901: Is Your Blue My Blue?

Episode of This American Life · November 9, 2026 · 1 h

Ira Glass, Ike Sriskandarajah and Molly Marcello present stories of people trying to convey hearing loss, cluster headache pain, and grief to others.

Summary

This episode of This American Life explored the difficulty of communicating inner experience to other people. Ira Glass opened by describing how cataract surgery revealed he had been seeing a duller blue than everyone else without knowing it.

In Act One, musician Shaun Bengson and his wife Abigail discussed his hereditary hearing loss and tinnitus. Despite years of warnings from his father, Shaun avoided earplugs from his teenage garage-band days onward and kept the damage secret out of shame. Abigail said she went along with the recklessness early in their marriage. Shaun played a simulation of his worsening tinnitus, and he described how the birth of his son, who was briefly in intensive care, pushed him to start protecting his ears. He resisted hearing aids for more than two decades before finally getting them at 43, which he said changed his daily life.

In Act Two, producer Ike Sriskandarajah examined a survey ranking cluster headaches against other painful conditions. Patients who had also been shot, had kidney stones, or had given birth rated cluster headaches as worse. His wife Emma recalled being annoyed when he shared the comparison while she was nine months pregnant. He concluded that comparing pain does not produce empathy, though meeting fellow sufferers did.

In Act Three, production fellow Molly Marcello described grief after her mother's sudden death and her quest to track down a grief zine a coworker had given away. The artist Chelsea Granger recreated it from her original collages, and reading it made Marcello feel both understood and newly confronted with the reality of her loss.

Chapters

0:01
Prologue: Cataracts and the color blue
Ira Glass describes how cataract surgery revealed he had been perceiving blue differently than others.
3:33
Sean's inherited hearing loss
Shaun Bengson recounts ignoring his father's warnings and damaging his hearing in a teenage garage band.
8:02
Reckless together
Abigail Bengson explains how, as a new wife and bandmate, she embraced Shaun's anti-earplug attitude.
12:39
The tinnitus simulation
Shaun plays an audio demonstration of how his hearing has degraded and where it is headed.
19:49
Parenthood as rock bottom
After his newborn son's medical emergency, Shaun begins wearing earplugs and asking for lower stage volume.
23:24
Finally getting hearing aids
Shaun's years of delay on hearing aids end at 43, transforming conversations with Abigail and family.
31:03
Act Two: Ranking cluster headache pain
Ike Sriskandarajah describes his cluster headaches and a survey comparing them with other extreme pain.
33:38
Gunshots, kidney stones and childbirth
Patients who also experienced gunshots, kidney stones and labor rate their cluster headaches as worse.
41:32
Telling a pregnant wife
Emma recalls her annoyance at Ike's comparison and rates his empathy, and Ike reflects on finding fellow sufferers.
45:29
Act Three: My mom died
Molly Marcello describes how her mother's sudden death dominates her thoughts and sets out to recover a lost grief zine.
49:46
Recreating the zine
Chelsea Granger rebuilds her grief newsletters from her collages, and Marcello reads them and confronts her loss.

Key points

What was said, by whom, with the exact words. Timestamps jump to the moment.

Ira Glass
Glass says he had no idea he was misperceiving colors until cataract surgery corrected his vision.
“I had no idea I was misperceiving the world before the surgery. I had no idea I had cataracts”
Listen from 0:01 · Cataract surgery
Shaun Bengson
Shaun Bengson says he regrets that he understood the risk to his hearing from his very first band rehearsal but still ignored it.
“It feels so dumb because I feel like I had like all the information in my very first interaction with it”
Listen from 6:42 · Hearing loss
Abigail Bengson
Abigail Bengson says that early in their relationship she felt supporting Shaun's disregard for ear protection was a way of being on his side.
“it felt sort of like being a good teammate to be on the side of this sort of recklessness”
Listen from 10:43 · Marriage and long-term partnership
Abigail Bengson
Abigail Bengson argues that Shaun's tinnitus demonstration should be seen as an invitation into his experience rather than a tragedy.
“But hearing your tinnitus is not a demonstration of tragedy. It's just a sort of stark invitation into your experience”
Listen from 19:37 · Tinnitus
Shaun Bengson
Shaun Bengson recounts feeling guilt and shame that he could not follow nurses' conversations about his critically ill newborn son.
“terrible guilt and shame that I'd let this go on so long and now my child's life might be on the line”
Listen from 21:40 · Hearing loss
Shaun Bengson
Shaun Bengson likens his son's hospitalization to an addict hitting rock bottom, prompting him to start wearing earplugs.
“It does have a little bit of like an addict rock bottom like feeling. Like I had really ridden this pony as far as it would go”
Listen from 22:10 · Hearing loss
Ira Glass
Glass cites a long-term study finding people wait about nine years on average between being told they need hearing aids and getting them.
“One big long-term study found that the average time that people wait between the diagnosis that they should get hearing aids and actually getting the hearing aids was about nine years”
Listen from 26:52 · Hearing aids
Shaun Bengson
Shaun Bengson says hearing aids have not restored his ears but have changed his daily life.
“My ears aren't restored, but I am hearing things I haven't heard in decades. Like daily life is different”
Listen from 27:09 · Hearing aids
Ike Sriskandarajah
Sriskandarajah reports that cluster headaches affect about one in a thousand people and are thought to stem from hypothalamic dysfunction.
“Clusters affect about 1 in 1,000 people. It's about as common as MS or lupus. They think it's caused by a dysfunction in the hypothalamus”
Listen from 37:13 · Cluster headache
Eric
Eric describes his cluster headache pain as worse than his unmedicated gunshot wound.
“It felt like my eye socket was full of red hot coals and a mule was just kicking me in the face repetitively for hours on end”
Listen from 37:47 · Cluster headache
Ike Sriskandarajah
Sriskandarajah reports the survey found gunshot wounds averaged a pain score of 6 versus 9.7 for cluster headaches.
“In the survey, gunshot wounds received an average pain score of 6 versus cluster headaches, which got 9.7”
Listen from 38:22 · Pain measurement
Gary
Gary says he never rates his cluster headaches a 10 because he can always imagine a worse level.
“And the only reason I never say I have a 10, because I can always think that there's the level where it gets worse”
Listen from 39:16 · Pain measurement
Ashley
Ashley rates the most painful moment of labor at 9.5 but still rates cluster headaches as a 10.
“Cluster headaches, a different type of pain. And I would still put cluster headaches as a 10 out of 10”
Listen from 41:22 · Childbirth pain
Emma
Emma says that ranking cluster headaches above childbirth tends to offend people.
“I think it's like saying it ranks above childbirth really rubs people the wrong way”
Listen from 43:03 · Childbirth pain
Ike Sriskandarajah
Sriskandarajah concludes that comparing one's pain to someone else's, especially with data, does not generate empathy.
“If you want someone to empathize with you, Don't try to compare your pain with theirs, especially with empirical data backing up that yours is worse”
Listen from 44:14 · Empathy
Molly Marcello
Marcello says she only feels relief from constant thoughts of her mother's death when she gets to talk about it.
“The only time I feel relief from the near constant interruption of my mom is dead is when I get to talk about it”
Listen from 46:03 · Grief
Linked moment · 50:42Skip to 50:42 using a listen link in the info box.
Molly Marcello
Marcello says reading the recreated grief zine made her feel fully understood, which then made her angry because it confirmed her mother's death.
“Because comparing all those notes with Chelsea and her grieving friends, I completely understood what they understood”
Listen from 50:42 · Grief

People

In the conversation

Ira GlassHost and creator of This American Life
Ike SriskandarajahThis American Life producer who reported the prologue and Act Three
Shaun BengsonMusician in the folk-punk duo The Bengsons who has hereditary hearing loss and tinnitus
Abigail BengsonMusician in The Bengsons and Shaun Bengson's wife
EricJuror in the Kouri Richins trial who withheld his last name
GaryCluster headache patient who has had kidney stones
AshleyCluster headache patient who has given birth twice
EmmaIke Sriskandarajah's wife
Molly MarcelloProduction fellow at This American Life whose mother died suddenly
Chelsea GrangerArtist who made a grief zine after her mother's death

Discussed

Michael ComadayThis American Life staff member who lost his father and told Molly Marcello about the grief zine

Topics

From the publisher

The doomed project of trying to translate what’s in your head into someone else’s head. Start a Life Partners free trial to watch our new video, A Night of Stories and Improv. (00:00:00) Prologue: A while back, Ira woke up with double vision and learned that he had cataracts. After his cataract surgery, he realized the color blue looked very different to him. Now he always wonders: does everyone see the same blue as I do, or is their blue different? (3 minutes) (00:03:26) Act One: Shaun Bengson has known since he was a kid that he’d very likely lose his hearing as he got older and develop tinnitus. And even after it started, he didn’t do the sensible things that would slow its progression. Shaun and his wife, Abigail, discuss their decisions — and non-decisions — with Ira. And Shaun plays a simulation of what the world now sounds like to him. (27 minutes) (00:32:50) Act Two: Cluster headaches are sometimes called the most painful medical condition. Researchers who study them wanted to know if that was actually true. They asked cluster patients to compare their headaches to other famously painful conditions. Producer Ike Sriskandarajah, who gets these headaches, was excited to read the findings. But should he tell his pregnant wife? (14 minutes) (00:46:35) Act Three: Molly’s mom died suddenly last fall, and it flipped the axis of her world. But one day, a friend told her about a special object that really helped him cope with his own father’s death. Molly decides to track this object down. (8 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org / This American Life privacy policy . / Learn more about sponsor message choices .

Summary, chapters and key points were generated from the episode transcript on November 10, 2026. Quotes are checked word for word against the transcript.

Categories: Society & Culture·Medicine·Relationships