#56 44 Photos AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Heavyweight

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Episode: #56 44 Photos

Author: Spotify Studios
Duration: 00:31:52

Episode Shownotes

One morning, Amy opened her mailbox and found a package with 44 photos inside—photos of complete strangers. Now Amy wonders: Who are they? And why were the photos sent to her? Credits This episode was hosted and produced by supervising producer Stevie Lane, along with Jonathan Goldstein, Phoebe Flanigan, and

Mohini Madgavkar. The senior producer is Kalila Holt. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon. Special thanks to Alex Blumberg, Mimi O’Donnell, Lauren Silverman, Maureen Taylor, Estelle Ivory, and all the incredibly patient people over at the USPS. The show was mixed by Bobby Lord. Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, Blue Dot Sessions, Golden Dunes, In Skies, Megatrax, Christopher Lennertz, and Bobby Lord. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records. Heavyweight is a Spotify Original Podcast. Amy has just written a new book, Artificial, a graphic memoir about her father’s efforts to preserve her late grandfather’s identity using AI technology. You can find it at your local bookstore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Summary

In episode #56 titled "44 Photos" of the podcast Heavyweight, Amy receives a package of 44 photographs of complete strangers instead of her expected book. This leads her and her friend Jordan to explore the complexities of the U.S. Postal Service to determine how the photos arrived in her mailbox. Amid the investigation, emotional stories unfold, particularly focusing on Kelly, who passed away unexpectedly, and her daughter Devin's reminiscences. The narrative underscores themes of memory, connection, and the impacts of loss, ultimately reflecting on the invisible bonds linking individuals and families through shared histories.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (#56 44 Photos) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:03 Speaker_06
Hello?

00:00:04 Speaker_10
Hello. Oh, hello. Do you know who this is?

00:00:07 Speaker_06
Yes, Evie.

00:00:11 Speaker_10
Yeah, you got me.

00:00:12 Speaker_06
You have a pretty recognizable voice, I have to say. It has a pleasantly deep register in a nice way, but it makes your voice very distinct.

00:00:22 Speaker_10
It's funny you should say this because one time when I was in middle school, my friend called my house and I picked up the phone and I was like, hello, and she thought it was my dad. She was like, hi Rob, is Stevie home?

00:00:36 Speaker_10
And I just pretended that, in fact, I was my father. And I, like, was just like, uh, yeah, let me get her.

00:00:44 Speaker_06
You didn't want to contradict your friend.

00:00:46 Speaker_10
I think I was just so embarrassed that I could possibly be mistaken for an old man.

00:00:52 Speaker_06
Well, maybe with respect to your dad, he, maybe he kind of sounds like a little girl.

00:01:00 Speaker_00
Hello, Stevie Lynestad speaking.

00:01:09 Speaker_10
I'm Stevie Lane and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, 44 Photos. Right after the break.

00:01:24 Speaker_07
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00:01:50 Speaker_07
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00:02:02 Speaker_01
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00:02:13 Speaker_01
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00:02:32 Speaker_10
There are places, according to Celtic folklore, where the boundary between our physical world and the spiritual world is porous, where Earth and the otherworldly are separated by no more than a few inches.

00:02:45 Speaker_10
At these places, strange, unexplainable things can happen. These places are called thin places, and this is a story about one of them. A few years ago, Jordan Kistner wrote a book about thin places. She wanted to send it to her friend, Amy.

00:03:07 Speaker_08
So it was April 7th, 2021, and I went to the USPS that was a few blocks away from my apartment at the time.

00:03:21 Speaker_10
Jordan bought a brown padded envelope, put her book inside, and handed it to the postal worker.

00:03:27 Speaker_08
And that was that. It was a really uneventful post office visit on a pretty normal spring day in Vegas.

00:03:38 Speaker_09
It was a sunny day in April, and I walked to the mailbox. This is Jordan's friend, Amy, which is a really exciting part of my day. I really like mail, and I opened the mailbox with a little key, and there's something like stuffed into my box.

00:03:58 Speaker_09
Something Amy had been expecting, the package Jordan sent her. It says, you know, to Amy, from Jordan, and the address is Las Vegas.

00:04:07 Speaker_10
Amy brought the package back to her house and eagerly tore it open. But inside, Amy did not find Jordan's book. She didn't find a book at all. Instead, she found a stack of photographs.

00:04:21 Speaker_09
And that's where the mystery begins.

00:04:29 Speaker_10
Amy didn't recognize anyone in the photos. There was one of a girl wearing a blue t-shirt with clouds printed on it. Another of three teenagers in caps and gowns. The people were of all different ages and races.

00:04:43 Speaker_10
Some of the photos were in black and white, some in color. One was a Polaroid. Amy counted 44 photos in all. 44 photos of complete and total strangers. And yet, the package was labeled to Amy, her name written in ballpoint pen.

00:05:07 Speaker_10
Jordan's return address was scrawled in the upper left-hand corner. Struggling to come up with an explanation, Amy wondered, maybe Jordan sent these by accident.

00:05:19 Speaker_10
So Amy texted Jordan, telling her she received her package, but rather than a book, found 44 photographs inside.

00:05:27 Speaker_08
And I was completely confused. I just, I just couldn't, I actually felt like I couldn't totally comprehend the message she was sending me.

00:05:37 Speaker_09
So Jordan texted Amy back, wait, comma, what? With two question marks. Two? Yeah, two. And then photos, question mark.

00:05:48 Speaker_10
Amy sent Jordan a picture of the package and all 44 photographs spread out on her kitchen counter.

00:05:54 Speaker_09
And she said, what in all caps? I have no idea what those photos are. I don't even know those people, but that's my handwriting on the package.

00:06:09 Speaker_10
It was hard to know what to make of the whole thing. It's like Amy expected a book about thin places, but got an actual thin place experience instead. Amy can't bring herself to just throw the photos away.

00:06:23 Speaker_10
So for an entire year now, she's kept them by her desk. And for an entire year, she's been studying them. There's the one of a new baby sucking on someone's finger.

00:06:33 Speaker_10
There's a little girl in glasses and a cheerleader's outfit, holding her leg up and smiling confidently into the camera. The more Amy looks at the photos, the more she thinks about the family that's missing them.

00:06:46 Speaker_10
These people in the photos are nobody's to Amy, but they are somebody's to somebody.

00:06:52 Speaker_09
Is there a way to find any of these people? Like, who are they? Do they want their photographs back? Because I would like the photographs to be returned to the family. I feel like people should have their things.

00:07:08 Speaker_10
A year ago, when Amy first received the package, she and Jordan tried opening a case file on the mysterious photos, hoping the USPS could shed light on where they came from. But nothing ever came of it.

00:07:20 Speaker_08
The mail system, we feel like we understand it, but then when you really think about it, it is this complete mystery. It's like a void into which we send stuff and from which that stuff emerges again.

00:07:33 Speaker_08
But then when it doesn't emerge, you're like, wait a second, but what? What is, where is it going? What is, what is this system? What don't we know about it?

00:07:41 Speaker_10
There's a lot that I don't know about it, but Amy and Jordan want my help figuring out how Amy ended up with the photographs and how to return to Sender.

00:07:52 Speaker_10
To get to the bottom of it, I'll have to navigate a mysterious, little understood world that exists alongside our own. A world separated only by an inches wide slot in a metal box.

00:08:07 Speaker_10
And so I step over the boundary into the world of the United States Postal Service. I start with a theory that Jordan, Amy, and I discussed on the phone.

00:08:25 Speaker_10
Jordan had sent Amy the book via media mail, a discounted rate for sending things like books and CDs. From what I read online, it sounds like the post office searches media mail packages to prevent people from sending anything they want on the cheap.

00:08:40 Speaker_10
And in fact, Amy noticed that the package had been taped up as though it had been resealed en route. Maybe Jordan's package and the package with the photos were both searched and then accidentally swapped.

00:08:55 Speaker_10
To test this theory, I call the Postal Inspection Service. It turns out the post office has a whole department of inspectors. Are you sort of like the James Bond of the mail service?

00:09:06 Speaker_04
Actually, it's funny you mention it. My badge number was 007. No. Really?

00:09:17 Speaker_10
Really. His name is Mihalko. Dan Mihalko. He's a U.S. Postal Inspector. And what does he inspect?

00:09:27 Speaker_04
Postal crimes, theft of mail, mail fraud, prohibited items in the mail such as bombs, narcotics, anthrax attacks, pornography.

00:09:40 Speaker_10
I put my theory to Dan. Might the Postal Inspection Service have opened and examined Jordan's package?

00:09:47 Speaker_04
No, no, we don't do anything like that. The only time we'd ever inspect mail is if we had a search warrant. So we can't just open up mail. Nobody in the Postal Service has that authority.

00:10:00 Speaker_10
Dan says USPS investigators don't inspect packages without probable cause.

00:10:06 Speaker_04
Here's what it sounds like may have happened.

00:10:10 Speaker_10
Dan guesses that somewhere along the way, Jordan's package got damaged and the book fell out. Another package, carrying the bundle of photos, could have also broken open.

00:10:21 Speaker_10
— A postal worker might have seen the loose bundle of photos, thought they belonged in Jordan's envelope, and accidentally switched the packaging. And here's where that switch might have occurred.

00:10:32 Speaker_04
— It used to be commonly referred to as the dead letter office, but now I think it's mail recovery center.

00:10:40 Speaker_10
The Male Recovery Center, or MRC, is located in Atlanta, Georgia. It's where all undeliverable mail winds up. Some of the stuff they receive is truly strange.

00:10:52 Speaker_10
An alligator skull still covered in flesh, cremation boxes, Tom Nasalky's 1971 NBA championship ring, which had been stolen from him 12 years before showing up at the MRC. I don't know who Tom Nasalky is, but listeners might.

00:11:09 Speaker_10
The MRC is also one of the few places where postal workers are actually allowed to open mail to help them look for clues as to where the items or letters belong.

00:11:19 Speaker_10
Dan says that it's the job, in part, of the MRC employees to make their best guess about what belongs with what and send it on its way.

00:11:27 Speaker_04
They have to try to put pieces together. You know, they're kind of sluice in their own way.

00:11:34 Speaker_10
In their own way. Don't condescend to the MRC, Agent Mihalko. If Dan is right, the original package the photos came in with the original address might still be sitting somewhere at the MRC. So I phone up the person in charge to ask.

00:11:55 Speaker_03
This is the manager, Lionel Snow.

00:11:57 Speaker_10
Oh, hi, Lionel. My name is Stevie Lane, and I'm a radio journalist. Do you have a moment so I can tell you why I'm calling?

00:12:07 Speaker_03
Uh, not really. I mean, I don't have a whole lot of conversation time to talk with customers.

00:12:17 Speaker_10
Nevertheless, I tell him about the mix-up.

00:12:20 Speaker_02
Anything could have happened. Anything could have happened. I mean, I couldn't tell you.

00:12:24 Speaker_10
Lionel tells me that, contrary to Dan Michalko's theory, Jordan's package likely never made it to the MRC. If it had, it would probably have a special stamp on it, which Jordan's package doesn't.

00:12:37 Speaker_10
I ask if he has any other guesses, but he just keeps whipping out his favorite phrase.

00:12:41 Speaker_02
When I press, the answer is, or not.

00:12:55 Speaker_10
Jordan had likened the mail system to a void into which we send stuff and from which that stuff emerges. But it appears it's also a void into which I send my questions and from which nothing emerges.

00:13:09 Speaker_10
Over a number of weeks, I reach out to more people at the USPS, in the communications department, the historian's office, even the Postal Museum.

00:13:18 Speaker_12
It is a mystery.

00:13:19 Speaker_13
I can't really guess. We have 160 million addresses in the US. could have come from any one of them.

00:13:26 Speaker_10
Nobody is able to help. I've hit a dead end with the post office, so I turn to the only other information that I have, the photos themselves. Is there a way to identify the people in these photographs?

00:13:45 Speaker_10
There's a photo of someone's pet cat, but it doesn't have a collar with a tag. There's a graduation, but it doesn't show the name of the school.

00:13:53 Speaker_10
There's one photo of a man sitting in a restaurant, holding up a signed headshot of what looks like a younger version of himself. The headshot is signed, Dr. Pedro something MD.

00:14:05 Speaker_10
But after hours of Photoshop sharpening, I still can't read what that something is. For every photo, I'm just one small piece of information away from cracking the case. Every photo, except for one.

00:14:22 Speaker_10
The photo is the oldest in the bunch, a creased and faded Polaroid. In it, a man crouches in the grass, supporting a baby in plaid overalls, barely old enough to walk.

00:14:34 Speaker_10
The baby is looking down at a dog, rolling over on its back playfully while the man pets its stomach. No one is aware of the camera. It seems to be capturing a private moment. And when you flip the photo over, there's something written on the back.

00:14:51 Speaker_10
Dallin, Kelly, and Queenie, it says in all caps. At grandparents, Cox's. Kelly, nine and a half months. Dallin, Kelly, and Queenie, grandparents, Cox's. After Googling around, I find a number for a Dallin Cox in California.

00:15:32 Speaker_14
Hello.

00:15:36 Speaker_10
Hi, is this Dallin?

00:15:38 Speaker_14
This is.

00:15:38 Speaker_10
I'd called a few days before and left a message.

00:15:42 Speaker_14
I'm just really curious what this is all about, honestly. I have no idea how I'd be involved in anything that you would be looking into.

00:15:51 Speaker_10
So I explain about the package of photos Amy received, about one in particular, of a man with a child and a dog with an inscription on the back. And it says, Dallin, Kelly, and Queenie at grandparents Cox's. Kelly, nine and a half months.

00:16:12 Speaker_14
That's crazy. Yeah, that's crazy. That would be my dad, yeah.

00:16:15 Speaker_10
Huh.

00:16:16 Speaker_14
Yeah, it sounds like it might be my dad and my sister Kelly.

00:16:21 Speaker_10
Dallin's dad is Dallin Sr. Dallin suggests I give him a call to see if the photo belongs to him. Hello? I tell Dallin Sr. all about the photo of him and his daughter Kelly. Then I texted over to him. All right, here it comes.

00:16:42 Speaker_05
Yeah, I'm gonna be all right. Well, that would have been from 1967, probably, or 68. She'd have been about nine months old, I would say, at that time. Obviously is standing up a little bit, but she walked at an early age like that, so.

00:17:01 Speaker_05
Yeah, that's really something. No, I don't have that picture in my collection. In fact, I don't recall ever having seen it before. Kelly was born in 67, in June of 67. And she actually, she passed away in March of last year.

00:17:21 Speaker_10
Kelly died on March 30th, 2021. The package with Kelly's photo was postmarked April 7th, 2021, just one week after she died.

00:17:34 Speaker_05
That just makes it really strange.

00:17:39 Speaker_10
Kelly died unexpectedly of heart failure at the age of 53. It was a shock to her family.

00:17:46 Speaker_05
Everybody loved her laugh. When she laughed, it was just really unique. and enthusiastic laugh, you know. I remember taking her with me to a lake one weekend and she learned to water ski and she was having a ball.

00:18:10 Speaker_05
My dad used to take Kelly at that age, when she was about a year old, down to the lake and they would feed the ducks. He'd take breadcrumbs and they'd throw them to the ducks and she got so excited to do that. That was her favorite thing to do.

00:18:35 Speaker_10
Dallin Sr. doesn't recognize the handwriting on the back of the photograph, but he wonders if it belongs to Kelly's mother, his ex-wife, Betty. Betty had been sick and unable to make it to Kelly's funeral.

00:18:48 Speaker_10
Maybe she put it in the mail, hoping it would arrive for the service. When I phone Betty, she doesn't remember the photo, but she tells me that she did indeed mail a package of photos to her granddaughter, Devin. Devin is Kelly's daughter.

00:19:06 Speaker_10
This is Devin. So I call Devin to see if I ended up with the photos that her grandma tried to send her.

00:19:13 Speaker_12
No, I did get a package of photos from my grandmother. Huh.

00:19:20 Speaker_10
Devin got the photos from Betty in a package that was firmly sealed. And the photo of Kelly and Dallin, that one wasn't in there. Devin says she's never seen it before. As for the rest of the photographs Amy received,

00:19:34 Speaker_12
I don't recognize any of the people.

00:19:37 Speaker_10
None of them, huh? No. Dallin Jr., Dallin Sr., and Betty all said the same thing when I sent them the photos. Somehow, then, it seems this photograph, along its journey through the mail, wound up with 43 other images of other random families.

00:19:57 Speaker_10
Devin can't tell me anything about those other families, but she does tell me about her own. Her mom, Kelly, got pregnant with her when she was in college.

00:20:07 Speaker_10
Kelly wasn't prepared to take care of a child, and soon after Devin was born, Dallin Sr., Devin's grandfather, took Devin in and raised her as his daughter.

00:20:16 Speaker_12
I know that my mom had mental health issues, and it took over my mom's life in many ways. There were many instances to take care of me. And there were many years that passed by and I had nothing to do with my mom. Like I didn't know where she was.

00:20:42 Speaker_12
I didn't hear from her. I was unsure if she was even alive. So I've had a hard time growing up believing that my mom loved me.

00:21:01 Speaker_10
But, Devin tells me, in the last seven or eight years before her mom's death, that changed. Devin was in her mid-twenties, and without explanation, seemingly overnight, Kelly started reaching out more.

00:21:15 Speaker_10
She would come over to help Devin with projects around the house, like painting cabinets. The two of them spent hours sitting together on the couch, playing Zelda.

00:21:23 Speaker_12
And I felt like I had my mom. I finally had my mom. I was an adult, but At least I had my mom. Two weeks before she passed, my mom, just out of the blue, said, do you want to go out and go do something together? And I was like, I don't know.

00:21:47 Speaker_12
Where do you want to go? And she's like, what about that place that has mini golf and go karts? And I was like, OK, then let's go. I hang on to that moment. Somehow I feel like she knew that she wasn't going to be around for very long.

00:22:09 Speaker_12
And she was trying to spend more time with me and trying to do things with me.

00:22:17 Speaker_10
As for the photograph and the strange circumstances of its appearance... I don't feel like it's weird.

00:22:26 Speaker_12
I just think that it fits my mom's personality to do something like that. How do you mean it fits her personality to do something like... She believed that there's something beyond death.

00:22:40 Speaker_12
And I've never believed in ghosts or anything or anything after you passed. But if there is something there, my mom would definitely do something like this.

00:22:54 Speaker_10
So you think that this is almost like emissive from your mom?

00:22:58 Speaker_12
Yeah, I think that's possible.

00:23:13 Speaker_10
In Jordan's book, she writes that in thin places, quote, invisible things like music or love or dead people might become visible. Or if they don't become visible, they become so present and tangible that it doesn't matter.

00:23:30 Speaker_10
Like Devin, I'm not one to believe in ghosts. Yet, after talking with everyone, I still don't know where the photo of Kelly came from. No one in Kelly's family can account for it.

00:23:42 Speaker_10
So after months of searching, the origins of this photo are still a mystery. But in what I see as a series of unexplainable events that began with Jordan sending a book and ended up here, Devon sees her mother.

00:23:58 Speaker_10
And it's precisely the unlikeliness of the events that she points to as proof.

00:24:03 Speaker_12
I just think if you look at all of the little pieces of how this happened, not just anybody would have reached out and tried to find the owner of a photo. I think it would have been tossed in the trash or pushed aside.

00:24:18 Speaker_12
I feel like it's like a treasure from my mom. That's how I feel. Like my mom placed it there on purpose and got it into the right hands that would reach out to me.

00:24:35 Speaker_10
I'd been thinking of this as a story about mail going to the wrong place, but listening to Devin, I wonder if it's actually a story about it going to the right one, to Amy.

00:24:47 Speaker_10
And yet, because the photo wound up in Amy's hands, Devin didn't get it for an entire year after Kelly's death. If Kelly wanted Devin to have the photo, why deliver it a year late? Why now?

00:25:02 Speaker_12
There have been times where I've really needed somebody to be in my house with me. And out of everybody in my family and out of all of my friends, my mom would drop anything to come and support me.

00:25:20 Speaker_12
And when she passed, I didn't have that safety net anymore. I had trouble at my job and I had to take extra time off. But if she's still here, that makes a difference. It's not easy losing a mom.

00:25:44 Speaker_12
So having this feeling that she's still here and she's still with me is amazing.

00:25:58 Speaker_10
Right after a loss, there are lots of people to lean on. But as time passes and people return to their lives, you begin to feel that loss in a new way. Houses get cleaned out, clothes get donated, and all evidence of the person fades away.

00:26:17 Speaker_10
With the photo though, Kelly has come back to Devon. A year late, but perhaps right on time. Devin's grandfather, Dallin Sr., is turning 75 soon. Devin told me that they're throwing him a big party.

00:26:38 Speaker_10
She's been working on his birthday present for months, a new family photo album.

00:26:43 Speaker_10
And along with all the photographs she's collected, she wants to include this one, safe among the other smiling faces of Kelly's family members, where, surely, it won't be lost again.

00:27:40 Speaker_11
Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage deposit Take this moment to decide If we meant it, if we tried

00:28:16 Speaker_10
This episode of Heavyweight was produced by me, Stevie Lane, along with Jonathan Goldstein, Phoebe Flanagan, and Mohini Madgaonkar. Our senior producer is Khalilah Holt.

00:28:25 Speaker_10
Special thanks to Alex Bloomberg, Mimi O'Donnell, Lauren Silverman, Maureen Taylor, Estelle Ivory, and all the incredibly patient people over at the USPS. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon.

00:28:37 Speaker_10
Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions, Sean Jacoby, and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on our website, gimletmedia.com slash heavyweight.

00:28:49 Speaker_10
Our theme song is by The Weaker Thens, courtesy of Epitaph Records. Amy has just written a new book, Artificial, a graphic memoir about her father's efforts to preserve her late grandfather's identity using AI technology.

00:29:02 Speaker_10
You can find it at your local bookstore. Heavyweight is a Spotify original podcast. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight, on Instagram at Heavyweight Podcast, or email us at heavyweight at gimletmedia.com.

00:29:15 Speaker_10
You can follow our show on Spotify and tap the bell to receive notifications when new episodes drop. And one will drop next week.

00:29:26 Speaker_00
Hello, Stevie's dad speaking.

00:29:44 Speaker_06
Oh, that was nice. Okay, great. Estelle, thank you so much.

00:29:47 Speaker_00
Hey, what is your show about anyway?