Positively Terrible

This week's Decent Human Being is author Shelly Edwards Jorgensen. Her story is about her mother's murder. Other topics include alcoholism, domestic violence, sexual assault, and arson. You can buy her memoir on Amazon.com .  Shelly knew trouble was brewing. Her dad was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde alcoholic, and on this day he was preparing dinner and drinking Manhattans in his robe when he should h...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Michelle. Her fucked up story is about growing up with a learning disability called dyscalculia. Other topics include bullying, shame, limited hand dexterity, and visual perception issues.  Michelle is a smart woman. That will become clear as you listen to the episode, but I need to say it because people with learning disabilities don't always get the benefit of...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Paula. Her fucked up story is about being raised by a toxic mother who tried to murder her as an infant. Other topics in this episode include narcissistic abuse, alcoholism, and anxiety.   Paula's mother tried to kill her. She was only 3 months old the first time it happened, and five months old the second. It's taken her a lifetime to piece together and process...

Warning: Producer Dan couldn’t make it to this episode, so please don’t turn it off when you hear Scott's voice first. Also, note that this is not our usual format - it's our first update interview. The updates are nothing but positive, but we revisit parts of Amy's story about her broken neck and sheared brain stem, and we also talk about the suicidal thoughts she was having at that time. Amy's b...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Simon Rinne. His fucked up story is about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Other topics in this episode include alcohol abuse, parental divorce, anxiety, masculinity, and a very professional intro.  Simon suffered from undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder for 20 years before he learned what it was or that he had it. It started when he was eight and a sc...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Kelli Murbach. Her fucked up story is about quiet trauma. Other topics include chronic illness, loneliness, and depression.  Kelli’s childhood was filled with what she described as quiet trauma. She wasn’t abused, nor did she find herself on death’s door at any point, but her upbringing was less than ideal. When she was three her little brother was born with a c...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Katrina Lelli. Her fucked up story is about alcoholism. Other topics include bipolar depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts/ideation.  Katrina was a good girl as a teenager. She grew up in an alcoholic home and was forced to be the adult in the house after her father walked out on the family on the day after Christmas when she was a young teen. That might be...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Bill Lee-Emery. His fucked up story is about surviving throat cancer. In 2022, Bill was diagnosed with throat cancer . He was a healthy, 70-something-year-old man who up until that point wouldn't even take an aspirin for a headache. He'd prioritized alternative medicine for over 40 years, so the diagnosis created tougher questions for him than it would for many....

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Melanie Verstraete. Her fucked up story is about toxic relationships.   Melanie had six step-dads by the time she was 21. You might think a stable of step-dads makes for a fucked up story in itself, but that wasn't the bulk of the story here. It contributed for sure, and nobody can argue that she had a great role model for relationships, but she wasn't here to t...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Tonje Wyn-Jones. Her fucked up story is about the death of her 18-month old daughter from SIDS.  Tonje was on a business trip when she got “the call no mother wants to get.” It was her brother, and all he would say is that she had to come home. She hung up and called her husband, and he told her their 18-month old daughter had died unexpectedly overnight.  She h...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Lisa Marie. Her fucked up story includes compound grief, life-changing deaths, death from disease, death from cancer, and death from an accident. You can probably tell by the title, but Lisa had a rough couple of years. Rough is probably selling it short – maybe I should call it a fucked-up couple of years. It started with the death of her niece, which while not...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Julie. Her fucked up story includes infidelity, depression, job loss, gas-lighting, and her (now ex-) husband fathering a child with another woman during their marriage. When Julie met her now ex-husband, she was smitten.  He wasn't her normal type - she described him as a big, burly goth guy with painted nails and long hair - but Julie didn't judge him on his s...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Jackie. Her fucked up story includes growing up in poverty, sexual abuse, teen pregnancy, alcoholism, drug use, (barely) surviving a house fire, and the murder of her oldest son. Jackie was one of those kids you'd say never had a chance. She was born into poverty, was sexually abused by multiple adults, and started smoking and drinking before she was old enough...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Heidi Johnson. Her fucked up story took place in the school library during the Columbine massacre. Topics in this episode include murder, school shootings, and suicide.   On April 20, 1999, two students walked into Columbine High School and changed this country forever. They murdered thirteen people - including 12 students and a teacher - and wounded twenty-one...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Jorge V Gonzalez. His fucked up story started when he suffered a life-altering back injury at work. Topics in this episode include debilitating physical injury, job loss, depression, and suicidal ideation.  Jorge’s career in Warehouse Logistics started when he was 19. He’d realized he either had to find a decent gig or else he’d need to find two less-than-decent...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Harris Eddie Hill. Their fucked up story is about overcoming trauma and helping others heal. Topics covered in this episode include self-harm, suicidal ideation, sexual trauma, family dysfunction, cancer, and ADHD.  Harris is an impressive human being. I want to get that out of the way because that’s the thought I keep coming back to when reflecting on our inter...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Carleigh. Her fucked up story is about living with undiagnosed bipolar disorder. This episode contains talk of self-harm and suicide.  Carleigh looked like a normal kid on the outside. She might have been a tad hyper, but she did alright in school and didn't have any issues making friends. Those are the things you look for, right? Any outside observer would have...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Uncle Satan. His fucked up story is about anxiety and teenage drug/alcohol abuse. I'm having a hard time not naming this episode Uncle Satan, the Punk Rock Archaeologist. That feels a little too click-baity for me, even if those words contain no lies. We did interview an Uncle Satan, he is an archeologist who came up in the punk crowd, and he does suffer from an...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Marie Miller. Her fucked up story is about emotional abuse and non-consensual kink. Marie is a fascinating woman. She’s been part of a backyard circus where she learned to do the Russian Ladder trick, performed blacklight theater in a Lovecraft piece, and did a hell of a lot of other cool things that Dan and I would have loved to explore further. We kinda had to...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is  Christine Errico. Christine was born with a cleft lip and palate. Her first of many surgeries was when she was only two months old. She detailed the bullying and discrimination she faced in various stages of her life, including in the workplace. Notable Quotes: Christine Errico: "I always felt broken... I just wanted to not get bullied... to be myself." Terribl...

This week's Decent Fucking Human is Andy Turner, author of Who Turned Up the Silence . His fucked up story is about grief, secrets, false accusations, and fighting back. Andy Turner thought he had a great marriage. He met his late wife at church, and when she invited him out to coffee he didn't hesitate. They dated and married quickly, and Heather became mom to his three boys. Thirteen years and a...

This week's fucked up story is about trauma, addiction, and recovery. Sean Young is a combat veteran, has enough ex-wives that I lost count during the episode, sports a beard that's longer than Dan and Scott's combined, and hosts two podcasts (Recover Out Loud and Beyond the Veil). If you noticed this episode is longer than recent releases, go back and read that sentence again. Do you think we cou...

I wasn’t sure about doing an episode about someone losing their job when Angilie first reached out. We’ve done episodes about terminal illnesses, murder, and stalking, and I wasn’t sure that this quite fit what we normally do. After maybe five minutes, I realized that people lose their jobs every day. Not only does it suck, but it’s traumatic to be laid off, and probably one of the more relatable...

Libby Supan grew up considering the letters f, a, and t to be the building blocks of one very bad word. A lot of us felt that way though, didn’t we? During my childhood, everyone was looking for ways to lose weight with aerobics and fat-free diets. In Libby’s memories, it was her mom who was always on a diet. She learned that gaining weight equals bad, losing weight equals good, and how you did it...

Lots of childhood trauma is what Dana came on to talk about. Not just childhood trauma, but lots of childhood trauma. He said he suffered his first traumas in the womb before experiencing just about every form of abuse you can. Six months after being sexually abused, before he'd even had a chance to process what happened, he had to go on the run with the family because his dad was a wanted crimina...