Ethan Sacks is a veteran comics writer, having created stories for Marvel, DC, and numerous Star Wars comics. In the comic A Haunted Girl , Ethan enlisted his daughter Naomi as co-writer to tell a story much more personal than anything involving Star Wars or the Avengers. A Haunted Girl tells the story of Cleo, a character inspired by Naomi’s real life experiences in her teens dealing with depression, anxiety, and suicidality. She spent time in in-patient facilities and now, at 21, is doing bett...
May 26, 2025•45 min•Ep. 212
It would take an entire section of show notes here to list all the things Felicia Day has accomplished in her career. Here’s an attempt at making that brief: acted in a bunch of TV shows you know, created and starred in web series, made just so very many online videos, and is now the author and star of an audiobook called Third Eye about someone who is supposed to save the world but fails. In our interview, Felicia talks about doing all those things while dealing with mental disorders like depre...
May 19, 2025•44 min
Aperture is the sixth studio album by the indie-folk band The Head And The Heart and it’s kind of a return to the more grounded, collaborative sound of their earliest work. It’s less polished, less highly produced, not as poppy. That’s not an accident. The band has been putting in the work to be more of a cohesive unit by sharing songwriting and singing duties, going to therapy together, and trying to closely protect the health of both the individual members and the group itself. Kenny Hensley j...
May 12, 2025•41 min•Ep. 211
There have been ten million contacts, via phone calls, texts, and chats, with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline since it first launched in July of 2022. As its third anniversary approaches, we check in to see how the system is holding up, what the funding and capacity issues are, and what the future might look like with our guest, Hannah Wesolowski, Chief Advocacy Officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). We also examine the potential threat to the LGBTQ specialized services li...
May 05, 2025•39 min•Ep. 210
Would you open your heart to a bot? Tell it all your problems? Look to a piece of code, a computer program, for high-quality mental healthcare? Some people have said yes and the results are hard to ignore. Dartmouth University test subjects who sought help from Therabot, a generative AI chatbot, showed a 51% reduction in depression symptoms, 31% for anxiety, 19% for eating disorders. Dr. Nicholas Jacobson, who led the study, says people really bonded with Therabot, called it Thera for short, and...
Apr 28, 2025•48 min•Ep. 209
If you were brought up in a family or a culture that never recognized, discussed, or processed things like depression and trauma, you may have learned to simply hide those difficult feelings away and simply act as if everything’s great. You can be a high achiever, striving perfection, all to keep away demons that you’ve never really faced. Your act can be so good that it even fools you. For a while, anyway. Until it doesn’t. And then things can get very ugly. Psychologist Dr. Margaret Rutherford...
Apr 21, 2025•48 min•Ep. 208
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 as a treated person for bipolar will mean going forward. Cameron Esposito j...
Apr 14, 2025•44 min•Ep. 207
Statistics say that 23% of Americans are currently living with some form of mental illness. For most people, that calls for reaching out for help and receiving treatment and advice on management. But if you’re an FAA-approved airline pilot, disclosing that you have something like a depressive disorder or an anxiety problem can mean a temporary pause or permanent end to your entire career. Of course, having a mental illness, not disclosing or getting treatment, and flying anyway presents a variet...
Apr 07, 2025•38 min•Ep. 206
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 both taking care of himself and building a strong community of other people ...
Mar 31, 2025•49 min•Ep. 205
Things are scary in this country these days for a lot of people. There is turmoil in the government, shakiness in the economy, and a deep divide over what America even means anymore. In times of upheaval, it’s a good idea to reach out to friends, see how they’re holding up, help carry their burdens and sorrows, and see what wise advice they can share about perseverance. We do this on our show from time to time. In this mini-episode, we check in on a good friend of the show Open Mike Eagle. He’s ...
Mar 26, 2025•20 min•Ep. 204
We’ve been seeing an influx of new listeners recently. It’s very exciting. Thank you for that and we’re delighted that you’ve joined us. So we thought we’d take a moment and explain what the show is all about and who it’s for. Spoiler alert: it’s for everyone, including you, regardless of your mental health history. It's the final week of the 2025 Max Fun Drive! Check out the fun thank you gifts and become a member of Max Fun ! Check out our I’m Glad You’re Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at t...
Mar 25, 2025•6 min•Ep. 203
“I’m very kind to Jim, I’m trying to take good care of Jim, I’m trying to love Jim,” says musician Jim James of the band My Morning Jacket. The kindness he’s showing Jim, himself, is a relatively new thing, he says, after a long time spent kind of beating up on the guy. As My Morning Jacket releases its new album, is, Jim reflects back on issues such as a need for validation through achievement, alcoholism, and depression. And he shares what he’s learned through intense therapy, meditation, EMDR...
Mar 24, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 202
In this bonus content edition of Depresh Mode, We’re joined by some Maximum Fun all-stars for some very light-hearted and delightfully competitive games that are as informative as they are silly. Our competitors: Justin McElroy of My Brother, My Brother, and Me , Adventure Zone , and Sawbones Hal Lublin of Tights & Fights and We Got This Laura Swisher, senior producer overseeing about a million Max Fun podcasts Who will win the game Antidepressant, Pokemon, or State Fair Food ? Who will emerge v...
Mar 20, 2025•6 min
It’s not MaxFunDrive without a wild kickoff spectacular! Former real-life VJ and host of MTV's Spring Break 1999, Dave Holmes, takes your favorite MaxFun hosts through some wacky ‘90s- and Spring Break-themed mini games!! Featuring: Dave Holmes, Jeremy Bent, Oscar Montoya, Dimitry Pompée, Tom Lum, Ellen Weatherford, Alex Schmidt, Brenda Snell, Drea Clark, Alonso Duralde, Dan McCoy, Jordan Morris, Manolo Moreno, Ella Hubber, Caroline Roper, Ella McLeod, John-Luke Roberts, Justin McElroy, Clint Mc...
Mar 17, 2025•1 hr 19 min
The alcohol, says J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, came about in young adulthood, when it solved persistent social anxiety and made him the life of the party. As Kenji found tremendous success in food writing and restaurateuring, he found that he couldn’t really make it through the day without downing between two and five drinks. This wasn’t hard to pull off in the food business, surrounded by booze and a culture that heartily encouraged its consumption. Kenji found that, as is so often the case with mental ...
Mar 17, 2025•54 min•Ep. 201
Maybe you’re one of those people who dreads even looking at the news these days, with stories of layoffs, tariffs, upheaval in foreign policy, and a lack of knowledge as to where this is all going and what it might mean for the future of America and the world. It’s a tumultuous time. When things are chaotic, it can be good to check in with one’s friends and that’s what Depresh Mode does this week. We have conversations of commiseration, of humor, and of hope with comedian and actor Paul F. Tompk...
Mar 10, 2025•51 min•Ep. 200
Lamb of God is a very popular heavy metal band with Grammy nominations, gold records, and a huge headbanging following. Randy Blythe, front man for the band and author of a new book, Just Beyond the Light , is in recovery from drugs and alcohol and tells stories of finding sobriety, including how it was pretty easy to stay sober while on an Australian vacation surrounded by koalas but a lot harder once he returned to the States and the old patterns and routines of his life. Randy also talks abou...
Mar 03, 2025•49 min•Ep. 199
Microdosing involves taking very small amounts of psychedelic substances such as LSD or psilocybin, maybe seven to twelve percent of a regular dose. It’s not enough to “trip out” but enough, proponents say, to yield very positive results, especially in terms of treating depression that hasn’t responded well to other methods. The catalog of extensive clinical, scientific trials about the practice of microdosing is pretty limited but James Fadiman and Jordan Gruber have collected what scientific m...
Feb 24, 2025•47 min•Ep. 198
Ophira Eisenberg once believed that everyone had a trauma quota, a maximum amount of hardship that a person would face in life and once that mark was hit, nothing bad would ever happen again. It was a way of comforting herself after a car accident at age eight that seriously injured Ophira and killed her friend. Turns out that’s not how life works and Ophira still had cancer and a miscarriage to deal with later on. Ophira joins us for a wise and actually very funny conversation about trauma, bei...
Feb 17, 2025•48 min•Ep. 197
Would you get a device the size of a Nilla wafer implanted in your body if it meant relief from treatment-resistant depression? There are big advances being made in vagal nerve stimulation therapy, a process by which electrical impulses are fed into a patient’s vagus nerve to alleviate depression that hasn’t responded to more common treatments. We take a look at the science, the breakthroughs, and why your insurance might be more likely to cover it. Then we have an interview with actor and write...
Feb 10, 2025•49 min•Ep. 196
The cover of Neko Case’s memoir features a young Neko in a swimsuit she says she wore for six months straight and she’s accompanied by a drawing of a big spiky-toothed monster who she says is there to protect her. The invention of such monsters can feel necessary when one’s parents are unavailable, simply not physically present, or, in the case of her mother, faking their own death only to reappear a year and a half later. Neko talks about the trauma of her childhood, what music meant then and a...
Feb 03, 2025•46 min•Ep. 195
Sex is not always an easy topic to discuss. Issues like how to get what you want, how to make sure your partner is getting what they want, these are delicate conversations and often intimidating ones as well. Add in issues like depression and anxiety for one or more of the people involved and it becomes more complex still. Fortunately, we have Dr. Emily Nagoski with us who is an expert on sex and how to talk about it. She’s the author of the new book, Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Cre...
Jan 27, 2025•45 min•Ep. 194
Hari Kondabolu has never been afraid to talk about sensitive topics on stage. The veteran comedian, who has appeared on Conan, Kimmel, Letterman, and NPR’s Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me mined material about race, immigration, and other societal hot button issues. But unlike some comedians, he was hesitant to discuss himself and in particular the depression that has followed him for years. He goes there in this interview that also includes exploration of panic attacks, the ups and downs of therapy, ...
Jan 20, 2025•53 min•Ep. 193
On the podcast Hyperfixed , host Alex Goldman sets out to solve mysteries and conundrums that listeners submit. But he’s found himself having to do some figuring out for himself. Alex finally got diagnosed with ADHD just a few years ago, when he was around 42 years old. Which was a big relief after years of struggling with things like attention and task completion. The problem was that the meds they gave him triggered hypomania followed by big depressive crashes, resulting in a diagnosis of bipo...
Jan 13, 2025•48 min•Ep. 192
There are sad movies that nonetheless offer some sort of hope and optimism. And then there are the ones that offer no hope at all, just bleakness and despair and the cinematic versions of major depressive disorder. Those are our focus on this episode as a trio of film critics and pundits offer their picks for the most depressing films and offer analysis on whether there is value in watching works that present worlds with zero hope. Films discussed include: Grave of the Fireflies Aftersun Amour D...
Jan 06, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 191
Trauma and comedy wouldn’t seem to have a lot in common but they do have one thing: Paul Scheer. You may know Paul from TV shows like the comedy The League or from his podcasts like How Did This Get Made . In this deeply personal, vulnerable, and – yes – funny interview and in his new memoir, Joyful Recollections of Trauma , Paul Scheer recounts tales of the repeated physical and mental abuse he and his mom received from his stepfather. He also recounts how he has learned to process these and ot...
Dec 30, 2024•56 min•Ep. 190
Writing is not what Cory Richards is best known for. No, that would be feats like being the first American to climb one of the 14 peaks in the world measuring over 8000 meters. He’s also known for his photography, which includes National Geographic covers. But Cory’s new book, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within, isn’t just about his accomplishments, it’s about his struggles too. He tells us about the violence in his home growing up, his bipolar II diagnosis and depressi...
Dec 23, 2024•55 min•Ep. 189
Lead was added to car fuel back in the twenties and wasn’t phased out in America until 1996. By then, according to neuropsychologist and researcher Dr Aaron Reuben, the damage had very much been done. He’s one of the authors of a new study pointing to 151 million cases of mental illness that correlate with the presence of lead in gas tanks. The people damaged the most were those born during the highest usage of lead, the mid to late sixties through the early eighties. Dr. Reuben says that while ...
Dec 16, 2024•45 min•Ep. 188
Home for Richard Sarvate wasn’t anything like the home lives of his friends. Unlike his friends, his mom was convinced Richard was trying to kill her and that Bill Clinton was sending her secret messages because they had the same birthday. Richard shares stories of growing up with an abusive mom who had schizophrenia, what that meant for the development of his social skills and sense of self, and how the food was always somehow great. He also tells of how a scary situation in Puerto Rico led to ...
Dec 09, 2024•41 min•Ep. 187
Twin Cities comic Ellie Hino was wondering if her young son might have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, so she looked into the symptoms. What she found was a pretty good rundown on problems that she had been wrestling with for many years, especially since becoming a mom. After extensive testing, her diagnosis was confirmed, which opened up the possibilities of treatment and led to a more manageable mind and life. She shares with us her understanding of the condition, what it’s m...
Dec 02, 2024•43 min•Ep. 186
