This is an ABC podcast.

Hey, just letting you know this week's episode is one from our archives.

About a decade ago, psychologist Ethan Cross found himself doing something totally out of character.

I'm pacing my house with a baseball bat.

At one point, I found myself contemplating just terribly irrational things.

You know, these bad guys coming to get us.

And at one point in the early morning hours,

I actually, as embarrassing as it is to admit,

contemplated doing a Google search for bodyguards

that specialize in protecting academics, which, you know, in retrospect, right, is totally

preposterous.

What in the world had gotten him to this point?

Well, the story starts out straightforward enough.

We had just published a study showing that when people use the words of physical pain to describe how they feel after being socially rejected, so people often say, oh, I'm in pain, my feelings hurt.

We published a study that suggested that when people are using that language of being in pain,

they may actually be referring to physical sensations in their body.

Ethan and his colleagues had found the brain processed emotional and physical pain

in surprisingly similar ways, more so than previously thought.

And, you know, we had no high expectations for this paper, but it ended up getting a lot of

coverage. I went on national television. And it was, it was really exciting, really fun for a

couple of days until I came into work one day and I found a hand-addressed letter in my envelope,

which was a little odd because I never

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