So Help Me

When Anna was in college, she learned to manage her anxiety with a very colorful, very meticulous calendar. For a long time, it worked – until letting the calendar run her life led to a huge mistake. She tries to address that anxiety, and that mistake, while immersed in a warm, salty bathtub.

When Anna moved from a large apartment in Philadelphia to a small apartment in Queens, she had to get rid of most of her possessions. Throwing stuff out felt good until she got to three large plastic bins in the corner of her apartment. They were filled with all the art she’d made in Art School. For weeks, she couldn’t bring herself to throw the art away. To understand why, she turned to a 4’7 Japanese tidying legend.

In 2018 Anna Ladd won Gimlet’s Casting Call competition - a search for the “next great podcast host.” Her prize for winning was that Gimlet would help her make a podcast mini-series. But when she moved to New York and started to make the show she realized the dark secret of reality show success: Just because you win a contest doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing. Making the show was overwhelming until Anna started a self-help program (a couple, actually) and got some advice from Alex and PJ.

Premieres November 8 — So Help Me is a show about self help and what happens when you try to figure yourself out. Profoundly flawed but hopeful host Anna Ladd tries different self help methods to fix everything from her attitude to her apartment, and learns from experts and others who have tried them along the way.