Depresh Mode with John Moe

Dr. Jeremy Heffner was a highly educated, high achieving surgeon. Not the kind of person one would expect to slide down an AI chatbot-generated rabbit hole, lose touch with reality, and give credence to the bot’s suggestion that he was one of the three smartest humans ever. But that’s what happened. The bots also told him there was a 70% chance AI would end the world and only Jeremy could save it. His experience, chroni...

Cameron Esposito has many titles: hugely successful standup comedian, actor in television and film, writer, podcast host. After a recent rehab stay led to a mental health diagnosis, she has realized that she’s also a person with bipolar disorder, type II. Cameron has a new special, Four Pills, that’s part stand-up comedy and part reflection on the circumstances that led to this discovery as well as thoughts on what life...

Bay Area journalist s.e. smith thinks the high school goths were right: we should be talking about death all the time. It’s underdiscussed for something that will literally affect us all. And in that silence, they say, things get worse: the topic becomes less approachable, inevitable periods of grief can become more chaotic and disruptive, and the actual pain of losing your person or cat or dog can become harder to process. s...

Mary H.K. Choi compares living with her brain to just not understanding the operating system on a computer. She didn’t know if this was a result of trauma and neglect in her childhood, the experience of being parentified as a child, grief after the death of her father, or what. So she spent decades of effort and piles of dollars to figure it out. She did cognitive behavioral therapy, internal family systems therapy, “he...

Margaret Glaspy compares the experience she was having on Instagram to being lightly punched in the gut, over and over, for a very long time. Like it’s not like being hit hard, just a little tap of something negative with each update you read, each comparison made, each distancing away from actual humanity and toward the simulated reality the platform presents. So she quit social media. Which was hard because it was an actual...

For most of the world, the advent of middle age does not make depression, loneliness, and memory issues more of a problem than earlier in life. In some countries, things actually get better. The only nation on earth where it all gets worse is right here in the USA. Arizona State University psychologist Frank Infurna has been researching this topic extensively and explains the uniquely American societal forces that are contributing ...

Angela Harger-Thompson had moved to Hollywood to make it big in showbiz but soon fell victim to a devastating assault. There to comfort her was her intermittent boyfriend. She really liked him and thought his offer of a four-week, 4000 mile sailing voyage on the Pacific Ocean, accompanies by a small crew of strangers and a dog seemed like a good idea. The claustrophobic pressure of that situation, combined with the dangers of ocean...

This week, we take a look at a couple of acronyms that are soaring in popularity and ask what their widespread adoption means for mental health. Maggie Harrison Dupré of Futurism has been following the AI space closely and has an update on lawsuits related to chatbots’ culpability in numerous cases of attempted and completed suicides. She also explains some recent research about why prolonged engagement with the sycophantic c...

Jo Dee Messina has a long career in the music industry: number one hits, platinum and gold records, many awards. She’s a country music icon. Jo Dee just released Bridges, her first new album in 12 years and those were 12 years filled with some tough times. Her marriage ended, leaving her as a single mom of two boys, both her parents died, and Jo Dee battled cancer, completed treatment, and is cancer free. She’s reluctan...

Hanif Abdurraqib is a MacArthur Fellow, accomplished poet, and critically lauded author of numerous books, including There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, which is now out in paperback. He’s also a person who deals with major depressive disorder and numerous anxiety disorders. In a revealing, positive, and practical interview, Hanif talks about the numerous ways he cares for his mental health issues by ...

The title of Elizabeth Roberts’ new book, In Praise of Addiction, is likely to catch your attention, maybe even set off some cognitive dissonance in your mind. But the University of Michigan’s Elizabeth Roberts doesn’t want you to be unhealthy or take up new habits that can hurt you and others, she just wants you to consider that maybe we haven’t been looking at addiction with the clearest of eyes. Why are s...

British-born, LA-based author and illustrator Gemma Correll had a couple of reasons to choose  the motif of an amusement park for her new anxiety book, Anxietyland. One, she loves amusement parks and wanted to be able to write off a Disneyland trip as a research expedition. And also, there are so many great metaphors to be found there like emotional rollercoasters and a worry-go-round. With hilarious candor, Gemma shares her o...

Secretary of Health & Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is, to put it mildly, a skeptic of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) medication, a form of meds that millions of Americans use regularly with tremendous benefit. He was once on SSRIs, went off them, then became addicted to heroin, and he believes these events are linked. He also believes they cause school shootings and cause harm to developing fetuses. Ther...

If you’ve ever listened to Robyn Hitchcock’s music, you know that it can get pretty surrealistic. Some might say divinely bizarre and eclectic. Others might just say weird. All of that’s fine with the London-born, Nashville-based artist, who has been putting out music on his own and with The Soft Boys and The Egyptians for half a century. Robyn says he’s very happy to be in touch with a world beyond the view...

There is no Tom behind TOMS Shoes. It’s short for “Tomorrow’s.” There is a Blake, however. Blake Mycoskie founded the company in 2006 under the model that for every pair sold, a second pair would be donated to children in the developing world. TOMS took off, which meant years of constant work for Blake, traveling the world telling the TOMS story, and ultimately getting burned out and selling the company. Des...

Yes, the episode is about a rock singer but it’s also about any of us who grind away for the benefit of our work and the detriment of ourselves. The sudden cancellation of the band Sweet Pill’s extensive tour promoting their sophomore album Still There’s a Glow came as a shock to fans and the press. But it makes total sense given that singer Zayna Youssef had been working herself into the ground with writing, reco...

This episode of the show is about America, ultimately. We’re joined by Cristina Jimínez, author of the memoir Dreaming of Home: How We Turn Fear into Pride, Power, and Real Change and MacArthur genius grant recipient for a discussion of mental health in the immigrant and undocumented immigrant communities in light of events like the ICE surge, 9/11, and January 6th. Cristina fled Ecuador with her family when she was 13, lande...

I’m pretty sure you’ve been in this situation: you’re in a group setting of consequence and importance. Maybe it’s at work, maybe in school, but something is on the line. In that place are people different from you. They’re of a different race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and you begin to worry about how you are being perceived. Are you an individual in everyone’s eyes or are they seei...

The things that happened when you were young, especially the really painful things, can easily and often carry into adulthood. For documentarian, former high-powered executive, and actual Mister Rogers neighbor Benjamin Wagner, an adult life of terrible stress and substance use issues wasn’t really going to be solved until he understood more about the ripple effects of his parents’ divorce and a severe assault that occu...