409: Held Hostage

Ira Glass

Probably the strangest thing about the K&R business-- K&R, that's Kidnap and Ransom-- is that it's a business at all, that there are enough kidnappings in the world that a whole industry issues kidnap insurance and there's responders who will help your family through the kidnapping and ransom process. And it's also workaday, like any other business.

Ira Glass

ASI Global is one of the big American companies in the K&R business. And perhaps this just comes with the job, but Daniel Johnson is capable of a kind of understatement that's sort of breathtaking. For instance, he was telling me how K&R insurance works.

Ira Glass

By bump in the night, Dan means what you or I might call a violent, life-threatening, life-changing abduction. See? Understatement. Another interesting fact about kidnapping insurance with this company-- one condition of having the policy is that you don't tell anybody you have the policy. It's like the first rule of Fight Club.

Ira Glass

In the Mideast, he says, don't do this or talk about religion. But in Mexico, where there are lots of kidnappings these days--

Ira Glass

The other advantage of a Bible, Dan says, is that you might be captive for a long time. And one of the big problems in that situation is it's really, really boring. People get depressed. They stop taking care of themselves. Some of them think about suicide. So it's important to keep your mind active, to create a routine of things that you do every day, not to sleep all day, which lots of people end up doing. And if you have a Bible, you can read, which is huge.

Other tips-- eat what they give you because it's probably the same food that they're eating. Drink the water. Don't try to escape. Don't look your captors in the eye.

Ira Glass

But that's hard to do, he says. Your instinct is that you want to trade away everything just to get your life back. You'll do anything. But you have to understand, if it's a kidnapping for ransom-- and one sign of that is that you're still alive-- that's like a business deal, and they need you alive to make their money.

And usually, Dan says, you're going to get out. It's just a matter of coming to a price. You have to remember that. And you have to remember that your role in that business deal is to be the hostage, to do what you need to do to survive, to avoid panic.

Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our radio show, Held Hostage. We have three stories for you of people who are forced by circumstance to be the hostage and how they cope with what that means. We're going to begin with people held in the traditional way, nabbed and taken to the jungle.

But we also have people in our show who are taken hostage in much less literal ways. One man can't get out from under the thumb of one of his neighbors. And we have a man held hostage by love, and I know that sounds really corny, but believe me, it is not what you think. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, Captive Audience. So today's episode is a rerun from 2010. And at that time, nearly a decade ago, there was so much kidnapping going on in Colombia, that the country's biggest radio station had a program that was specifically for kidnapping victims. Like, it was targeted to them as an audience. And this was not the only show like this. There were several other shows like this on smaller stations, again, whose audience was kidnapping victims around the country.

Annie Correal is originally from Bogota, Colombia. And she went to the biggest radio station and visited the program.

Annie Correal

The show is called Voces del Secuestro-- Voices of Kidnapping-- and it's been on the big national station in Colombia, Caracol, since 1994.

[MUSIC - JUANES, "SUENOS"]

Starting at midnight every Saturday and running until 6:00 AM, hundreds of people call in to send messages to their kidnapped relatives. And in secret camps all through the jungle, prisoners, and sometimes even their guards, tune in to listen.

Annie Correal

The host kicks off the show welcoming all the hostages in the jungles of Colombia. Most families call in with their messages.

Annie Correal

But some people actually come into the station like Viviana. Her dad, Edgar Yasid Duarte, is a police commander who was kidnapped in 1998 and still hasn't come home.

Annie Correal

Tomorrow is Viviana's 13th birthday, and rather than run the risk of not getting on the air, she and her mom are spending the night at the radio station. A dozen interns man flashing phone banks, lining up the callers from around the country who will send out their messages tonight.

Annie Correal

170 will make it on the air.

Annie Correal

Viviana is in a pink hoodie, drinking little cups of coffee from the vending machine to stay awake. She always sends a message to mark her birthday. It's 5:00 in the morning when she finally gets on the air.

Annie Correal

She says her birthday's an important day in their lives, and she just knows he's going to be there, that they're going to free him this year so he won't miss any more special dates. She says she celebrated with her friends by going to a shopping mall and to the movies and to get ice cream. She tells him she loves him, and she sends him a blessing.

I know how she feels. When I was 19, my dad was kidnapped by the FARC, the same rebel group that kidnapped Viviana's dad. The FARC is an army of leftist guerrillas that kidnaps people for political reasons, but also civilians like my dad, for money. My dad, Jaime Correal, was kidnapped on his way home from work in 1999.

Annie Correal

This year when I went back to Colombia, my dad and I drove through a park, up a winding, isolated road to the spot on the highway where it happened.

Annie Correal

Back then, Colombia was the kidnapping capital of the world. At the peak of the kidnapping craze, there were around 3,000 people kidnapped a year. That's like eight people a day. Carjackings happen in Bogota all the time and in plain view, like my dad's.

Annie Correal

As we sat in the spot where it happened, he said if he had taken a left, it would have taken him 20 minutes to get home.

Annie Correal

While my dad was kidnapped, I was in college in the States. But my stepmom Sammy used to call into the radio show, Voices of Kidnapping, to try to reach him. Six months in, when the guerrillas arranged a phone call with my dad, she learned to her amazement that some of our messages actually got through. My dad had had a radio and had listened for us obsessively.

Annie Correal

A guard snuck the radio to my dad. They're not officially allowed, but the FARC lets prisoners listen because it keeps up morale. It keeps them from killing themselves, and it keeps them marching. My dad was moved 37 times during his captivity. The radio meant everything to him because for the first six months that he was held captive by the FARC, my dad was held alone, completely alone. The radio was his only companion.

Annie Correal

So when he first heard my stepmom, Sammy, talking to him over the radio, it was like a miracle.

Annie Correal

My dad would stay up all night listening to the show every week.

Annie Correal

This is a radio message from my family recorded 10 years ago when my dad was held captive. My stepmom made this tape to send to the radio station, hoping he would hear it, wherever he was. In real life, she was struggling to hold it together, losing weight, dark circles under her eyes. But on the tape, she makes a point to be cheerful. She calls him by his nickname, Lumpy.

Annie Correal

She chose one of her favorite love songs to mix with the radio message.

Annie Correal

She says every time she hears it, she thinks of him intensely. She asks if he can imagine how much they're going to enjoy making up for lost time. Then she introduces my little sister.

Annie Correal

My little sister says she hopes he comes back soon safe and sound and that he'll be very, very, very hungry because they'll have his favorite-- eggs and sausage-- waiting for him. Then my brother comes on.

Annie Correal

He says he's the goalie on the school soccer team and he's blocked a lot of shots. Then he says he loves him and misses him. My stepmom says that she's waiting for him, that she'll always wait for him and he's the love of her life. And she can't wait to pick up where they left off in November.

Annie Correal

The families on Voices of Kidnapping are coached not to say anything negative or cry, so there tends to be a lot of talk of holiday parties and kids' grades at school, weddings, new babies in the family. These days, the number of new kidnappings in Colombia is way down. There are just a few hundred a year. And that's a good thing. But it conceals something basic.

The fact is that thousands of people who are kidnapped never came back. There are thousands of families who are still waiting for their relatives to be released, like Viviana, the girl who was celebrating her 13th birthday at the radio station. Viviana's dad has been gone for 11 years, almost her entire life. He's part of a small group of political prisoners that the FARC won't free unless the government agrees to a prisoner exchange. So there's nothing the family can do but wait.

Annie Correal

Everything Viviana knows about her dad fits easily on top of a coffee table. There's a pile of notebooks filled with his colored pencil drawings, the rusted aviator glasses he was wearing when he was kidnapped, and a few photographs and videos the FARC has sent as proof he is alive. Vienna was so young when her dad was kidnapped, that her only images of him come from these photos and videos.

Annie Correal

She says that he's in the jungle, but it's impossible to know where because he's posed against a sheet. I remember getting one of those pictures. They call it a [SPEAKING SPANISH] a proof of life. It's like seeing something from another world-- my dad next to a tree in sweatpants and a peasant sweater. My dad is a prisoner. I asked Viviana what her dad looked like in those proofs of life.

Annie Correal

She says in the older photos, he used to look normal, chubby. But in the recent videos, he's looking thin and he's going bald. She says that's hard because he used to look stronger. She says she thinks to herself, no, why is he like that? Life is hard, she says.

To cope, Viviana still talks to her dad, and not just over the radio.

Annie Correal

She says it's not that she feels he's here. She says she talks to him in her head.

Annie Correal

I talked to my dad in my head, too. I consulted him about what to major in, and I asked for his help at exam time. When my mood would plummet, I would think it was somehow connected to what he was going through. And in the worst moments, when I wouldn't feel his presence, I'd look outside and say, if he's alive, let there be a sign in the next 60 seconds. And I'd count down. And inevitably, a dog would bark, or a street light would turn on.

It's like sending the radio messages. You send these little telepathic messages, you concentrate, and you start to believe someone is out there, listening. I've met families who haven't had a proof of life for five years or a decade. Their loved ones are probably dead, but they act like they're not. They send out messages to them week after week, hoping that they're out there in the dark, holding a radio.

Ira Glass

Annie Correal, she's a staff reporter for The New York Times. You sometimes hear her on the podcast, The Daily. She originally produced a version of this show with Jay Allison for transom.org. I have to say, a lot has changed since we first aired this story in 2010. Annie's dad was rescued by the Colombian military, along with five other hostages, in August 2000. The family moved to Panama, which is where her dad, Jaime Correal, died in 2016 after a short illness. He was 63.

That girl who Annie interviewed, Viviana-- her dad, Edgar Yasid Duarte, was killed by the FARC during a failed rescue attempt in 2011. He'd been held captive for 13 years. Viviana is in college now studying international relations. The FARC disbanded in 2016 as part of a peace deal with the Colombian government. After that, the radio show Voces del Secuestro came to an end. Its final episode was in 2018. Similar programs with messages for hostages also ended.

Coming up, taken hostage by somebody whose only weapon is paperwork. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our show, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, Held Hostage. In this second half of our program, we move to people who get held hostage without a gun, or a knife, or any kind of traditional captor, and then they have to figure out what to do. We have arrived at Act Two of our show. Act Two, Misdeeds.

This is a kind of classic story of people who are not looking for trouble, and then the trouble came looking for them. Wayne Curtis tells the story.

Wayne Curtis

11 years ago, Tracy Poydras and her husband, Oscar, were living in New Orleans. Tracy was a nurse in her late 20s. Her husband ran a nightclub in the city. They were planning for their future, and they decided to invest in a house. They checked out a city program that seizes blighted properties and sells them cheap, and they found a rundown duplex in a decent neighborhood. It was basically just a shell with four walls and a roof and not much of a floor, and they spent something like $50,000 or $60,000 fixing it up.

For a while, they lived in one unit and rented out the other. Then they moved out and rented both. The whole process went just as they'd hoped, until 2003, when, pretty much out of the blue, Tracy Poydras got a call from her tenants.

Wayne Curtis

The eviction papers have been filed by a person who used to own the building, a guy named Nathaniel Dowl. Tracy figured it was a misunderstanding of some sort, that Dowl was probably just confused and didn't understand that the city had seized his property and sold it to somebody new.

Whatever it was, she was sure a simple explanation would clear things up with Mr. Dowl. She was wrong. And pretty soon, Tracy and her husband found themselves in court and, for the first time, came face-to-face with Dowl and his wife, Barbara.

Wayne Curtis

After a long day in court, the judge asked the Dowls for proof that they owned the building. The Dowls couldn't come up with any. The judge stopped the eviction. And for a while at least, everything was OK. A year went by. Life returned to normal.

Then Hurricane Katrina hit, and the levees failed. The house the Poydras's had fixed up was now in shambles. Flooding destroyed the first floor, and the wind ripped off the roof. Tracy and her husband hired contractors to start fixing up the place all over again. But then, not long after, the contractor said weird things started happening around the site.

Wayne Curtis

Tracy didn't know it just then, but she had company and plenty of it. Other people across the city were finding that weird things were happening, both with their properties and with the paperwork behind their properties. One of those people was a tall, fairly reserved ex-army officer named Brad Robinson. At the time all this started, he and Tracy Poydras had never met and they traveled in different worlds. But they both had decided that buying up cheap New Orleans property made good sense.

Shortly after Brad got out of the army, he and his wife, Michelle, started a business rehabbing blighted old houses and building new ones. In 2004, they'd spotted a house in the city's list of seized buildings, so Brad wrote down the address, 8633 Zimple Street, and drove over to check it out.

And that's where I recently met up with Brad. He was waiting there with a stack of photos to show me what the house looked like when he bought it. It was a mess. The grass was several feet high, and vines covered it like an ill-fitting toupee. The back part of the house was collapsing, and from what I could tell from the pictures, the only thing holding up part of it was an old refrigerator.

It was so bad that Robinson couldn't imagine anyone would possibly be living in it, much less that the owner would drive up as he stood there, slam his car door, and storm over to him. It was Nathaniel Dowl, the guy who had shown up in court reeking of marijuana.

Wayne Curtis

Brad actually had a few things in common with Nathaniel Dowl. Both were born and raised in New Orleans. Both were in their 40s. Both were from families that had once bought investment properties here, only to lose some of them to the city for neglect or unpaid taxes. So Brad thought it was only fair to give Dowl a shot at keeping his house. But Dowl failed to act. He didn't pay his back taxes, and the city went ahead and put his house up for auction. Brad picked it up for $10,000.

A couple days after buying the house, Brad and two friends stopped by to check it out. He also wanted to disconnect the electric meter, which he worried could be a fire hazard.

Wayne Curtis

Brad called the cops who cited both men for disturbing the peace. Brad showed the police some papers proving that he had just bought the house, so the police told Dowl he had to leave. But Brad had a feeling it wasn't over.

Wayne Curtis

Brad called the cops again.

Wayne Curtis

None of this made any sense to Brad. Why would a judge sign a restraining order against him? After all, he hadn't done anything. Besides he owned the house.

Wayne Curtis

The TRO was a fake, and this is where Nathaniel Dowl's background comes in. Under the advice of his attorney, Dowl refused to talk to me. But here's what we know mostly through public records and court documents.

Throughout much of his life, Dowl ended up in court for stumbling onto the wrong side of the law for car theft, for pot, for unpaid debts. In 1988, he was sentenced to three years in prison for using bogus money orders. We also know Dowl used to own several houses, places he apparently inherited from his father, who invested his longshoreman salary in properties.

Somewhere along the line, Dowl started teaching himself law. He enrolled in a correspondence program and got his paralegal certificate. He learned the basics, what legal documents do, how to file them, what size the paper should be, how to make them look official. In fact, he learned enough that he could produce fake documents pretty easily.

Dowl had a couple of favorite scams. One was to take a bogus document to a notary and would stamp it with a seal. That only meant Dowl signed the document in person in front of the notary. But the seal made things look all the more official and gave the appearance that claims in the document had been verified.

Dowl also figured out how to make good use of a run-of-the-mill kind of legal document, which, and unless you're a lawyer, you've probably never heard of. It was something called a quitclaim. While it might sound obscure, the idea behind a quitclaim is pretty simple. Let's say you have the rights to a piece of property. You go to the courthouse and file a quitclaim giving those rights to, say, your cousin. So your cousin now has legal rights to that property.

The trick that Dowl figured out was that he could file a quitclaim on any piece of property, whether he owned it or not. City officials would look at that document and figure he must have had some rights to begin with, because why else would he file it? And so essentially, Dowl found that armed with just a small bit of legal knowledge, he could trap pretty much anyone he wanted in an upside down topsy-turvy world where all sorts of basic things normally taken for granted just crumble out from beneath you.

Brad Robinson's war with Dowl started out small and kind of mundane. Brad sued to get Daniel evicted. Dowl challenged the city's right to take his property. The fight went to the state Supreme Court where Dowl lost. And for a while, Robinson's life went back to normal. But then Dowl started showing up in strange places, like the houses the Robinsons were working on, properties Dowl had never had anything to do with.

Wayne Curtis

Dowl would file these bogus documents. Robinson would have to track them down and get them thrown out. And here's the thing. It wasn't like the city or the courts would call Robinson up and say, hey, Dowl came in again. Instead, Robinson had to be constantly watching.

Wayne Curtis

Dowl went after his old house, houses that Robinson was renovating, even after Robinson's family home.

Wayne Curtis

Over time, Dowl grew more brazen. At this point, he was just going after Brad with reams of paperwork. But he stepped things up with Tracy Poydras. She's the woman we talked to earlier, the woman who found her house covered with caution tape. Not only did Dowl file papers claiming he owned her house, he moved in.

Wayne Curtis

Meet the third person to get into this war with Nathaniel Dowl. Richard Arias is an attorney in his early 60s. He lives in a house that's dark inside because all the solid wood shutters are sealed tight. He explained to me that stems from a paranoia that dates back to his days as an infantryman in Vietnam. He knew both Nathaniel Dowl and Brad Robinson because he owned a house on Zimple Street next door to the one the two first fought over.

Wayne Curtis

But that was pretty short-lived because it didn't take long for Dowl to turn on Arias, to decide Arias wasn't his ally, and to start serving him with fake paperwork and eviction notice, all of it. And the thing with Arias, he'd never bought any properties that Dowl once owned. With Arias, it was about vengeance, plain and simple. But regardless, he found himself in this paper war with Nathaniel Dowl.

Wayne Curtis

This went on for more than four years, and Arias, the Poydrases, and the Robinsons all felt trapped. They went to the police, who told them it was a matter for the courts. They went to the courts, and the judges said they really couldn't do much, except reverse each fraudulent filing as it was presented to them. They went to the district attorney, who was struggling with the chaos left in the wake of Katrina and had didn't seem too interested in white collar crime.

They even went to the court workers, the people who accepted Dowl's bogus documents when he filed them. The workers sort of shrugged and told them that even if they knew the documents were fake, they were bound by state law to accept them. At one point, Tracy's husband Oscar told her if the courts wouldn't help and the police wouldn't help, then they were on their own.

Wayne Curtis

Then came the mounting costs of all this-- court fees, filing fees, not to mention that after Dowl moved in, the Poydrases had to pay two mortgages, but couldn't rent out their rental property because Dowl was living in it. But the people who felt the strain the worst were Brad and Michelle Robinson, who guessed that when you include court fees and lawyer fees, they ultimately spent about $90,000 on what was originally a $10,000 house.

The genius of Dowl's scheme was that he exploited the inertia of the legal system. Every time he filed a quitclaim, he was forcing the system to agree, just by taking the paperwork, that he had some rights to the property. And once the system accepts something as true, even for a moment, it's hard to make it go away. Do that over and over, and you're always a step ahead of your adversaries.

And if Nathaniel Dowl hadn't slipped up, it's hard to say how long this all would have gone on. But Dowl finally tried his property trick on the wrong people-- the Feds. Brad Robinson discovered this after Katrina when he applied for federal money to do work on the house on Zimple Street.

Wayne Curtis

Using bogus property claims, Dowl's wife Barbara had applied for federal Road Home assistance. They got $132,000 on a property the Robinsons owned. That got the attention of the US Attorney's office. And soon Barbara Dowl was indicted by federal grand jury, and Nathaniel Dowl was charged with filing false public records. For a moment, the Robinsons, the Poydrases, and Arias thought they might get their lives back.

And then something really dark and crazy happened. Brad had a habit of going out late at night after his kids were asleep-- he liked to play poker-- and then coming home after midnight. But one night-- it was a couple days after Dowl found out he was being charged-- he happened to be in bed early.

Wayne Curtis

During this time, the Robinsons had someone staying with them, a friend of a friend named Tony White, who was an engineer from out of town working on some reconstruction projects. He didn't know a lot of people in this city, and most nights he worked late. This was one of those nights.

Wayne Curtis

Brad went outside.

Wayne Curtis

Tony White had been shot through his left eye at point blank range.

Let's be clear here. The crime is still unsolved, and the investigation never connected the shooting in any way to Dowl, or his wife, or anybody for that matter. And Dowl had an alibi. But there are things that still haunt the Robinsons about the shooting. Brad and Tony were about the same age, height, and build. The killers didn't bother with any of Tony's stuff. They took his car and burned it, but left behind his money and a bunch of expensive camera equipment. Brad's convinced that what happened at his house late that night wasn't just another random crime.

Nathaniel Dowl was eventually found guilty for filing fake public records. He's now serving a 10 year sentence, and his appeal was rejected late last month. Brad Robinson says he feels safer with Dowl in jail-- that's no surprise. But he also knows that in six years or so, Dowl will likely be getting out. He worries what will happen then.

Wayne Curtis

Because of that fear, Robinson is planning to move his family out of New Orleans before Dowl gets released. Whatever does happen, then, even if it's over for the Robinsons, even if it's over for the Poydrases and Arias, it might not be totally over. Recently, Brad Robinson told me he happened to be looking at the city of New Orleans website, and he saw another one of Nathaniel Dowl's old properties up for sale by the city. Robinson says he feels sorry for whoever buys that place.

Ira Glass

Wayne Curtis, he's a contributor to The Daily Beast and Garden & Gun. Today's show is a rerun. Nathaniel Dowl died in 2013 shortly before he was due to be released from prison. The murder of Tony White remains unsolved.

[MUSIC - TEENAGE FRAMES, "SIGN ON THE DOTTED LINE"]

Ira Glass

Act Three, I've Fallen in Love and I Can't Get Up. Sometimes you're a hostage inside your own body. Chris Higgins has this example, and we decided to rerun today's program this week because a movie is opening up this weekend based on this radio story. Anyway, here's Chris.

Chris Higgins

You know it's going to be a pretty weird interview when the first question is this. If you have an attack during this interview, what would you like me to do? I'm talking to Matt Frerking. He's 39.

Chris Higgins

About four years ago, Matt started having these strange attacks. The first attack happened when he was taking a shower. His muscles began to feel heavy. His head began to droop. He slumped into a sitting position. He ordered his body to stand, but nothing happened.

Chris Higgins

That's Trish, Matt's wife. They have four kids from her previous marriage, and some of those kids have kids of their own. It kept happening. Matt kept collapsing out of the blue every day, sometimes three and four times a day. He went to a string of doctors, including a psychiatrist, and a sleep doctor, and a neurologist. But none of them were able to fix the problem.

Matt happens to be a neuroscientist. He's a professor at a university, but he was as baffled as everyone else. When each attack hit him, Matt was still totally conscious. He just couldn't move. Once on campus, he ended up flat on his back in a flower planter for over half an hour with his legs sticking out over the edge. He's fallen down stairs. He's had police and paramedics show up.

It took Matt three years to finally get a diagnosis. It turns out he has this disease called narcolepsy with cataplexy. That first part you've probably heard of. Narcolepsy is excessive sleepiness. You can treat that with stimulants. The real problem is the cataplexy, which is making him collapse. Worldwide, researchers estimate that more than a million people have this disease.

Although they're not sure why it's happening, they think it's related to REM sleep, the part of sleep when you dream. When you start dreaming, your brain tells you your muscles to go limp, so you don't act out the dream. That same signal was getting sent from Matt's brain, but it's happening while he's awake. So while the cause is hazy-- and by the way, there's no cure-- scientists have managed to figure out what triggers the attacks in most patients.

Chris Higgins

Let me make sure you got that. When Matt gets really happy, when he feels the warm fuzzy stuff, he becomes paralyzed by his emotions-- literally paralyzed. This has been going on for four years, and there's no end in sight.

Chris Higgins

So for example, when his littlest granddaughter had her second birthday party, Matt showed up. Kids were running around the living room. He was filled with the sentimental happy feelings anyone feels. And then he collapsed on the couch in the middle of a swarm of toddlers who weren't bothered by it. Matt can't even pet a puppy without collapsing.

Weddings are just as bad. Matt's brother got married a few weeks ago, and Matt was there, happy for him, and therefore having an attack the whole time. He was propped against a wall, hoping people would ignore him and just go on with the wedding.

Chris Higgins

So at this moment, Matt is starting to have an attack. You can hear him slowing down and hesitating more.

Chris Higgins

We talked for a little while more, and then Matt has to go lie down. It's half an hour before he's able to talk again. Matt's on medication now, and that medication helps him postpone the attacks. He has some warning before he loses control. And think about this. Matt had this attack while he was talking about a photograph he's never seen. If just talking about a picture can cause this, imagine all the other things Matt has to avoid.

Chris Higgins

Trish is pretty open about how she's come to deal with Matt's cataplexy and how it's changed their relationship. It messes up their social life and their sex life, too.

Chris Higgins

Trish is the only person who's really close to Matt these days. She told me that she reminds everyone that if Matt didn't care about them, this wouldn't be happening, that when he collapses, it's proof of his love. Their kids even have a kind of contest going to see who causes him to have more attacks to find out who his favorite is. They'll tease each other, like, did he pass out when you talked to him on the phone? 'Cause he passed out when I talked to him.

And after living with this for four years, with being punished every time he experiences happiness, Matt's adapted, though the way he's adapted is sad. He tries to enjoy things less. He told me he tries to think of himself as a robot and not engage too emotionally. He's told me he even has to be careful with how he speaks, not to get too enthusiastic or worked up.

Chris Higgins

But it's important to point out even though Matt is being trained by his brain every day not to feel these emotions, he still has them. He's still with Trish, and they make it work. Although Matt tries to avoid happiness, it's still a part of his life. He's proof that you can't avoid happiness. It'll find you no matter what. And Matt's lucky he has a wife who's standing by him. But for now, they're not holding hands.

Ira Glass

Chris Higgins, he's the host of the Election Ride Home podcast. As I said earlier, a film is coming out this weekend that is a fictionalized story of somebody like Matt Frerking. The screenwriters basically heard this story on the radio and wrote a whole script that tries to imagine what it might be like to try to date and find love with this disease.

Like, what happens when you meet somebody who really makes you so joyful, and ecstatic, and therefore triggers these attacks? The film is called Ode to Joy. It stars Martin Freeman. It's in theaters right now in New York, and Los Angeles, and then lots more cities next weekend. And you can watch right now online on Amazon and iTunes.

[MUSIC - WARREN ZEVON, "HOSTAGE-O"]

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Lisa Pollak and Ben Calhoun, with Alex Blumberg, Jane Marie, Sarah Koenig, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Our senior producer for today show is Julie Snyder, the music up from Jessica Hopper. Additional production on today's rerun from Jessica Lussenhop, Katherine Rae Mondo, Stowe Nelson, and Matt Tierney. Special thanks today to Josh Bearman, Scott Carrier, Annie Baxter, Matt Malloy, Etgar Keret, and Douglas Robinson. Annie Correal's story in Act One was originally produced with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to Public Radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder Mr. Torey Malatia. It is so distracting when he comes into the studio while I'm here reading the credits.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

[MUSIC - WARREN ZEVON, "HOSTAGE-O"]