Trans people are under attack in the United States, both literally, through violence and threats of violence, and figuratively, in the form of anti-trans legislation and discrimination. This can be depressing for trans people and can make them anxious. So what does it mean for people who happen to be trans and already deal with depression and anxiety disorders? We find out one person’s experience in this interview with Parker Molloy, writer of the newsletter The Present Age . Hear about Parker’s...
Oct 02, 2023•50 min•Ep. 127
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...
Sep 25, 2023•44 min•Ep. 126
Aparna Nancherla’s new book, Unreliable Narrator: Me, Myself, and Impostor Syndrome , covers a lot of mental health territory, much of which she talks about in this interview. Despite being an accomplished comedian and actor, thus having no reason to suffer from impostor syndrome, she still does, because that particular phenomena is impervious to logic. Nor does her success keep away perfectionism, dysthymic depression, or anxiety. In her book and in conversation, Aparna doesn’t go for the easy ...
Sep 18, 2023•42 min•Ep. 125
Investigative reporter and Columbia University journalism professor Meg Kissinger has, for many years, specialized in uncovering the catastrophic state of mental health care in America, particularly in Milwaukee, where she has lived for many years. Recently, she used that reporter’s tenacity in learning and telling the story of her own family of origin in her book While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence . Meg grew up in a suburban Chicago Catholic f...
Sep 11, 2023•50 min•Ep. 124
“Every time I’m on the sidewalk, I want to step into the road,” sings Lydia Loveless on her new song “Runaway.” “Let this Kia flatten me cause I don’t want to come home.” It’s a set of lyrics that packs a wallop but one that she laughs about in our interview. Lydia is in a pretty good place right now, anticipating the release of her new album, Nothing’s Gonna Stand In My Way Again and with her depression under pretty good control at the moment. But she says that depression and thoughts of suicid...
Sep 04, 2023•49 min•Ep. 123
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 2. Maria talks about the issue of access to mental health treatme...
Aug 28, 2023•50 min•Ep. 122
Patrick Page has earned a reputation as one of the top classical actors in America today and one of the best at playing villains. He’s played Iago in Othello , the Grinch, Marc Antony and Brutus in Julius Caesar , Scar in The Lion King , King Lear, and Hades in Hadestown to name very few of his roles in a decades long career. But Patrick has faced off against a classical villain off stage as well, having battled a depressive disorder ever since he was five years old. He talks about his experienc...
Aug 21, 2023•48 min•Ep. 121
Have you ever felt like an impostor? Some of you, the listeners, wrote in to answer this question. According to Dr. Valerie Young from the Impostor Syndrome Institute, about 70% of you will answer that question with a “yes.” Dr. Young joins us to discuss both the internal and external factors that cause impostor syndrome, as well as what individuals and organizations can do to lessen it. Dr. Ken Duckworth, the chief medical officer of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, also talks to us abo...
Aug 14, 2023•55 min•Ep. 120
This episode originally aired on August 1, 2022. Getting Jamie Lee Curtis to open about her many years spent addicted to Vicodin is, frankly, not very difficult. She wants to talk about it. And that’s for a couple of reasons. One, she wants to make it clear that she’s no different from any other addict in any other walk of life. That’s why she calls herself a dope fiend. She just happens to have had success in an industry she derisively calls “show off business”. Two, because she committed to so...
Aug 07, 2023•54 min
Before she was a cast member on Saturday Night Live, Sasheer Zamata was a cast member at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, where she would climb inside the character costumes and mingle with guests at the park. One particular costume, Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, was particularly cumbersome and uncomfortable and that’s where Sasheer had her first ever, full-blown panic attack. She shares that story in this interview as well as her experiences with an irregular heartbeat, a wise life coach...
Jul 31, 2023•39 min•Ep. 119
Bethany Cosentino describes her new album as “a coming-of-age story about a 36-year-old woman reclaiming her life and what matters against the landscape of the world ending.” That last bit of that description is hard to miss and indeed climate anxiety figures heavily in the record but let’s not look past the middle part of the description, the part with the reclaiming life and what matters. In this fun and insightful interview, Bethany talks about recently being diagnosed with ADHD just a few we...
Jul 24, 2023•54 min•Ep. 118
Nick Seluk had been drawing an online comic called Awkward Yeti about a socially stumbling cryptid named Lars while working a corporate day job as a graphic designer. Eventually, Seluk started creating strips where Lars’s heart and brain were walking around on their own, trying to strike a balance between their emotional and logical tendencies. And audiences responded, sending Heart and Brain into viral meme territory. In this interview, Seluk talks about how these resonant characters, which he ...
Jul 17, 2023•49 min•Ep. 117
This episode originally aired on September 12, 2022. In the entire 321-year history of Yale University, the most popular class ever is a relatively new one called “Psychology and the Good Life”, taught by Dr. Laurie Santos. Since it’s debut in 2018, it has proved to be so much in demand that Yale now offers a version of the class for free online to anyone in the world. Part of the appeal is that Dr. Santos is a really great professor. She’s smart, presents lessons in a compelling way. But beyond...
Jul 10, 2023•59 min
When Emi Nietfeld was applying to colleges, she had her eyes set firmly on the Ivy League. Through her childhood years spent in foster care, shelters, psychiatric hospitals, very occasionally with her problematic mother, and finally a boarding school, Emi was fixated on getting into the most difficult college she could. In an effort to tell her full story, she wrote an application essay that included the struggles she had experienced with mental health issues like eating disorders, depression, a...
Jul 03, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 116
Kate Speer is a New England writer, entrepreneur, and mental health advocate. She has a popular Instagram account and Substack newsletter where she often talks about mental illness, recovery, and how her psychiatric service dogs Waffle and Tugboat have helped along her mental health journey. Kate’s loyal readers have also heard a lot about her friend Maura, how they met in an in-patient facility and became very close, and how Maura died due to her depression. But as we learn in this episode, you...
Jun 26, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 115
You don’t have to listen all that deeply into the song catalog of singer-songwriter Noah Kahan to hear mention of mental health themes. It’s an important topic for Noah in his own life, which has involved struggles with depression, anxiety, and body dysmorphia. And because mental health is important in Noah’s life, it shows up a lot in his intensely personal, vulnerable, and revealing music. Growing up in Vermont, Noah Kahan was heavily influenced by music and, especially, relatable lyrics penne...
Jun 19, 2023•42 min•Ep. 114
A good day for Michael Landsberg goes up to about a seven but not really any higher than that. His mood doesn’t raise up to an eight, nine, or ten due to the medication he takes for his longstanding major depressive disorder. But Michael’s low days don’t go below a four thanks to the same medication. It’s a bargain that Landsberg is comfortable with. We also discuss Landsberg’s discovery of his own depression and anxiety, how he’s treated it, and whether the fight against stigma is going well. L...
Jun 12, 2023•54 min•Ep. 113
Bruce Springsteen was coming off his first number one album and first top ten single when, in 1982, he retreated to a small New Jersey bedroom to record something unexpected. What he made, the album Nebraska, is darker, starker, simpler, and deeper than any of his previous work and it reflected some of the more painful components of Springsteen’s mental makeup. Warren Zanes, a musician himself as well as an author and professor, interviewed Springsteen about all that went into Nebraska, how chil...
Jun 05, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 112
Members of Congress answer to their constituents, ultimately. They work for us. So this week, we check in on one of our employees, the junior senator from Minnesota, Tina Smith. Smith is very active on the topic of mental health and gives us updates on legislation that is moving - sometimes slowly, sometimes swiftly - through the U.S. Senate. We discuss the provider shortage, the innovation around telehealth, and whether congress can or should do anything about regulating social networks to bett...
May 29, 2023•35 min•Ep. 111
Some important questions tackled in this week’s episode with the author of Adult Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers : When does someone have an actual personality disorder and when are they simply being a bit of a jerk? Can someone with genuine NPD even recognize that they have it? What does therapy look like for someone with NPD? How does a narcissistic parent influence the mental and emotional makeup of their child? Get your copy of Adult Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers and learn more about D...
May 22, 2023•45 min•Ep. 110
We all have voices inside ourselves that give us advice on what to do in a given situation. Not talking about literal voices that you genuinely hear, just thoughts that you have when a decision needs to be made or something needs to be navigated. And those voices sometimes contradict each other so you need to know which one has your best interests at heart. Author Cheryl Strayed refers to her negative and unhelpful voice as her ITS, which stands for Inner Terrible Someone, while the one that’s r...
May 15, 2023•51 min•Ep. 109
Samantha Irby has visualized a lot of scenarios that get more than a little unnerving. The driver behind her gets so impatient with her driving that he runs her off the road, drags her out of her car, and then beats the crap out of her. In another imagining, she’s at an author event and someone has gone to the trouble of buying a ticket just to run up on stage and yell obscenities at her. I mean, these are terrifying scenarios but when she talks about them, you’ll find yourself laughing as much ...
May 08, 2023•54 min•Ep. 108
When our society and our entire culture gets behind a cause, we can really make a difference. And it’s happened before. Back in the day, littering made public spaces look awful but we got together and did something about it. We created an owl mascot and, more directly, changed our way of thinking. We got together on causes like smoking and drunk driving and while those problems have not been eradicated, we got better. Back then, mental health and the stigma around it did not receive the same tre...
May 01, 2023•40 min•Ep. 107
Hero Journey Club is a business that offers mental health support groups for video game enthusiasts, run by therapists. The group sessions happen over the online voice and instant messaging platform Discord and the participants, the gamers, are playing games while the sessions take place. Sometimes collaboratively on the same game, sometimes on completely different games. The group members are usually similar in age and have a shared desire to work on particular mental health issues. We talk wit...
Apr 24, 2023•41 min•Ep. 106
Therapy is not a competition. You can’t defeat other clients or come in first place. Still, there is such a thing as getting better at going to therapy. There are ways to get the most out of that valuable hour or so you get with a professional. And for that, we turn to professional therapist, author, and podcaster Lori Gottlieb, who offers some plain-spoken advice on building a great relationship, not expecting the depictions you see in movies and on television, and why people generally don’t li...
Apr 17, 2023•47 min•Ep. 105
Writer, blogger, podcaster, pundit, and reporter Ana Marie Cox joins her good friend John Moe for a conversation about writing. Ana teaches what she calls Third Story Workshops that are dedicated to helping people get their stories out of their minds and onto the page. She says you can look at your story in three parts: what it was like before, what happened, and what you are like now. It’s that third bit that she really concentrates on with students. John, who published a memoir in 2020, shares...
Apr 10, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 104
Chris Powell is probably best known as the host of the ABC reality show Extreme Weight Loss, which ran for five seasons. On that show, Chris used his experience as a fitness trainer and all around motivational human to help people who wanted to lose 200 pounds or more. And Chris doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to experience mental illness. He comes across as very energetic, very positive, and someone not at all hounded by personal demons. But that’s the thing about disorders like anxiety and d...
Apr 03, 2023•52 min•Ep. 103
A special preview of this year's MaxFunDrive Bonus Content! Listen to the whole episode by becoming a member. Go to MaximumFun.org/join and pick a level that works for you! We’ve said it many times on our show: there isn’t one thing that works for everyone to improve mental health. But chances are there’s something out there that will work for you. Maybe it’s a certain type of medication. Perhaps it’s a particular modality of therapy. Could be a medical treatment of some kind does the trick. Or ...
Mar 29, 2023•5 min
What is it like to feel better in your mental state? And what does it take to get there and to stay that way? Those are some of the questions we ask in this interview with the great comedian Gary Gulman. Gary sounds very different than when John Moe first interviewed him back in the fall of 2017 when Gary had been hospitalized for depression and was just beginning to turn things around. We hear about how he convinced himself to begin a very kind and manageable exercise regimen, how he tended to ...
Mar 27, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 102
As far as Dana Gould could tell, he had been awake for 11 days. He logically knows that this was probably medically impossible but even if he had slept, he had no memory of doing so, which is pretty significant right there. This incident and the hospitalization that followed it is just one part of Dana’s mental health journey. He talks about growing up in a family where alcohol was a strong presence and a comedy industry where drugs were everywhere but Dana didn’t drink or use drugs. Dana also s...
Mar 20, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 101
