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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio. John Moe has served as host of national

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Speaker 1: public radio broadcasts over the many years that I have

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Speaker 1: heard him, including Weekend America I didn't listen to but

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Speaker 1: I wish I had wits that sounded good, and he

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Speaker 1: is often featured on All Things Considered Morning Edition and

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Speaker 1: other national public radio products. He joins us here as

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Speaker 1: the author of the Hilarious World of Depression, some of

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Speaker 1: the material coming from the podcast, but not mostly because

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Speaker 1: the podcast is sort of an interview formatt and that

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Speaker 1: always makes me nervous. John, to interview an interviewer, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'll try to avoid turning any tables. No, but you're

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Speaker 1: going to judge me if I don't do it right.

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Speaker 1: I just know it. And I'm not actually a terrible interviewer,

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Speaker 1: because usually I don't. Yeah, I don't like to ask questions.

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Speaker 1: So I'll just give you the format of this show generally,

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Speaker 1: which is I will say stuff and then I'll come

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Speaker 1: to a full stop and there'll be an awkward pause,

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Speaker 1: and then you'll feel either compelled to comment or to

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Speaker 1: you know, sort of pull a comment unpack something from there.

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Speaker 1: How does that sound okay, sure, kay, that sounds unconventional

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Speaker 1: and yet refreshing. Yeah, but yeah, exactly because it avoids

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Speaker 1: all the So what about your to read your book?

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Speaker 1: You write your book? So I have a I have,

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Speaker 1: I've been blessed, and I would think, just biochemically, I

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Speaker 1: won the lottery in that one sense that although I

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Speaker 1: have been appropriately sad at emotional events which I think

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Speaker 1: require sadness, I would be a sociopath that might weren't.

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Speaker 1: I've never really experienced any kind of profound or what

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Speaker 1: you would refer to as cleany d a clinical depression.

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Speaker 1: And I don't think I even understood how lucky I

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Speaker 1: was in that genetic lottery until later on when I

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Speaker 1: realized a lot of my friends just don't have it

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Speaker 1: that that good in that sense. Yeah, I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: a tricky thing like I've been unable to ever really

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Speaker 1: define it. And that's part of what fascinated me about

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Speaker 1: the disorder, about the illness, is that I couldn't give

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Speaker 1: you an elevator pitch definition of what depression is. I

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Speaker 1: don't know anybody who could. I've read, you know, books

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Speaker 1: and writings and articles by by people who are very

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Speaker 1: experienced in psychiatry and psychology and they really can't. And

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Speaker 1: so um, you know, the a lot of what the

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Speaker 1: book does is it explores it through the stories that

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Speaker 1: people tell, the analogies that I come up with, and

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Speaker 1: it's it's really it's a tricky thing to to put

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Speaker 1: your finger on. It's kind of it's kind of impossible.

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Speaker 1: But really it comes down to a disorder. You know.

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Speaker 1: I was I interviewed Mike bar Bigli as a comedian

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Speaker 1: not long ago, and he said that that he had

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Speaker 1: never been diagnosed as depressed, and but yet he also

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Speaker 1: had an inability to feel joy and it interfered with,

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Speaker 1: you know, parts of his life. And I said, well,

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Speaker 1: that's sort of the same thing. It's it's a disorder

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Speaker 1: if it's getting in the way of doing things that

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Speaker 1: you need to be doing, not just you know, whitewater

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Speaker 1: rafting or something, but getting the kids to school, getting

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Speaker 1: getting a shower, getting out of bed, that's when it

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Speaker 1: becomes a disorder. But the term depression, you could use

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Speaker 1: it or not. It's it's more or less. A therapist

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Speaker 1: friend told me it's more or less for insurance purposes.

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Speaker 1: Have a darkness that's forming a block in your life

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Speaker 1: that's proving to be an obstacle. We call it a

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Speaker 1: major depressive disorder because then you can get it treated

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Speaker 1: in a medical type of situation. And yet medical works

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Speaker 1: for a lot of people, but not for everybody. And

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Speaker 1: I know that to be true, just even with friends

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Speaker 1: and family, and I also know that and some people,

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Speaker 1: you know, for them it was a savior. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's absolutely turned their life around. But I guess I'm

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Speaker 1: part of the point I'm pushing on that is that

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Speaker 1: people toss around the word depression when really they mean sadness.

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Speaker 1: And it's very fleeting. And if we're going to include

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Speaker 1: a definition of depression, I think in your book you

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Speaker 1: get to it right away. It's it becomes sort of

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Speaker 1: this inability to resist that dark cloud. It becomes that

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Speaker 1: dark cloud starts to control you, not you being able

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Speaker 1: to hold it off any longer. And that's what really

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Speaker 1: tricked me about it for a very long time. So

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Speaker 1: I didn't get diagnosed till I was in my mid thirties,

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Speaker 1: and so all the thoughts of depression that I had

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Speaker 1: experienced I thought was just my own brain. I thought

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Speaker 1: it was just the way the world was, you know,

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Speaker 1: the reality of the world, I figured was that I

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Speaker 1: was kind of weird and just not as good as

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Speaker 1: everybody else. And because I had been hearing that since

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Speaker 1: I first experienced this stuff when I was very young,

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Speaker 1: then I just thought, well, that's you know, that's the

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Speaker 1: oldest voice I can remember. That's the voice I know best.

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Speaker 1: So that's the ultimate truth. And I could have people

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Speaker 1: be friendly to me, I could get married, I could

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Speaker 1: have my wife and kids tell me they love me,

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Speaker 1: and it was all great, but I could say, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I'm I'm also like the worst person around. And

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Speaker 1: it took a long time to separate those thoughts and say, okay,

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Speaker 1: there's no logical basis for those thoughts. There's no empirical

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Speaker 1: evidence that suggests that this is true, and yet I

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Speaker 1: believe it, and so what's going on there? And then

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Speaker 1: that's when things really started to improves, when I could say, Okay,

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Speaker 1: that's distortion. That is the product of a disorder that

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Speaker 1: I have. But it's compounded, as you say, with the

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Speaker 1: vagueness of the term depression, because it is a disorder,

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Speaker 1: but it is also an emotion. You know, people say

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Speaker 1: they're depressed when their team lost the Super Bowl, but

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Speaker 1: they're just sad, and that's a healthy thing because they

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Speaker 1: cared about that team. If they felt nothing when the

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Speaker 1: team won the Super Bowl, that'd be a little bit

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Speaker 1: more cause for concern. But the depression is also a

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Speaker 1: weather term, and it's a geology term, and it's an

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Speaker 1: economic term. So it's it's really hard, I think, for

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Speaker 1: people to get a grip on what we're talking about

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Speaker 1: it in terms of a medical situation or a psychological disorder. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I don't usually spend as much time on somebody's book

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Speaker 1: jacket as I'm going to spend on years, but I

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Speaker 1: want to read one of the part of it because

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Speaker 1: I thought it really distilled the point very clearly. Again,

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Speaker 1: we're talking with John m The Hilarious World of Depression,

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Speaker 1: and it says here depression had John Moe questioning every

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Speaker 1: part of his life, from his loving marriage and children

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Speaker 1: to his career as a beloved public radio personality. And

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Speaker 1: I think, what's so interesting for me and I I'm

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Speaker 1: assuming you've had a similar experience. There's a lot of

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Speaker 1: people in media who go into media at least in

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Speaker 1: part because of their depression. I think it's true. I

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Speaker 1: think a lot of people, I mean the whole idea

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Speaker 1: for this started when I knew so many comedians who

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Speaker 1: were depressed, either talking about it on stage or just

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Speaker 1: as like, oh yeah, as friends, and I think there

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Speaker 1: is like early on it, right around the time depression hit,

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Speaker 1: I found that I was a pretty good actor, Like

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Speaker 1: I had a natural talent for acting, not great, but

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Speaker 1: pretty good enough that I could get cast in school

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Speaker 1: plays and make a a minor go of it as

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Speaker 1: an adult. And it worked out so well because you

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Speaker 1: could go on a stage or a set or whatever

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Speaker 1: it was and know, Okay, here's my relationship to all

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Speaker 1: these people. Here is exactly what I'm going to say,

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Speaker 1: and I know and advance what they're going to say

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Speaker 1: in return, and then at the end everybody collapsed and

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Speaker 1: and gives me the the support and encouragement that I

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Speaker 1: can't provide for myself. So it's and media is kind

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Speaker 1: of the same way, and I'm trying to It's been

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Speaker 1: a bit of a soul searching period really since I've

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Speaker 1: I've kind of focused on the issue of depression in

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Speaker 1: my professional career because along the way, you develop a

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Speaker 1: knack for doing it, in our case, for doing you know,

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Speaker 1: talking into microphones and finding out what happens when you

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Speaker 1: do it, and so I I love this and I

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Speaker 1: don't want to give it up. I hope I'm doing

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Speaker 1: it for the right reasons. And so for me, it

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Speaker 1: was a matter of kind of shifting what I talked about.

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Speaker 1: So when I got that response, it was some people

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Speaker 1: who said, oh, this, this book he wrote really helped

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Speaker 1: me figure out what was going on. I'm going to

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Speaker 1: go get some help or help me figure out what

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Speaker 1: my dad's been dealing with all these years. Well, and

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Speaker 1: I think I think that speaks to radio listeners too

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Speaker 1: in that especially on an overnight show like this, which

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Speaker 1: I've been a part of for two decades. But there's

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Speaker 1: been a recurring conversation in back channel originally chat rooms

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Speaker 1: than just even through email or through social media about

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Speaker 1: depression and about being up all night, being unable to sleep,

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Speaker 1: and learning to love the radio as sort of a

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Speaker 1: dashboard buddy to keep to kind of, you know, drive

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Speaker 1: them through these depressions. I thought that was that was

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Speaker 1: interesting on both sides. And so many people I know

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Speaker 1: who were either had depression or or were bipolar who

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Speaker 1: were performing the radio, and the people that had depression

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Speaker 1: or other issues that were listening to the radio, and

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Speaker 1: I thought, wow, that is just there's a there's a

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Speaker 1: kind of symmetry to that, but there's really a symbiosis.

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Speaker 1: And I think I don't know that anybody's ever addressed that. Well.

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Speaker 1: It's human connection, isn't it at the end of the day.

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Speaker 1: And it's it's the same thing that I have a

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Speaker 1: lot of friends who I talked to who are who

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Speaker 1: are in the book, musicians and singer songwriters, actors, novelists

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Speaker 1: and comedians, and when they're successful, they're they're saying something

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Speaker 1: that connects with people, right, And so um, I you know,

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Speaker 1: I'll talk to my friend Nico Case, singer songwriter and

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Speaker 1: brilliant songwriter, and she'll she'll write a line and deliver

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Speaker 1: it with her voice in just such a way that

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Speaker 1: gets through the recording and into the headphones or into

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Speaker 1: the speaker or whatever it is, and it hits people

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Speaker 1: in the heart and it's a magical thing. And I

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Speaker 1: think for people who who struggle, you who have to

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Speaker 1: make a conscious effort in getting through the day or

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Speaker 1: in navigating the world, that that's a really that's a

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Speaker 1: really terrific thing. Yeah, I think there are the the

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Speaker 1: co factors too that you experienced the OCDUM as a child,

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Speaker 1: even again undiagnosed, and the co factors that other people

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Speaker 1: may have that don't necessarily connect it to depression, and

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Speaker 1: they too may never have been clinically diagnosed, but they

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Speaker 1: may have other things too that you know, they may

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Speaker 1: have insomnia, they may have a bunch of other things

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Speaker 1: that that only feed that that downwards spiral that needs

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Speaker 1: to you know, the energy needs to go up and down.

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Speaker 1: And this is what you're doing so much in your book,

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Speaker 1: as you're trying to get the energy to go up

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Speaker 1: and not just keep drilling down. Well, I'm encouraging people

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Speaker 1: to look around for things that work for them. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I always say I'd be a really terrible guru or

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Speaker 1: cult leader because I don't believe there's one way to

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Speaker 1: treat it. I can't say follow me and do what

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Speaker 1: I say and you'll be all right. I just don't

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Speaker 1: believe that. But I think there's even though there's nothing

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Speaker 1: that works for everybody, there's something out there that'll work.

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Speaker 1: And there's a lot of trial and error involved in

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Speaker 1: finding and I try to describe that in the book too.

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Speaker 1: And I have friends who who only do therapy and

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Speaker 1: don't do meds. I have friends who do meds and

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Speaker 1: don't do therapy. I have friends that don't do either,

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Speaker 1: but they exercise like crazy, or they meditate or whatever

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Speaker 1: they do, and good for them. But you're you're right. Depression.

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Speaker 1: I always say, it's it's it's. It never rides alone.

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Speaker 1: It's not a simplo act. It's always part of a

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