May 30, 2025 • 10 mins
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so take a look back at some of the recent mental health discussions with The Daily Show's guests.
Lil Red Howery and Michael Kosta talk the beauty of therapy. Singer Raye sits down with Desi Lydic and discusses singing about anxiety. Olivia Munn joins to talk postpartum anxiety. Author and social psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb joins Jon Stewart to break down productive vs. unproductive anxiety. Author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt talks the effects of social media on "The Anxious Generation." Actor Mark Duplass opens up about anxiety and depression.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
You've been doing stand up specials, and in this last special, well,
you've talked openly about how vulnerable you've become in some
of your stand up and you spoke openly about some
of the therapy you've tackled.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Oh, I love therapy.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Tell me about it.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
I love give it up a therapy.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
You get therapy, and you get therapy.
Speaker 5 (00:27):
You get therapy.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Talk to me about the love of therapy, because it's
nice to have two men openly talking about therapy. And
those are the women that are trying to bring us down.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
You know something, It's it's changed my life in so
many ways. I think it's made me a funnier comic
because not everything from a very dark place anymore. And
maybe like just pretty much talk about anything, but therapy
has been so beautiful. Like I'm at the happiest I've
ever been because I've been able to unpact things over time.
Speaker 6 (00:56):
That's over a year.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
You're you're a busy guy. Are you doing? Is it
like phone therapy?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Is it zoom?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Are you in a you know, on set? Like and
this is the way it made me feel? And you
know that type of.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
A knock and hat.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I do both. Actually it depends on what my scheduling is,
because I do like going in person. It's just in
person is always so crazy because, like, especially if you've
been crying a little bit, it's like awkward when you leave,
Like you can tell the therapists want you to go
because this time they keep doing this.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Yeah yeah, but you like this, and.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
So they're like yeah, so uh.
Speaker 7 (01:41):
One of the things that I appreciate so much about
your music and that I think sets you apart from
so many other artists is the way that you juxtapose
these these big, sort of joyful, big band jazzy music
along with lyrics that are really raw and honorable and
about very serious issues. You talk about body dysmorphia, you
(02:04):
talk about mental health, sexual assault. How do you even
begin building music around those lyrics?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Well, you know, I do think I think music is medicine.
I will say that. I think I think, like, even
sitting here and talking to you about these sort of
heavier subjects, I get nervous. I don't really know how
to address it or what to say. And I think
music is a safe space to kind of be raw
and honest, and for me, that's my safe place, it's
my therapy. And yeah, you know, I think there's a
(02:35):
lot of us have really broken and a lot of
us are hurting, and a lot of us are dealing
with things we don't know exactly how to speak about
or express even with the people that we love, And
I think music is a safe space to do that,
to find healing or talk about it or just I
don't know, process it. So that was really important to
me as an independent artist. I just wanted to be
honest about those things you're quite about, you know.
Speaker 7 (02:59):
You you actually took quite a bit of time away
from acting to spend the time with your family. You
had Malcolm, and you were very open about experiencing postpartum depression.
Speaker 8 (03:09):
Yeah, postpartum anxiety. Anxiety, Yeah, so I had. I'd been
prepared for postpartum depression because we hear so much about it,
But postpartum anxiety came on and it was I don't
know if anyone here has gone through that of their
partners have, but it is. It is one of the
worst experiences of my life.
Speaker 9 (03:29):
It came on like a month or two after I
had Malcolm, and I woke up at four am. My
eyes just pop open and I start going.
Speaker 8 (03:40):
And I keep breathing like that all day long, and
I keep waking up like that every day at four am.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
For a year.
Speaker 9 (03:47):
Oh my god, for a full year. I just couldn't breathe.
I just had so much anxiety and it wasn't There
was no actual thoughts, and thank god, I didn't have
any thoughts of self harm or harming others. I have
so much compact and sympathy for mothers who are going
through that, and I think that people don't understand it
enough and we're not compassionate enough about what it's like
(04:07):
to be a mother, into birth, a bathing, everything that
happens to your body and the hormones. But it was
incredibly difficult, but I did make it through to the
other side.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Well.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
For social media to keep people engaged, for news organizations
to keep people watching, they have to ramp up the
urgency and the existential nature of the crisis. So you're
sort of torn between these two impulses. One is to
not participate, which would be abdicating civic responsibility, but the
(04:46):
other would be to bathe yourself in this existential crisis.
What choice do you have?
Speaker 6 (04:53):
Well, we do have a choice because so look at anxiety.
There's productive anxiety and unproductive anxiety. Think about it. If
you didn't have anxiety, you wouldn't be able to be safe.
That's why we have anxiety. It was like, there's a bear,
you better have anxiety. Your unproductive anxiety is I'm just
going to stand here. Productive anxiety is I'm going to
(05:14):
do something about this.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
See that's so weird because my anxiety has never saved
me from bears, but it often convinces me I'm not lovable.
Speaker 5 (05:26):
So how how I shared too much?
Speaker 8 (05:33):
How do you just going to say?
Speaker 4 (05:35):
How I watch I didn't want to watch the debates tonight,
but I do work once a week now, so I
have to because it's toxic to me. I know that
I have to participate. But how does that anxiety of
watching it? How is that a relic of something.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
That's good for me.
Speaker 6 (05:52):
It's good for you because then you can take action.
By the way, I hope you're taking action on the
unlovable thing.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
I hope you're getting some help with that little thing
called mushrooms, baby micro dosa.
Speaker 6 (06:02):
Way, Sorry, but it's helpful because you say, okay, there
are two ways you can respond to this. You can
say I'm going to put my head in the sand
and not engage, which is I hope not the option
that people here are taking. And you can also say, oh,
I'm just spinning an anxiety, I'm doom scrolling, I'm just
getting all worked up. That's not helpful, that's unproductive anxiety.
(06:24):
And then there's productive anxiety, where you say what can
I do well? You can get involved in a campaign,
you can volunteer, you can please vote, you can get
the people around you to vote. There are things that
you can do. The thing that you want to do
is you want to say what can I control here?
And that's where you take your anxiety and you say,
it's going to motivate me to do something productive.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
Something happened in the early twenty tens. And my argument
in the book is a tragedy in two acts. The
first act is the loss of the play based childhood.
It's what anybody over forty in this audience had. You
were out with your friends after school, there was nobody supervising.
You had to learn how to work out conflicts, how
to face adversity. So that's what kids have had for
(07:08):
ten hundreds of thousands of years. It's part of being
a mammal. You play, you develop skills. We began to
crack down on that to lock kids up in the nineties,
to not let them out. So we're restricting what they
most need, which is play, from the nineties through the
two thousands. But mental health doesn't collapse. Then it's actually
pretty stable. Then we get aact to which is the
(07:29):
arrival of the phone based childhood, and what that is
is in twenty ten, everybody had a flip phone. The
iPhone had come out, but most teens had a flip phone,
no front facing camera, no social media on the phone,
no high speed data. And by twenty twenty fifteen, everyone's
got all those other things. Now suddenly everyone has a smartphone,
(07:50):
front facing camera, high speed internet, social media especially Instagram
on the phone, and almost like someone turned a switch.
In twenty thirteen, girls in America and many of the
countries suddenly become very anxious, depressed, and self harming.
Speaker 7 (08:10):
You mentioned that you've talked very openly about struggling with
anxiety and depression. How did that feel to share that?
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Did that?
Speaker 7 (08:19):
Were you surprised by the reaction that you got?
Speaker 10 (08:21):
One hundred percent surprise and here's the thing. It didn't
feel weird to share because I live in Los Angeles
amongst a group of artists where this is just dinner
table conversations. We're all anxious and depressed and we're always
talking about it all the time. We're trading therapists.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, what medication?
Speaker 7 (08:35):
My therapist is right under the.
Speaker 8 (08:36):
Set on call.
Speaker 10 (08:39):
Yeah, and so it's like, what medication are you on?
I'm switching over to Selexa. Now you know it's this,
these are our conversations. But what I didn't realize is
that you know, as you well know, because I don't
know if you guys know, DESI was with me on
the League like ten.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Years ago as a guest star.
Speaker 10 (08:54):
A little amazing, but god, it's a great it's a
great show. And a lot of the men who watch
that show are not the men who are comfortable with
talking about their mental health because of football dudes and whatnot.
And so when I started going on my social media,
I got this outpouring, particularly from men just being like,
I can't believe you're saying this out loud. And it
(09:15):
makes me feel really good to know that someone that
I view as somewhat successful is still on their feet
despite this, and it offers hope in that way. So
I never really planned on being some sort of mouthpiece
for it. I was just sort of whining on social
media and then it kind of had this effect. So
I'm like, oh, well, this is something so.
Speaker 7 (09:34):
Not only brave, it's a generous thing for you to
do to help support others.
Speaker 8 (09:39):
So it's really meaningful that you did that.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by
searching The Daily Show wherever you.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Watch The Daily Show week nights at eleven ten Central
on Comedy Central, and streamful episodes anytime on baar Amount
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Plus Paramount Podcasts
You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
You've been doing stand up specials, and in this last special, well,
you've talked openly about how vulnerable you've become in some
of your stand up and you spoke openly about some
of the therapy you've tackled.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Oh, I love therapy.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Tell me about it.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
I love give it up a therapy.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
You get therapy, and you get therapy.
Speaker 5 (00:27):
You get therapy.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Talk to me about the love of therapy, because it's
nice to have two men openly talking about therapy. And
those are the women that are trying to bring us down.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
You know something, It's it's changed my life in so
many ways. I think it's made me a funnier comic
because not everything from a very dark place anymore. And
maybe like just pretty much talk about anything, but therapy
has been so beautiful. Like I'm at the happiest I've
ever been because I've been able to unpact things over time.
Speaker 6 (00:56):
That's over a year.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
You're you're a busy guy. Are you doing? Is it
like phone therapy?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Is it zoom?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Are you in a you know, on set? Like and
this is the way it made me feel? And you
know that type of.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
A knock and hat.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I do both. Actually it depends on what my scheduling is,
because I do like going in person. It's just in
person is always so crazy because, like, especially if you've
been crying a little bit, it's like awkward when you leave,
Like you can tell the therapists want you to go
because this time they keep doing this.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Yeah yeah, but you like this, and.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
So they're like yeah, so uh.
Speaker 7 (01:41):
One of the things that I appreciate so much about
your music and that I think sets you apart from
so many other artists is the way that you juxtapose
these these big, sort of joyful, big band jazzy music
along with lyrics that are really raw and honorable and
about very serious issues. You talk about body dysmorphia, you
(02:04):
talk about mental health, sexual assault. How do you even
begin building music around those lyrics?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Well, you know, I do think I think music is medicine.
I will say that. I think I think, like, even
sitting here and talking to you about these sort of
heavier subjects, I get nervous. I don't really know how
to address it or what to say. And I think
music is a safe space to kind of be raw
and honest, and for me, that's my safe place, it's
my therapy. And yeah, you know, I think there's a
(02:35):
lot of us have really broken and a lot of
us are hurting, and a lot of us are dealing
with things we don't know exactly how to speak about
or express even with the people that we love, And
I think music is a safe space to do that,
to find healing or talk about it or just I
don't know, process it. So that was really important to
me as an independent artist. I just wanted to be
honest about those things you're quite about, you know.
Speaker 7 (02:59):
You you actually took quite a bit of time away
from acting to spend the time with your family. You
had Malcolm, and you were very open about experiencing postpartum depression.
Speaker 8 (03:09):
Yeah, postpartum anxiety. Anxiety, Yeah, so I had. I'd been
prepared for postpartum depression because we hear so much about it,
But postpartum anxiety came on and it was I don't
know if anyone here has gone through that of their
partners have, but it is. It is one of the
worst experiences of my life.
Speaker 9 (03:29):
It came on like a month or two after I
had Malcolm, and I woke up at four am. My
eyes just pop open and I start going.
Speaker 8 (03:40):
And I keep breathing like that all day long, and
I keep waking up like that every day at four am.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
For a year.
Speaker 9 (03:47):
Oh my god, for a full year. I just couldn't breathe.
I just had so much anxiety and it wasn't There
was no actual thoughts, and thank god, I didn't have
any thoughts of self harm or harming others. I have
so much compact and sympathy for mothers who are going
through that, and I think that people don't understand it
enough and we're not compassionate enough about what it's like
(04:07):
to be a mother, into birth, a bathing, everything that
happens to your body and the hormones. But it was
incredibly difficult, but I did make it through to the
other side.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Well.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
For social media to keep people engaged, for news organizations
to keep people watching, they have to ramp up the
urgency and the existential nature of the crisis. So you're
sort of torn between these two impulses. One is to
not participate, which would be abdicating civic responsibility, but the
(04:46):
other would be to bathe yourself in this existential crisis.
What choice do you have?
Speaker 6 (04:53):
Well, we do have a choice because so look at anxiety.
There's productive anxiety and unproductive anxiety. Think about it. If
you didn't have anxiety, you wouldn't be able to be safe.
That's why we have anxiety. It was like, there's a bear,
you better have anxiety. Your unproductive anxiety is I'm just
going to stand here. Productive anxiety is I'm going to
(05:14):
do something about this.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
See that's so weird because my anxiety has never saved
me from bears, but it often convinces me I'm not lovable.
Speaker 5 (05:26):
So how how I shared too much?
Speaker 8 (05:33):
How do you just going to say?
Speaker 4 (05:35):
How I watch I didn't want to watch the debates tonight,
but I do work once a week now, so I
have to because it's toxic to me. I know that
I have to participate. But how does that anxiety of
watching it? How is that a relic of something.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
That's good for me.
Speaker 6 (05:52):
It's good for you because then you can take action.
By the way, I hope you're taking action on the
unlovable thing.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
I hope you're getting some help with that little thing
called mushrooms, baby micro dosa.
Speaker 6 (06:02):
Way, Sorry, but it's helpful because you say, okay, there
are two ways you can respond to this. You can
say I'm going to put my head in the sand
and not engage, which is I hope not the option
that people here are taking. And you can also say, oh,
I'm just spinning an anxiety, I'm doom scrolling, I'm just
getting all worked up. That's not helpful, that's unproductive anxiety.
(06:24):
And then there's productive anxiety, where you say what can
I do well? You can get involved in a campaign,
you can volunteer, you can please vote, you can get
the people around you to vote. There are things that
you can do. The thing that you want to do
is you want to say what can I control here?
And that's where you take your anxiety and you say,
it's going to motivate me to do something productive.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
Something happened in the early twenty tens. And my argument
in the book is a tragedy in two acts. The
first act is the loss of the play based childhood.
It's what anybody over forty in this audience had. You
were out with your friends after school, there was nobody supervising.
You had to learn how to work out conflicts, how
to face adversity. So that's what kids have had for
(07:08):
ten hundreds of thousands of years. It's part of being
a mammal. You play, you develop skills. We began to
crack down on that to lock kids up in the nineties,
to not let them out. So we're restricting what they
most need, which is play, from the nineties through the
two thousands. But mental health doesn't collapse. Then it's actually
pretty stable. Then we get aact to which is the
(07:29):
arrival of the phone based childhood, and what that is
is in twenty ten, everybody had a flip phone. The
iPhone had come out, but most teens had a flip phone,
no front facing camera, no social media on the phone,
no high speed data. And by twenty twenty fifteen, everyone's
got all those other things. Now suddenly everyone has a smartphone,
(07:50):
front facing camera, high speed internet, social media especially Instagram
on the phone, and almost like someone turned a switch.
In twenty thirteen, girls in America and many of the
countries suddenly become very anxious, depressed, and self harming.
Speaker 7 (08:10):
You mentioned that you've talked very openly about struggling with
anxiety and depression. How did that feel to share that?
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Did that?
Speaker 7 (08:19):
Were you surprised by the reaction that you got?
Speaker 10 (08:21):
One hundred percent surprise and here's the thing. It didn't
feel weird to share because I live in Los Angeles
amongst a group of artists where this is just dinner
table conversations. We're all anxious and depressed and we're always
talking about it all the time. We're trading therapists.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, what medication?
Speaker 7 (08:35):
My therapist is right under the.
Speaker 8 (08:36):
Set on call.
Speaker 10 (08:39):
Yeah, and so it's like, what medication are you on?
I'm switching over to Selexa. Now you know it's this,
these are our conversations. But what I didn't realize is
that you know, as you well know, because I don't
know if you guys know, DESI was with me on
the League like ten.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Years ago as a guest star.
Speaker 10 (08:54):
A little amazing, but god, it's a great it's a
great show. And a lot of the men who watch
that show are not the men who are comfortable with
talking about their mental health because of football dudes and whatnot.
And so when I started going on my social media,
I got this outpouring, particularly from men just being like,
I can't believe you're saying this out loud. And it
(09:15):
makes me feel really good to know that someone that
I view as somewhat successful is still on their feet
despite this, and it offers hope in that way. So
I never really planned on being some sort of mouthpiece
for it. I was just sort of whining on social
media and then it kind of had this effect. So
I'm like, oh, well, this is something so.
Speaker 7 (09:34):
Not only brave, it's a generous thing for you to
do to help support others.
Speaker 8 (09:39):
So it's really meaningful that you did that.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by
searching The Daily Show wherever you.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Watch The Daily Show week nights at eleven ten Central
on Comedy Central, and streamful episodes anytime on baar Amount
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Plus Paramount Podcasts
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