The Gondolier

June 26, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In 2014, reporters David Conrad and Kristen Clark heard a story on a bus in Philadelphia: Venice had its first female gondolier in 900 years. Alex Hai had broken through an ancient, all-male tradition. It seemed like a perfect empowerment story. But when the reporters finally met Alex in Venice, standing under a lamppost at midnight with a cigarette, the story they thought they knew began to dissolve. Alex was not a woman. He was a transgender man who had been living inside a global headline that did not belong to him.

The Story That Wasn't True

The reporters arrived expecting a simple narrative of a woman smashing a glass ceiling. Alex, however, had other plans. He refused to give easy answers on the gondola ride, correcting their questions and steering them away from the tourist canals into quiet, beautiful passages. At dinner, Alex's girlfriend mentioned that Italian newspapers had used the wrong pronoun—"lui" (he) instead of "lei" (she). The reporters realized the truth: Alex was a man. Every article celebrating the "first female gondolier" had been wrong. For twenty years, Alex had been trapped inside a story that turned his identity into a symbol for a cause he was not part of.

A Childhood of Conflict

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What you'll learn

1 (03:10) **Setup: The woman gondolier headline** - Reporters David and Kristen discover global coverage of the first female gondolier in 900 years
2 (06:15) **Arrival and first encounter** - Reporters meet Alex at midnight under a streetlamp in Venice
3 (09:31) **The gondola ride** - Alex rows the reporters through back canals while avoiding their prepared questions
4 (13:52) **Dinner revelation** - Alex's girlfriend uses male pronouns; reporters realize Alex is a transgender man
5 (21:55) **Alex's early life in Germany** - Born in a female body, Alex knew from age three he was a boy; parents were unsupportive
6 (25:55) **Arrival in Venice and apprenticeship** - In 1996 Alex becomes fascinated with gondola rowing and is taken on as the station's "mascot"
7 (28:30) **The journalist and the article** - Reporter Consuelo spots Alex and writes the first "woman gondolier" story against his wishes

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Back in 2017, reporters Kristen Clark and David Conrad came to us with a story that dug into the difficult and often dark places discrimination creates. We start in Venice, Italy, where they meet gondolier Alex Hai. On the winding canals in the hidden parts of Venice, we learn about the nearly 1000-year old tradition of the Venetian Gondolier, and how the global media created a 20-year battle between that tradition and a supposed feminist icon.

We circled back to Alex in 2026, to find out where the canal of life ended up leading after our initial reporting, and we’ve included some heartbreaking and heartwarming updates on Alex’s life at the end of this episode.

Special thanks to Alexis Ungerer, Summer, Alex Hai, Kevin Gotkin, Silvia Del Fabbro, Sandro Mariot, Aldo Rosso and Marta Vannucci, The Longest Shortest Time (Hillary Frank, Peter Clowney and Abigail Keel), Tim Howard, Nick Adams/GLAAD, Valentina Powers, Florence Ursino, Ann Marie Somma, Alex Overington, Jeremy Bloom and the people of Little Italy.

EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - David Conrad and Kristen Clark.
Produced by - Annie McEwen and Molly Webster.
with help from - Anisa Vietze
Fact-checking for the update by - Angely Mercado

OTHER COOL THINGS:

Books -

The Gondolier, by Alex Hai

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