ENCORE How To Confront a Vindictive Neighbor with Tig Notaro
How To! with Mike Pesca
Peach Fish Projects
4.3 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The trouble began when Sarah put a fern in front of her new condo. Nice, right? The woman who lives in the unit above didn't think so, and without warning sent Sarah a slew of passive-aggressive notes. Sarah thinks it's all a big misunderstanding, but now her neighbor refuses to even speak to her. Sarah is wracked with anxiety, struggling to sleep, and contemplating moving out. On this episode of How To!, we turn to stand-up comedian Tig Notaro, a cancer survivor and host of the new advice podcast Don't Ask Tig, to help Sarah approach the situation with humor and clarity. When things don't go your way, Tig says, you have to take back control of your own story. What would the hero in your favorite movie do? For Sarah, this means gardening with headphones and the Rocky theme on the soundtrack.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, how to listeners. This is Charles Duhigg, the original host of how to. And as we're preparing this show for 2026, we thought we would play you one of my favorite reruns, the show with TIG Nataro about how to confront a toxic neighbor. Played a few years ago, but the advice is still golden. So here you go. Have a great show with TIG. There's so much going on in the |
| 0:23.9 | world and she's outraged about a fern. And yeah, you know, it's just you, all you can do is pity her at |
| 0:31.0 | this point and start planting ferns. You're listening to How To. |
| 0:38.1 | I'm Charles Duhigg. |
| 0:40.0 | Each week on the show, we hear from listeners who write us with a problem and we try and find a creative solution. |
| 0:45.5 | And this week, we got some help from a freshly minted podcaster. |
| 0:48.9 | My name is Tignotaro. |
| 0:50.8 | I'm a comedian. |
| 0:52.6 | I also host a podcast called Don't Ask TIG. |
| 0:58.2 | Don't Ask TIG is an advice podcast in which you probably should not ask, but you still will ask |
| 1:04.0 | TIG for advice. Yeah, I was like, I'm good at this. I don't want to keep anyone from my talents here. |
| 1:13.4 | I really enjoyed the ability to unravel nonsense around a topic. |
| 1:22.3 | Which is exactly why we asked Tig to join us, because as you'll hear, there is a lot of |
| 1:26.9 | nonsense to help this week's |
| 1:28.3 | listener unravel. My name is Sarah, and I'm a college counselor. I work with high school |
| 1:35.5 | students who are low-income, and I just bought a condo this year. This is the first time I've ever |
| 1:42.9 | owned a house or anything. So that was |
| 1:44.9 | pretty exciting. It's a small building. There are just three units in it. So it's me living on |
| 1:52.0 | the first floor and then a guy who lives behind me and then a family who lives upstairs. |
| 1:57.5 | This sounds very familiar to me. And I know these people you're talking about. |
| 2:04.2 | They're very dear to me, but what happened? Yeah. So one day, I got this note in my mailbox from the wife who lives |
| 2:15.5 | upstairs. And it said, I am done trying to communicate with you. |
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