Welcome to strangers from KCW and Radiotopia.

I'm Leah Tao.

And last year, I got an email from a woman called Elizabeth Meyer.

She wrote to me and said,

I have been inspired by your show to give a kidney to a stranger.

I listened to your podcast in February and then signed up on matching donors that day.

Elizabeth had heard an episode we did called The Gift, where Cora gave a kidney to a friend.

Not a stranger in that case, a friend who had played an important role in

Kora's life, but who sadly wound up dying despite getting Kora's kidney.

And when I was researching that story, I discovered that there was a growing trend of people

giving kidneys to total strangers.

And there's this website called Matchingdonors.com, where people who need a kidney, find people who are willing to give one.

Kind of like an online dating site, but for organ donations.

And when Elizabeth heard me talk about that on the show, she was like, I got to do that.

But why?

Donors can't be compensated. It's strictly illegal in the U.S. to receive money or gifts in return for an organ. So these are purely charitable donations. And the reaction from almost everyone I've talked to when I told them what Elizabeth had decided to do was what? Like, who would do such a thing? Even at a hospital that has a major

transplant center near Elizabeth's home in Wisconsin, the media coordinator whose job it is to handle

the hospital's PR for human interest stories such as organ donations had this to say when I told her

what Elizabeth had set out to do.

What does it take to come to that kind of a decision?

I don't get it, but it's fascinating.

I just feel like I work in health care.

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