Potatoes, Ketamine, Screens, Sleep, and Which to Get More of
Life is sure full of exciting nouns, right?
Jenny Lawson will inform and delight you about ketamine and books
When I interview the very famous and highly acclaimed writer Jenny Lawson, it’s just an absolute treat. For one thing, I know she’ll be honest and forthcoming about what’s going on in her life and in her mental health journey, which makes for a great interview. For another thing, I know that she’ll provide more than just information, she’ll offer insight as well.
This week, Jenny is my guest on Depresh Mode and she’s outstanding again. Highlights include a detailed discussion of what her ketamine treatment was like, including how she periodically worried about being lost in a ketamine fog forever but then came back into her own reality every time, guided by the voices of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. Jenny also details her somewhat intimate relationship with Wendy’s baked potatoes. As I say in this interview, I had been wanting to talk to someone about what clinical ketamine treatment really feels like and Jenny provides that.
Something that really intrigued me about Jenny is that she even though she deals with depression, anxiety, and ADHD, Jenny Lawson is a voracious reader. She’s able to read an entire book in one sitting. I hear from so many people who deal with some of those disorders and really struggle to read books even though they really want to. So if that’s you, you’ll want to tune into the episode to hear Jenny’s secrets.
Let me give you fun things!
It’s the second and FINAL week of the Max Fun Drive. Your chance to support my shows and my efforts toward mental health and better sleep.
I would like you to become a member of my shows and I want to GIVE YOU THINGS to thank you.
If you join even at $5/month, you get access to the 600+ hours of Max Fun Bonus Content.
We have pins to give you.
We can give you a Games on the Go kit or Bucket Hat.
We can even give you the biggest BAG YOU’VE EVER SEEN.
THANK YOU.
Here’s a ratio to remember: 70/30
We have been receiving some excellent support for Depresh Mode and Sleeping with Celebrities and we thank those who have become members during the Max Fun Drive.
70% of the revenue to run Maximum Fun shows comes from listener support. It’s not just most of the revenue, it’s the overwhelming majority. And 70/30 also refers to the rough split of your dollar given in membership:
One of my pet peeves is when people refer to the people pitching on public radio drives as “begging”. I don’t hear much begging, really. And I don’t think I beg. What I hear a lot is people explaining a business model and it goes like this:
Artists make good shows.
People listen to the shows and enjoy them because they’re good shows.
People send in financial support to keep getting and enjoying good shows.
That’ all, I’m done explaining it, there is no number 4.
You’ll notice what’s missing from that business model are media conglomerates, corporations, and other moneyed interests that interfere with the art being made. Maximum Fun is an employee-owned co-op. There is no pressure from on high to put profits above art because there is no on high.
Please support Depresh Mode and Maximum Fun and the concept of making podcasts in a better way. And thank you.
Alan Tudyk on Sleeping with Celebrities
We asked actor Alan Tudyk what he wanted to talk about on his appearance on Sleeping with Celebrities and he said yardsticks. He has a huge collection of yardsticks.
You might know Alan Tudyk as the star of the SyFy series Resident Alien or the groundbreaking series Firefly. You might know him from the films Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, 28 Days, or A Knight’s Tale. It’s possible also that you know Alan Tudyk from his robust participation in the yardstick collector community because the veteran character actor has a rather enormous collection of these measuring devices. Thousands of them. And Alan Tudyk will tell you all about his yardsticks as you drift off to sleep.
Please support our show so we can keep sending you off to Dreamland. Visit maximumfun.org/join and check out the fun thank you gifts you could receive when you become a member.
Are screens a huge problem for teen mental health, according to new book?
Axios has coverage on some of the findings in a new book by NYU professor Jonathan Haidt.
The pandemic is often cited as a driver of the teen mental health crisis, but it was brewing long before then. A growing body of research links the acceleration of the crisis to one of this century’s biggest events: the arrival of the smartphone.
“Smartphones and social media fundamentally changed the way teens spend their time outside of school,” says Jean Twenge, a psychologist and author of the book “Generations.”
“You take a generation of young people, they’re spending a lot more times in their rooms, alone, not sleeping, not hanging out with their friends in person. That’s a pretty bad formula for mental health.”
But here’s Jeff Jarvis’s Twitter thread of refutations to Haidt’s research from last April.
Shocker: getting enough sleep is really reeeeeally important to your emotional well being
There’s new research out about sleep and boy oh boy did they get a big-ass data set.
An analysis of 154 sleep deprivation studies conducted over a 50-year period across 28 countries revealed that sleep loss doesn’t just make us feel tired. It adversely impacts a host of other critical functions, including our emotional responsiveness, mood, and anxiety levels, thereby making us more vulnerable to psychological distress and disorders
These effects may be more pronounced in females than males:
When asked if she had any data (or an opinion based on data) that might explain why females, at least in some studies, seem more vulnerable to the emotional effects of sleep loss, Palmer pointed out that previous research suggests that females may be more sensitive to the neurobehavioral effects of sleep loss. For example, she said that in teen studies, researchers have found that poor sleep affects “next-day emotional experiences” more so in females than males.