Episode 7 - Peter Sagal, Jesse Thorn, and the MFD
Life or Death Situation No Biggie
Today’s show
The first interview I ever did about depression was with Peter Sagal, several years ago. He opened up about his divorce and came out of the depression closet, disclosing his condition publicly for the first time. Today, I revisit my friend and learn how he climbed (not really out but) through the muck and formed a new life with a new spouse and even a new baby.
I think it’s important to know that the Peter Sagal you hear on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me is really Peter. He’s not playing a character. But as with all of us, you are meeting one angle of him. In this interview, I think you hear a lot more of his full complexity. The pain and loss that he has experienced through losing his original family is still top of mind and very real but the love and joy and hope he has with his new family is just as real.
Also, the first guy to email me when the old show went away, Jesse Thorn of Maximum Fun, joins me to talk about Depresh Mode, Maximum Fun, and why we’re working together.
It’s a pretty great episode.
The Purely Magnanimous Angle
It’s an exciting day. I consider it to be the first day of Depresh Mode in many ways.
Sure, we’ve put out some great podcast episodes already but today begins the Max Fun Drive and our identity as a shared organization. It’s not just me writing a newsletter or me and Gabe and some folks from Maximum Fun putting on a podcast anymore,. Now it’s a community. It works like this: those of us on the production side make something of value, those of us who consume it recognize the value and help pay for it. Then we repeat that process for the rest of our lives.
I want nothing more than to keep having open and honest conversations about mental health for the rest of time. If people join up during the Max Fun Drive, that can happen. If they don’t, it probably can’t. I think they/you WILL join, at whatever level suits you. It can be a little or a lot. But if you’re reading this, you probably already believe that having Depresh Mode - in any of its forms - out in the world is a) good and b) costs money. And you’ll donate.
The Also Wanting Stuff Angle
You can get stuff for becoming a member!
The Max Fun Drive page has all the details of what STUFF you get when you join but here are some of the possibilities:
The Depresh Mode pin!
Apparently show pins are a big deal. As I explained to Jesse Thorn on today’s show, it’s a bit like Olympic athletes trading pins but for our show it’s something you can just have on your sweatpants as you sit on the couch.
Here are other things available:
BONUS EPISODES! I recorded two bonuses for the drive:
DESTROY ALL MONSTERS COMMENTARY TRACK - John Hodgman and I watched the 1968 chock full o’ monsters monster movie and made observations and jokes. If you wondered what it would be like to kick back and watch a silly movie with us, now you will know.
TV WRITERS PANEL - In cooperation with the Dead Pilots Society podcast, I moderated a panel about the depictions of mental health on television and the mental health of tv writers. Rachel Bloom (creator and star of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), Steven Canals (creator of Pose), and Paul Puri (actual psychiatrist AND tv writer) joined me.
Rocket hats!
Membership cards!
Tea, it looks like!
I Have to Pace Myself on this Fundraising Business
It’s only the first day of the drive, it’s not even noon. I’m excited but must breathe. Breathe, John.
This thing seems like something I should pass along
Follow-up study finds a single dose of one drug can ease anxiety and depression for five years
Still unclear why the word “psilocybin” doesn’t appear in the headline. But that’s what the drug is. It’s psilocybin.
We need a jam band cover of this:
No we don’t.
Remember!
Join! We like existing!