401: What if you were ambushed on a dark desert highway?
This Is Actually Happening
Audible
4.6 • 10.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2026
⏱️ 60 minutes
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Summary
After spending much of his life trying to outrun the feeling of being trapped, a man’s violent kidnapping on a solo motorcycle trip through Mexico forces him to reckon with the fear, rage, and longing for freedom that have shaped him since childhood.
Today’s episode featured Gary Stauble. If you’d like to reach out to Gary, you can email him at ezinef@gmail.com.
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Producers: Whit Missildine
Content/Trigger Warnings: kidnapping, violence, violent assault, descriptions of violent assault, childhood emotional distress, threats, explicit language
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of This Is Actually Happening, |
| 0:04.3 | ad-free right now. |
| 0:06.4 | Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. |
| 0:09.4 | This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. |
| 0:13.7 | Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode, |
| 0:17.0 | and for more information about support services. |
| 0:22.9 | I start getting this feeling that I've never really had before in my life. |
| 0:28.2 | I describe it like a blanket of dread, like this very heavy weighted blanket of dread that somebody is just dropping on my shoulders. |
| 0:36.6 | And it was just this feeling of impending doom, to be honest. |
| 0:40.4 | Like just something bad is about to happen. |
| 0:42.6 | Something really bad is about to happen. |
| 0:52.6 | From Audible Originals, I'm Whitmissildine. |
| 0:56.6 | You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. |
| 1:02.7 | Episode 401. |
| 1:06.1 | What if you were ambushed on a dark desert highway? So my father grew up one of, I think it was 11 kids and grew up very poor. |
| 1:38.6 | My grandmother was an immigrant from Ireland. |
| 1:42.0 | It's kind of a joke in the family that my grandmother used to tie |
| 1:44.9 | some of the kids to a tree because it was no way to keep track of them all, which is true. |
| 1:49.4 | But it was very much a depression era mindset in the sense that you don't waste food, you value |
| 1:55.9 | hard work, honesty, integrity, all of that stuff's very important, my father. And then when he joined the military, he got stationed in El Paso. |
| 2:04.8 | And one night he was in a bar in El Paso, and that's when he met my mother. |
| 2:09.9 | My mother was born in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1947. |
... |
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