From KCRW, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is Unfictional.

Unfictional is a program of personal documentaries told like a journey.

Radio movies for your head.

When Sharon was little, she was her mother's best friend,

but now that she's an adult,

her mother thinks they're living in two different worlds.

I've learned especially with you, I can never get to do to you.

But Sharon is just trying to maintain her own individual standard of weirdness, and avoid all the family rules.

Never admit to weakness. If you have cancer, tell no one. If you're unhappy, smile. So Sharon ceases on the idea to go on a

kind of self-help therapy cruise with her mother.

Mm-nunatoram.

Featuring a Persian language radio psychiatrist, the one person her mother will take advice from.

I don't know, he can pinpoint things, he can read your mind with two three sentences.

spoiler alert.

On the way to the boat, their Uber driver is playing Titanic.

Although that's probably not the best music for us to be listening to is we're about to go on a ship.

Laughing, cringing, and crying. it's not a country western song, it's man, Ho-Bang, I am good.

On this episode of Unfictional.

Today on the program, a story produced for unfictional, though you might have heard it on

Caitlin Press's fantastic podcast called The Heart a few months back.

In it, producer Sharon Mashihi tries to stay weird.

While her mother just wishes she was more like the other Persian women of Great Neck, New York,

...