Anna Almendrala: This Is Our House, As Well (Re-Cast)

During the holidays, Matt and Adam offer some of The Neighbor Next Door's great episodes with a few special guests. This week, they sit down with Anna Almendrala, a health care journalist who wrote a powerful opinion article that was published in The Los Angeles Times and centered around a story of neighboring.

"We are so honored to be joined by Anna  on the virtual front porch! She is an incredibly compassionate person with a heart for justice, a way with words, and a fantastic sense of humor. Anna covers health care policy for California Healthline, a health news site independently published by Kaiser Health News. She previously worked at HuffPost for nine years, where she reported on health and lifestyle news and was the creator and host of a podcast about infertility called "IVFML." Yes, Anna is a podcaster herself (a much better one, too, we might add)! The podcast was a Webby finalist in 2019 and a Webby honoree in 2018. It also won a 2019 Excellence in Podcasts award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. Check it out! In addition to HuffPost, her work has appeared in publications including The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, NPR, USA Today and on NBC and Univision. She is so very talented!

Anna and Adam are longtime friends, so the episode begins by the two talking about how they know one another and sharing stories. Then, Anna takes it from there and tells the powerful story that she wrote about in her opinion article. If you would like to read the article before hearing her tell the story in this episode, you can do so here. The first part of the story details an experience Anna had in her neighborhood that is extremely disturbing and speaks to the racism present in America and around the globe. It is an experience that Anna had, and others are having, that we cannot ignore. Then, the second half of the story details Anna's bold and compassionate response to the experience. Listeners, Anna participates in neighboring of the most difficult kind. We have so much to learn from her. We mean it when we say it, you are not going to want to miss this episode!

As we note at the beginning of the episode, this particular episode contains more swear words than our episodes normally do. We are very open to this language on our podcast because we know some people use swear words in order to express themselves, process experiences, and tell stories, and we want those people to feel welcome doing so during their episodes. It also feels important to note that Anna would not be able to tell her story accurately without the use of swear words. If you would rather not hear these words, that is, of course, totally fine! Please feel free to skip this episode.

All of this being said, we are so very excited to present this episode to you all! You will definitely want to read more of Anna's work when you are done, and you can do so by visiting her author page here. You can also get in touch with her via Twitter @annaalmendrala. Thank you, as always, for listening!"