:

She says that here, the kids can come, their husbands can visit.

Bhrikuti Rai:

They are fed well [foreign language 00:52:39]

Molly Webster:

The surrogates get good medical care.

Bhrikuti Rai:

They're taken care during the whole nine months.

Molly Webster:

And, and for those whole nine months, their sending money back home. And back home, there's one less mouth to feed.

Bhrikuti Rai:

I think, you know, I mean, the way we pass judgment, you know, you just pity on this women. But I think they've, they are very aware of what they're doing. They might be exploited to some level, like you said. But it seemed like the women are, are, in some ways, they are in charge of deciding how they want their life to be. And we don't have to look at them with, um, with pity [foreign language 00:53:19]

Molly Webster:

The last woman that Bhrikuti spoke to, she was a 32 year old woman, from Darjeeling, she spoke in Nepali. And she told Bhrikuti [foreign language 00:53:34] I came here in March, my embryo transfer was done once, but I don't know if it was due to the earthquake or something else, but it didn't get heartbeat and it got washed.

Bhrikuti Rai:

She said that she lost the fetus in two months. And they tried it twice on her [foreign language 00:53:47]

Molly Webster:

Bhrikuti, "How did you feel when the child got washed?" Surrogate, "[foreign language 00:53:59] I felt bad. What to say. It felt like it was my own. And they won't give money if its unsuccessful."

Molly Webster:

Wow wait, she, uh, I'm like, I didn't know if you miscarry, you don't get paid?

Bhrikuti Rai:

Molly Webster:

She says its treated like a business. You get paid for every month you successfully carry. And if you do lose the baby, depending on where it is in the pregnancy, part of the money is refunded to the intended parents. [foreign language 00:54:47] Surrogate, "Most of my friends had successful stories to share back in Delhi. Some of my friends made a house with the money. Some bought land. I felt good."

Molly Webster:

She basically says, she wishes she had done this earlier, because now, with the ban, she was being sent back to her village.

Bhrikuti Rai:

She was still weeping a little, of what could have been if she was, you know, if the eggs were healthy enough, if her health was all right. [foreign language 00:55:17]

Molly Webster:

Bhrikuti, "Will you come again if this opens back up and try again?" [foreign language 00:55:28] Surrogate, "Yes, I will come."

Jad Abumrad:

Producer Molly Webster.

Robert Krulwich:

Ah, there's something on your face that says were not quite done here.

Jad Abumrad:

No, we're done, we're done, we're done.

Robert Krulwich:

No, no, no, say, say what's on your mind.

Jad Abumrad:

I'm, well, I'm thinking, I'm thinking about all the different ways we've thought about this story along the way of making it.

Robert Krulwich:

Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Jad Abumrad:

I mean, you can read it as, like, this is story about the business of family making.

Robert Krulwich:

Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Jad Abumrad:

The outsourcing of babies. You can hear it as a story about exploitation. All these different things are happening in this story.

Robert Krulwich:

Jad Abumrad:

But it occurs to me that this is also a story about the inventiveness of people, in some weird way.

Robert Krulwich:

Invent, you mean, what do you mean by that?

Jad Abumrad:

I guess, what I mean is, like, the way that cultures will cross fertilize in these really unexpected, like okay-

Robert Krulwich:

Jad Abumrad:

Like, these are, these are two, these are two sets of needs that are, sort of, reaching out and finding each other, half a world away. And there's a kind of symbiotic benefit. Even while its trouble and maybe unfair. But its still kind of there. And so like, I, I feel like we could talk about this story in any number of ways but I also feel like one of the things that's happened here, this is a story about dreams. And about aspiring to have a better life and how, in this case, those aspirations meet in this really uncomfortable transaction.

Robert Krulwich:

Yeah. Yeah, well lets thank people. That's what we should do next. Lets thank them.

Jad Abumrad:

Molly Webster:

So many people.

Robert Krulwich:

Jad Abumrad:

First we should, uh, we should begin by thanking, uh, the posse at Israel Story and Maya Kosover. Uh, we have just, we went in deep with those guys (laugh) for this story. Check them out, it, its really cool stuff. At prx.org and israelstory.org. What was the one you were just telling us about?

Molly Webster:

Oh I love this one.

Robert Krulwich:

There's, there's a story that they did last season, in which they went to every town in Israel that has a Herzl Street. Herzl's, like, the George Washington of Israel. So they all have Herzl Streets, they knocked on 48, 'cause Israel was founded in '48. They go, "knock, knock" "who's there" and they open the door and they interview whoever's on the other side of the door. It's just a wonderful, cool idea and they get to meet a crazy quilt of Israelis.

Jad Abumrad:

Yeah, well huge thanks to the Israel Story team and to Barry Finkle.

Robert Krulwich:

Molly Webster:

And to our reporters in India, Nilanjana Bhowmick, and in Nepal, Bhrikuti Rai. And the International Reporting Project for connecting us with reporters and translators in different countries.

Jad Abumrad:

We talked to a lot of agencies, uh, for this story, surrogacy agencies, special thanks to Doron Mamet and Dr. Nayana Patel.

Molly Webster:

To our translators Tom Wasserman, Aya Keefe, Karthik Ravindra, Turna Ray-Franz and Adhikaar, which is a Nepali community organization out of Ridgewood, Queens and, uh, thanks to Ivan Zimmerman.

Robert Krulwich:

And for music, special thanks to [inaudible 00:58:52] and the Balkan Beat Box.

Jad Abumrad:

We had production help for this, uh, story from Andy Mills and this piece was produced and reported by Molly Webster. I'm Jad Abumrad.

Robert Krulwich:

I'm Robert Krulwich.

Molly Webster:

I'm Molly Webster.

Jad Abumrad:

Thanks for listening. Oh and one last note, uh, we should tell you that, uh, Tal and Amir did meet their surrogates, very briefly, one time. And, uh, its kind of a cool moment. We couldn't figure out where to put it in this story. But we have that scene on our website at radiolab.org. And its worth listening to.

Message five from phone number-

Maya Kosover:

Hi, this Maya Kosover. Calling you again because I had a mistake last time.

Bhrikuti Rai:

Hello, my name is Bhrikuti Rai and I'm a journalist from Kathmandu.

Yochai Maital:

Hi this is Yochai Maital from Tel Aviv. Calling to read the credits. Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad. Our staff includes Brenda Farrell, David Gebel, Dylan Keefe, Matt Kielty, Robert Krulwich...

Bhrikuti Rai:

[inaudible 01:00:05]

Maya Kosover:

Arianne Wack, Molly Webster...

Yochai Maital:

Soren Wheeler and [inaudible 01:00:12]

Maya Kosover:

With help from Simon Adler and Alex [inaudible 01:00:18]

Bhrikuti Rai:

[inaudible 01:00:19]

Yochai Maital:

Our fact checkers are Eva Dasher and Michelle Harris. All right...

Bhrikuti Rai:
New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio's programming is the audio record.

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Jad here. So, uh, next week we're gonna launch a new miniseries here on Radiolab from Molly Webster. Molly is somebody who, if you've listened to the show for a while... Like you know her voice, you know her vibe, she's been reporting mostly science stories here at Radiolab for about five years.

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Advice and help on student finance from Which? Money. Read our tips and help on student loans, tuition fees, budgeting and financial support available.

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Votre dictionnaire est-il de droite ? - Parler comme jamais - Binge Audio

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Il serait le répertoire des " bons " mots, classés de A à Z, avec leur sens exact et leur bonne orthographe. Il serait le guide neutre, unique et fiable du comment bien écrire, bien parler, bien s'exprimer. Sauf qu'il n'existe pas un seul dictionnaire. Il existe différentes versions, plus ou moins reconnues, faites par des personnes différentes avec des choix éditoriaux différents. Alors, le dictionnaire que vous consultez est-il de droite ?

Dans cet épisode, Laélia Véron a reçu Marie-Hélène Drivaud, lexicographe et directrice éditoriale du petit Robert, et Bernard Cerquiglini, professeur de linguistique, conseiller scientifique du Petit Larousse, à la tête d'un nouveau projet de dictionnaire, le Dictionnaire des Francophones.

RECOMMANDATIONS ET COUPS DE CŒUR

LES MOTS DE BERNARD : agender ; adulescencer

LES RECOS DE LAELIA : le Trésor de la Langue française - disponible en ligne et gratuit, Le Grevisse et Le Petit Robert

RÉFÉRENCES CITÉES DANS L'ÉMISSION

" L'emprunt linguistique dans le lexique des homosexualités. Étude historique etcomparative des internationalismes en français, italien, espagnol, anglais et allemand. Linguistique " thèse écrite par Nicholas Lovecchio et publiée par Sorbonne Université en 2019

Parlez-vous tronqué ? (Bernard Cerquiglini, éd. Larousse, 2019)

" Description lexicographique et idéologies : jusqu'où s'engager ? Retour sur Le français au Burundi " écrit par Claude Frey publié dans Le Français des dictionnaires en 2008

" Féminicide : mot masculin qui tue " article écrit par Dominique Perrin publié dans M Le Mag (Le Monde) le 22 novembre 2019

Catalogue des idées reçues sur la langue (Marina Yaguello, éd. Seuil, 1988)

Pédophilie, Pédocriminalité par Bernard Cerquiglini (Radio France, Dailymotion, 2020)

Les dictionnaires cités dans l'épisode : Le Dictionnaire des belgicismes ; Le Dictionnaire des francophones ; le Larousse ; Le Robert ; Urban Dictionary ; Le Wiktionnaire ; Le Dico ; Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française ; Le Littré ; Le Dictionnaire de Richelet

La chaîne YouTube Linguisticae

Josette Rey-Debove ; Aya Nakamura ; Pierre Guyotat.
ARCHIVES
Bilal Hassani - Djadja (Aya Nakamura Cover) (Bilal Hassani, YouTube, 2018), La Boîte à Questions de Aya Nakamura - 23/10/2018 (La Boîte à Questions, YouTube, 2018), Renaud et l'argot (D'hier et d'aujourd'hui, Ina, 1981), Catherine Sauvage " Mets deux thunes dans l'bastringue " (Ina Chansons, YouTube), LA THUNE - ANGELE [COVER] (Linor, YouTube, 2018), L'Académie française dit oui à la féminisation des noms de métiers (Brut, YouTube, 2019), La féminisation des noms de métiers, fonctions, grades ou titres (Aujourd'hui la vie Au nom des femmes, Ina, 1985), Violences conjugales : du crime passionnel au féminicide | Franceinfo INA (Ina Actu, YouTube), Dictionnaire des francophones : une plateforme participative pour illustrer la diversité du français ( Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, YouTube, 2019), Les 3 Fromages - C'est toi que je t'aime (nouvelle génération) (Les 3 Fromages, YouTube, 2014)
CRÉDITS
Parler comme jamais est un podcast de Binge Audio animé par Laélia Véron, avec la collaboration scientifique de Maria Candea, enseignante-chercheuse à l'université de Paris 3 et en soutien avec la Délégation générale à la langue française et aux langues de France. Cet épisode a été enregistré en janvier 2020 au studio V. Despentes de Binge Audio (Paris, 19e). Réalisation : Adel Ittel El Madani. Générique : Thomas Oger. Production et édition : Diane Jean et Camille Regache. Identité graphique : Sébastien Brothier (Upian). Direction des programmes : Joël Ronez. Direction de la rédaction : David Carzon. Direction générale : Gabrielle Boeri-Charles.

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Votre dictionnaire est-il de droite ? - Parler comme jamais - Binge Audio

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Il serait le répertoire des " bons " mots, classés de A à Z, avec leur sens exact et leur bonne orthographe. Il serait le guide neutre, unique et fiable du comment bien écrire, bien parler, bien s'exprimer. Sauf qu'il n'existe pas un seul dictionnaire.

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What was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution? Hans Rosling makes the case for the washing machine. With newly designed graphics from Gapminder, Rosling shows us the magic that pops up when economic growth and electricity turn a boring wash day into an intellectual day of reading.

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The Central Applications Office (CAO) processes applications for undergraduate courses in Irish Higher Education Institutions.

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Ireland: CAO EU Student information booklet

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Ireland: CAO EU Student information booklet

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BC Study UK How to Apply to UK Universities.pptx

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Store photos and docs online. Access them from any PC, Mac or phone. Create and work together on Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents.

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StudyUK: How to apply to a UK university

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All the latest info about studying in the UK can be found here

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All the latest info about studying in the UK can be found here

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'We continue to be open to all international students, including those from the EU, and we value the important contribution they make to our universities.' - Michelle Donelan, Universities Minister

Here in the UK, a warm welcome is waiting for you.

The UK education sector is one of the most international in the world. Students and staff from the EU and beyond are extremely welcome. International students make an enormous contribution to the UK and the success of its education institutions.

There's still time to study in the UK in the 2020-21 academic year. Visit our dedicated webpage for more information.

Does the UK leaving the European Union affect students from the EU?

If you're from the EU, EEA-EFTA states or Switzerland, and you're thinking of coming to study in the UK, there are a few practical things that might change as a result of the UK leaving the EU on 31 January 2020. These depend on when you arrive in the UK.

If you are an Irish national, these changes will not apply to you.

If you arrive in the UK before 31 December 2020, there's very little that will change as long as you register for the EU Settlement Scheme. If you're an EU citizen and you start living in the UK by 31 December 2020, you and your family can apply to the EU Settlement Scheme and continue living in the UK after 30 June 2021. The deadline for applying is 30 June 2021.

If you arrive from 1 January 2021 onwards, there will be some changes. Many of these are still subject to negotiations, but the UK government, the British Council and universities in the UK are working hard to make any new arrangements as simple as possible.

The main changes are:

Arrive in the UK before 1 January 2021
No changes; apply for EU Settlement Scheme to stay longer than 30 June 2021 (if you want to remain in the UK beyond 30 June 2021 and keep 'home fee status' beyond this date)

Arrive in the UK after 1 January 2021 and start your course before 31 July 2021
Changes to immigration status, no changes to fee status

Arrive in the UK after 1 January 2021 and start your course after 1 August 2021
Changes to immigration status and fee status (for studies in England, Scotland and Wales)

More details on these changes are below.

Will EU students have to pay the same university fees as international students to study in the UK?

At present, EU students studying at a university or further education institution have 'home fee status' in the UK. This means that if you're an EU student, you pay the same tuition fees as students from the part of the UK where your university is located (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales). If you study in Scotland as an undergraduate, your tuition fees are paid by Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS). EU students studying in the rest of the UK as an undergraduate can apply for a student loan from the relevant student funding body to cover any tuition fees.

This won't change if you start a course at a university or further education institution in the UK before July 2021. You will continue to be eligible for 'home fee status' - in other words, you will be charged the same tuition fees as UK students, and you can still apply for a student loan in England, Northern Ireland or Wales, or have your fees paid by SAAS if you are studying as an undergraduate in Scotland.

If you're an EU national, or from the EEA-EFTA states or Switzerland and have already started your course in the UK, you are also guaranteed your existing status for the duration of your studies.

These guarantees apply for the full duration of your course, even if it finishes after 31 December 2020.

EU students and students from the EEA-EFTA or Switzerland who start a new course in England, Scotland or Wales after August 2021 will no longer be eligible for home fee status. Instead, each UK university will set its own fees for EU students. Northern Ireland will announce arrangements in due course. If you're thinking of starting a course in the UK from August 2021 onwards, you will need check with the university you are applying to for more information about fees they will charge.

Students from the EU, EEA-EFTA or Switzerland who start new courses in England, Scotland or Wales after August 2021 will also no longer be eligible for student loans (Northern Ireland will announce arrangements in due course). However, there may be other forms of financial support you can apply for. Find out more in Scholarships and funding.

Will EU students need a visa to study in the UK?

If you arrive in the UK before 1 January 2021, you will not need a visa. If you plan to stay in the UK longer than 1 January 2021 (for example, to complete your full course), you'll need to apply online for the EU Settlement Scheme. The scheme is free of charge. You should apply as soon as possible after you've arrived in the UK, and by 30 June 2021.

If you plan to arrive in the UK from 1 January 2021 onwards, you will need to apply for a student visa if you are studying a course which is longer than six months in length.

You will need to complete an application, pay an application fee (£348 for students), and have a current passport or other valid travel document.

Most people will be able to complete their application, including identity verification, using a smartphone app. If you can't access the smartphone app or you don't have a biometric passport, you may need to go to a Visa Application Centre in your country.

You will also need to pay a fee called an Immigration Health Surcharge. This gives you access to the UK's National Health Service. Students receive a 25 per cent discount on the usual cost of this surcharge. Details of costs will be available shortly.

You will be able to apply for a student visa up to six months before your course starts.

Visa applications for EU and EEA students open on 5 October 2020. There's more information on the GOV.UK website.

Can EU students still come to the UK on the Erasmus+ exchange programme?

The UK will continue to participate fully in the current Erasmus+ programme, which lasts until the end of 2020. Participants who study, train, volunteer or spend time abroad through Erasmus+ exchanges that were confirmed during the current programme (2014-2020) can participate fully and for the full duration of their exchange. This covers UK participants going abroad and international participants coming to the UK. The UK's participation in future Erasmus+ programmes is part of discussions between the UK government and the EU and has not yet been finalised.

The British Council, the Erasmus+ UK National Agency (British Council and Ecorys UK) and Universities UK are strongly supportive of continued and full UK participation in Erasmus+ after the UK leaves the European Union, so that UK and EU students can continue to benefit from Erasmus+ opportunities over the longer term.

For the most up-to-date information on Erasmus+, go to the UK National Agency website.

Do these changes apply to UK nationals living in EU countries?

UK nationals who live in EU countries, countries in the EEA-EFTA, or Switzerland will be eligible for home fees status if they start their studies in the UK before 1 January 2028.

If you are a UK national and you're thinking of studying in the UK, please contact the British Embassy in your country for more information about this announcement.

Can EU students stay and work in the UK after studies?

All international students in the UK - including EU students from January 2021 onwards - will be able to apply for the UK's new Graduate Route to stay in the UK for two years after their degree (three years after completing a PhD) to work or look for work at any skills level.

The route will be available in summer 2021 for those who have completed an undergraduate or master's degree at a higher education provider with a track record of compliance. There's more information about this on our post-study work opportunities page.

If you arrive in the UK before 1 January 2020, and you successfully apply to the EU Settlement Scheme, you have the right to live and work in the UK as part of your status. Find out more about this on the UK government website.

Where can I find more information?

We will continue to update this page regularly. For more information about starting your degree in 2020, including information about changes to study, support for international students, travel and more, visit our dedicated page.

Sign up to our newsletter to receive updates about studying in the UK.

Please see below for additional official sources of information about UK higher education.

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'We continue to be open to all international students, including those from the EU, and we value the important contribution they make to our universities.' - Michelle Donelan, Universities Minister The UK education sector is one of the most international in the world. Students and staff from the EU and beyond are extremely welcome.

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Here are useful upcoming events to help you make your decisions.

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This year we'll be doing lots of exciting activities and it would be great if we could document them. Please return this form asap. If you're not willing, then please write no on the top.

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To return to your teacher ASAP