Mara Brock Akil

speaker

353 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 30 Jun

Mara Brock Akil’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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And I took the test back in the day.

I was a journalist.

I was covering a story on World AIDS Day for the Grand Rapids Press.

And, you know, this is a time when we...

when AIDS was a gay man's disease.

I'm as a reporter and I remember this woman walking past me in the hall and I thought, gosh, she's gorgeous.

I shopped her.

I always shop, like I shopped you.

I was like, oh, that's cute, that's cute.

Let me get to the press conference on time because I'm a reporter.

So I'm in the back of the room and she is the woman who is telling us that she's HIV positive.

My jaw hit the floor, hit the floor.

What year was this?

This is 1990 or 1991, either 90 or 91.

Yeah.

And I think 91 because it was a time.

And I was floored.

I mean, literally, it's funny.

I was at Northwestern at the time.

And when I got back to school, I took an HIV test.

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