Toilet flushing, cats, cheese, belly buttons, the number 13, our fears and phobias can be as bizarre as they are diverse. But how are our fears created in the first place? And what happens inside our brain when we feel the fear?! Aoibhinn tackles her fear of spiders with a hands on experience with one of the furriest critters and we hear from NUI Maynooth’s Dr Brian Roche on how our fears develop and why, if we don’t face them, we can become crippled by them. Jonathan undergoes a form of the highly controversial “water boarding” in an experiment at Trinity College Dublin to determine if stress affects our ability to recall information and we hear from Professor Shane O’Meara about the brain’s reaction to torture and the psychology of fear.