We love this listener’s project — and your response

An Arm and a Leg

Society & Culture, Medicine, Health, Health & Fitness, Documentary

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A listener named Thomas Sanford wrote to us earlier this year, asking for help with a little DIY project. And it’s turned into the most encouraging thing we’ve seen all year.

With input from the Arm and a Leg community — specifically folks who get our First Aid Kit newsletter — Thomas has drafted a one-page handout, packed with resources for anyone who needs help with medical bills.

It’s ready for you to use, and he wants your help making it better.

You’ll hear all about Thomas’s story — he’s a medical resident, who started out just wanting something to hand to his own patients — in today’s mini-episode.

And now you can get involved. Thomas’s current version is great — and there’s also tons of room to improve it, with your help.

Print out the current version and pass it around: Download it right here.
Make suggestions for the next version: Anybody can comment on this Google doc.
Volunteer to pitch in: Got design skills? Editorial chops? Language skills, to translate it? Other ideas? Here’s a sign-up form.

And you can make your own adaptations! Thomas has registered it with a Creative Commons license.

This project has been incubating in our First Aid Kit newsletter. If you’re not subscribed, this is a great time to sign up.

Here’s a transcript of this episode.

Send your stories and questions! Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.

Of course we’d love for you to support this show.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Sources and Methods, the crown jewels of the intelligence community.
0:05.0	Shorthand for, how do we know what's real? Who told us?
0:08.8	If you have those answers, you're on the inside.
0:11.2	And NPR wants to bring you there.
0:13.3	From the Pentagon to the State Department to spy agencies, listen to understand what's really happening and what it means for you.
0:20.2	Sources and Methods, the new national security podcast from NPR.
0:24.3	Hey there.
0:25.1	So here's a story, a project that has given me more encouragement than anything I can think of lately.
0:31.9	And it's driven by you, by listeners to this show.
0:36.4	You know, one of my big dreams for an arm and a leg, like from almost the beginning,
0:42.3	it's been to connect people, to help folks learn to help each other.
0:47.8	And I think I'm seeing the beginnings of what could be a big win.
0:54.4	It started with one listener trying to do what he could for people right around him,
0:59.2	and he asked us for advice.
1:01.3	We asked folks who get our first Aid Kit newsletter to pitch in.
1:05.0	And now, with that help, our original listener has started creating a tool that I think can ultimately help a lot of people help each other.
1:14.9	And it seems like the start of a virtuous cycle and you can help it keep going and keep growing.
1:24.1	Okay, here's the story.
1:26.3	Thomas Sanford goes to medical school in Brooklyn. He says he's listened to this show for years, but some of the things we talk about here got more vivid for him last fall as he started his third year medical school.
1:38.7	Where I go out of the classroom and I start spending my days in the hospital interacting with patients.
1:50.2	And appreciating that for especially folks in my area, which is one of the poorest parts of Brooklyn,
1:54.2	that can be a financial death sentence. It will ruin you in debt that you cannot cut out of.
	...

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