Heavyweight · Pushkin Industries

#59 Etta

September 18, 2025·36 min·3 clips

At Etta's triumphant art opening, her husband Milt collapses unconscious, prompting her to finally agree to empty the house.

The season begins with a shove. Jonathan calls Jackie Cohen hoping for an endorsement, with the confidence of someone already in trouble. Jackie is not in a ceremonial mood. She tells him to picture her face, then makes him choose between ecstasy and disgust. The answer lands dry. From there, the episode moves toward Etta and a family problem nobody can quite explain away. Johnny wants a fix. Dimitri thinks hypnosis might reach whatever argument has not reached. Gregor is having none of it. Johnny knows the pitch is risky, because even suggesting a remedy can become evidence in the brother-against-brother file. He pitches it anyway. Hypnosis, as Johnny presents it, would take less time than building a museum and would involve fewer humiliating stanchion noises. Gregor hears the lift in his voice. He can tell Johnny likes the word a little too much, which somehow becomes both the complaint and the diagnosis. Dimitri joins the call and argues that the whole thing would take only fifteen or twenty minutes. Nothing obvious to lose. Gregor still does not buy it. To him, an entrenched behavior is not something a quick trance tidies up. The comedy stays wonderfully uneasy. Johnny keeps trying to sound neutral while Dimitri's idea has clearly got him. Around the edges, the family details keep poking through: a mother making art with bird droppings and googly eyes, old rejections, small embarrassments that have had years to harden. Nothing gets neatly solved. The fun is watching Johnny balance doubt and hope while hypnosis keeps giving him away.

As heard by us

Two brothers, a hypnotist, and the question of whose version of love for Etta is the right one.

Goldstein opens the season calling someone he addresses as "Mamala" -- Jackie Cohen comes on to say what the show has meant to her, and her response lands somewhere between flat and fond.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Two brothers, a hypnotist named Saul Feldstein, and whether you can love someone into changing.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Heavyweight