From KCRW, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is Unfictional.

Unfictional is a program of true stories, radio movies.

And this season we've been featuring stories about changes in perception.

Seeing the world as someone else does.

And this comes at a time when it seems like nobody wants to listen to opposing views.

No one can reach understanding anymore, and everyone just shouts past each other.

But on this episode, two different stories about trying to reach over the divide that keeps people from connecting.

One story is about the way that two kids can be such tight friends and then grow into adults who barely recognize

each other.

But first, this story from producer Courtney Harrell, she's spent a big part of her life searching for her own universal language.

From KCRW, it's unfictional.

I used to say that if I could have any superpower it would be to speak every

language in the world. As a kid I wished I had a built-in decoder. I wanted to hear any language and instantly

understand the pattern that turned the sounds into meaning.

I'd imagine everything I could do, people I could know,

if I could communicate with everyone on the planet and really understand them.

But when I talked to friends on the playground about this or later with

boys out on dates there was something I never told them. I had one particular

language in mind that I wanted to speak but I didn't know how to describe it. Starting in kindergarten, in kindergarten, I had a Sunday morning ritual. I sat on my

parents bed while they got ready for church and I watched televangelis on TV.

My favorite part of the morning church and I watched televangelis on TV.

My favorite part of the morning was the end of the service.

...