Jordan Beckwith is in her early 30s.

She lives on her own, just outside of Denver, Colorado.

She's got an apartment, a car, two big dogs named Sophie and Leo, and a YouTube channel with

a million subscribers.

My name is Jordan Beckwith, but online my handles Footless Joe.

Footless Joe's origin story goes like this. When I was 13, I took a very bad fall off of a horse,

shattered my ankle, my tibia broke off and then was shoved up into my legs. It was a really bad break.

It caused a lot of complications in healing.

It was about 14 years of surgeries and trying to walk,

trying to be active and be a kid.

By the time I was 27 and still dealing with all of that,

I knew that I was at the point to make the right decision.

And five years ago in 2018, I had my below-the-knee amputation. From the time that I sent the email in being like, yes, let's go ahead and do this, I think it was three weeks from them. And it's funny. I mean, the process is like minor knee surgery or wrist surgery. It's all the same when they're also removing a limb.

They come in, smiling.

They're like, this is the one we're taking off today, right?

As soon as pain was under control, they keep you there for like three days, and then they send you home.

What came next was an intense, expensive, and important relationship with her new leg.

In general, they try to get you up and beginning to use a prosthetic within like six to eight weeks,

which sounds very soon, right? Like you just cut off my leg and I'm supposed to start walking on that.

For the Freakonomics Radio Network,

this is the economics of everyday things.

I'm Zachary Crackett.

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