Season 1, Episode 2
Nick Quah
Hey folks, just a heads up: This episode contains references to suicide.
[Clip: The Hilarious World of Depression, John Moe and Miz Cracker]
John Moe:
Is depression funny?
Miz Cracker:
Depression is hilarious! When life is void of meaning, and joy, everything is hilarious! You're like, I can't believe that I am getting dressed today. [laughs] Like, why would I do that? When my naked body will be soon returning to the soil, anyway? [laughter] You know what I mean? [laughs]
Nick Quah
From LAist Studios, this is Servant of Pod.
Nick Quah
In many ways, my relationship with podcasts began as a mental health exercise. It was years ago, I was living by myself in Chicago. I was deeply unhappy, and I was deeply alone. To ward of loneliness, I would take long walks in the freezing Chicago air, listening to podcasts. I listen to people talk and tell stories, and interview each other and have a good time. That's how I started really getting into podcasts, as a way to manage my depression.
So for this episode, my guests was John Moe, the creator of the hit podcast, The Hilarious World of Depression, and the new memoir of the same name. We spoke a few weeks back, and we had planned to release the interview as part of our launch. The conversation was lights, thoughtful, fun; it was hopeful. We talked about the future, and where John might want to take the show. But much has changed since we spoke. Earlier this week, we learned that the show was being canceled. That Moe is being laid off by American Public Media. The official reason as reported elsewhere: “Economic turmoil and budget shortfalls due to the pandemic.” We briefly considered pulling this episode, but decided against it. We felt that what happened to The Hilarious World of Depression stands as a representation of how tenuous these times are, the pandemic, and its economic consequences. So we're running this interview to help honor John's vision. Furthermore, I really believe in the show. Since its debut in 2016, John has served up interviews with interesting people about depression, mental health, and most difficult moments in their lives. He's spoken with reporters and drag queens, actors and comedians, athletes and musicians. Recently, he sat down with Darryl McDaniels, otherwise known as DMC of Run-DMC, who spoke about a failed attempt to take his own life.
[Clip: The Hilarious World of Depression, Darryl McDaniels, DMC of Run-DMC]
We's in Austria Yugoslavia—somewhere, I was gonna go jump off the roof—at the hotel roof. When we's in Japan one time I went to the fucking hardware store by myself, but I didn't go with a translator. So the man behind the counter didn't know what the fuck. I need rat poisoning! So then, when I say I'm really gonna kill myself, this what happens? I said okay, if I kill myself, people gonna know the Run-DMC story. They're gonna know what me, Run and Jay did: first to go gold, first to go Platinum, first on the cover of Rolling Stone. Everything that hip hop is doing is because of me, Run and Jay and what we did to represent this beautiful culture. But they don't know about Darryl, the little boy who's no different from any other little boy or girl on the face of the earth.
Nick Quah
Heavy, human, hard and revealing. When I listened to the podcast over the years, I've often thought to myself, Man, I wish I had this back in Chicago. So I asked John, where he came up with the idea to do a show like this.
John Moe
Whenever I would talk about mental health and depression and suicide on Twitter, I got a tremendous response. And most of my Twitter is dad jokes and Black Sabbath references, [laughter] like it's not, it's pretty—
Nick Quah
— that's a big overlap.
John Moe
Yeah, it's pretty low brow and, you know, like—I'll say Twitter is just a valve on my brain that I just let the thoughts out on through typing. So nothing's ever all that considered, it just kind of plops out. Which is a big tonal shift when I started talking about mental health issues, and I just got this enormous response like from tweets of people saying, "Hey, what you said, inspired me and made me want to make an appointment with a therapist, and I did and I kept it this time and things are going great. Thank you for for tweeting that." I'm like, tweeting that. Like, that thing took me five seconds to type and this difference that it's having. So it's just this incredible response. And at the same time, I knew a lot of comedians and musicians so when Wits, the variety show I was doing, got cancelled. I was like, okay, well, what— what's in the cupboard here? Like, what can I make dinner with, what ingredients do I have? And it sort of seemed to line up nicely to talk about mental health. Given that, when I did, it seemed to go over big. And I had all these friendships really, or at least acquaintance-ships with a lot of creators, entertainers. And, you know, there there are, like a handful of radio shows that become consistent hits, like, I think the list is like, over the last 20 or 30 years: This American Life, Wait, wait, Don't Tell Me and Radiolab. Those are really—I mean, there are other shows on the air, and I've hosted them, but those are the hits. And so it's really hard to, to break into it and get all those stations to carry it and get sponsorship and get good time slots. And the podcast, I thought, you know, this is a really narrow idea that I have, but that's what podcasting is for. And I saw it as a chance to like take these tools that I had and work with a tremendous amount of freedom for the first time. So, I kind of had the idea and pitched it internally at A.P.M. and it really caught on. People really just latched onto it, to me to a surprising degree. Cuz I did think it was a sort of weird idea. I thought it might work, it might be a total disaster because they're asking comedians to talk about, like, definitionally the least funny thing in the world.
Nick Quah
Yeah.
John Moe
And so I pitched it, and then we, you know, there was enough interest to do a pilot. So we made a pilot with Patton Oswalt, and then we found a sponsor, and then we're off to the races.
Nick Quah
Was the concept for the show always the same? Like, I mean, my understand is that you start every—almost every episode with a sort of thesis, right? Like, do you—
Nick Quah
Do you find depression funny? Which it's still, you know, quietly a provocative question, but it also feels like a journey in a sense.
John Moe
—Yeah.
John Moe
Yeah. I mean, when I started the show—when I started thinking about the show, the idea was why are so many comedians depressed? Do depressed people—are depressed people more likely to be comedians, or does comedy make people depressed? And it quickly became clear that it was unanswerable because there's some people who say, yeah, it's just because comedians can talk about this. There are no more depressed comedians, than there are depressed dentists. But, if your dentist was talking about suicidal ideation, it would be bad for their business. Whereas if a comedian does, it's, it's part of the job. But then other people said: no, you know, depressed people see the world in a different way. And they are, they're sharp about observing the absurdity of it. And so comedy is a thing that they gravitate to. So there was kind of a difference of, of take on that. But what I discovered pretty quickly was that they were really good at describing it, and it's a hard thing to describe. And when they describe it in a resonant way, then people relate to it and pretty soon you're part of a community; and you're not just sort of, suffering alone in silence. And so that focus kind of shifted after the initial idea.
Nick Quah
But before you got to that point where the show's out, and it starts hitting its community, you mentioned that the station had a lot of sort of excitement around the show.
John Moe
Yeah.
Nick Quah
Was it difficult to just to even just get off the ground? Was it difficult to sell ads against or, or just to build a model around it?
John Moe
Well, I think, I think A.P.M. saw the same thing that was happening around the country and that I had seen, which was that there was a hunger to talk about this thing. There was a shift going on. In the same way, like with littering in the 70's and drunk driving in the 80's. People just said, let's get better about this. Let's change things. And there was a real hunger to talk about it. And then like, it was being talked about more among well known people. I mean, that all started, I think, with Dick Cavett in the 1970's, who was on our first season of our show. And so, mental health had already been identified by A.P.M. as an area that they really wanted to put some muscle behind, that and water—like global water issues. And so it fit really well with that and at the same time, there's a company in the Twin Cities called HealthPartners, which is a health care provider and an insurance company. And the company had been looking to do some partnerships with them. And so when we made the pilot, I met with them, me and a few other people from the company; and they had this website: makeitok.org, which was this really cool website that's all about destigmatizing mental health, promoting conversation—talking points, like how to approach someone when you're concerned, and they had stories about— individual stories that kind of traced how these things evolve. It wasn't just depression was all sorts of things. And they had this great website. They couldn't get enough people to go to it. They had bus ads and billboards and nothing really goose the traffic like they wanted. And so they had this fund for community support and community awareness. And what I wanted to do with the show matched up with what they were doing with Make It Ok, just the Venn diagram looked like a circle. So they sponsored us right out of the gate, which kind of gave us some wiggle room in terms of underwriting, and in terms of generating money in other ways. And it also let me get on an airplane to go out to Hollywood and talk to some of these people in their homes and in their offices. So that was a real serendipitous kind of arrangement. And we still have a very close partnership with them. It's kind of a unique thing, because they have nothing to do with the content of the show. Like everybody agreed on that right away, like there's, there's going to be a wall. But it's, sort of more like I go out and do events with them, and we talk to them all the time. So it's it's more of a partnership than a sponsorship. [music]
Nick Quah
And that partnership, at least in its current form, ended this week. More with John Moe in a minute. [music]
Nick Quah
John Moe has had a long career in public radio. For the podcast, I wanted to know whether he primarily pulled from that experience or with the he looks somewhere else for inspiration?
John Moe
I think I took a lot from Marc Maron, because you know, sort of about the mental health stuff—but like, Marc Maron and Howard Stern will just ask the blunt questions without worrying about like, without apologizing beforehand or without, you know, kind of tiptoeing through it. They'll just smash right in, and people tend to answer them. And that's what I really noticed, is that if they've agreed to be on the show, then they kind of know what's coming. And if I don't make the question scary, then they probably won't respond like it's scary. And that worked out really well. I think a lot of it is after being in radio, as long as I had been, seeing people just being comfortable with the narrow range of topic. And the drilling down was really inspirational, and you know, I could get that from a music podcast or a basketball podcast, or a lot of other things that I was listening to where you know, if you're going to talk about Karl Malone, you don't have to do the [laughs] radio thing of Karl Malone was a basket—.
Nick Quah
—also the best d—
John Moe
Yeah! [laughs] He was known as "The Mailman" and here's why. You know, you just talk about it, and the people who are listening to you get the reference already, and you're free to just drill down.
Nick Quah
This is one of the things I've been perpetually fascinated by, because even the two examples that you had like Marc Maron, on the one hand, Howard Stern to the other. There's this sort of sense of, with something like Maron and with podcasting in general, is the thing that we're talking about the whole—the narrow you get, the more you're allowed to be yourself.
John Moe
Mm hmm.
Nick Quah
And there's something about like, Stern, probably—possibly not these days—but especially, in his earlier like, part of his career where the very fact of his personal mess is the thing that makes him the shock jock. Like, well, what is this? It feels like this sort of embarrassment over the the personal, like in the broadcast culture.
John Moe
Yeah, I mean, I've got all the respect in the world for, for a lot of the things Howard Stern does. I've never been a fan; I've never been a listener, because some of it makes me uncomfortable, some of—the awkwardness of it and—I can't relax into it. And I think with with Maron, I heard him doing it in a more empathetic way, and doing it about things that you could tell matter to him. Like Howard Stern can have anybody on the show and ask those questions. I don't get the sense that he's very personally invested in any of it. And so, especially when I started the show, and I had a lot of people on the first season, who were, who were friends of mine, or acquaintances of mine, talking about things that I had also been through, I was I have always really put my heart in it. Like, you know, when someone's talking about some of these tough times, I might not have been through something identical to that, but I've been through something similar. And so, I kind of connect with that. I think the other thing that comes from is, before I was ever in radio, I was an actor for many years.
Nick Quah
Hmm.
John Moe
And what you're trained to do there is give your attention to your partner and go off to cues that they give you, and you have your the lines you have to say, and the situations that you're in. But, you're a human responding to another human, ultimately. And, I've tried to carry that over to interviewing. And so if somebody is, you know, telling a funny story about something that happened with their mental health, I'm probably having fun along with them. And if they're talking about some real dark stuff, I'm down there too. And I'm thinking in those terms, in that moment. I mean, that's one of the reasons when I'm done with an interview, I'm completely spent; I often need to take a nap. [laughs] Because it's, it's an incredibly emotional journey just to be the interviewer in that situation.
Nick Quah
Yeah. Is there like a collective weight that you feel? Because it does sound-what you just said there, with each interview, you're giving a lot of yourself in that situation? Yeah. I imagine that's different from sort of earlier parts of your broadcasting career?
John Moe
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I've done—I've been a producer. I've been a newscaster, I've been a reporter. When I did all those things, really my focus was on: how is this going to technically sound? And then what information can I get across in what is invariably a very short amount of time? So it's economy of language and it's a—
Nick Quah
—it's a puzzle, almost.
John Moe
Yeah, yeah! It's definitely solving a puzzle. I used to use that analogy when I did a four and a half minute tech show once a day for Marketplace. How can I get all this in 13 seconds? What preposition can I lose? What adjective can I lose? And so this was a different thing right away, when I didn't have to worry about the clock. I didn't have to worry about swear words. I didn't have to worry about a lot of things that I used to. And it really just let me lean into, in the interview, extracting the story; extracting the story in its full depth and color and then in editing and assembling the show using the parts that define the fundamental arc and putting it in the clearest relief I possibly could, so that the listener would have the same illumination that I found in the interview.
Nick Quah
I want us to unpack that that sort of post production process a little more. But before that, so I'm curious, like when you are done with these interviews, and then you find yourself spent, like, do you have like a self-care routine that happens afterwards? Like, what what's the decompression like?
John Moe
I just—I let it be. I don't try to expel it. You know, I might, depending where I am, I might go get a lovely cup of coffee or, [laughs] or a sandwich. You know, I might, I might nap, I usually don't, but I just sort of have to let it sit for a while. And when we do it in the A.P.M. headquarters, like if I've been in a studio there, we'll get through the interview and then at the end, Krissy and I will talk about okay, what stood out for you? What's—
Nick Quah
—and that's Krissy, your producer?
John Moe
Yeah. Like, what's the part that you're going to go home and tell your family about, this amazing thing that this person said; because that's probably something you want to keep and maybe build around. We'll have the debrief and then, she just sort of leaves me alone in terms of like, you know, gotta go voice this underwriter, you got to write the WebCopy. So we can just rest for a while, and then I can resume getting back to it.
Nick Quah
So there's like, no, like, pump up music or—
John Moe
No!
Nick Quah
Or watch—put on an episode of Parks and Recreation?
John Moe
No! I don't try to do that. I try to just let it sit. And, you know, it actually gives me a lot of clues about how to form the episode after the editing process is done. Like, what stood out and what was surprising? And I kind of just let that sit for a while, and then maybe watch some Bigfoot videos on YouTube because that always helps everything in my life.
Nick Quah
Yeah, that's the Pacific Northwest. [laughs]
John Moe
Yeah! You know what I'm talking about.
Nick Quah
So, when you sit down and you kind of like think through the arc of these interviews, what is the shape you're looking for? Like, what are the sort of main components to build around in the initial run of thinking back to an interview?
John Moe
I'll generally listen to it all the way through and then just like, you know, while I'm playing poker on my phone or something. Like, I try to do something else with my eyes in my hands, so I'm not checking email and and not paying attention to the interview, I try to avoid words. [laughs] And so I'll listen to it once, maybe twice. And then my process, which I just kind of didn't learn from anywhere, I just sort of came upon it, is I'll start separating out the interview, the raw tape into beats; of like, okay, this is the junior high section, and this is the part about when he was a shoe salesman. So I'll label it in all caps, each of those beats, I'll do like little micro cuts on the tape on Pro Tools, and label that cut "shoe salesman", "junior high", you know, "breaking with mother", whatever it is. And, then I start to kind of see the bones of like the chronology. And if I got to something about childhood late in the interview is something that I can slide back into the first part of the tape and have it be smooth, what it needs to transition does not fit at all? And then usually by then, something is kind of emerging that either has been talked about, or has been implied, or something that keeps coming up. And then I'll sort of weigh that against the public interest in this person. So an example, we have an episode with Steven Page from the Barenaked Ladies.
[Clip: The Hilarious World of Depression, Steven Page, Barenaked Ladies]
Well, I had this memory, I realized that suicidal ideation had been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. And I remembered walking home from school one day, and well probably many days, but I remember specifically one day of walking home from school and imagining the knife I was going to get out of the kitchen knife drawer. I was probably six. And it wasn't until I was in my 30's that it kind of dawned on me, that that's not how everybody thinks; that wasn't the normal way a six year old's brain should work. I mean, awareness of suicide is one thing, or being upset about something-but just having you know, have-the idea of having a plan. Thankfully, I know now that knife was super dull, my mom never had sharp knives.
John Moe
The thing that I thought about while listening to Steven being suicidal at age six, and you know all the things-being arrested for cocaine possession, and also being a pretty hilarious guy was—oh, okay, there's two levels here. You know, there's "One Week" is a great song, but it's ultimately about the collapse of a relationship, you know. And "Pinch Me" is a song that he brought up, which is a song about depression that he made Ed sing because he was more comfortable not singing it himself, because it was such a heavy song; and it's a it's a pop song. I even say in the episode, like, hold on, "Pinch Me" is a funny song. There's an underwear joke in it, and someone runs through the sprinkler in their gym shorts. That is a fun song about summer. [music] But then, you know you listen to it. I point this out in the in the podcast episode. There's also the lines:
[Music Clip: "Pinch Me", Barenaked Ladies
I feel fine enough, I guess. Considering everything's a mess.
John Moe
—and talking about leaving town and nobody would notice "that I'm not around." Like, it's a really bleak sign. And so that sort of two levels that he would operate on was really telling. And so he would be everybody's favorite party band. But then, if you pay attention to what he's really saying, he's doing things on the same level. And they're both truthful to Steve, and he's, you know, he's like, no, I do like, having fun with my friends. But then there's also this. So that, to me, was the most telling thing about it. And especially because that is something that if you think you know, that band, maybe there's a darker, deeper side to them. And I think people would appreciate knowing about that. That's something people might not have thought of, or you know, Mike Birbiglia is on our show, and he says, I've never been diagnosed as depressed but he also talks about this persistent obstacle of an inability to feel joy. [laughs] And, you know, and he talks about it in almost all of his shows but doesn't elaborate. And I'm like, okay, what's going on with Mike Birbiglia?
[Clip: The Hilarious World of Depression, Mike Birbiglia]
Mike Birbiglia:
I think that at a certain point, I had this understanding of, of my own existential dread, just this idea of like, well, there's, you know, there's not much we can do. [laughs] We're gonna die. It's gonna be either instantaneous and soon or it's gonna be—
John Moe:
—protractive and horrible—
Mike Birbiglia:
—in fourty or fifty years from now, and they'll have some declined to, and, and I feel like—I that's something I—you know, I feel like I can't get that out of my head. I think it's part of what makes me a comedian.
John Moe:
Mm hmm. (host)
Mike Birbiglia:
Because I think about that, and I think that part of the job of a certain type of comedian is like, what—the kinds of I do is, is to take the darkness and-and-and-and-and break it open and find the humor in it so that people themselves can see the humor in it. Because I think laughter is a great coping mechanism for a lot of darkness that surrounds us at all times. (mike)
John Moe
And that became a show really about how depression is a term that is sometimes just used for insurance purposes. Like all you're talking about with depression, you can call it that, or you can call it something else. You're talking about a dark tendency that is an obstacle in your life. And beyond that, it's semantics and nomenclature, what you know—however you want to go about that. But that really became what that show was about. And so I try to, I try to tell the person's story and use the insight that I've gleaned from their story. And from all these other dozens of interviews I've done. [music]
Nick Quah
This is neither here nor there, but I'm reminded that the word for inability to feel joy is anhedonia.
John Moe
Anhedonia. Yes.
Nick Quah
Which is a beautiful word.
John Moe
I know—
Nick Quah
—for something ghastly.
John Moe
I know. It's like gonorrhea. It's just a beautiful word. [laughs]
Nick Quah
In hindsight, gonorrhea is actually a fantastic word.
Nick Quah
After the break, how the podcasts changed John's life. [music]
John Moe
Yeah, yeah. [music]
Nick Quah
I'm curious has your relationship with, you know, mental health and your depression specifically changed since doing the show? Or starting the show?
John Moe
Yeah, it has in a kind of unexpected way. And a lot of that is from the book because after the first season we we won a Webby Award for Best Comedy Podcast, which I can only think must have mystified, actual comedy podcasts. And so, we were getting some buzz and my book agent said you should write a memoir. I said, nobody cares about me. She said: "That's depression talking, it'll help people." I said, okay. And then after the second season, I struck a deal with St. Martin's Press to write it. And then it was like, well, if I have to write a book about a subject, I better know the subject. And I don't know how well I know me, I better go start figuring that out. And honestly, like, through two seasons of the show, my thinking was, well, I've stopped my depression from getting worse. And I think I know where some of it comes from. And so then that's the best I can do. If I can just not get worse until I die, I will have won. [laughs] But then I thought, well, maybe I can get better? Maybe it doesn't have to be, just not worse? And I got into some good therapy, because I also wanted to find out more about how my mind works, for myself and for the sake of this book. And I got into Cognitive Behavioral Therapy because I researched enough of the modalities and the, you know, different approaches, that I had a good feeling that would work for me, not everything works for everybody. I thought that would work for me. And it did. And it was amazing and regulatory. So the show, I think, has given me enough variety of stories in terms of what works for people, what people have tried. You know, I've heard everything from Electroconvulsive Therapy to Ketamine to you know, a million other things, and it let me kind of see the menu and order what I thought would be good.
Nick Quah
I'm sort of thinking about, so I just re-listened to the Mike Birbiglia episode this morning for this, and he talked a little bit about the way he restructured to thinking about his sort of career—his working to contribute something, as opposed to be something. Do you feel like, your work with the podcast and the memoir has been sort of biggest contribution you had in your life or—
John Moe
Yeah. [laughs]
Nick Quah
How does that settle into your your personal narrative?
John Moe
Yeah, it's it's been—it's a show that I started because my other show had been canceled, and I wanted to keep having a job. And so—and this seemed like a good topic to have the show about. Now, this topic is what I do with my professional life, and there happens to be a podcast involved. Since the show started, I've been asked to do speeches all over the place. I was invited to go down to the Carter Center and met with Rosalyn Carter down there, like all these—writing this book—all these amazing things have happened. And it came in a time too, where it wasn't just that I was between shows, but I was I was solidly middle aged and I was thinking: what am I doing here on the planet? I'm not especially religious or even spiritual? So I didn't really believe any, in you're intended to do this, it's written down in a space book. [laughs] But I thought, well, what what should I do? What should I do to help people and, and this seemed like a chance to do that just before we launched, about four months before we launched, my wife had an acute appendicitis while we were on a vacation and it perforated. And we're very lucky to have her still with us. And, after that happened, you know—by the time that was like, all done, it was fall of 2016. And I thought, jeez, we could all go anytime. You know, tragedy is always just around the corner. And so maybe I could just help people carry things. Maybe I could just help with the load of being a person on the planet. It felt like the same sort of relief is when I was finally diagnosed with depression in my mid 30's after having it since seventh grade. It gave me a chance to think about my work in something other than what are the download numbers? What are the sponsorship numbers? Where are we on the charts? All these things that I ultimately can't really control and that I was had always had a tendency to misinterpret as a judgment on my own worth, you know, like, if a lot of people are listening to the show, that means I am a good boy. [laughs] And thinking in a different term, thinking in terms of like, go out there and help people. That's a goal that's much more easily filled, and much more generous to the world. So I was giving a speech at this conference for surgeons and talk about "imposter syndrome." What am I to tell surgeons? And the the person introducing me was was from HealthPartners and she said—talked about what I had done in my career. Like other shows I had done, and other things done. And she used the phrase "Prior to finding his true calling." And I'm like, oh, no, really! [laugher] I had the rest of the biography to find my legs again, because it really blew my mind. But it is, you know, I mean, who knows what the future holds. But this is, this is what I'd want to do; through this podcast through other things through books through speeches through, I don't know, folk music, whatever it is. It's the thing I want to do.
Nick Quah
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I really appreciate it.
John Moe
Well, thank you. This was delightful.
Nick Quah
On Tuesday afternoon, Moe tweeted, quote: "American Public Media has ended production of the Hilarious World of Depression. I have been laid off. I am unemployed. I don't know what the future will be. I thank them for giving me the opportunity to make the show happen in the first place. It's a hard day. I don't know where I go from here, but I I'm looking for work." End quote. We hope that the show finds a home and that Moe will be back in your headphones again soon. For now, though, if you haven't checked out the show, I highly recommend that you do. It was a helpful one for me. John Moe, The Hilarious World of Depression. [music]
Nick Quah
Servant of Pod is written and hosted by me, Nick Quah. You can check out more episodes at LAist.com/servantofpod. Web Design by Andy Cheatwood and the digital marketing teams at Southern California Public Radio. Logo and Branding by Leo G., Thanks to the team at LAist Studios, including: Kristen Hayford, Taylor Coffman, Kristin Muller and Leo G. Servant of Pod is a production of Laist Studios.
