Depressing music, commutes, and society in general
Sorry, I just can't spin a happy ending here. Holy Roman Empire? No, never mind
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The best, most depressing music our experts could find
Misery, as the saying goes, loves company. And to that end, I think that people love the company of music about people in miserable situations. I’m talking about sad music, depressing music, music that is bleak as hell. And that music is the subject of our podcast episode this week. We convened three expert music critics and writers, Steven Hyden, Craig Jenkins, and Ann Powers, and asked them to bring us the music that isn’t just sad but is flat out depressing. Like something beyond “I have a broken heart”, more like “I have a broken heart and spirit and nothing can ever be good again.”
So there’s music from Townes Van Zandt, Jason Isbell, the Fifth Dimension, Elliott Smith, Stevie Wonder, and more.
There’s even a mention of how depression can sometimes not make you feel sad but instead feel nothing at all, like you’re totally dead inside. We even pull up a song for that one:
Your commute is making you crazy
For real, though. Depressed. And unhealthy.
I mean, it stands to reason that spending a significant percentage of your weekday life sitting down and waiting to be somewhere would not have a huge health benefit but now there’s some more research into just how much damage is being done.
Nowhere are those health effects felt more acutely, perhaps, than in South Korea, a country thought to have some of the longest average commuting times and highest rates of depression among OECD nations.
Yet little research on the health impacts of lengthy commutes has been done in Asian populations, or to understand how physical effects may snowball into poor mental health, such as depression.
A new study of more than 23,000 people has rectified that research gap, finding that South Koreans who commute longer than an hour are 16 percent more likely to experience depressive symptoms than those with shorter commutes under 30 minutes.
I used to have a long commute when I lived in Seattle. I worked in the northeast part of the city and lived in the southwest part and there was no practical way to get to work or get home without dealing with downtown Seattle. Seattle had or has some significant challenges to commuting due to topography (mad hills, Puget Sound) and skinny roads. I know in recent years there has been a lot more light rail but I’m not sure if that’s kept pace with all the people constantly pouring into the region. I would leave on one end of the commute not knowing if it would take 30 minutes or an hour due to traffic.
Anyway, this was over 15 years ago now and it really damaged my mental health to the point where it was one of the big reasons we moved to Minnesota. Here, my commute was less than ten minutes and now I work from home. That has helped.
The suicide epidemic examined
In The Guardian, Robert Reich takes a look at the rising suicide rates and questions whether this is an individual mental health phenomenon.
Maybe the widespread anxiety and depression, along with the near record rate of suicide, should not be seen as personal disorders.
Maybe they should be seen – in many cases – as rational responses to a society that’s becoming ever more disordered.
After all, who’s not concerned by the rising costs of housing and the growing insecurity of jobs and incomes?
Who (apart from Trump supporters) isn’t terrified by Trump’s attacks on democracy, and the possibility of another Trump presidency?
Who doesn’t worry about mass shootings at their children’s or grandchildren’s schools?
Who isn’t affected by the climate crisis?
Add increasingly brutal racism. Mounting misogyny. Anti-abortion laws. Homophobia and transphobia. Attacks on Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Jews, Arab Americans and other minority groups. And the growing coarseness and ugliness of what we see and read in social media.
A question I run across in my own thinking a lot while working on my show is whether depression and anxiety in our contemporary society is a mental illness or a rational response to a fucked up world.
On Sleeping with Celebrities: Guy Branum and the Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire is a huge topic, spanning at least one continent and nearly a thousand years. Fortunately, we’re here to cover the entire thing in about an hour while you doze off to a good night’s sleep with thoughts of complex treaty agreements dancing in your head. We’re guided on this journey by comedian, actor, and writer Guy Branum who knows more about the political and military intricacies of the Holy Roman Empire than we thought possible. Perhaps Guy is preparing to mass an army and finally make his move on Europe. Only time will tell.
I used to sing Tecumseh Valley to my kids at bedtime because I am a terrible singer and it's one of the few songs I could manage. I did wince every night when I sang "So she turned to whorin', out on the streets, with all the lust inside her".