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Prologue

Ira Glass talks to Sam Ashner, whose debilitating fear of spiders was ruining his life. So he opted for an extraordinary treatment — the nuclear option — to deal with it.

Prologue

Ira tells us about a short-term therapy for trauma called CPT. Cognitive processing therapy was designed for survivors of sexual assault and is also used for veterans with PTSD symptoms.

Act Two: Week Two

After a difficult first week in therapy, Jaime starts to see progress. (21 minutes)

Act Three: Ask My Grown-Up Kid

We searched for a parent who had a question for their kid...that they could only ask them after their kid was an adult. Then we found Ken Gethard, comedian Chris Gethard's dad, who had some really meaningful questions he wanted to ask his son.

Act Two: Don’t Need to Know Basis

In this act, writer Michael Kinsley describes harnessing the power of his own mind to deal with his Parkinson's diagnosis. Michael Kinsley is a contributing columnist for Vanity Fair and the Washington Post.

Prologue

NPR Science reporters Alix Spiegel and Lulu Miller explain to Ira Glass how they smuggled a rat into NPR headquarters in Washington, and ran an unscientific version of a famous experiment first done by Psychology Professor Robert Rosenthal. It showed how people’s thoughts about rats could affect their behavior.

Prologue

Ira talks to Joel Gold, a psychologist and author, about a strangely common delusion known as the "Truman Show Delusion," in which patients believe that they are being filmed, 24/7, for a national reality television program. Joel wrote a book with his brother Ian called Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness.

Act One: I Am the Eggplant

Producer Stephanie Foo speaks to Nasubi, a Japanese comedian who, in the 90s, just wanted a little bit of fame. So he was thrilled when he won an opportunity to have his own segment on a Japanese reality TV show.

Act One: High on the Corporate Ladder

Producer Alex Blumberg introduces us to Richard, a former executive at a big time marketing firm who smoked pot daily — sometimes at work. As it turns out, Alex is intimately familiar with how Richard's getting high kept him from focusing on the important things in his life.

Act Four: Straight Man

Comedian Marc Maron, who's been off drugs for more than 15 years, says he still thinks it's okay to laugh at funny drug stories. And then he tells us one of the funniest we heard while putting this show together.