Episode 8: Zach Kornfeld, Ira Glass, Rhett Miller

Or: threads and how to chase them

The first part: Zach Kornfeld

Let’s just say that’s the first part anyway. There’s a little bit of me talking Max Fun Drive at the top but it’s brief.

Our latest episode is pretty epic.

It’s hard to think of a better job description than “Try weird stuff with your friends, talk about it, reap untold riches.” But that’s pretty much what Zach does as part of the absurdly popular troupe, The Try Guys.

Here they are trying some food hacks from Tik Tok. This video has 2.4 million views as I write this:

Yet, as I’ve learned from guests over and over for many years now, having success doesn’t clear up health issues. That’s simply not how it works. It’s no more realistic to say “But you’re on top of the world, how could you have OCD?” than it is to say “But you’re on top of the world, how could you have leukemia?” In both cases, it’s like, well, yeah, I wish I didn’t.

So here’s a guy who was diagnosed with depression and OCD at an early age, who experienced a near-fatal car accident in 4th grade, and who is dealing with a painful autoimmune disorder in the current day. He’s also found a path that didn’t exist before he and his friends tried it. It’s not so much a matter of overcoming something, I think, as it is an example of how conflicting narratives (mental health issues vs. success) can exist at the same time.

In our chat, Zach brings up “The Gap” (not the clothing store), a talk by Ira Glass. Here’s that talk, animated. It’s short.

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The third part: Ira Glass

We’re going to temporarily skip past Rhett Miller here because we have some flow working.

I watched that video after I interviewed Zach and one thing that struck me was how out of context it was. Where was Ira when he was saying this? Didn’t sound like This American Life, it’s much looser than they usually do, less deliberate. And yet I’ve seen it brought up a lot over the last few years. Creative folks, regardless of their field, seem comforted by the permission Ira gives people to suck for a while. I think for a certain stripe of creative person, Ira is by this point a sage guru atop a mountain. People listen.

So I had questions about this thing. And I know from my own creative work that when you don’t get something and want to figure it out, that’s a good instinct to have and one that you should listen to. I thought it would be fun to get Ira on the show because I bet he’s a little confused by the popularity of this piece too.

And he agreed to do it because he was a little confused, I think. Maybe he remembers my name. We’ve emailed before and I’ve been around the public radio system. Or maybe he just thought it was interesting.

I’ve never talked to him before but the thread of where The Gap came from and what it says about sucking at something for a while proved to be something I wanted to talk about for longer than I had expected. And if I thought it was interesting and so did Ira Glass, I figured maybe audiences would too. And that’s why our show is so freaking long this week. I don’t mind. Hope you don’t either.

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The second part: Rhett Miller

It’s 1999 and my wife brings home a CD called Fight Songs by a band called Old 97’s. She had heard them on KEXP, I think, and liked the music so she bought a CD because we didn’t get our music Beamed Down From Space Or Whatever, we bought little discs that were expensive. And because it cost money, you listened more intently back then.

I loved the music. The singer would give anything, he sang, not to feel so jagged.

This is what we talk about, he sang, when we talk about love and I got the Raymond Carver reference. So who is this cowboy singer referencing Raymond Carver? Well, I should buy a lot more of their music and listen to it a bunch.

Well, fast forward many years and I’m living in St Paul and hosting a variety show. Several other people on the show know Rhett Miller personally so we invite him to appear and he’s a prince of a guy and we become friends.

Here is a lovely solo song by Rhett with Rachel Yamagata that is slyly very funny:

Folks: this is a weird thing. One of my favorite musicians has become my legit friend. And we’ve stayed friends. And Rhett is a regular guy with a job and he’s the same person onstage as offstage. But to me, they are different people because a favorite singer occupies different mental real estate than a friend. It’s weird but it’s happened to other people I’ve met who were favorite artists and then became, to varying degrees, regular friends. I won’t name drop but there are several.

And I think there’s a connection. If you like what someone has to say, you like what they have to say. Thus I recommend that you meet your heroes but expect them to be regular people.

Anyway, in 2015, when we needed a musician to make a theme song for my old show, I told my producer to try to think of a “Rhett Miller type” to approach. She correctly asserted that Rhett Miller was a Rhett Miller type and he said yes right away. For Depresh Mode, it only made sense to get that guy from the CD my wife brought home 22 years ago.

On this episode, Rhett is there to talk about donating to the show, public radio style. Which is even more of a stacking up of my worlds. Whew!

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Well, now I’ve gone and done it (a Max Fun Drive update)

So when we launched this Max Fun Drive, I thought maybe we’d get 200 donors. And as I write this, we’ve topped 500. I mentioned on last week’s Depresh Mode Debrief (Tuesdays at 1pm central on YouTube Live) that IF we hit 500, I would set a STRETCH goal and if we hit THAT, I would do something. Take it away, me.

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The party drugs are getting jobs

A psychedelic drug boom in mental health treatment comes closer to reality

Drugs long stigmatized, such as psilocybin and MDMA, are rising in profile as mental illness treatment options. Just last week, results from a phase 3 trial of MDMA combined with talk therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder showed results that were impressive.

“This is a pivotal event,” said Elemer Piros, a biotech analyst at Roth Capital Partners who covers the emerging alternative mental health treatment space. “It may not seem humongous, but it is one of the best and most rigorously executed trials in the space. And the results corroborate what we have seen time and time again from smaller studies over the past two decades,” he said, referencing remission rates double that of a placebo. “The magical experiences kept showing up, but no one had the courage to take it through to regulators.”

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