Depresh Mode with John Moe

If you are one of the many subscribers to the Peloton exercise/media network, you may already be familiar with Kendall Toole. For many years, she was one of the stars of Peloton, exhorting users to push themselves harder, sweat more, and pursue their goals. In those cases, Kendall was positive, cheerful, always with a smile and kind words. But people are complicated and the truth is that Kendall has faced many mental health issues ...

At age 59, Anne Abel had never been to a concert. Ever. Music wasn’t part of her upbringing, although emotional abuse and belittlement from her parents absolutely were. Reluctantly agreeing to join her son and daughter-in-law to see Bruce Springsteen, Anne’s mind was absolutely blown by the energy and generosity of the musicians and the crowd. Bruce shined a light on a better possible world and allowed her to have fun for the first...

While the acclaimed musician Emma Swift had experienced painful periods of depression in the past, fed by grief or the first Trump presidency, her psychotic break and mental breakdown in 2023 was new territory. She lost touch with reality, believing that her electronic devices had been hacked, that she was being followed, images of heaven and hell emerging. Emma actually had a sense that she was losing her mind and went to the hosp...

Are ChatGPT and other AI chatbots inducing psychosis? Or exacerbating it? Are people being hospitalized or even killed because the bots seem too human, too understanding, too lifelike? To be clear, the bots are not human. They are software. But they are so convincingly programmed to speak like people that users, especially ones who may already be having trouble discerning reality, begin to sense that the bot is alive and that the u...

Alex Edelman loves going to concerts but admits that he usually goes solo. That’s because his ADHD leads Alex to show up pretty late to the show and he often spends part of it on the stairs writing something, occasionally darting into the main room for a song he likes. He can’t make it through most movies either. Alex stars in the new Peacock series The Paper, a sort of descendant of The Office. His one-man show, Just For Us, about...

If you’re looking for a calm mind, do you love a room with little or nothing in it? Or do you need to be wall-to-ceiling with mementos and objects and stuff to give you a sense of peace? We take a look at how the layout of your living space may have an effect on your mental well being with Dr. Beverly Walpole. She’s a clinical psychologist and the founder of Haven | Wellness By Design, a consulting service based around the psycholo...

When she was growing up in conservative, evangelical rural Minnesota, she knew. When she was excelling at sports, giving and receiving body slams and folding chair hits as a pro wrestler, she knew. Even when she married a woman while still living as a man, Denise knew that she was female. Denise figured it was either suicide or take action to live her truth and fully transition. With her debut special, Bougie on a Budget, now strea...

There are plenty of places online to get very serious information on mental health, delivered in tones that are somber, sober, or very dry. Ashly Burch goes a different route on her new YouTube show, I’m Happy You’re Here, employing loads of comedy, puppets, foul language, and mature subject matter to teach what’s going on in complex matters such as anxiety. Ashly is known for her work in the games Fortnite, Life is Strange, and Th...

Because she racks up millions and millions of views for her viral comedy videos on social media, because she’s written two books including the new best-seller A Clean Mess: A Memoir of Sobriety After a Lifetime of Being Numb, because she’s famous and successful, Tiffany Jenkins and her family were invited to travel to California and visit Lego Land. They paid her to have a wonderful vacation. On the ground at Lego Land, the first t...

If you’ve dealt with depression, you know that it’s a disorder that speaks to you, firing off insults and terrible idea, often right in the middle of a conversation. Barges in to tear you down. We all must contend with this rude presence. Aaron Foster is a very funny comedian who is still fairly new to the full-time comedy life but, now in his fifties, he’s done a lot of living to inform his comic material. Much of his recent act i...

To blow off steam from an incredibly stressful profession, professional nurse Blake Lynch started putting together little comedy videos on social media as “Nurse Blake”. The clips went viral and he started making live comedy appearances to packed audiences, many of whom were nurses themselves. His celebrity status gave him a chance to lobby for better pay and working conditions for nurses. As Nurse Blake prepares for a 68-city tour...

Bush lead singer Gavin Rossdale has a lot of memories from growing up as a kid who excelled at sports but also treasured his Lou Reed records. He is also keenly aware of who left during those years: his mother disappearing after divorcing his dad, a beloved aunt passing away, and a revered older sister striking out on her own. Those losses informed his mental health for the rest of his life but so did the understanding of his emoti...

Jen slept fine the night before she couldn’t. Just short of 29 years old and after years of excellent sleep, insomnia entered her life leading her down a years-long search for cures, treatments, or even just an explanation of why her life had been turned upside down. Jen Senior is the author of an article, “Why Can’t Americans Sleep?” in the Atlantic and she joins us to talk about the intersection of sleep, depression, anxiety, sha...

Brandon Stickney remembers booze being everywhere growing up in Lockport, New York and he definitely remembers getting a taste for it growing up. Over time, he developed bipolar disorder and his substance use disorder added cocaine and opioids as favorite drugs. Brandon’s love of getting high would cost him his marriage, his successful career as a journalist and author, and his freedom, after getting busted selling drugs and being ...

When the comedian, actor, and author Maria Bamford has something to say about mental health, it’s a pretty good idea to give a listen. For one reason, she’s hilarious. Also, she comes at the issue not just as an observer. Maria has a long history with mental health conditions. SHe has spent a good bit of time in in-patient facilities, has dealt with problematic intrusive thoughts, and has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, type ...

Hollywood doesn’t exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to portraying mental illness in a sensitive, honest, and appropriately complex way (think Psycho or the notorious caffeine pill episode of Saved by the Bell). But the top show on Netflix right now, Ginny & Georgia went to great lengths to show mental health conditions honestly. The series tells the story of Georgia, a mother with a traumatic background, Ginny, her ...

"Beneath the Lilypad" is singer-songwriter Alexandra Savior's third album, but her first in five years. Several years ago, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, type 1. That’s a condition marked with manic highs that can last for weeks or months as well as crushing lows of depression, she’s had both, you’ll hear about that. She’s also dealt with psychosis, and has spent time in an in-patient facility. That mental health journey ...

As temperatures and sea levels rise, the effects of climate change are being felt in weather patterns, natural disasters, and in both public and personal mental health. We talk with Dr. Caroline Carney, President of Behavioral Health and Chief Medical Officer at Magellan Health in Phoenix about the connection between your mind and the dire conditions Earth is facing. She says the damage is being done by the traumatic effects of fir...

Rep. Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.) is one of four chairs of the bipartisan Mental Health Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, a 93-member group of Republicans and Democrats pledging to fight stigma, improve accessibility, and generally make the country’s mental health better. But as the Trump administration floats huge cuts to Medicaid and other social services and as the tone of politics in America gets more divided and vitrioli...