Depresh Mode with John Moe

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 d...

Right now, in Jamie Loftus’s childhood home in Brockton, Mass., there are dozens, maybe hundreds of notebooks in storage boxes. They’re from second grade up through middle school and each of the notebooks is filled, cover to cover, with detailed descriptions of where she was and what was happening: who was there, what were they wearing, what was on the walls. The descriptions are all written in a...

This episode of Depresh Mode with John Moe came about as part of a challenge to our listeners: if we reached our member goal during the last Max Fun Drive, we’d make and release an episode with Justin McElroy. We hit the goal, here it is. Of course, making that goal can be and was a pretty nervous-making enterprise. There’s more than a bit of anxiety involved.  Appropriately to that proposition, a...

The CBS News Sunday Morning commentator, Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me panelist, and veteran actor had all the approval and validation one could want early in her life. She was a pageant winner, Harvard grad, and Rhodes Scholar by the time she went to Los Angeles to make it in film and television. But the vagaries of the entertainment industry, the death of her mother, and an unsuccessful marriage sh...

It’s not actually all that hard to tell when Tim Heidecker is kidding and when he’s not, but it does take a little bit of practice. When he’s performing on shows like  Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!  or  Tim & Eric’s Bedtime Stories , it’s comedy. When he acts in comedic movies, sure, that’s comedy as well. But on albums such as his new one,  High School , you don’t need to listen carefully...

Honestly, I really expected to call this episode “Covid Sedaris” because David Sedaris had just tested positive for COVID when we taped the interview. But when we spoke, he wasn’t feeling it much at all. Had some symptoms that might have been allergies or COVID but were barely noticeable. Other people have it a lot worse, he says. David has been delighting audiences for 30 years now, ever since th...

Comedian and writer Ginny Hogan got interested in standup comedy when she was in her twenties and working at a tech startup in San Francisco. Soon she was hooked on comedy. And alcohol. She got hooked on alcohol as well. The comedy was definitely more positive and healthy than the alcohol. In this interview, Ginny recounts a habit she developed for getting drunk, picking up a little extra wine to...

Jamie never expected to be a mental health advocate. He was working in the industry that had always been his dream career: surfing apparel. But things changed after several days spent taking care of a young woman he didn’t know, who was struggling with suicidal thoughts, substance use disorder, and self-harm. Renee had carved the word “fuckup” onto her arms but couldn’t get into a treatment facili...

Right now, in our society, there is so much to be anxious about. There are many factors that could lead one to feel depressed and defeated. If one already has a tendency toward anxiety and depression, that path can be even shorter. But as a member of that society, one must look for hope anyway. It’s that dynamic relationship between despair and hope that led us to reach out to Maggie Smith. The Am...

The English language is constantly growing and evolving, and so is our usage of that language. We don’t refer to people with mental illness as “lunatics” anymore. At least we shouldn’t. But there was a time when that was a commonly accepted term. Even language that we think to be more enlightened can fall out of favor. Person-first terminology has become popular in recent years. That’s where you d...

A lot of people listen to Shamir’s music, and have since he was 19 years old and his songs began circulating. People listen for the innovative arrangements, the poetic lyrics, and the artist’s unique singing voice. The music has been described as house-hop, disco, and indie-pop. Shamir pays a lot of attention to the music as well. He’s listening to make sure he’s staying true to himself. He wants...

Current events in the world today can be a lot to deal with even as a regular person. You got war in Ukraine, anti-democracy and pro-Putin forces in a major political party, a movement against LGBTQ and trans people, COVID, and environmental worries to name just a few things. And it might be even more intense if you’re one of the people producing the news. S.E. Cupp has to follow the news very clo...

The singer, songwriter, guitarist, and acclaimed author John Darnielle is one of the more prolific creative forces you’re likely to run across. He’s released 20 full-length studio albums, plus a mess of EPs, tapes, and singles over his 25-plus years of recording. And he’s written three novels in recent years as well. In this interview, John talks about his interest in written material about violen...

Sarah Edmonson and Anthony “Nippy” Ames were doing okay in life. They were healthy, they were working, and, like a lot of people, they were looking for more success. So when they were introduced to some self-help courses called the Executive Success Program, they gave it a shot. When it seemed to be working pretty well, naturally, they stuck with it. The group they ended up in, pronounced “nexium”...

41% of people are planning to quit their jobs in the next three months. 41%! We first tackled the topic of employee burnout a year ago and much has happened since then: a bunch of variants, restrictions being lifted and reset, and an event known as The Great Resignation, where more people have quit their jobs than ever before. And now we’re starting to see the effects of prolonged work-from-home j...

For people who have never lived with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the condition can be seen pretty simply. They might think it means the person can’t concentrate on anything, that they can’t focus on much of anything. But for the writer and podcast host Sarah Marshall - and for many like her - it’s not that simple. She grew up with the issue of being very focused on things she...

Online comments sections have become synonymous with cruelty, hatred, bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, and the jerks who spew that kind of thing out. Most of us roll our eyes at that or, if at all possible, avoid even looking at that dispiriting part of the internet altogether. But Dylan Marron is not most of us. When his viral comedy videos led to strongly vitriolic comments aimed directly at Dylan...

First time author Liz Scheier’s book, Never Simple , is aptly named. Liz had always known that her mom suffered from depression and anxiety but she didn’t know until her early twenties that borderline personality disorder was also part of her mother’s mental framework. BPD, according to Mayo Clinic , “impacts the way you think and feel about yourself and others, causing problems functioning in eve...

Human Resources , a spinoff of the Netflix show Big Mouth , is a very honest, truthful, and illuminating program about how mental and emotional health operate. It’s well-researched and displays depth and accuracy. And all of that might be surprising given that it’s full of extremely horny monsters, panicky mosquitoes, ambition gremlins and a ton of other cartoon creatures. And just so much extreme...

It’s tempting to try to look for a reason why Joel Kim Booster, ordinarily a very funny and engaging person, feels dead inside, trapped in a persistent depressive state. His father recently died of COVID. The two hadn’t been very close (Joel’s dad was a conservative Christian, Joel is a gay Hollywood star) but were beginning to reconnect. You could point to the pandemic, which left Joel in an apar...

Drummers have different styles. Patty Schemel’s drumming has always been tight and precise but she plays hard and heavy, big thick beats that powered songs like “Miss World” and “Violet”. Her substance use was also hard and heavy, keeping pace with or exceeding the consumption of her peers in the Seattle music scene of the 90’s and of her band’s leader and frontwoman, Courtney Love. It started wit...

It used to be a lot easier to keep family secrets about issues of paternity. That was before companies like Ancestry.com and 23 & Me came along and offered genetic testing for a small fee and some spit in a cup. Now, what might have started out as some fun, idle curiosity is often turning into something more earth-shattering, more of an existential crisis. It can result in strained family relation...

Dissociative identity disorder (DID), a condition formerly referred to as multiple personality disorder, is very rare almost everywhere in the world except for one place: Hollywood. Not among actual people there but among characters in movies that are often very over the top. So while you and I might know people with depression or anxiety, the only reference we have for people with DID are fiction...

As if sustaining a traumatic brain injury and being in a coma for a few weeks wasn’t bad enough - and it certainly was - Drew Magary had the added complication of becoming a real asshole. Which was unexpected. You’d think that surviving an ordeal like that would make one glad to be alive, more conscious of appreciating one’s family and all that life had to offer. And it did to some extent but he a...

Anxiety has cost Jen Kirkman several things over the course of her life, including, as she explains in our conversation, a study abroad program in Amsterdam, an effective outcome of a fear of flying class, and a pleasant time on a Ferris wheel. She doesn’t even remember that trip on the Ferris wheel but she knows it happened from an old photo where she looks absolutely haunted. Among the other pro...