Podbit · Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
An 80-year-old man whose wife had recently died waited two days before calling an ambulance about a large wooden banister piece in his rectum. The ER doctor went elbow-deep to remove it. The object was unsanded and bloodied, roughly the shape of a chess bishop — but enormous.
Where this was said
At 34:25 · chapter starts 33:20
Lucy sets the scene: a big-city trauma center in 2021, an EMS call for an 80-year-old with stable vitals and abdominal pain — a thoroughly routine presentation. The medic pulls Lucy aside to share two things: the patient had confessed en route that he'd inserted something rectally two days earlier, and his wife had recently died. Lucy immediately reads the room and focuses on compassion over curiosity, assuring the stoic elderly man that they'll get it out. He declines pain medication. The ER doctor finds the object on the first attempt but can't get a grip due to suction and slipperiness; the patient simply says 'just do it' as the doctor attempts a second time, going fully elbow-deep. [1] — Lucy "An 80-year-old man whose wife had recently died waited two days before calling an ambulance about a large wooden banister piece in his rect…" 34:25 Moments later there's a pop, and the doctor is holding what Lucy describes as a 6-by-8-inch piece of wooden banister, roughly bishop-shaped, covered in blood and stool, and not perfectly sanded. The doctor bags it and walks out. An hour later, security calls: the nephew is here. Lucy races to the room, positions herself between the door and the specimen bag, tells the nephew she has 'absolutely no idea' what's causing the pain, and slides out while dropping the evidence in the trash. [2] — Lucy "After the extraction, Lucy left the wooden object in a specimen bag on the counter. Minutes later, the patient's unsuspecting nephew arrive…" 41:50 George's dignity survives intact.
Lucy the ER nurse estimated she has seen between 20 and 30 rectal foreign body cases in her 12-year career.
Lucy noted that rectal foreign body cases often arrive in clusters, with multiple presenting in close succession for reasons she cannot explain.
The 80-year-old widower waited approximately two days after inserting the object before calling 911, likely hoping it would resolve on its own.
The ER doctor had to go fully elbow-deep to retrieve the wooden banister piece from the 80-year-old patient after failing on the first attempt.
Lucy's 80-year-old patient had inserted a piece of wooden banister described as 6 inches wide and 8 inches long into his rectum.
Self-help fails because people are sold one universal cure by the hyper-responders who had a transformative result from it. The real problem is context: every method works for the right person at the right time, which is almost never you just because the author says so.
Spencer Greenberg was once so socially anxious his heart pounded just approaching a stranger. His therapist gave him homework: go to a bar alone, talk to 5 strangers. Starting with asking for the time, he worked up to asking men for hugs — and his anxiety fell dramatically in 6 months.
A person who flies regularly but obsessively checks weather forecasts before every flight is not doing exposure therapy — they're teaching their brain that flying is only safe with the ritual. Safety behaviors prevent the brain from ever learning that the feared thing is actually fine.
The worry-time technique assigns all worries to one scheduled slot (e.g. 5 PM). Every time a worry surfaces, you write it down and ban yourself from engaging with it until that time. When 5 PM arrives, most worries feel trivial and the act of batch-worrying exposes how little it actually accomplishes.
In a randomized study of 20 habit techniques, 'habit reflection' stood out: recall a past habit you successfully built, write down what helped you succeed, then apply those same strategies to your new habit. It works because it's self-adapting — it uses whatever worked for YOU.
The tiny habits technique — always having a minimal version of your habit you can do when life gets in the way — keeps the mental machinery of habit formation from breaking. Paradoxically, people given a tiny-habit fallback option were MORE successful at the full habit, not less.
Fears and worries act like playground bullies — they want to ambush you. But when you deliberately seek them out and choose the time of engagement, they lose their power. The volitional act of starting the fight on your own terms is one of CBT's most underappreciated insights.
Most downtime defaults are things you regret immediately after — phone scrolling, binge TV. 'Glad you did it' activities meet the same need for rest but leave you feeling like you spent your time well. The switch from a bad screen to a documentary, a book, or a walk costs almost no extra effort but compounds into identity over time.
You rarely control your first reactive thought. But you can train your second thought — the response to the trigger — by asking whether your initial reaction is the most helpful one and replacing it with something equally true but more constructive. Over time, that second thought becomes automatic.
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