Welcome to strangers from KCW and Radiotopia. I'm Leah Tao.

And today's story is the second installment in a mini-series, and this episode won't make much

sense if you haven't heard episode one. So if that's the case, I propose you press pause

right here and go listen to that first.

We're following the story of Elizabeth, who decided to give a kidney to a stranger, and of Mary, the person Elizabeth connected with, on the website, Matchingdonors.com, to be the recipient of her kidney.

But where we left them on the last episode, they had hit a bump in the road, because Elizabeth,

the donor, didn't want to have the surgery in Texas where Mary lives, and Mary was reluctant

to come to Wisconsin where Elizabeth lives. As the recipient of the organ, Mary would have to stay in Wisconsin for three months after the transplant

to minimize any risk of her body rejecting the kidney.

And her initial reaction was, I don't know if I can do that.

Practically, financially, emotionally.

So we left you with a bit of a cliffhanger at the end of the last episode.

But then, here's Mary.

My doctors said, you know, if the kidney won't come to you, you go to the kidney. It's not the kind of thing

that, oh, well, if I don't take this one, I'll take another one in three weeks or a month or a

year. So you really have to take what is given you when it's there. Mary and Elizabeth were back

on track. But judging from the many, many reactions we've received from you guys in response to the first episode, this will be good news to some of you, but not necessarily to others. Some of you objected to Elizabeth's choice of Mary because she is 67 years old, especially when you heard that after Elizabeth had already started the process with Mary, she saw that there was a five-year-old in her home state who also needed a kidney.

Hello, my name is Jacob, and I'm calling about the Elizabeth and Mary episode.

And I saw some of the comments on Facebook where people said something like, who am I to judge?

Who am I to say one life is more valuable than another?

Well, I think everyone's entitled to judge that one life is more valuable than another.

And if your opinion is that the 67-year-old that one life is more valuable than another. And if your opinion is

...