Why we get scared (and why we like it)
Jack Rodolico knows exactly what scares him. Sharks.
But here’s what he doesn’t get: if he’s so freaked out, why can’t he stop incessantly watching online videos of bloody shark attacks?
Why would he deliberately seek out the very thing that spooks him?
To figure it out, Jack enlists the help of other scaredy-cats: our listeners, who shared their fears about nature with us. Together, Jack and the gang consider the spectrum of fear, from phobia to terror, and what it might mean when we don’t look away.
Featuring Lauren Passell, Arash Javanbah, Nile Carrethers, and Sushmitha Madaboosi.
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LINKS
The ubiquity of smartphones means plenty of hair-raising amateur videos of shark attacks to get you started on your doomscrolling (warning: a couple of these are bloody).
If this image of an octopus freaks you out, you might share Lauren’s “fear of holes,” or trypophobia.
Learn more about augmented reality technology and other projects at Arash Javanbakht’s clinic.
Lauren Passell’s Podcast the Newsletter.
Related: why people love horror movies.
Sushmitha Madaboosi holding a VR spider. Courtesy Arash Javanbakht.
CREDITS
Host: Nate Hegyi
Reported and produced by Jack Rodolico
Mixed by Taylor Quimby
Edited by Taylor Quimby, with help from Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Nate Hegy, and Jessica Hunt.
Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie
Music for this episode by Silver Maple, Matt Large, Luella Gren, John Abbot and Blue Dot Sessions.
Thanks to everyone who sent in voicemails and memos, even the ones we didn’t play: Erin Partridge, Lauren Passell, Nile Carrethers, Michelle MacKay, Alec from Nashville, and Hillary from Washington.
Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.
If you’ve got a question for the Outside/Inbox hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.
A glimpse of augmented reality therapy at Arash’s lab. They offer this treatment not only for fears of spiders, dogs, and snakes, but also for social phobia and PTSD.
Audio Transcript
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Nate Hegyi: What should I search on YouTube? Do I search a video?
Jack Rodolico: Something along the lines of, “shark week, white shark attack.” That should do it.
I’m Nate, this is O/I. This is Jack Rodolico, a producer at NHPR. Before he got into podcasting, he majored in marine biology - which is kind of funny, because Jack… has a problem.
Jack Rodolico: I've watched this once. And earlier today, I remembered that we're going to do this.
Nate Hegyi: Are you nervous?
Jack Rodolico: Yeah. Yes.
Nate Hegyi: Oh, wow.
Jack Rodolico: Yes.
SHARK WEEK MUSIC UP
Video: Anyone who works with them knows the risks.
So it’s a video from Discovery Channel’s Shark Week - which is supposedly now the longest-running cable TV event in history.
Anyway, there's a guy in a shark tank. The ocean is a deep, deep blue.
Video: Next thing you know, it all happened.
Nate Hegyi: Okay, there's a great white shark.
Video: There’s a shark here.
Ok here’s the thing you really need to know about the shark cage this guy is in. It’s not made of metal bars - it’s made of clear plastic. Like a fish tank.
Jack Rodolico: It almost doesn't look like he's in a cage.
Nate Hegyi: Right? I don’t know why he’s in there.
Jack Rodolico: It’s just downright stupid.
Nate Hegyi: It’s stupid, yeah.
The guy is tapping at the glass, almost taunting the shark. The shark tests the tank.
Video: I’ve already had two bumps now that have been pretty deliberate.
Nate Hegyi: Now he can't see the shark because it's below him.
Jack Rodolico: Ok, the shark's down deep.
Nate Hegyi: Slow motion.
Jack Rodolico: Coming up.
Video: What was that?
Nate Hegyi: Ooooh…
Video: [Crunching, cracking.]
Nate Hegyi: Ho—ly…yeah.
Video: Screaming and bleeping.
The shark swims straight up, and cuts into the tank like a hot knife through butter. The diver is totally exposed.
Nate Hegyi: And he's panicked. The music is panicking now. He's swimming for his life.
Jack Rodolico: Oh my god.
[mux stops]
Nate Hegyi: Dude deserved that! I mean, come on. He was knocking on the glass.
Jack Rodolico: Is that the first thing you think of?
Nate Hegyi: It is. But how did it make you feel?
Jack Rodolico: It is my literal nightmare.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Jack Rodolico: I cannot think of a scarier thing
Nate Hegyi: Than that.
Jack Rodolico: Than that.
[mux]
Nate Hegyi: Where does that come from? That fear? Have you always had it?
Jack Rodolico: Yes. I think… Jaws. Jaws started it.
Jack wasn’t born when Jaws came out in 1975. But you couldn’t grow up after that without kids or parents doing the theme when you went for a swim.
Jack watched Jaws — and the sequels — repeatedly, on TV as a kid. And it obviously made an impression.
Jack Rodolico: I went down this track of watching any documentary I could about white sharks, and I do not think I got scared less. I think I actually got more and more scared of them.
We aren’t Shark Week. We’re journalists. So here’s a cold bucket of reality…. Sharks don’t hurt or kill a lot of people. You’re much MUCH more likely to die being swept out to sea in a rip-current than from a shark attack.
BUT… they have been in the news a lot lately. Especially the ones Jack is most scared of. Great whites. That’s because it seems like they’ve been spending a lot more time lately along the shores of the east coast.
Jack Rodolico: I got this sharktivity app. Dude, do you know the sharktivity app?
Nate Hegyi: I've heard of it.
Jack Rodolico: This is like, this is where I feel sick. Hold on...
He pulls out his phone and shows me this map, like a Google map, and each dot marks the location of a verified great white shark sighting in the Atlantic…
Jack Rodolico: In the last — let’s just do, watch — in the last two days. Last week. Last month.
Nate Hegyi: Wow.
Jack Rodolico: Look at that!
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Nate Hegyi: There are so many dots on the screen you can’t even count them all.
Jack Rodolico: I do know that when I got this app at first on a weekend in the summer, I would get a text every time somebody in New England saw a shark, every single…. And I'd be talking to my wife. I'd be like, uh, another one. Three in the last hour, babe, you know? And she'd be like, So what is this for? You know, why? And I don't… I don't know. I don't know.
[theme]
This is Outside/In. I’m Nate Hegyi.
What is fear? And why do some of us... kinda love to get ourselves good and scared?
Today, Jack Rodolico is taking us on a tour of fear in the natural world… starting with his own fear slash fascination with sharks.
Plus we hear all of the amazing stories you've sent us these past few weeks.
And it’s not too late to share - if this episode inspires you, email us at outsidein@nhpr dot org, and we’ll print your fears and phobias in our free newsletter.
Alright, let’s do it.
THEME
I spent a lot of time in the water when I was a kid. Public pools, public beaches. Sometimes, on a quiet day, I’d get in the water by myself.
I remember feeling safe if my head was above water. But down below—my imagination took over. I’d see the great white, coming at me quick as lightning, its jaws wide. The fear hit me so fast. I’d swim frantically for the ladder and hurl myself out of the pool—saving myself from the worst death I could imagine … and sparing my mother the heartache of finding her youngest floating in a pool of blood.
[mux in]
As I got older, reality helped me contextualize my fear.
I swam on the south shore of Long Island — because I knew great whites didn’t live there. I became a SCUBA diver… and dove with blacktip reef sharks and scalloped hammerheads… because I knew those sharks weren’t great whites. The fear never went away, but I was able to put it in its place. It’s not like haunted me. Til recently anyway.
The marine biologist in me is relieved that white sharks have rebounded in the Atlantic. But the seven year old in me can’t stop looking up YouTube clips of white sharks killing seals as people try to enjoy a day at the beach.
Clip 1: Oh, my God…. Oh, there's his head….Holy [bleep]. Look it. You guys are not going in the water. Oh!
This is common now. People on a boat, or the beach, anywhere from Jersey to Nova Scotia, taking a cute little video of a seal. And then… the water goes white, then red.
Clip 1: Oh!
I’m watching these clips on my phone and I start off convincing myself that I’m learning something from these videos—about white sharks and the ocean I think of as my backyard. But quickly… I’m just doom scrolling.
Clip 3: Huge great white shark. Oh my God. That’s the size of my kayak.
I’m looking for whatever will scare me the most.
Clip 4/Montage: They say it was at least 12 feet long. /// Joe, he's fucking half the size of my boat. /// By that time, the gentle waves were filling with blood. /// I got it on video. Outta the water! Outta the water!
MUX UP AND DOWN
It’s weird. I don’t HAVE to watch shark videos. I choose to do a thing that scares the hell out of me.
And I don’t get that. I don’t understand that line between fear and curiosity. Why would I — or anyone else for that matter — knowingly do a thing that scares them so much?
So I cast a net to find some other scaredy cats. To see if their fears could teach me something about mine. And I found Lauren Passell.
Lauren Passell: I’m recording right now
Lauren was born in Ohio, now lives in the East Village with her husband. She has her own marketing company, actually a podcast marketing company.
Lauren Passell: Thank you. Oh my gosh, I should know how to do this. I work in podcasting.
She’s fun to talk to. She loves Disney World as much as any grown up possibly could.
Jack Rodolico: You listen to the theme park music?
Lauren Passell: Yes.
Jack Rodolico: That is a hardcore kind of Disney.
LAUREN PASSELL: Oh, I'm hardcore. I've probably been to Disney World 200 times. I'm going on a Disney cruise next week.
Anyway, Lauren is afraid of something way less specific than a big fish.
Lauren first noticed it in her 20s.
LAUREN PASSELL: I was on a run in DisneyWorld and I saw a pinecone on the ground. And the holes inside the pinecone made me so uncomfortable that I couldn't run by that spot again. /// You know, you don't realize things about yourself or that there's something unique about you sometimes. And I realize, oh, that is something just happened to my brain.
What happened in her brain is a thing called trypophobia.
Honestly, I had never heard of this.
Trypophobia is an aversion — even a repulsion — to repetitive patterns of holes.
LAUREN PASSELL: Like a coral reef really, really bothers me.
JACK RODOLICO: Like a honeycomb? Is this like clusters of holes?
LAUREN PASSELL: Yes, cluster! The word, cluster. Oh, yes. That's a bad one. You just… you get it.
There are theories that trypophobia is somehow connected to evolution. That at some point humans learned to associate repetitive visual patterns with some kind of threat: like maybe a terrible skin disease, or a poisonous reptile’s scales.
For people like Lauren, these patterns pop up in all sorts of unexpected places.
LAUREN PASSELL: I've heard that there is this photo of an octopus. I've heard that if you look at the octopus and it bothers you, you have trypophobia. And I'm afraid to google it. Maybe I could google it with you.
JACK RODOLICO: I mean, that is totally up to you. I'm up for that but that's only if you are interested.
LAUREN PASSELL: Maybe I should do it. This is confronting. I'm confronting something right now. Um… I'm going to do it right now.
JACK RODOLICO: You are? Okay, I'll do it too.
This was the moment that I truly understood that my fear of sharks is nothing like a true phobia.
LAUREN PASSELL: Ooooh. Oh wait… that's a lotus! And that's another one! Lotus flower! Oh, are you on this? Are you on this business?
JACK RODOLICO: I…I… yes, the Business Insider. Yeah.
LAUREN PASSELL: Oh, my God. The honey!
JACK RODOLICO: Let's shut it down. We don't have to do it.
LAUREN PASSELL: Okay, I see the octopus. Do you see it? What do you think when you see the octopus?
JACK RODOLICO: Um… it does not bother me.
LAUREN PASSELL: I think there's something wrong with you.
MUSIC UP AND OUT
Trypophobia doesn’t exactly limit Lauren. She’s an entrepreneur, a competitive runner. She accommodates her phobia. She says she once avoided her gym for a little while because there was some construction that was… too… holey.
Also, she’s never had a clinical diagnosis. She’s never sought treatment.
JACK RODOLICO: Does addressing it head on force you to have all of those icky feelings?
LAUREN PASSELL: Yeah. Yeah.
Jack Rodolico: Yeah.
Lauren Passell: Like, even right now I’m, like, scratching my leg. It’s really hard to — it’s, like, I don’t want to go there.
Lauren squirms through our entire call. I can see her. She’s burning calories on her end of the line. At one point she says, “I would love not to have this.”
LAUREN PASSELL: But, like, I just don't think I make any sense because my friends were over and, ooooh, there was this video of someone who had like a toe like lesion…[FADE UNDER]
Basically, her friends were watching some kind of gross surgery video of a hole in someone’s toe.
LAUREN PASSELL: And my husband was like, “Lauren, do not look at it.” Like, and I had to look. You know?
Jack Rodolico: You did.
LAUREN PASSELL: I had to. I don't know if I regret it because it was, like, interesting. But I can… I'll never forget it. It was so bad. It was maybe the worst because it was also like a movie of, oooh, it was so bad.
JACK RODOLICO: I wonder if there is like… if this thing is that… has that much power, there's something very potent about knowing that you can tap into it.
LAUREN PASSELL: Yeah. Yeah! Ooh, this is like therapy.
JACK RODOLICO: It's not! I just want to be clear.
LAUREN PASSELL: No, I know it's not, but it's like, maybe it's a control thing. I can make myself feel something.
JACK RODOLICO: Right.
LAUREN PASSELL: But I don't like it. I don't know. Oh my gosh.
[New message. Saturday, September 17. Time: 11:18 p.m.] Hi, this is Hillary from Washington State and I am afraid of oven mitts, you know, the kind that looks like mittens. The reason is because I am from a part of Texas where you always have to check any hidden space for spiders and scorpions and sometimes even rattlesnakes. And so growing up I became afraid of putting my hands in places where I couldn't see them. And oven mitts that are shaped like that, um, still feel like maybe I might find a scorpion inside of them. So that is what I am afraid of. Thanks. Bye.
After the break - fear, logic… and virtual reality spiders?
[clip]
But first… a quick reminder that we have a free newsletter that is just as fun to read as this podcast is to listen to, and you should sign up! You’ll get some little behind the scenes messages from the team, pictures, suggested reading, and if you say something super nice or thoughtful about us we might name you our listener of the week.
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[New message. Friday, September 16th. Time 10:24 a.m.] Hi there. This is Aaron Partridge. I'm calling from Lafayette, California. And you had asked about things in the natural world that scare us. /// I am a rattlesnake bite survivor. I was bitten by a baby rattlesnake twice. Not once, but twice. Um, once on each foot. Uh, right on my front doorstep. /// So ever since then /// every time I see or hear about a rattlesnake, my feet drop right at the point where I was bitten. [End of recording. New message…]
[mux up and down]
Arash Javanbakht: Patients come to my office and /// say, “I know it's stupid, but I'm afraid of this.” And I say, “It's not stupid, it's illogical.” /// Fear has to be fast and fear has to be illogical because logic is slow.
Dr. Arash Javanbakht knows a lot about fear. Also, there are a lot of pictures of him online with a gigantic dog.
Arash Javanbakht: If you Google the most famous dog in Ann Arbor, you will find him. [Laughs]
Arash does deep work with people who are deeply scared of something. In fact, “fear” trivializes his work a bit; he’s a trauma psychiatrist. He works with refugees, torture survivors, victims of human trafficking. Also, cops, EMTs, veterans.
He’s a super smart guy. And I wanted him to do something that, for him, is super simple. Walk me through what is happening in my brain—in your brain, all of our brains—when we are scared.
Arash Javanbakht: So there is this almond-shaped part of the brain in the temporal lobe right near the ear: amygdala.
Fear fires up the amygdala. Sometimes people call the amygdala the “lizard brain.”
Arash Javanbakht: It's job is anytime I see something, it determines the salience. Should I run away from it? Should I attack it? Should I eat it? Should I have sex with it?
[mux in]
All your senses are wired directly into your amygdala. And the amygdala breaks input down into super-simple categories: threats, non-threats.
Arash Javanbakht: Very primitive, basic human functions of survival. And so let's say amygdala sees a lion…
[Or a shark…]
Arash Javanbakht: …and says, “Run away!”
Get out of the pool!
Clip 5/Montage: Outta the water! Outta the water!
When it senses a threat to life and limb, the amygdala sets off all these physiological dominoes — adrenaline floods your bloodstream, your heart beats faster, your blood pressure jacks up, the tiny airways in your lungs get wider. Before you can think, your body is primed to fight or escape.
Which is useful. Sometimes. And that’s where the next part of the brain comes in. The hippocampus.
The hippocampus slows you down a bit, brings in a touch of logic.
Arash Javanbakht: Let's say I see the lion. The context — if the context is, I am with the lion next to it in African Sahara, my response would be very different emotionally than if I'm in a zoo. I see the people. I see the writing that says it’s a zoo. I see the bars between me and the lion. I see kids are having ice cream, laughing. And all these contextual cues tell me we are safe. So places like… areas like hippocampus know, ‘okay, now we are in the safe context to tell amygdala, okay, slow down.’
This is why people can walk into the first room of a haunted house, get scared out of their wits, then walk into the next room. It’s why I can watch a shark video that scares me, then watch another one.
It still doesn’t explain why I do that. Still, I’m a step closer I think.
Also, it explains how people with debilitating fears can be trained to conquer those fears.
Sushmitha Madaboosi: Ok.
Arash Javanbahkt: We are going to bully the bully. Fear’s a bully and we are bullying the bully. Right?
Sushmitha Madaboosi: Ok.
Arash is Director of the Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research Clinic at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Michigan. And he sent me this recording from a session of exposure therapy — that’s where a patient faces the very thing that scares them.
This patient is Sushmitha Madaboosi, a 22-year-old grad student.
Sushmitha, who consented to me using this tape, has arachnophobia.
Sushmitha Madaboosi: Jumping spider!
Arash Javanbahkt: No, no...
Sushmitha is wearing augmented reality glasses. The video I’m watching is taken from those glasses. I see what she sees: she’s looking at the actual room she’s in, a square, carpeted room with a desk in the corner. Arash is at a computer, superimposing spiders into her view.
Sushmitha Madaboosi: I'm starting to itch./// Starting to itch. I don’t know where he went.
Arash Javanbahkt: He went to the left.
At first there’s a few spiders… and they’re way across the room.
Arash Javanbahkt: Can I have one of them move just a teeny bit? Not towards you.
Sushmitha Madaboosi: Ok, I only see one of them right now.
Arash makes the spiders walk away from her. Then towards her. Every minute or so, she ranks her fear from one to ten.
Sushmitha Madaboosi: Yeah, that's, that's like and eight. It’s heading right towards me.
Slowly, she gets closer to the spiders. Way, way closer.
Sushmitha Madaboosi: Why not?
Arash Javanbahkt: Why not! I touch it? You can touch it also.
Sushmitha slides her hand under a tarantula…
Sushmitha Madaboosi: Ooh, I'm under it. Swear it felt warmer under there.
Arash Javanbahkt: That's good! That's very good! What are we doing? We're training your brain: this is safe, this is safe, this is safe.
Arash Javanbahkt: You’re the boss. You’re in charge, right?
Sushmitha Madaboosi: I'm the boss.
Arash Javanbahkt: Of course you are. Let's do it. Keep going back and forth. Slow walk.
After less than an hour…Sushmitha is left alone in a smaller room… filled with fake spiders, dozens of them. The door closes … and Arash chats with her through a baby monitor.
[SFX: door clicks]
Arash Javanbahkt: What's your number?
Sushmitha Madaboosi: I'm at a two.
Arash Javanbahkt: That's perfect. Now I'm gonna just start making them all randomly move around. Okay.
Sushmitha Madaboosi: Oh, okay. Okay.
Arash Javanbahkt: All right. Ready?
Sushmitha Madaboosi: Yep.
[mux in]
Fear is primal. It’s learned. And it’s specific to each of us.
Arash Javanbakht: We can talk to someone forever about why spiders are not scary, or a shih tzu is not gonna harm them, a pet shih tzu. And they say I know it is. But part of me doesn’t understand. And that part is the animal brain, the animal inside of us. And that animal learns through experience, which is exposure.
After just one session of augmented reality exposure therapy, Sushmitha was able to hold in her hands a real, living tarantula. It was a total gamechanger for her. In an email, she told me she recently picked up a spider with a paper towel and released it outside.
And this technology has way broader applications than arachnophobia. War veterans whose PTSD stops them from entering a crowded space. Arash is doing the same kind of exposure therapy with them, putting them in crowded rooms, one fake person at a time, retraining their brains: this is safe, this is safe, this is safe.
[mux up and down]
[New Message. Time: 9:21am. Alec from Nashville, Tennessee. And my experience sorry, I was camping in Kansas and at this time I didn't really ever use tents. I would just put down a sleeping bag and be under the stars and I thought that was great. Until one night I woke up and there was a sniffling and a snuffling right next to me. And then I felt things touching my bag and clawing at my sleeping bag. And it's a mummy bag, so it's only my head sticking out. And then I hear things being… something being dragged around me. And then I saw what it was. I had slept somehow near a place where coyotes brought all of their wild turkeys that they killed. And they found me. And there just sniffing at me, pawing at me. And I just stayed perfectly still, ‘thinking I'm a rock. I am a rock. I'm a rock.’ After probably about 5 minutes, that seemed like hours, they left me alone. But I didn't even dare move because I didn't know where they would be. And I just watched the full moon cross the sky for hours that whole night, holding it in because I had to pee really cold and just wishing I had stayed somewhere else. Thank you.
My hypothesis from earlier feels contradictory… that Lauren and I force ourselves to face our fears because it makes us feel alive.
But I asked Arash about that theory, and he said it actually makes sense. That there’s overlap between the circuits and neurotransmitters involved in all big emotions. Fear, elation, falling in love, using drugs — chemically, they’re not all that different.
Still… fear is its own emotion. It’s there to protect you… to save your life. And for some people with certain fears… exposure is the last thing they need.
I wanna play one more voice memo for you. From a guy named Nile Carrethers. Who spent a season as a researcher in the forest in Costa Rica.
Nile Carrethers: But there was this one morning — it was probably 4:00, 4:30 a.m., so it was still dark out — that I was walking out to a site by myself and I heard footsteps. [sfx forest sounds] /// And what stood out to me about these footsteps is that they were in sync with my footsteps. So in my mind I'm thinking these kind of sound like human footsteps. [sfx again] /// And that the idea that a cat or even a jaguar or another predator, another large animal, might be in the forest at that time didn't frighten me as much as the idea of that being another human in the forest. But yeah. That’s my two cents. Love your show. You guys rock. Bye.
///
I followed up with Nile. He lives in Southern California, where he’s working as a billing administrator for a rock climbing company while he gets his master's degree.
Jack Rodolico: Well, first of all, did you ever figure out what was behind you?
Nile Carrethers: No, I never did. In the end, I believe that it was probably a jaguar.
That idea — that it’s scarier to be stalked by a human than a jaguar — I have to say I get that.
Nile Carrethers: I think that's why they make movies about people going camping in the woods, or people going out to a cabin in the woods is a classic one. And some unfamiliar figure arrives, right? And it kind of unfolds from there.
But there’s another layer to Nile’s anxiety. And it’s something I can’t relate to personally.
The scary movie in his head? It isn't Halloween or Blair Witch. It’s more like Get Out.
Nile Carrethers: In general, it's a pretty white space. And I have to be realistic with myself /// to say that /// one, people don't always expect to see a tall, Black man by himself walking through the forest /// and, two, /// I have interacted with individuals, where I'm like, okay, this doesn't feel like a space that I'm welcoming in and I have a pretty good idea of why that might be the case, right?
Nile’s 29, adventurous. His instagram looks like a spread in Outside Magazine.
Nile cliff diving.
Nile climbing mountains in the snow.
Nile sprinting up a dune.
Dude looks invincible.
But as a Black dude, he knows that he’s not. And he’s reminded of it often — in the outdoors. This one time, he says, he and a friend, also a man of color, were in Michigan.
Nile Carrethers: We were trying to find a lake — access to this lake so that we could put our kayaks in. /// And as we're passing one of the houses at the end of this little road, this man like runs out of his house like, must have seen us coming up the road, B-lines it out of this driveway, out to the road and stands in the middle of the road blocks our car.
Jack Rodolico: Hmmm.
Nile Carrethers: And I already like I'm kind of on edge at that point, so my approach is like be polite. Just kind of let this person know what we're doing. So I'm maintaining this demeanor of like, “Hey, we're out, we're on vacation. You know, we're looking for a spot. We're trying to have fun.” And his demeanor does not match that at all. Immediately, he's like, “What are you doing here? Like, why are you on this street”
The guy didn’t call the cops. He didn’t pull out a weapon. Nile says, the one thing he did do was give them directions on how to leave his neighborhood.
Nile Carrethers: And as we turned around and left, he is like yelling from his yard, yelling at us like, slow down, like, don't speed. /// So I just took that as like his last ditch effort to control that situation
Jack Rodolico: Completely control…
Nile Carrethers: Yeah, and just be like, you know, you have to do do what I say in this scenario.
[mux up and down]
Nile Carrethers: What's wild to think about is like, I think when I leave my house, oftentimes like a certain level of vigilance kind of kicks in. /// It probably requires a lot of energy on my end to be in that state so, so frequently. ///
Jack Rodolico: When you get further away from people into the outdoors, does the vigilance drop?
Nile Carrethers: Yeah. Like if I can be more certain that I'm not going to encounter other human beings. And I'm just like, out there. That's where, like, I sometimes feel the most relaxed, like, /// no expectation of my behavior. There's no expectation of how I need to behave depending on, like, who inhabits that area. /// I say to my friends sometimes when I'm out in nature that I'm like flopping around. And I would describe those situations where I'm just like out flopping around, like kind of just hanging out, doing whatever, exploring, flipping rocks, looking around for wildlife and just like being happy about it.
Jack Rodolico: Flopping. When Nile is flopping, this means this means like loose. In it.
Nile Carrethers: Yes. It's just like. Just in it. Hanging out, kind of doing whatever comes to mind. It's like a it's the the child inside of me is freed.
[mux up and down]
Arash — the trauma psychiatrist — says fear… is a spectrum. How we react when we’re exposed to our fear? That depends… on where the fear falls on the spectrum.
Arash Javanbakht: So now we’re talking about the degrees of fear…from a little bit of like discomfort to terror. If something terrorizes you, you will not get close to it.
This is exactly where my chat with Nile landed. Lauren and I can push ourselves toward our fear from the comfort of our screens. Not Nile.
Jack Rodolico: This is not like a fear that you are sort of pushing yourself towards to examine.
He’s shaking his head, “No.”
Jack Rodolico: No. Yeah. No, this is. No.
Nile Carrethers: No. This is a fear that if it unfolds and becomes founded, a valid fear, then, like, I'm out, at that point it becomes like a fear for my life. I know that not every interaction is that serious, but in my mind it can become that serious. /// The gray area of how that can go is not is to like, that's too scary for me. Like, I don't want to stick around to see how things go.
So, why do I push myself to do a thing that scares me?
Probably, the answer is that I do it because it scares me… just not too much.
—---
This episode of Outside/In was produced by Jack Rodolico.
It was edited and mixed by Taylor Quimby.
Additional editing help from me, Nate Hegyi, Justine Paradis, Jessica Hunt, and Felix Poon.
Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer.
Special thanks to all the folks that shared their fears and scary stories with us: Erin Partridge, Lauren Passell [pah-SELL], Nile Carrethers (CUH-REH-THERS) Michelle MacKay (MICK-KAY), Alec from Nashville and Hillary from Washington.
Also, a special shoutout to Mike Kramer Duffield who caught an audio editing error in our recent show about veterinarians and let us know right away. You are the best
It’s not too late to share your own two cents about spooky stuff in the natural world… Email us at outsidein at nhpr dot org… or join our private facebook group, where you can chat with other listeners and occasionally help us gin up ideas for the show.
Links for all that jazz and more in our show notes.
Music in this episode came from Silver Maple, Matt Large, Luella Gren, John Abbot and Blue Dot Sessions
Our theme is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.