Depresh Mode with John Moe

Eating disorders are, unfortunately, pretty common. It’s also pretty common to experience shame and anxiety about them and thus suffer in silence. Annie Weisman is a veteran playwright and television writer and producer. From her late teens to age 30, Annie dealt with bulimia. She was binging and purging and not telling anyone. Even after she got help for the condition (she now considers herself to be recovered), she kept quiet about that part of her history. That is, until she made a TV show called Physical, which debuted last year. In this interview, Annie Weisman talks about taking on the most painful mental health experiences of her life and translating them into this show, which stars Rose Byrne as a character not precisely based on Annie but with a lot in common. She also talks about the pain of keeping the bulimia a secret and the pain of those around her when they finally found out.Watch the first two seasons of Physical on Apple TV+. Follow Annie Weisman on Twitter @mrsanniemac and on Instagram @annieweisman.Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun. Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.Help is available right away.The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALKCrisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlinesThe Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is available here. https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-hilarious-world-of-depression/Find the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.John is on Twitter @johnmoe.

In the entire 321-year history of Yale University, the most popular class ever is a relatively new one called “Psychology and the Good Life”, taught by Dr. Laurie Santos. Since it’s debut in 2018, it has proved to be so much in demand that Yale now offers a version of the class for free online to anyone in the world.Part of the appeal is that Dr. Santos is a really great professor. She’s smart, presents lessons in a compelling way. But beyond that, the class holds appeal because so many people these days are not happy at all, with college students reporting depression and anxiety in numbers that are astronomical and terrifying. This trend was happening before the pandemic and has only gotten worse since.In this interview, Dr. Santos, who also hosts the podcast The Happiness Lab, talks about what happier people have in common and how to implement practices in your own life to start doing better. Importantly, this isn’t a recipe for suddenly being a character in a musical comedy, jumping and singing for joy all the time. That’s unrealistic and frankly a bit gross. But students who learn from her teachings report an incremental uptick in their levels of happiness, laying the foundation for better times ahead.Helpful Links:Paul Rudd goofing around to the Partridge Family in Ant Man and The Wasp: youtube.com/watch?v=LzXywwT9fI0The Worry About Yourself Video: youtu.be/4A6Bu96ALOwThe Science of Well-Being course on Coursera: coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-beingDr. Santos at the Aspen Ideas Festival: youtube.com/watch?v=ZizdB0TgAVMListen to Dr. Laurie Santos' podcast, The Happiness Lab, wherever fine pods are cast. Learn more about Dr. Santos' Yale course, Psychology and the Good Life, by vising her website at DrLaurieSantos.com. Follow Dr. Santos on Twitter @lauriesantos and on Instagram @lauriesantosofficial.Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun. Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.Help is available right away.The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALKCrisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlinesThe Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is available here. https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-hilarious-world-of-depression/Find the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.John is on Twitter @johnmoe.

It used to be that Jonathan Ames read and wrote all kinds of books. But somewhere along the line everything but detective novels kind of fell away and now that’s pretty much his thing. His big project these days is a detective series, featuring private eye Happy Doll, a 50-year-old Angeleno who tries to solve cases and not get killed in the process.Ames says we relate to detective stories because we’re all constantly trying to solve our own mysteries. That’s hard in real life, to put it mildly. But when we know a book has 250 pages, we also know that by the time those pages are read, we will have some answers.Get your copy of Jonathan Ames' latest book, The Wheel of Doll, out September 6th, 2022, wherever books are sold.Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun. Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.Help is available right away.The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALKCrisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlinesThe Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is available here. https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-hilarious-world-of-depression/Find the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.John is on Twitter @johnmoe.

Maybe you, dear podcast listener, put on a couple of pounds during COVID. You were home more because there weren’t as many other places to go. You just weren’t as active. That was the case with actor and singer Lola Kirke, who describes this period of cocooning at home as being a time she was very happy.But chances are you weren’t prevented from working in your chosen field as a result of that body change. Lola Kirke was.Lola has starred in television shows like Mozart in the Jungle and in movies like Gone Girl and Mistress America. She’s really good at acting, acclaimed by critics, loved by audiences, she’s at the top of her game. But she says her team of agents and managers have told her that she’s a leading lady and needs to lose weight if she wants those parts.Meanwhile, Lola poured her heart and soul into her new album, Lady For Sale, only to find that it didn’t meet with the reception she was hoping for.While Lola has observed eating disorders in people close to her, she says she’s never experienced it herself. She was however, dealt with depression, recently emerging from an extended down cycle.We hear from Lola about being a brand, a commodity, a lady for sale.Get your copy of or listen to Lola Kirke's new album Lady For Sale on the music service of your choice. Visit Lola Kirke's website at LolaKirkeMusic.com. Follow Lola on Twitter @LolaKirke and on Instagram @lolakirke.Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun. Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.Help is available right away.The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALKCrisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlinesThe Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is available here. https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-hilarious-world-of-depression/Find the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.John is on Twitter @johnmoe.

You really should watch City of Ghosts. It’s on Netflix, six episodes long, and it’s a delightful and important exploration of Los Angeles, cultures, and how we manage history. City of Ghosts also happens to be, at least at first glance, a show for children. It’s animated and features a group of kid characters who fan out across L.A. to interview and record the ghosts that live there. It’s guileless and smart and often very funny.Elizabeth Ito created the show. She wanted to create something less intense and anxious for her son, who often got overwhelmed by children’s shows. She also wanted to pay tribute to her hometown and the people and cultures that have been there. You can tell City of Ghosts comes from the heart.Unfortunately, the show was canceled after just one season. Then it won the prestigious Peabody Award. And all of this made for a tremendous emotional roller coaster for Elizabeth, who is prone to anxiety and depression. She joins us to talk about the need to create and the wringer that being an artist in the practical world puts her through.Watch City of Ghosts on Netflix. Watch Mall Stories, Welcome to My Life, and Elizabeth's Peabody victory dance video at her website, ElizabethIto.com. Follow Elizabeth on Twitter @kikutowne and on Instagram @ottersnaps.Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun. Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.Help is available right away.The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALKCrisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlinesThe Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is available here. https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-hilarious-world-of-depression/Find the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.John is on Twitter @johnmoe.

Gaby Dunn is well-known to podcast audiences for her shows Just Between Us, co-hosted by Allison Raskin, and Bad With Money with Gaby Dunn. They’re well-known to readers for books like I Hate Everyone But You and Bury the Lede and articles in The New York Times and Buzzfeed. But Gaby Dunn hasn’t always been well-known to Gaby Dunn. Raised in Florida, where talk about sexual orientation was scarce and talk about transgenderism was non-existent, Gaby had a long journey to figure out who they were in terms of orientation and gender. And then there were problematic hypomanic episodes that landed Gaby in Paris on a whim, broke and with no clear plan for what comes next. Gaby shares with us the story of figuring out that what was happening in terms of mental health was bipolar 2, which doesn’t feature the extreme mania of bipolar 1 but can still be incredibly destructive. As Gaby recovered and found their bearings, they channeled their learning into helping other people find their bearings in regard to money.Listen to Bad With Money with Gaby Dunn and Just Between Us wherever fine pods are cast. Get Gaby's books, Stimulus Wreck, I Hate Everyone But You and Please Send Help... (with Allison Raskin), Bury the Lede (with Miguel Muerto and Claire Roe), and Bad With Money wherever books are sold. Listen to Gaby's audio drama, Apocalypse Untreated, on Audible. Follow Gaby on Instagram @gabyroad and on TikTok @dabygunn.Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun. Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.Help is available right away.The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALKCrisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlinesThe Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is available here. https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-hilarious-world-of-depression/Find the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.John is on Twitter @johnmoe.

Within the comedy world, Tom Scharpling is known as a bit of a Swiss Army Knife. He’s the host of the long running Best Show, online now and on WFMU before that. He’s a veteran TV writer on shows like Monk and What We Do In The Shadows. He directs music videos. Now he’s a book writer, with the memoir It Never Ends. In that book and in our interview, he tells stories of his own mental health journey that he’s never shared with an audience before.Tom started running into trouble with depression when he was around ten years old, which evolved into two hospital stays, the second of which involved electroconvulsive therapy. That treatment wiped out the depression but wiped out a big chunk of his memory in the process.Get your copy of Tom's memoir It Never Ends: A Memoir With Nice Memories! at www.tomwroteabook.com or wherever books are found. Follow Tom on Twitter @scharpling.Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun. Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.Help is available right away.The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALKCrisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlinesThe Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is available here.Find the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.John is on Twitter @johnmoe.

Getting Jamie Lee Curtis to open about her many years spent addicted to Vicodin is, frankly, not very difficult. She wants to talk about it. And that’s for a couple of reasons. One, she wants to make it clear that she’s no different from any other addict in any other walk of life. That’s why she calls herself a dope fiend. She just happens to have had success in an industry she derisively calls “show off business”. Two, because she committed to sobriety after reading someone else’s story of addiction so maybe her story can help someone too.We talk to Jamie about how she got hooked, how she sustained the habit, and how she carried on a perfectly successful movie star life without anyone catching on. Until they did catch on.Listen to Letters from Camp, now on its third and final season, at Audible.com. Follow Jamie Lee Curtis on Twitter @jamieleecurtis and on Instagram @curtisleejamie.Jamie's Gifts to John:"At such a time, it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against? Our species is the only creative species and it has only one creative instrument: the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. And now the forces marshalled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on the preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammer blows of conditioning. The free roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, and drugged. It is a sad, suicidal course our species seems to have taken. And this I believe that the free exploring mind of the exploring human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for. The freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I'm about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind for this is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this. And I hate it. And I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost." - John Steinbeck, East of Eden"When things go unexamined for a long enough time, certain things happen. They become very very powerful. They create conformity. They intimidate." - E.L. Doctorow"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." - The Dread Pirate Roberts, The Princess BrideThank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun. Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.Help is available right away.The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALKCrisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlinesThe Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is available here. https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-hilarious-world-of-depression/Find the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.John is on Twitter @johnmoe.

Issues of depression and anxiety have been present in Open Mike Eagle's raps for a long time. His most played track on Spotify is "Ziggy Starfish (Anxiety Raps)" and it's from 2015. Mike has always been more prone to self-effacement and worry than to the boasting and swagger you might find in other hip-hop artists. But after a year that saw him lose his tv show, his touring income, his marriage, and his home, Mike became more open than ever before and hit record on all of it. His album, Anime, Trauma and Divorce, touches on his experiences and the psychological narratives of his life.Listen to or buy your copy of Anime, Trauma, and Divorce here. Find out more about Open Mike Eagle, his music, tour dates, and his podcasts at his website, mikeeagle.net. Join his Patreon and follow him on Twitter @Mike_Eagle and Instagram @open_mike_eagle.Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of MaximumFun.orgHey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.Help is available right away.The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALKCrisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlinesThe Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is available here. https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-hilarious-world-of-depression/Find the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.John is on Twitter @johnmoe

Even if you’re not completely aware of Shane Koyczan’s poem “To This Day”, at least 25 million other people are. That’s how many views the YouTube video of the poem has as of the time we made this episode. It’s not just a great poem, it strikes a nerve. “To This Day” talks in a very direct and meaningful way about the effects of bullying and how people can carry it with them from the playground deep into adulthood. Because, many times, it’s not just kids messing around, it’s actual assault or emotional abuse or a kind of terrorism that can fall under the category of trauma.Shane was bullied from a very young age and had a hard time making friends throughout his childhood. He also had a key ally: his grandmother Loretta, who encouraged him to write things down. When he reached university, he found more encouragement for his writing and his talent bloomed.Today, Shane is a successful writer and a person with depression and a performer who has had a hard time getting by during the pandemic.In this episode, Shane Koyczan shares a poem about his grandmother that left us speechless.Find out more about Shane Koyczan at his website, ShaneKoyczan.com. Listen to "To This Day" on Shane's Youtube channel, Youtube.com/ShaneKoyczan. Follow Shane on Twitter @Koyczan and on Instagram @shane_koyczan.Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun. Hey, remember, you’re part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.Help is available right away.The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALKCrisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlinesThe Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is available here. https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-hilarious-world-of-depression/Find the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.John is on Twitter @johnmoe.