After you see Boy Erased this weekend, you may find yourself wondering how the mental conditioning known as gay conversion therapy depicted in the film based on Garrard Conley’s 2016 memoir could ever have occurred. Who would subject themselves or their loved one to that kind of abuse? And where did the idea come from in the first place?

Luckily the film’s producers have teamed up with the creators of acclaimed radio program Radiolab for a four-part podcast investigating the history of so-called conversion therapy in America.

On UnErased, executive producer Mikel Ellcessor and a team of journalists, including Radiolab co-founder Jad Abumrad, take listeners all the way back to the roots of the movement and provide first-hand accounts from people who have been through conversion therapy as well as from some who still believe in it. Ahead of the show's release, NewNowNext got in touch with Ellcessor to chat about bringing the long, sordid history of conversion therapy to light.

This podcast is a companion piece to Boy Erased. How does it add to the story told in the film and in Garrard Conley’s memoir?

Boy Erased is Garrard’s story, and it certainly fans out and is illustrative of other people. UnErased is diving into the heart of the matter of conversion therapy as a practice, as a philosophy. What were its roots and the thinking behind it? It’s our way of looking at this crime that’s been perpetrated on over 700,000 human beings in this country. And, without reducing it to a black and white, good guy/bad guy situation, how did we subject as many people as live in the city of Boston to this practice? What was the thinking? There’s an evolution of it, as we discovered, through the medical community, the psychological community, the faith-based community, through families, through church groups. All these things evolved and converged, and 700,000 people now have been put through it.

What was your understanding of "conversion therapy" before embarking on this project?

I knew it was a practice that existed that had very weak foundations. I knew that the scientific side of it was—that it had no bearing. I was not aware of the specifics of what people are put through and the level of personal disavowal that they are put through. I was not aware of the specifics of just how complicated it gets. Is this about patrolling masculinity? Is it about preserving faith? There are all these fulcrums that it turns on. Like I said, this policing of masculinity that’s so prevalent: how to stand, how to sit, how to touch, how to look at your nails, how to dress. What is going on with that?

So, the belief is that those superficially masculine postures and actions will have an effect on someone’s sexuality?

Absolutely. That was just confounding to me. That's why I chose that word specifically. It's the policing of those boundaries.

You mentioned how the practice has evolved within medicine, psychology, faith. Which of those frameworks provides the most useful way to think about conversion therapy in 2018?

The medical and the psychological community are clear on this: there is no peer-reviewed work looking at the efficacy of conversion therapy that says that it works. That’s very clear. So, continuing to put people into conversion therapy when the medical and psychological communities say it doesn’t work is literally an act of faith. And I mean that as a person of faith. I have my own faith practice, so I don’t say that in any way to be disrespectful of anybody that’s a part of a faith community or that has a faith practice. But there is no scientific underpinning for this. So, you’re just saying, "I believe this will happen even though the science is telling me that it doesn't actually work." Even though we have this significant collection of stories of real people who have experienced significant, grave psychological and emotional harm because of this.

What are some of the consequences of conversion therapy that you and the other reporters who worked on UnErased encountered?

The record on it and things that we encountered in interviews with different people, they have definitely reported all kinds of different struggles around issues of self-esteem, relational issues with their families, broken relationships with their faith, suicide, substance abuse—all of these practices that show up when someone is grappling with shame and extreme isolation and what they see as a lack of options to come back into relation with people. We've seen from many of the stories that have come out of this—people that have self-reported after they’ve been through conversion therapy—it has often had significant detrimental effects upon the people that have been put through it.

What are some of the legal challenges to conversion therapy out there?

The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) is doing a lot of the leadership around that. Their Born Perfect campaign and their work with the Trevor Project is really out in front on it. Certainly HRC, GLAAD, everybody is working on this. But what NCLR is trying to do is get states to look at conversion therapy as fraud—that's my imperfect understanding of it. Basically, it's the idea that reparative therapy or ex-gay therapy have been condemned by every major medical and mental health association in the country and they can’t find evidence that it works. So, to sell somebody a course of treatment that says it will take care of this, they're trying to make the case that that must be fraud because you can’t prove that it works.

How did you find people to profile?

The folks at the Mattachine Society were incredibly important in orienting us through this. And then we really just used the practices of good reporting to go out and find out who’s out there, who’s been working on this. Tracking down leads and people who are willing and generous and brave enough to tell their stories to us. The Mamma Bears in particular—this virtual community of mothers who are working to stand up for their children—we devoted a whole episode just to the Mamma Bears.

You also got some people who still practice conversion therapy, who still believe in it to talk to you for the podcast.

We did. In our reporting, we talked to many, many people who still endorse the practice, who are still fully engaged in conversion therapy.

What is it like listening to those interviews?

I did not listen to every hour of the raw interviews, but having heard a lot of the interviews and also having talked to the reporters, I think one of the biggest things for us to understand is that people have a belief set when they’re doing this, and the more that you hear them, you can see where they’re coming from. It doesn’t in any way change the medical evidence, but you can see what they’re going for. I don’t think there’s any contradiction in dealing with the humanity of someone who believes in conversion therapy and working as energetically as possible to make sure that not another single human being is put through it.

Listen to UnErased here. Boy Erased is now playing in theaters.