The Birth Keepers: When Emilee met Yolande – episode two

This is The Guardian. Hi, I'm Shewing Kahler, and I'm Lucy Osborne. You're listening to The Birth Peoples, a new six-part series from The Guardian Investidates. Just before we start, this series contains references to Babyloss and Maternal Harm. Before Emily Celdere was the leader of a self-proclaimed movement, she was Emily Benner, A.K.A. Hoop Nasty. There's a video on an old YouTube account posted by Emily in 2010. It's got 500 views, a show reel from her time as a Hula Hooper. Emily is dancing on stage in an LA nightclub gyrating in a hoop and a red and blue strobe lights. It feels very naughty. She's wearing a trill bee, she's got the fingerless gloves. She's actually pretty good. It's hard to imagine. This is the same woman who 15 years later would be hosting this festival on her land in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. June 2025, Emily's sitting in a sage cleansed yurt. Her pregnant belly exposed in a flowing green crop top. Her hair and braids adorned with gold beads. No crown, this time. She's surrounded by women in linens and flower crowns, singing and discussing their upcoming free births, their words infused with her teachings. But then again, on reflection, maybe it's not that surprising. In both of these eras, Emily is in the spotlight. She's confident and aware of what makes a striking image. To understand the pull of the free birth society, you need to understand who Emily Saldaya is. And how Emily and her business partner, Yelanda Norris Clark, became the women they are today. Emily and Yelanda love to remind their listeners of their extensive birth experience. Having attended hundreds of births in every environment imaginable, really. I actually have spent over 20 years working in the birth field supporting other women witnessing births. They consistently claim to have 40 plus years of experience between them. And FBS has made millions of dollars in revenue from women who trusted them, paid them for their expertise. Are they who they say they are? From the Guardian Investigates, I'm Lisi Osborne and I'm Sharon Kale. This is The Birth Peepers. Episode 2, when Emily met Yelanda. Looking at Emily and Yelanda's childhoods, you wouldn't be either of them on a path to announce mainstream medicine. In fact, both of them came from medical families. Emily's mum is an obstetric nurse and her dad sold medical equipment to neonatal units. And Yelanda's grandfather was kind of a big deal in atomic circles. He was a medical historian who specialised in the history of infectious diseases like cholera, which is striking because Yelanda doesn't actually believe that germs cause disease. So, why did they devote their lives to condemning the medical system? And how did they become the world's leading free birth influences? Emily was born in Florida in 1985. Her parents divorced when she was around nine, which she found difficult. It felt very uncared for, like very not looked after. I was being bullied at school. Emily has spoken to her followers about her childhood and teenage years. And have any friends? How her parents divorced left her lonely and angry. It's like my mean girl came out of that persona. I was bullied. And then I went to a new school. And so I showed up to that school as a bully. Oh, so cringe. When she was 16, she dropped out of high school and moved to L.A. Emily fell in with an alter crowd. They went to Burning Man, back when Burning Man was pretty wild. They did warehouse parties and Kundalini Yoga, which is famously very intense. Emily an extra-tash by trimming weed. I spoke into multiple people who were close to Emily doing those years in L.A., the hoop nasty years. And they told me that she was playful, ambitious, and adventurous. One phrase kept coming up. Emily was a force. She ran with a hippie lefty crowd, but Emily was always a bit different. She had a capitalist streak. And she didn't see those things as incompatible. "Why not be spiritual and rich?" One former friend told me that Emily wanted to quote, "Have a big voice and be an activist, but she was also oriented towards making money." After also working as a waitress, Infant Misesu's nanny and yoga instructor, Emily found what seemed to be her calling. She trained as a doler. Dolers aren't midwives. It's a non-medical job. They support women emotionally and practically during pregnancy, birth, and afterwards. There's actually footage of Emily working as a doler from a documentary in 2015. She's smiling and encouraging a woman as she gives birth. But then, Emily seemed really open-minded about how a woman should give birth. Her website at the time said, "I am experienced, comfortable, and confident in both hospital and home birth settings. I support all methods of birthing and look forward to helping you explore what feels right for your family." "She was great. She was really passionate and fiery." Laura Garland met Emily around 2013. She, with somebody that would get things done, she had a lot of ideas and a lot of confidence. And she was fun and funny. Together, they worked on the LA Doler project, a non-profit that provided free dolers to low-income women. "Bellay Doler project provides non-judgmental doler support to people across the spectrum of reproductive experiences." "I was really young when I had them boarded." Emily's also spoke in many times about working as a midwife's assistant. But that midwife told me that, although Emily went to some of her training sessions for assistance, she only ever remembers her assisting at one or two births and she mostly worked on the front desk. She told me that, quote, "In no way, shape or form was she ever an apprentice of mine." Emily's workers at Doler took her into hospitals around LA and as time went by, what she saw in those rooms, it horrified her. "I mean, really sincerely haunted. It took me years to get some of those images out of my head on the daily." Laura dug out an old email, Emily sent her, and a group of local dolers. And she said, "Hi, ladies. My last five births have been incredibly hard on me. Hard to witness, hard to process, hard on my body, mind, to spirit everything. I have seen so much trauma and abuse these past few births and I feel like I'm unraveling with nowhere to go to wrap my heart around it all." How do you feel reading that back? Oh, I really, my heart hurts for her. My heart hurts for her because she really cared so deeply about her clients. The trauma and abuse Emily saw, it's the result of a system that many people see as fundamentally broken. I've reported on maternal health care in the UK and I also gave birth in a hospital in London and the experience was not great. In the US, for a multitude of reasons, things are even worse. The United States has some of the worst maternal and neonatal death rates in the developed world. For women giving birth in many countries, it's a role of the dice. Do you get medics who are going to listen to you to eat you kindly and ask for consent before they do things? Or not? Very frequently, women are touched without consent. Ivy Draver is a douler who also works on the LA douler project, which wouldn't necessarily be construed as violence, but when you're looking at actually having hands go into your vagina without being checked in with, without having any communication, without being listened to, it would already be painful if you're not prepared for that, if you're not relaxed, if you've never met this person before, which is often the case, when a nurse is walking in in a hospital, I have also seen apesiatomy is done without consent, where the doctor just takes out the scissors and cuts. An apesiatomy is when a doctor cuts the vaginal opening to make it bigger for the baby to come out. So when this is done without consent, understandably, women can experience this as an assault. Emily saw this, women she felt were being assaulted, and she also saw something else that concerned her. How many women she felt were being pushed into sea sections? It's something Ivy has seen too. - There's a doctor in Los Angeles, who I won't mention by name 'cause she could probably sue me, but she's referred to as the butcher, because she just sections people needed or not needed, that's just what she does. To be clear, there's nothing wrong with getting a sea section if you need one or if you want one, but there's also good reasons why women don't want to have sea sections unless absolutely necessary. It's major surgery. Also, in the US, where healthcare is privatized, and there's a fear of litigation if things go wrong, experts say that hospitals are financially incentivized to push sea sections, which means, women can feel pressured to have surgery that they may not have needed, and they can emerge from their births feeling brutalized. This is the system Emily was seeing play out. Laura remembers Emily's discomfort. - I don't think she was ever happy to be within the system. You know, I think like many of us, she really wanted to change the system from within, and I think that she just was less and less able to tolerate the system. - And how did Emily feel when one of our clients transferred to the hospital? - She would be really frustrated. Frustrated and disappointed. - When Lloyd A. birth herself, she chose to transfer to hospital, and she felt like it affected her friendship with Emily. - I did feel like Emily was disappointed or a little bit judging me because of my transfer. I felt like our relationship shifted a little bit after that. - Emily was clear. The hospital is a place you don't want to give birth in unless you absolutely have to. Homes the best place to give birth. And many women agree it makes sense because women can feel more relaxed at home. This helps autism and the hormone of birth get flowing, encouraging their labors to unfold naturally. Emily had initially planned to train as a home birth midwife. Should help her clients stay away from the fluorescent strip lights of the hospital and have a beautiful and empowered birth at home. But then Emily started to see these midwives, even home birth midwives, as part of the problem. Maybe even worse because they pretended to be on the women's side and then Emily felt betrayed them. - It's just more the same. And in some ways it's even worse because the abuse in the sabotage is happening in her home on her bed. Emily at this point in 2016, she's a doler. She's not meant to give medical advice. But I spoke to a midwife who attended a home birth with Emily around this time. A couple of days after the mother's water broke, the midwife advised that they should transfer to hospital. Her labour wasn't progressing and there was an infection risk. According to the midwife, Emily suggested to the mother that she should not tell the doctor how long her waters had been open in the hope she might avoid a C-section. The midwife says she was furious. She'd never worked with a doler who had recommended lying before. This is the start of a pattern that Lucy and I saw again and again with Emily, which is that she advises women in labour to lie to doctors and sometimes she even gives them a script of what to say. Emily says she began attending births underground as the sole attendant with no midwife with her. Although, Lucy and I haven't been able to verify this. I kept it quite quiet. It was very underground. You know, I wasn't public about it, but the women kept coming. And I decided, you know, I realised this is it. This is everything. This is the truth about birth. And this is what I've been trying to figure out. One day, in 2016, Emily was listening to a podcast in her kitchen. And she had a guest describe themselves as a birth paper. With this sweet gentle voice of Yolanda Clark, Yolanda Northlark. The woman who was about to change the course of Emily's life. (sighs) Good morning. Hi. - Yeah. (laughs) My name is Yolanda Clark from Bosphon. Yolanda Northlark already had an online following. She had a blog, a podcast, and had been posting about her life online for years. - Journey. My journey as a homeschooling mother and a busy ceramic artist and a free birth duo. And I'm also a polyadies instructor and a lot of purer and a piano teacher, among other things. - Yolanda's path into birth work was unusual. She got pregnant at 19 with her first husband, and she hired as her midwife, a woman called Gloria Lamey, who's kind of famous in Vancouver where Yolanda's from. Gloria is an unlicensed midwife. She's sort of a folk hero to some. To others, a dangerous and qualified charlatan. She's repeatedly been in trouble with the law. Gloria attended Yolanda's first two births, but she did more than that. She inspired Yolanda's lifelong passion for birth. When Yolanda was 24, she separated from her husband, leaving her two young sons with him. She then married Lee Clark, a ceramic artist, and they settled down on half an acre of land near the hamlet of Queenstown, New Brunswick. She is quite the individual, quite a character. I don't think she'd mind me saying she's a bit of a character. - This is Lily Smallwood. She met Yolanda around 2013. - It's so confident, beautiful, radiant, so sure of herself. She draws you in, 100%. - I became a health coach because I too have struggled with and triumphed over issues around food, health, and healing. My mission is to inspire other mothers to recognize their own. - It's hard not to be drawn in to her so she starts to talk, so she starts to engage with you. - When Lily met Yolanda, Yolanda was living this lifestyle that looks so idyllic. She was blogging about it. Pictures of her walking in the woods, baking, making art, kids everywhere, running free. And of course, she's free birthing. In 2012, she shared a video of one of her free birts online. It brought her to the attention of the online birth world. She started to become a bit of a celebrity. Yolanda's always been very firm about her views on birth, but as the years passed, she got more entrenched. For her first few pregnancies, she received prenatal care, but soon became an advocate for what she called wild pregnancy, a term she claims she invented. No appointments, no blood tests, no ultrasounds. Yolanda became increasingly convinced that what she termed the medical industrial complex was best avoided at all costs. She set up meetings and cafes for local birth workers and pregnant women. Lily went along. She had also free birthed her children. - It was very nice to be welcomed into her community, her sphere and to be treated as a friend. I won't say equal, I won't say equal, but she's always been the top dog and she has such confidence and belief in herself and in birth and it inspires you. It inspires you to get involved and to believe in her. - Yolanda is not a midwife. She actually trained as a doler, but when she starts attending births a new bronze wick, she doesn't call herself a doler. She calls herself a traditional birth attendant. - What you're paying for is the ongoing support and her being available on call for them and people did find value in that and so they paid for it. - How was she advertising herself or is she saying that she was a midwife? - Never. She would always say, "I'm not a midwife." She was very much not gonna use that term. That was a term that because it's a regulated profession and Yolanda is a very intelligent woman and she was very mindful of how to phrase it and how to say it so it would never be a legal concern and that was a concern I had. When I said, "Okay, I'll attend a birth with you." It was very much a conversation we had about what we can say, what you should say and she always knew where the line was that you don't cross this line. If you say that we're here to support people to be completely autonomous and to take control over their own life and outcome, well then that's freeing yourself of that responsibility and that was like a conscious thing that she would do is that no matter what she said, if it's prefaced with the idea, "I'm not a medical professional. I have no medical training." That way, then there's no responsibility. There's no accountability on our parts. For this, in a country with free healthcare, Yolanda would charge up to $3,000 a birth. A lot more than a local doula with charge, which is what Lily considered herself to be. Yolanda continued attending births a new Brunswick and that's what she was doing when she popped up on the podcast Emily was listening to in LA. When Emily heard Yolanda, it was like listening to somebody with the answers. Somebody who embodied everything Emily had been reaching for and had built an online following. Emily had been interested in starting a business for a while. She had trained with a conscious leadership group, a consultancy dear to all CEOs and business leaders. In conscious organizations, people step forward and they take or claim or own responsibility. What this means in its most radical sense is that whatever is occurring in my life, I am responsible for it. In the most powerful way, I'm actually creating it. Emily learned about something called the drama triangle. In this framework, you can either be a victim, a villain, or a hero, or step out of the drama triangle and take total responsibility for your life. Emily's big breakthrough was applying this philosophy to birth. And it was like, you know, the sky opened up an angel saying for me. Instead of trying to save her clients by playing the hero, they needed to save themselves by taking radical responsibility for their births, by free-birthing. Laura, Emily's former dual colleague from LA, remembers the moment. She had been getting into these ayahuasca ceremonies where she had this vision and this understanding, this kind of epiphany, that it was not possible to have true mother-led births in the system with any assistance. And I remember talking to her, she had the idea for the free-birth society and I remember she sent me the logo. And Emily knew who she needed to help her. I think she might have said that there's this woman up in Canada who is just amazing and I'm obsessed with her and I'm going to make her be my best friend, something along those lines. She said she was doing a make-trapie, have best friends. Once she found out about her, I think she was very impressed. Emily, you know, Emily didn't finish high school and so she sometimes admires people who have a more kind of educated manner of speaking and I think that she was really enamored of, you know, just Yolanda's voice and her cadence and the way she sounds so smart. And so I was all lit up and I find you on Facebook and I send you a message and I'm so excited. Emily and Yolanda discussed this moment on the FBS podcast. I said like, I just found it on the podcast, I love everything you're saying. I'm doing a lot of the same work and we're going to become best friends. Do you remember what you said back to me? - It seems Yolanda was less sure on Emily. - I think I responded to the various sort of like, polite Canadian sort of like. - Oh yeah. - It's really nice to thank you for reaching out, you know? (laughing) - Oh yeah. - But I was really like, no. And you know, I'm kind of hard to crack. - A little bit of a tough time, too. - Yeah. (relaxing music) - In March of 2017, Emily launched the Free Birth Society as a Facebook group and tried to get Yolanda involved again, but Yolanda wasn't biting. - I remember writing you again and being like, "Hey, it's me again." (laughing) And being like, "I'm going to be starting a podcast. It's going to be sharing free burst stories. I'd love to have you on it." - And you being like, "Okay, but still not trying to be my friend." - A couple of months later, Emily launched the FBS podcast. - Do you know like the technical reason for the surgical birth? - My pelvis is too, you know, whatever that medical word. - The podcast was captivating. - Well, everything you're saying just, it completely embodies the essence of what it means to birth free. - You know, and-- - The Instagram is sleep. The Facebook group was growing by the month. - Exciting news listeners. The Free Birth Society apparel store has opened. Head on over to freebirthsociety.com and check out the adorable onesies and toddler shirts, adult tank tops, hoodies, and more. - From Canada, Yolanda was watching on. - What did she think of Emily when Emily first approached her about FBS? - Oh God. - Yolanda, is Yolanda gonna hear this? (laughing) Is Yolanda gonna hear me tell secrets? - Yeah, not sorry, but I'm sorry. - Lily again. - Yolanda's first opinion on Emily, I could say, was, I don't know, she kind of laughed it off, I think, that someone had had the audacity to create an organization called the Free Birth Society when they themselves had not had a free birth. And of course, at this time, Yolanda and I had both had multiple free births, right? And so it just seemed funny to us that someone would have that much audacity was the only word I can think of. But she was also really an awe of the size of the group, the power of the group, the reach of the group. She was impressed that Emily had kind of found a way to monetize it. Because at this point, Yolanda had been posting all this stuff online for years, for free, and hasn't really monetized it. It was just her sharing and promoting herself out there, but she didn't have the pull and power that Emily had somehow tapped into. I would say from Emily's perspective, it was the smart move, right? I mean, because she had limited free birth experience. Yolanda was gonna offer the heft in the actual experience to Emily's already established community that was needing kind of legitimacy. (upbeat music) In January 2018, Emily attempted to free birth her first baby. The first 24 hours went well, but then she felt like labor was stalling. This is Emily talking about it on her podcast. All day went by. And all night went by. And I could feel my baby a couple inches up inside of me, maybe two knuckles deep. I could feel her head. And it wasn't moving. I would put my fingers in and feel when the wave would come. And her head wasn't moving. She was supported by her husband, Johnny, her sister, and a friend who at the time was a registered nurse, which to some would suggest this wasn't actually a free birth. Alexandria takes my temperature, it's fine. She tries to do feel heart tones and she gets 80, which totally freaks me out, but then I try and I get 120. I can't decide if I should relax her not. I have this nagging thing that something might not be quite right. And I come to realize later that that was my head and that this was the work, that was the test, that was birth, saying how deep can you trust? Emily labored at home for 50 hours. Eventually, she decided to go to the local hospital. Although in the podcast, she said it was just a conditioning that made her do this. Emily agreed to a procedure to push back her cervical lip. I'm back on top. Whatever funk I had been in is totally gone. I'm clear and fully in my power again. I look over at Johnny with a shit eating grin on my face and I go, so you wanna get out of here? She frames leaving the hospital after this intervention as a heroic getaway. So we're laughing and high tailing it out of there. It seriously felt like we were escaping prison. And although she birthed a healthy baby at home, she still regretted her hospital visit. I didn't need to go. I could have stayed home. I would have had my baby in a few hours. Privately, friends say that the experience shook Emily as she hadn't had the true free birth she wanted. But, publicly, she claimed victory. What's unique about my story is because no one was managing me, I actually continued on to have a free birth. It's around this time Yelanda became more interested in getting involved with FBS. At the time, Yelanda wrote on her blog that she had received several threatening cease and desist letters from the Midwifery Council of New Brunswick. Out of necessity, she'd taken an office job. Over time, Yelanda would come by far the most frequent guest on the podcast. The first time she appeared, the subject was ultrasounds. 18 years researching, and yet, frankly, I don't really understand how ultrasound works. OK, I've just poured over these studies and articles over the years, and so I have a concept of what the effect is. But I don't-- In the podcast, Yelanda incorrectly states that ultrasounds are dangerous. We have this term called prenatal care, but in reality, it couldn't be further from what constitutes true caring. It's like prenatal harm. It's some prenatal harm. It's prenatal indifference. Former friends of Emily told us that after Emily met Yelanda, her views became more black and white. One friend said, Emily became more and more dogmatic, and she found they couldn't have agreed to disagree conversations anymore. It suddenly was you either with me or against me. I mean, you essentially saved me from liberal feminism. But it's true. Like, I was a good liberal feminist living in LA. I was righteous as fuck. The way Emily spoke about birth in the hospital also became more extreme. Emily started to suggest that even procedures like vaginal exams that a woman had consented to could be considered a form of assault. So I guess like a devil's advocate question would be if the mother's asking for it. Is it violation? Right. And I mean, we talked about this a moment ago before we started recording, but this is the argument that rapists make. And Shia is the foundation of industrial obstetrics. This is rape culture. This is what rape is. Rape is the argument. We are so normalized. By the summer of 2018, Emily's podcast had hit two million downloads. And she had Yelanda by her side. Together, they took a huge step. One that would take them into a totally different ballpark. Instead of telling other people's stories or discussing their opinions in a podcast, they were about to start creating educational material about free birth, including what action to take or more often not to take, impossible emergencies. They created a video course, the one that Nicole, who we heard from an episode one, and $10,000 women would watch. The complete guide to free birth. I'm thrilled to tell you about our brand new online course, The Free Birth Society, Complete Guide to Free Birth. The course will drop August 1, 2018, and consists of 10 modules of solid gold, jam packed with everything you'll want to know about free birth. The course cost $599, and it would make them millions. In the course's introduction, Emily says she has attended hundreds of births in every environment imaginable. Yelanda says they will give you as much unadulterated truth as possible. But either of those statements true. That's coming up. The complete guide to free birth was mostly based on manuscripts from a book Yelanda was working on. I was curious where the information in those manuscripts came from. So I asked Lily, Yelanda's former friend from New Brunswick. Did you read up, like, you know, midwifery book, substatrix books? Like did you see, you know, to have like practical skills or approaches to dealing with complications? Yelanda definitely never demonstrated to me ever having any interest in an obstetrical textbook that's for sure. So I best guess in the period that you knew her, you were her partner by attending births. How many births do you think, if you were to be generous and round it up? How many births do you think she attended? So I could think of maybe a dozen or so births that I was aware of, of her attending. There may have been a few more that I didn't know about. Yelanda was consistently said or implied that she has, you know, decades of experience and has attended hundreds of births. Like, do you think it's possible that's true based on your knowledge of her? I would be shocked. I couldn't imagine hundreds of births. I'm sure, I would say hundreds of births in that she's interacted with hundreds of pregnant women, you know, during their pregnancies and given advice and support. But to be physically present for hundreds of births, I can't really imagine that. For their followers, women who felt let down by hospitals or who couldn't afford them, it was reassuring to know that Yelanda and Emily are sharing all these expertise. But like Yelanda, Emily's numbers don't seem to add up. Emily has suggested on multiple occasions that she attended hundreds of births during her time in L.A. So I had attended hundreds of births by the time that I gave birth to my baby. I asked Laura, Emily's former dealer colleague from L.A. about this. Well, she's seen a lot of clients, because that's one thing that comes up a lot is people wondering how many births she actually attended. Was Emily attending a lot of births? She was. She was. I, when we were friends, I got to 100 births, which is a big milestone as a doula. So she told me at one time, I forget the number, but it was a really high number. Maybe it was 200. And I was like, oh, because I had records. I had records of every birth that I had gone to and that was kind of how I kept track. Was I had birth notes and I had prenatal notes and she said, oh, I don't do any of that. I just kind of have an estimate. And I also think about all of the births that I've heard about through other doulas. And so she included those into her number of how many births she had attended. So she would include births that she hadn't physically been present at in her tally. That is what I remember her telling me. Yeah. Our reporting suggests Emily and Ylanda have exaggerated how many births they have physically attended in person. And that's important. Because anybody who has listened to Emily and Ylanda talking, either on their podcast or their courses, will have heard them say this many times. I've never seen that. I've literally never seen that. I've never seen anything that I would call retained placenta. With undisturbed birth, I have never seen bleeding to such an excess that I would have labelled it postpartum hemorrhage. I've never seen a placenta that's not healthy and perfect. When they are telling their followers, they've never seen something happen. The actual experience they are claiming to have is where this phrase gets its power. It gives their followers confidence in the information. By the end of 2018, the cash was rolling in and there were 6,000 people in the Facebook group. But unbeknownst to Emily, not everyone in the group was a true believer. Some were really concerned about the extreme messaging and what might happen to the women who trusted it? Who trusted Emily and Ylanda? They were right to be concerned. That's next time on the Birth Keepers. Emily Saldaya and Ylanda Norris Clark were both approached for comments about the issues raised in this series. Neither provided a substantive response. In reply to one email, Emily said, "Some of these allegations are false or defamatory." After we published the findings of our investigation, Emily posted a statement on Instagram, branding our report Propaganda and suggesting it contained lies. She previously criticized other media coverage for unfairly depicting her as "some manipulative cult leader" and said she does not care whether women free birth, but wants them to have the option to choose. Ylanda has previously said FBS was the most ethical kind of business you can run. She has said FBS critics failed to understand its commitment to mothers taking radical responsibility and that she should not be held responsible for her mother's choices. Ylanda has also said she has always been transparent that she's not a registered midwife. In May, FBS released a disclaimer saying its content was not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition related to pregnancy or birth. It added, "For medical advice, consult your health care provider." You can read all our reporting on the free birth society at thecardian.com. Reporting and presenting was by shearing Kale and Lucy Osborne. The series producers, both Elizabeth Cassin and Joshua Kelly, failed production from Lucy Hoff. Music composition and sound design was by Rudy Zedadlow, the commissioning editors Renekol Jackson and Paul Lewis. [BLANK_AUDIO]