The Bright Sessions podcast is a compelling merging of superpowers and psychotherapy

What if the X-Men, instead of becoming superheroes, decided to spend some time in therapy? If that idea intrigues you, The Bright Sessions should be your new favorite podcast. Written and produced by actress Lauren Shippen, the fictional narrative centers on a mysterious psychologist named Dr. Bright and her work with patients who all happen to have rather ... unusual abilities.

But The Bright Sessions, now in its third season, is far from a typical superhero story. Tautly written and well-acted by its small cast, the podcast combines shades of The X-Files and the HBO psychotherapy drama In Treatment, plus the youthful characters of a WB drama like Roswell or Smallville, into one compulsively listenable tale. It’s modern in its ideas but a throwback in its execution, a testament to the simple power of good storytelling that makes it an excellent pastime for, say, a holiday road trip home.

The Bright Sessions employs a deceptively simple format. The early episodes are structured as Dr. Bright’s recordings of her therapy sessions with individual patients, bookended by voice memos to herself about each case. There are minimal sound effects, keeping the focus on the characters and their words. (The in-office recording conceit has a practical side, too; as Shippen tells me in a phone interview, it’s “a nice excuse for not super highly produced audio.”) Having each episode center on a straightforward conversation between two people could be a limiting premise for a podcast, but in Shippen’s hands it emphasizes how smartly structured The Bright Sessions’ story is.

The first few episodes of season one introduce us to the main characters, one by one, via these therapy sessions. High school football player Caleb (Briggon Snow) can feel others’ emotions; college artist Chloe (Anna Lore) can hear people’s thoughts; shy Sam (voiced by Shippen) can travel through time; smarmy Damien (Charlie Ian) can coerce people into doing his bidding. And they’re all connected, of course, by Dr. Bright (Julia Morizawa), who may not be as altruistic as she seems in marketing her services to “strange and unusual” types who don’t know where to go for help.

Beyond the voyeuristic thrill of eavesdropping on someone’s therapy sessions, the acting and the slowly unspooling conversations are especially compelling in the way they incrementally reveal tantalizing details about the characters and their relationships with each other — and the sinister government conspiracy they may all unwittingly be a part of. Each new episode provides a little more information, deepening our understanding of Dr. Bright and her patients as The Bright Sessions digs further into the tangled mystery at its center.

The episodes are short — usually between 15 and 25 minutes long — and the show sometimes jumps in time between episodes, as if it’s working through an archive of Dr. Bright’s recordings that isn’t quite complete. As a result, the show is a great candidate for binge listening; seemingly throwaway details often become important later on, and with multiple episodes passing before we check back in with one character or another, listening to several episodes in a row can help keep the particulars fresh. For superfans there are even “mini episodes” that run less than 10 minutes; they aren’t essential to the main story but are available as part of the main podcast subscription and give even more insight into the characters.

The Bright Sessions came about because Shippen, an actress, found herself “kind of getting frustrated with the work available” and wanted to create something of her own. Long a fan of other audio dramas like Welcome to Night Vale, she began writing the Sam character but realized it would be hard to convey the experience of time travel in audio format. Sam, she thought, needed someone to talk to about her experiences — “so maybe she’s talking to a therapist, because time travel isn’t going so well.”

Thus, The Bright Sessions was born, and it’s continued to develop as Shippen becomes more familiar with the medium and her cast gets more comfortable in their roles. Though Shippen is currently the show’s only writer, she says she often draws inspiration from her fellow actors, whose work and ideas for their characters occasionally take the show in different directions than she originally planned.

When she began writing season one, for instance, she had the first nine episodes sketched out with a specific conception of Dr. Bright in mind. But when she cast Morizawa in the role, she says the character “changed enormously,” gaining layers and complexity due to the “incredible nuance” in Morizawa’s voice.

“Working in audio drama has taught me so much about human speech patterns and conversation,” Shippen says. “I listened to these actors do takes and takes of dialogue, and heard each individual person’s filler words that were then written into the script; sometimes actors will ad-lib things. I learned a lot about how to make something conversational but find an individual person’s voice and what makes a person’s speech pattern.”

Sometimes the cast influences the plot, too, as in a rescue mission that takes place at the end of season two. The scene was originally going revolve around Sam as the main rescuer, but after a conversation with actor Charlie Ian, Shippen moved his character, Damien, to the forefront of the action. The shift totally changed the trajectory of the season two finale and set up much higher stakes for season three.

As The Bright Sessions’ story has progressed, new characters and settings continue to pop up, but in a way that feels natural rather than shoehorned in. “The larger mystery is always something coming out of the characters and their lives, and how I want them to grow,” Shippen says.

Again, the format helps: Dr. Bright’s therapy sessions are usually focused on a specific issue a character is having — so it feels believable when, say, after several episodes a main character suddenly starts speaking in depth about a previously unmentioned family member. Rather than feeling like The Bright Sessions is retconning to expand its world, these “reveals” come across as an as-yet unexamined area of that world coming into focus for the first time.

The conceit of the show also allows the show to underline the layers of secrecy at play — without being able to read the performers’ facial expressions, we’re totally reliant on the nuance in their voices to suss out exactly how truthful they’re being. Because we’re privy to Dr. Bright’s taped musings, for instance, we know that she may have some not-totally-aboveboard intentions for her patients, whom she calls “atypicals.” Yet we also only know what she’s willing to commit to tape; her motivations, and just what else she knows about said atypicals, remain at least partly obscured.

Pop culture nowadays is fairly overstuffed with stories about superheroes of all kinds of abilities and temperaments — but those superheroes typically share a sense of greater purpose and a feeling of responsibility to fight crime and save the world. The characters in The Bright Sessions, though, are something else altogether. They have special abilities — but rather than becoming superheroes, Dr. Bright’s patients are struggling to simply lead functional lives.

The story delves into the unique traumas these powers bring with them — Chloe the college student is barely able to sit through a lecture because of her peers’ encroaching thoughts; Sam finds it near impossible to maintain relationships for fear that she could disappear into time at any moment. The therapy sessions gradually reveal more about how the characters’ abilities work and what their limits are — but the majority of the sessions are devoted to exploring the characters’ emotions rather than trying to explain the science or logistics behind how the abilities work.

The Bright Sessions cleverly leans into this by giving its characters powers that are intimately tied to their emotional states. Sam’s time travel is a defense mechanism against the panic attacks she experiences; learning to rein in her emotions lets her stay in the present. Caleb and Chloe have to learn to focus their minds to filter out the crush of other people’s thoughts and emotions. Even Damien’s more insidious power of persuasion only works when he truly wants something and can then plant that desire in someone else.

The Bright Sessions features many of the typical trappings of superhero stories, including shadowy government conspiracies and vague yet ominous human “experiments”; but emphasizing how much the characters’ abilities hinge on their inner state of being ensures the story stays focused on people rather than devolving into scientific mumbo-jumbo.

It’s a refreshing, creative spin on the “normal people discover they have superhuman abilities” narrative. When these types of stories are presented onscreen, they so often rely on gaudy CGI and massive explosions to propel the action and bring the characters’ abilities and experiences to life — but The Bright Sessions reminds us that all any story really needs are compelling characters and a interesting tale told well.

The Bright Sessions is available for free via iTunes or SoundCloud.