This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

We get messages all the time from listeners who say the show has helped them think differently

about the world and about themselves.

As producers, nothing is more rewarding or gratifying.

A while back, we heard a listener story that especially moved us.

Hello, Shankar and Hidden Brain team.

My name is Audrey Hombren.

The point of this message is to send you a huge thank you as your show is the leading reason

for one of the biggest decisions of my life.

Today we tell you what happened.

It's a tale about two friends and how our show played a small role in their dramatic story.

We begin with a young man named Alex Eastman.

Alex was obsessed with sports and exercise.

So when I was in high school, nothing really stopped me.

I played sports all through high school.

I was a year-round player.

I did a baseball wrestling and I played football.

But I mean, even outside of those sports, I was consistently at the gym with all my

friends in high school playing basketball or working out, going on hikes.

But something happened in the summer of 2011 when Alex was 18.

The biggest time that I finally hit me that something was wrong was when I was camping

with my family out in John Martin, reservoir here in Colorado.

...