Ep. 83 | The Disappearing Girl

MrBallen’s Medical Mysteries

Wondery | Ballen Studios

True Crime

4.7 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When a vivacious preteen girl with Down syndrome suddenly becomes shy and withdrawn, her mother worries her precious daughter is getting depressed. But soon, it becomes clear that something else is wrong. With every passing day, the girl withdraws deeper into her shell. Her mother is determined to figure out what’s wrong before she loses her daughter forever.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members. You can listen to new episodes of Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries early and ad-free.
0:05.3	Download the Amazon music app today.
0:17.0	In 2011, Emma was a vibrant 13-year-old with Down syndrome.
0:26.6	Water skiing with her sisters on sunny afternoons, laughing with her friends, and excited to start middle school. But just months later, something changed. Emma became withdrawn, unresponsive. Her bright smile faded, replaced with a vacant stare.
0:36.6	She stopped talking, stopped engaging.
0:39.3	She wasn't the girl she used to be.
0:41.5	The world that once felt full of possibilities now seemed impossibly distant.
0:51.9	I'm Effarhusch.
0:53.2	I'm Peter Frankapone. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the
0:57.9	biggest characters in history. This season, we're talking about Joseph Stalin, a murderous dictator
1:03.7	who saved the world from another murderous dictator. The man who defeated Hitler, but also the man,
1:09.6	who oversaw the deaths of millions of his own people.
1:13.0	How did he get away with it? And why is he so popular in Russia today?
1:17.0	He is such a singular character for the scale of his brutality, for the psychopathic desire for power.
1:23.1	What do you think, Peter?
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1:28.5	but we're going to take Stalin from the streets of Gori in Georgia right the way through to the
1:33.3	centre of power as Russia transforms into the Soviet Union and then to a global superpower,
1:38.8	and to see how Stalin did it, how he got away with it, and what his legacies look like today.
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1:51.7	Last year, Long Crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation.
	...

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