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WNYC Studios Presents “10 Things That Scare Me” The Tiny Podcast About Our Biggest Fears Returns for a Final Season

New Episodes Out Today 

(New York, NY— January 13, 2020) —  Hailed by Vulture as one of the “Best Podcasts of 2019”—“a perfect pocket of meditative splendor”—WNYC Studios’ “10 Things That Scare Me” returns for its second and final season with new episodes featuring people from across the country revealing their darkest fears.

In each anxiety-filled, bite-size morsel, a single guest unpacks 10 things that haunt them, fill them with dread, or that they hope to never face. Always intimate, and occasionally funny, fears range from the familiar (clowns, climate change, cockroaches) to the singular (tall pine trees, sweet vermouth, deep sea centipedes).  Episodes are capped off with the voice of “10 Things” co-creator  Amy Pearl, who Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad describes as possessing “Wes Anderson levels of quirk and weirdness and genius.”

The first two episodes, available today, feature a submission from a listener Ike who fears—at the tender age of 11—that all his dreams will be crushed, and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of The Power of Habit Charles Duhigg, who fears that the people he admires most don’t admire him back. 

Other guests this season feature a wide-range of voices, including:

  • Hank Green, author, producer, and host of the “Dear Hank & John” and “SciShow Tangents” podcasts
  • Jia Tolentino, writer for The New Yorker and author of Trick Mirror 
  • Rebecca Carroll, WNYC’s Cultural Critic and Host of REBEL
  • George Divoky, the Director of Cooper Island Arctic Research
  • Hrishikesh Hirway, musician
  • Billie Parker and Gay Block, fine art photographer
  • Ellen Ryan, defense lawyer for Jeffrey Dahmer
  • Ida and Noa, the young sisters who inspired the idea for the “10 Things That Scare Me” podcast

“10 Things has become a cult hit in the podcast world — one of the first shows to innovate on a super-short, five-minute format, totally unnarrated, with sly and gorgeous scoring, and Amy at the end tying everything together,” said Paula Szuchman, Vice President of New Show Development, WNYC Studios. “I’m thrilled we’re launching one more season in this terrifying time, and that we can give listeners another chance to listen to each other for a change.”

“10 Things That Scare Me” is available at 10ThingsPodcast.org and all other platforms where podcasts are available. Two new episodes will be released every Monday through April 6, 2020.

On Wednesday, January 29, Amy Pearl and Isaac Jones, the podcast’s sound designer and composer, will present a behind-the-scenes look at how “10 Things That Scare Me” gets made. The Greene Space in New York City will host the event, details and live-streaming information may be found here. 

ABOUT WNYC STUDIOS

WNYC Studios is the premier producer of on-demand and broadcast audio, home to some of the industry’s most critically acclaimed and popular podcasts, including Radiolab, On The Media, Nancy, Trump, Inc., The New Yorker Radio Hour, Death, Sex & Money, Snap Judgment, Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin, and The Stakes. WNYC Studios is leading the new golden age in audio with podcasts and national radio programs that inform, inspire, and delight millions of intellectually curious and highly engaged listeners across digital, mobile, and broadcast platforms. Programs include personal narratives, deep journalism, interviews that reveal, and smart entertainment as varied and intimate as the human voice itself. For more information, visit  wnycstudios.org.

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