577: Something Only I Can See
This American Life
This American Life
4.6 • 88.8K Ratings
🗓️ 13 July 2025
⏱️ 59 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
When you’re the only one who can see something, sometimes it feels like you’re in on a special secret. The hard part is getting anyone to believe your secret is real. This week, people trying to show others what they see—including a woman with muscular dystrophy who believes she has the same condition as an Olympic athlete.
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- Prologue: Ira asks Jeff Emtman to do the impossible—describe the indescribable color he sees in his left eye. (5 minutes)
- Act One: Journalist David Epstein tells the story of Jill Viles, who has muscular dystrophy and can’t walk. But she believes that she somehow has the same condition as one of the best hurdlers in the world, Priscilla Lopes-Schliep. (36 minutes)
- Act Two: Producer Nancy Updike speaks with comedian Tig Notaro about her mother-in-law, Carol. Carol came up with a joke that is only funny to one person—herself. But she loved it so much, Tig had to have her perform it onstage. (9 minutes)
- Act Three: Actor Alex Karpovsky reads a short story by Etgar Keret, from his book, “The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God." (4 minutes)
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| 0:00.0 | When Jeffrey was 22, he had this rare problem with his eyes, and doctors had to use lasers to fix vessels that were bleeding at the back of his left eye, which worked great. |
| 0:11.2 | But not long after, on a cold, bright winter day, he came into his house from the cold and saw this color. |
| 0:18.7 | And it was almost like an after image, like when you look at a bright light. |
| 0:22.5 | Yeah. |
| 0:23.3 | And it was a blind spot right where they had put the lasers. |
| 0:27.4 | And instead of seeing blackness, it was this greenish, not green. |
| 0:33.8 | It was like a green that could never exist. |
| 0:36.8 | And it was fluorescent. And it was kind of pulsating and staticy. |
| 0:40.3 | Got that green, but not green. |
| 0:43.3 | You know, actually maybe a better way of describing it was like, |
| 0:47.3 | if the color black was fluorescent and green. |
| 0:53.3 | Wait, I'm just going to say those words back to you. If the color black were fluorescent and green. Wait, I'm just going to say those words back to you. |
| 0:55.7 | If the color black were fluorescent and green. |
| 0:59.8 | Yeah. |
| 1:00.9 | You know that sounds crazy, right? |
| 1:03.3 | Yeah, yeah. |
| 1:09.7 | You know how some colors seem more energetic like like bright red or bright yellow and |
| 1:14.0 | others are more peaceful like like you know sort of a blue green sea color like what which is this |
| 1:21.1 | it was both it was both energetic and calming. |
| 1:33.9 | But a lot of the color is greenish, right? |
| 1:35.5 | It's in the kind of green family? |
| 1:38.2 | Yeah, it is greenish. |
... |
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