Special Preview of Grapevine

October 4, 2023·21 min·1 clip

A mother at the microphone says teachers gave her son unsolicited information that convinced him she rejected him for wanting to be female — and runs out of her 60 seconds mid-sentence saying 'I lost my son.'

The episode opens at a chaotic August 2022 Grapevine school board meeting where nearly 200 residents have signed up to comment on a plan to combat what supporters call woke gender ideology. Parents on both sides argue about protecting children — one side demanding protection for transgender students, the other warning against classroom indoctrination. A speaker is escorted out after accusing board members of not following Christ's teachings. This scene establishes the culture war context for the entire series. Reporters Mike Hicksonbaugh and Antonia Hilton, who previously produced the Southlake podcast about a similar revolt over racial equity policy, frame Grapevine as a direct sequel — the same conservative Christian campaign now targeting LGBTQ acceptance in schools. The episode then focuses on M. Ramser, an English teacher at the Grapevine-Colleyville ISD's Aspire Academy, a prestigious program for highly gifted students. At 27, Ramser is having the hardest year of her life. She used to love driving to school; now she wonders if she's heading for a breakdown. The episode traces her origins. Growing up queer in North Carolina, she never intended to become a teacher. She changed her mind in 2015 when a summer job with a Duke University program showed her the power of creative writing. At a poetry slam, a student read a poem revealing she was gay and terrified, saying every story she knew of gay people ended in sadness or death. Ramser followed the crying student out of the room and disclosed for the first time her own mother's sexuality, telling the teen it was possible to be an adult and be happy. The student later wrote Ramser a letter calling her the first queer role model she had ever had. That letter convinced Ramser to become a teacher. The episode then provides political context: since 2016, Trump's explicit messaging to evangelical Christians that he would give them political power energized a movement to reclaim public schools. Christian conservatives, previously feeling like a besieged minority after school prayer ended and the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, saw Trump's election as a mandate to impose biblical values in public life — starting in schools. Ramser, arriving in Grapevine in 2020 to teach at the Aspire program, was unaware of these forces gathering around her. She stood out visually in a conservative town and was repeatedly asked which church she attended. In the 2020-21 school year, a quiet student caught her attention — a freshman who, like Ramser in high school, seemed to want to be left alone. At the start of the year, Ramser gave students a form asking their preferred names and pronouns. This student, listed in school records as male, asked to be called Wren and to use female pronouns. Ramser complied without hesitation. The episode ends with the reporters noting that Wren's mother Sharla — the same woman who said 'I lost my son' at the school board meeting — would soon set off a chain of events that would cost Ramser her future in Grapevine.

As heard by us

A school board meeting becomes a wider struggle over power and identity.

The episode opens on a crowded school board meeting in Grapevine, Texas, and turns a routine monthly gathering into a clear test of authority.

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Why you'd press play

Hear how the Southlake revolt spreads next door into Grapevine's packed school board.

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