Speaker 1: Hi listeners wondery in Bloomberg's hit series The Shrink next
Speaker 1: Door is moving from podcast to screen, but you can
Speaker 1: listen to all episodes right now and hear why Will
Speaker 1: Ferrell and Paul Rudd signed on to play the real people.
Speaker 1: In this unreal true story, journalist Joan Nosira investigates a
Speaker 1: decade's long story of how a New York psychiatrist deliberately
Speaker 1: and maliciously took over his client's lives. The most notable
Speaker 1: victim was a wealthy businessman named Marty Markowitz. Over the years,
Speaker 1: Joe got to know Marty and saw direct and clear
Speaker 1: evidence of how his shrink I Kershkoff manipulated him and
Speaker 1: systematically took over his life. The Shrink next Door is
Speaker 1: an incredible, jaw dropping story about how Marty nearly lost
Speaker 1: everything to a man he thought was his friend and
Speaker 1: most trusted confidant. It's strangely funny and told terrifying at
Speaker 1: the same time, and it's well worth a listen. I'm
Speaker 1: about to play you a preview of The Shrink next Door,
Speaker 1: but while you're listening, make sure to follow The Shrink
Speaker 1: next Door on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or you can
Speaker 1: Binge the entire series ad Free with Wondery plus on
Speaker 1: the Wondery app.
Speaker 2: Every neighborhood has its share of mysteries. We can live
Speaker 2: our entire lives and barely know the people just one
Speaker 2: door down. I have a summerhouse in Southampton, a couple
Speaker 2: of hours outside of New York. This part of the
Speaker 2: Hamptons is called the Bayside. It's quiet, peaceful, a place
Speaker 2: to escape from the city in the hot summer months.
Speaker 2: Sampson and Jackie Gillot have a house on the same
Speaker 2: street as me.
Speaker 3: My name is Jacqueline Guillot and we're married thirty five years.
Speaker 3: We're married fifty two years.
Speaker 2: They've been coming here since the eighties. Most of the
Speaker 2: houses on our street are single story with wooden clappered fronts.
Speaker 2: But there's one house on the street that stands out
Speaker 2: for starters. It's just bigger than most of the other houses.
Speaker 2: It's two stories instead of one, and it's the only
Speaker 2: one on the street with a separate guesthouse out back.
Speaker 2: And then there's the way it looks.
Speaker 3: The house is spectacular, with windows and windows and windows.
Speaker 2: Everything about it is over the top.
Speaker 3: There's a pond with goldfish lots of fish and a
Speaker 3: waterfall to the pond too.
Speaker 2: It's bigger, bolder, brasher than anything else on the street.
Speaker 2: In twenty ten, my wife Dawn and I bought the
Speaker 2: house next door. It wasn't long before a man popped
Speaker 2: over to our house to introduce himself. He was dressed
Speaker 2: like a maintenance man, green khaki pants, a long sleeve
Speaker 2: workshire and a faded baseball cap. He welcomed us to
Speaker 2: the neighborhood and then he handed us a folder of
Speaker 2: press clippings.
Speaker 4: I literally just took them and said thank you. But
Speaker 4: he wanted us to have them, you know, he really
Speaker 4: wanted Joe.
Speaker 2: To have him. There were articles that a psychiatrist, doctor
Speaker 2: Isaac Hirshkoff, had written and articles that had been written
Speaker 2: about him. In mid August, an invitation arrived to a
Speaker 2: summer barbecue next door, hosted by doctor Hirshkoff Ike. This
Speaker 2: would be the last of three big summer parties he
Speaker 2: threw every year. It was a warm afternoon. I chatted
Speaker 2: with a few people, sipped on my glass of wine,
Speaker 2: and began to wander around. At some point I found
Speaker 2: myself in the living room. There was a fake giraft bust,
Speaker 2: Venetian masks, plastic parrots hanging from the ceiling, even a
Speaker 2: giant gong. But what struck me most with the photographs,
Speaker 2: lots and lots of photographs, and in nearly every one
Speaker 2: of them there was ike Hirshkoff with a different celebrity,
Speaker 2: Ike with Henry Kissinger, ike with Ellie Wisell, ike with Brookshields,
Speaker 2: ike with Gwyneth Paltrow, even ike with OJ Simpson. It
Speaker 2: was like one of those diners where the walls are
Speaker 2: covered with pictures of celebrity patrons. At that moment, the
Speaker 2: man himself appeared. He greeted me like a long lost friend,
Speaker 2: and said that my wife and I should come over
Speaker 2: soon for a drink, and then he was gone. Sure enough,
Speaker 2: a few days after the summer party, the same maintenance
Speaker 2: man we'd met before showed up at our door again.
Speaker 2: This time he brought an invitation for drinks. It was
Speaker 2: very formal, as if he was reading from a script.
Speaker 2: I mean, like doctor Hirshkoff would want you to come
Speaker 2: over right at such and such a time, on such
Speaker 2: and such a day.
Speaker 4: The formality of it blew me away, and he was very,
Speaker 4: very exacting about how it had to go. So we
Speaker 4: went one of the strangest evenings I've ever had in the.
Speaker 2: Hamptons or anywhere else for that matter, but.
Speaker 4: Definitely the Hamptons.
Speaker 2: Ike and his wife Becky welcomed us in and ushered
Speaker 2: us to a round kitchen table. There were snacks laid out,
Speaker 2: carrots and celery. I served white wine. So what I
Speaker 2: remember is him talking incessantly about being a sex therapist
Speaker 2: and a celebrity therapist. And I can't remember the details,
Speaker 2: but that just really sticks in my mind that he
Speaker 2: kept going on and on about that. It was more
Speaker 2: like a monologue than a dialogue. That's what I remember.
Speaker 2: What do you remember?
Speaker 4: I just remember thinking these people are I felt suffocated.
Speaker 2: I talked about his work.
Speaker 4: I've never seen anything like it. But I remember thinking
Speaker 4: he was very brazen about the details of his life,
Speaker 4: considering we were strangers, and also considering what he does.
Speaker 4: He did talk about an NBA sports guys and somebody
Speaker 4: a Yankees player. I just thought he lacked a lot
Speaker 4: of discretion given.
Speaker 2: His feel We listened politely as he went on and on.
Speaker 4: I just remember looking towards the door.
Speaker 2: Finally, after about an hour. I said we needed to
Speaker 2: get home, and we got.
Speaker 4: Up to leave, and it was very clear that I
Speaker 4: wanted a photograph.
Speaker 2: A photograph of me.
Speaker 4: I think he came out and said, well, we'd like
Speaker 4: to get a picture of you, and it was just Joe.
Speaker 4: It wasn't Joe and I.
Speaker 2: So I take my picture, hit it to his wall,
Speaker 2: and then we left as fast as we could.
Speaker 4: I remember getting to her home, collapsing on a couch
Speaker 4: or something.
Speaker 2: Dawn told me she never wanted to go back. There
Speaker 2: was no sign of the maintenance man the night Dawn
Speaker 2: and I went over, but I knew he was still around.
Speaker 2: Sometime we'd be on our deck and we'd see him
Speaker 2: outside working in the yard. When I returned to the
Speaker 2: Hamptons the following summer, I noticed something strange at the
Speaker 2: house next door. I would see the maintenance man out
Speaker 2: on the property doing his usual work in the backyard,
Speaker 2: but ike Hirshkoff was gone. I would never see him,
Speaker 2: or his wife, Becky, and the Hamptons again. There were
Speaker 2: no more summer parties. It was as if they had
Speaker 2: simply disappeared. And that's when I learned that everything I
Speaker 2: had thought i'd known about my neighbor was wrong. It's
Speaker 2: a wild story. That's the maintenance man, the guy who
Speaker 2: came to our door with the press clippings, the guy
Speaker 2: we saw working around the yard. That was Marty Markowitz,
Speaker 2: the same guy who had first gone to see doctor
Speaker 2: Isaac Hirshkoff as a patient nearly thirty years earlier.
Speaker 1: You've just heard a preview of The Shrink next Door.
Speaker 1: To hear this unreal story in its entirety, plus new
Speaker 1: bonus episodes where Joe Nocera interviews the cast and creators
Speaker 1: of the TV adaptation, including Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd.
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