In 2019, Olympic dressage trainer Michael Barisone shot his student Lauren Kanarek at his Hawthorne Hill farm in Long Valley, New Jersey. In 2022, a jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity. Inspired by Netflix's "Untold: The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill," Tara and Nicole explain what the insanity defense actually means medically and legally. They cover how states define legal insanity, why the defense succeeds far less often than people think, and why "not guilty" doesn't mean walking free. The hosts also revisit the cases that shaped public perception: Lorena Bobbitt, John Hinckley Jr. and Andrea Yates. They also touch on Lindsay Clancy, whose postpartum psychosis defense ended in a mistrial last month. Grab a Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity cocktail and join us for this one.

Sources:

• Untold: The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill – Netflix
• Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity – US Law Explained
• Insanity Defense – Wikipedia
• Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity – Psychology Today
• Michael Barisone and Lauren Kanarek Tell Their Sides – People
• 5 Unsettling Details About the Attempted Murder of Lauren Kanarek – Primetimer
• Famous Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity Cases – Legal Clarity
• Cases Where Insanity Defenses Have Been Successful in the US – New York Post
• Lindsay Clancy Trial: How the Insanity Defense Differs in Mass. – Northeastern Global News
• Judge Declares Mistrial in Lindsay Clancy's Murder Case – NPR

This week, Tara and Nicole dig into the psychology of stalking — starting with the Hulu docuseries Stalking Samantha: 13 Years of Terror, which follows a woman held captive in a soundproof box by the man who pursued her for more than a decadebefore she found a way to escape and had to decide whether to pursue lesser charges or fight for full justice against her captor. They trace the same fixation across pop culture — Netflix's Baby Reindeer, the 2007 documentary Crazy Love, Netflix's You, and the 2025 film Obsession — before pulling back to the clinical picture: what stalking actually looks like, how often it happens, and why it's so often minimized. On the medical side, they break down the CDC's data on stalking as a public health issue, including how common covert surveillance tactics like tracking and monitoring really are, and the mental health toll on survivors — PTSD, hopelessness, anxiety. They also revisit the 1989 murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer, whose case helped create the first U.S. anti-stalking laws, and close with the real story behind Baby Reindeer as told by creator Richard Gadd. Cocktail this week: The Celery Stalker. hulu

Sources & further reading:

• Stalking Samantha: 13 Years of Terror (Hulu)
• Stalking Samantha (Disney+)
• Baby Reindeer — Wikipedia
• Crazy Love (2007 film) — Wikipedia
• Obsession (2025 film) — Wikipedia
• The True Story Behind Baby Reindeer — People
• Stalking — Office for Victims of Crime
• Stalking — CDC Intimate Partner Violence Prevention
• Stalking — Psychology Today
• Eva LaRue on Surviving Stalking
• Rebecca Schaeffer — Wikipedia
• Rebecca Schaeffer's Murder — All That's Interesting
• Celery Stalker cocktail inspiration — Epicurious

We're revisiting Episode 12 with fresh, urgent context: On Sept. 10, 2026, the CDC issued a Health Alert Network advisory warning of a nationwide increase in rabies exposures and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) administration errors. Rabies vaccine use is up an estimated 33% year-over-year and rabies immunoglobulin use is up 76%, with at least eight state health departments reporting mistakes in how PEP is being given — including wrong injection sites and missed or unnecessary immunoglobulin doses. We also cover a real-world example of exactly this kind of mass-exposure event: In late August, North Carolina health officials confirmed rabies in four baby goats from Farm Adventures, a mobile petting zoo that visited 10 public events across six counties, including a back-to-school bash and an assisted living facility, before the exposure was caught.

Rabies is nearly 100% fatal once symptoms appear but fully preventable with timely, correctly administered PEP — which is why we're topping off this episode with what's changed.

Sources:

• CDC HAN Advisory: Nationwide Increase in Reported Human Rabies Exposures
• NCDHHS: Rabies Confirmed at Mobile Petting Zoo
• NCDHHS: Additional Exposure Details, Mobile Petting Zoo

In 1964, a New York Times headline claimed 38 witnesses watched Kitty Genovese be stabbed to death in Kew Gardens, Queens, and did nothing — a story so shocking it launched decades of research into what psychologists now call the bystander effect. This week, Tara and Nicole dig into how much of that famous account was actually true. The 2015 documentary The Witness, directed by James Solomon and narrated by Kitty's brother Bill Genovese, dismantles the "38 witnesses" myth: there weren't 38 eyewitnesses, there were two attacks rather than three, at least one call to police was made during the assault, and a neighbor, Sophie Farrar, rushed to hold Kitty as she was dying. From there, the episode traces the real science Darley and Latané built off the (exaggerated) case — diffusion of responsibility, pluralistic ignorance, and why groups notice and react to emergencies more slowly than individuals do — plus how the effect shows up in later cases like the death of Wang Yue in China and ABC's What Would You Do? Along the way: Good Samaritan laws, what altruism research says actually predicts who helps, and why a story doesn't have to be fully accurate to change an entire field of psychology.

Sources & further reading:

• The Witness (2015 documentary) — Wikipedia
• Bystander effect — Wikipedia
• Death of Wang Yue — Wikipedia
• Good Samaritan law — Wikipedia
• Altruism — Wikipedia
• What Would You Do? (2008 TV program) — Wikipedia
• The Kitty Genovese Case — All That's Interesting
• The Witness Exposes the Myths of Kitty Genovese's Murder — NPR
• Original cocktail inspiration: Innocent Bystander Moscato Mojito — Two Loves Studio

This week, we're leaving the ER and heading upstairs — to the NICU. We're joined by Tara’s sister Kristin, doctorally prepared neonatal nurse practitioner, to break down ER Season 10, Episode 12 and Grey's Anatomy's NICU storylines, then get into the real clinical science behind what those shows depict. We cover congenital heart disease and coarctation of the aorta, extreme prematurity, hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy and therapeutic hypothermia, and what it actually looks like when a family decides to let go. The cocktail is The Tiny Fighter — gin, lemon, simple syrup, and bitters. Small but mighty, just like the patients.

Sources

• ER S10E12 "NICU" — Apple TV
• Grey's Anatomy NICU — Grey's Anatomy Universe Wiki
• Congenital Heart Disease — CDC
• Critical CHD Newborn Screening — CDC
• Coarctation of the Aorta — American Heart Association
• Neonatal Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy — PMC Review 2024
• Premature Birth — March of Dimes
• CHD Epidemiology 1990–2021 — Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine
• HIE Outcomes — BONBID Dataset, Harvard/Boston Children's
• NICU Ethics and Withdrawal of Care — Asian Bioethics Review
• Current Practice Management Guidelines in Neonates and Infants with Isolated Coarctation of the Aorta — Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia

This week we're diving into the unsettling world of parasomnias — sleep paralysis, night terrors, sleepwalking, sexsomnia, sleep eating, and sleep talking — using Inception and the 2015 documentary The Nightmare as our jumping-off point. We break down what's actually happening in the brain during these episodes, why sleep paralysis so often comes paired with terrifying hallucinations (hello, incubus and succubus folklore), and how conditions like exploding head syndrome, hypnic jerks, and nightmare disorder differ from garden-variety bad dreams. Pour yourself a Hypnagogic Highball and settle in — just maybe don't listen to this one right before bed.

Sources:

• Inception (Wikipedia)
• The Nightmare (2015 film) (Wikipedia)
• Sleep Paralysis (Wikipedia)
• Night Terror (Wikipedia)
• Exploding Head Syndrome (Wikipedia)
• Hypnic Jerk (Wikipedia)
• Nightmare Disorder (Wikipedia)
• Incubus (Wikipedia)
• Succubus (Wikipedia)
• Movies About Sleep-Wake Disorders (TherapyRoute)
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