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The Upgrade by Lifehacker

How to Laugh at Depression, With Humorist John Moe

Alice ​Hello and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcast from the team of Lifehacker, where
we help you improve your life one week at a time. I'm Alice Bradley, editor in chief of
Lifehacker. And today, I'm joined by our travel writer, Imani Bashir. Hi, Imani.

Imani ​Hi, Alice. Very happy to be here.

Alice ​Good to have you here. Imani, today, we're talking about a topic that feels more
necessary than ever before, and that is the topic of depression.

Imani ​Absolutely. Between the pandemic and all of its terrible outcomes on our health and
our families and our economic situations. And then, of course, the highlighting of the
overwhelming racial injustice in this country. I'd say we definitely need to take a moment to
talk about mental health.

Alice ​It's time. And who better to talk to us about depression than the brilliant and hilarious
John Moe of The Hilarious World of Depression podcast?

John Moe ​More and more I've started to think of depression as something of a
superpower because I do think to some extent the world really is awful. And so if you can
see that, then it's like you're seeing something other people can't admit to being the truth.

Imani ​John is a humorist, podcaster, and author. His new book, The Hilarious World of
Depression, just came out this past May. And I definitely have to say it is fantastic.

Alice ​It's a great book. And if you've never listened to his podcast with the same title, you
should really check it out. The thoughtful, honest and funny conversations are a real
pleasure to listen to whether you identify as what John calls a Saddie or a Normie. So,
Imani, I'm really looking forward to sharing today's interview because I got a lot out of it.

Imani ​Oh, I definitely did as well. It was so great to talk to John. He was so candid. And I
feel like his understanding of depression expands well past his own experience. It's
something that I certainly resonated with.

Alice ​Yeah, I think that's the real value of the podcast, is hearing so many different
perspectives that are so different. Right. About presumably the same illness and how
different how it can take on different shapes. It can be irritability, it can be just feeling
blank. It can be physical illness. It can be so many things.

Imani ​Absolutely. You know, I've I've had my bouts and I know people who've experienced
it and comes in many forms. And I think John does a brilliant job with showing us just in
the metaphor of the context of "hilarious" and "depression" being in the same sentence. It's
like it's a bit of an oxymoron. But at the same time, when you read his book, when you
listen to his podcast and obviously when you listen to this interview, you'll will definitely,
certainly get it.

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Alice ​I think it's something that he teaches us is that depression is worth laughing at, if
nothing else. So I think it's time to jump into it, shall we?

Imani ​Let's do it.

Alice ​So, John, welcome to The Upgrade.

John Moe ​Thank you so much.

Alice ​I am going to ask you the question that you ask all of your guests and I can't wait. Is
depression funny?

John Moe ​I think it is. And as you know, from listening to the show, a lot of people
disagree. But for me, it's funny in the way that Groucho Marx is funny, where Margaret
Dumont, like the the human mind, is represented by Margaret Dumont. And she just wants
to throw a lovely state dinner. And it's going to be dignified and everyone's going to look
great. And there's going to be great food and it's going to be elegant and that'll help
diplomacy. And then here come Groucho and his idiot friends to just fuck with everything
and just ruin things and just just, you know, make fun of everything. Say cool things,
destroy things that people have worked on. And it's awful. Like, it's categorically awful. But
it's funny that order is being disrupted in such a way. So, yes, to me it's funny.

Alice ​I would think of depression is kind of my inner Margaret Dumont like, that kind of,
you know, thinking there's only—very very rigid thinking there's only one way to do things.

John Moe ​Yeah. Yeah.

Alice ​Humorless.

John Moe ​I mean, it's it's true. Like more and more I've started to think of depression as
something of a superpower because I do think, I mean, and I don't know how much of this
is the depression talking, but to some extent, the world really is awful. And so if you can
see that, then it's like you're seeing, you know, something other people can't admit to
being the truth. But at the very least, it allows you to see the world in multiple ways and
understand the multiple perspectives. And and I've found that in many ways, being able to
look at that has has made me funnier, has made me appreciate comedy more. And it just
feels like, you know, I'm I'm smarter than the normies.

Imani ​I like that. I've heard I've heard a lot of comedians say that. I mean, typically, you
use the jokes, right. In some of the darkest areas of your life. But at the same time, you
know, for the rest of us, that could be, you know, a form of therapy. Laugh to keep from
crying. But if this is your profession. Does it actually work? Do you feel like that part of who
it is that you are as a comedian, really expressing some things that people laugh at but are
really kind of deep and dark? Do you find that it's actually therapeutic or can it be a bit
counterproductive?

John Moe ​I think it's more cathartic than therapy to kind of clear the deck and to kind of
say these things that that would otherwise stay hidden inside. I mean, a lot of the laughs
that a good comedian gets are from people recognizing a truth that hasn't been revealed.
And so if if a comedian, you know, really skilled Maria Bamford-type of comedian can lay
that out, the laugh comes from something of a sense of relief from the audience. Like, "I'm

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not the only one who thinks this. I'm not alone. I have a cohort." And I think that is good
community building. I've never subscribed to comedy being therapeutic or being, you
know, a form of therapy. I've talked to people who have and I respect them. For me, the
the therapy is necessarily a collaborative act. So a lot of people go to a therapist wrong.
You know, they go in thinking that it's going to be done to them like, you know, getting a
new transmission on their car while they just sit there. But it's a collaboration. It's a project
that you do with a therapist, and it's really, really hard. And so I think therapy is therapy,
but comedy can be revealing and cathartic, I guess.

Alice ​Yeah. Let's talk about your own journey, for lack of a better word, with therapy,
because you've talked about how it took you years and years to get into, to get into
therapy. Right. You tried with a bunch different therapists and backed out immediately.
Can you talk a little bit about that and why it took you so long?

John Moe ​Well, I mean, again, I was approaching therapy as a thing where I had a
problem and then I'll go and get it looked at and then I'll be fine. I approached it like
physical therapy. You know, I've got a problem in my knee. Well, here, take these
medicines and do these exercises, and in six weeks you'll be fine. But that's not really
what it is. It's about understanding what's going on. And so I...You know, part of that was
on me that I couldn't, I didn't really see how it worked. I went to good therapists, but for
whatever reason, I wasn't, I wasn't willing to, to commit to them, I think, because if you
commit, then you're going to eventually get into the really deep, scary stuff, which is sort of
the whole point is figuring out what that is and what that's been doing to you. Right. So but
yeah, it with depression, too, you get a diminished sense of self. And so you think, well,
I'm, I'm not worth it. You know, I'm not worth figuring out what's going on or I'm hopeless. I,
you know, I'm not going to do any of that. So it took me until well into making this show
that I've been making to entertain the idea that I could get better. I had stopped getting
worse. And I thought, "well, OK, I'll just get no worse until I die. And then I win." But I was
also like I was coming up on 50 and I was thinking, you know, I don't have a lot of time left,
ultimately, I don't know. You know, certainly I don't have any guarantees. I would like to
feel better. And so I approached it like I knew enough by that point about cognitive
behavioral therapy to know that that's what I really wanted to try. Nothing works for
everybody, but usually something works for any individual. And so I knew that's what I
wanted to do. And I, I went in there and I even said, I write about this in the book and the
very first session, I'm like, "I'm a storyteller by trade. And I'm going to try to spin this into a
narrative with a happy ending. Please don't let me," and, and my therapist was great about
that. And we hit it off. We connected. And that was you know, it was a combination of
finding the right form of therapy for me, finding the you know, the by-chance dating-style
person that I hit it off with. And really proximity, like her office is fairly close to my house.
So I could get over there in five minutes and like that, that shouldn't be underestimated.
That's a big thing.

Alice ​Yeah. Yeah. You know, you talked in the book about the difficulty of committing
suicide actually being good. Like having an impediment—

John Moe ​Yeah.

Alice ​—helps. And in the same way. I mean, not to make them too similar, but in the same
way, making therapy easy on yourself is something that doesn't occur to people, especially
people who are going through a depression. They think about, you know, "well, if I really

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want it, I should do it no matter what." But in fact, I think that's really important. Like, make
it as easy as you can.

John Moe ​Yeah. No, it's it's absolutely true. Like the an especially if, if you're dealing with
a problem that diminishes your energy. I mean, Dick Cavett, who we had on the show,
said, "depression is when there's like," I forget what metaphor he uses, but like, "there's a
magical wand on the table across the room. And if you wave this wand, your depression
will go away, but you just can't get over there." And, and so, yeah, the the the ease of
doing it makes a big difference. And unfortunately, in our in our country, ease of health
care is not a luxury we often have. And if you don't have insurance, there are you know,
therapists will often do a sliding scale. You pay where you can. But that has to be figured
out. And there are forms and there's negotiations. And so, you know, we have a situation
where the people least equipped to get help are...It's their task to get the most complicated
forms of help.

Imani ​It's interesting because, one I just, you brilliantly use metaphors throughout the book
and I'm always someone that I'm like, "just break it down to me in terms that I can
understand.".

John Moe ​Yeah.

Imani ​Coming from, you know, a community, specifically the black community, you know,
and even just in my home, you know, I'm the middle of five siblings, two-parent home.
Depression was something that was so obscure. It was so like outside of us. It wasn't
something like you thought of that as like the total end degree of stress. Now, realizing that
you can experience various forms of depression and one of the metaphors that you use is
you call it "bad property management" and you talk about how, you know, like pretty much
what you had been doing with your depression was like as though your house was burning
down and all you did was extinguish the fire. But then you don't fix the roof and you don't
do all the other parts—

John Moe ​How's the fire getting into the house?

Imani ​—Right. You know, of figuring out how did it even get in in the first place? How did it
even start? So in talking about, you know, the basic ways that people can begin to take the
steps, you know, when they don't understand depression, when they think it's so far
outside of them, but they are having feelings that they can't quite understand. How do they
get to that point? How do they get to that point of really understanding that this is a form of
depression?

John Moe ​Well, I mean, a friend of mine said that the term major depressive disorder is at
heart an insurance billing term. You know, it's it. It's something that you can put on a form
so that an insurance claim can get activated and, and so forth. It's in a human sense if
something is happening in your mind that's stopping you from living just the basic
functions, the day to day functions of, of your life. That's a disorder. You know, that's an
obstacle that you have if you have a hard time, you know, getting around to doing the
laundry, if you have a hard time, like keeping your patience around your kids. I mean,
everybody does. But if it's a real if it's a real problem, you know, that's that's a disorder and
that's something that can be addressed. And so, you know, I ​[00:13:59]​I interviewed Mike
Birbiglia, the comedian, and we talked about how in all of his shows he will toss out, "oh,
and I have an incapacity to feel joy. But anyway, this one time..." Like, he'll toss it out and

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then not elaborate on it. And I said, well, you know, that's that's anhedonia. Like, that's
that's a thing. And he says, "well, I've never been diagnosed with depression. I just have
this persistent darkness around me." I'm like, well, you know, you can call it whatever you
want. You can use clinical terms or you can use like country music or blues music terms,
like it's all describing the same thing. But if it's impeding your life as a human being, what's
happening in your mind, then that's a mental disorder. And we have you know, and if
people can get past the image of the societal image of a mental disorder, meaning that
you're in a straight jacket and you think you're Napoleon, then we can take care of a lot of
those things. ​[62.9s] ​But I mean, you mentioned being in a, being in a black family and
having the idea of of depression. Like so many of the black guests I've had on my show,
use the phrase, "I always thought that was white people shit," you know, to, to have the
luxury of depression, like to, to just feel sad, you know? No, I'm busy trying not to die
outside. And so that's something that that has come up again and again. But then it's
again, it's the different terms for the same thing where, where some of these people I've
interviewed will say, like, "yeah, you know, that's I my family never believed in it, but I also
can't form strong relationships," or, you know, "that's the way it's always been. But, you
know, I, I just figured that's that's not what's happening to me because that's I can't hold in
my hand. That's not a real thing." Which is another problem with depression. It's it's
colorless, formless, odorless, doesn't show up on a CAT scan or an X-ray. So, you know,
there's often different nomenclature surrounding what's essentially the same thing.

Alice ​Yeah, that's something that really that you really drive home on your podcast
because you're listening to all these different guests and their experiences are so different.
There is depression masked as irritability, as just kind of blankness, as anxiety—have any
of the interviews really stuck with you for that for that reason?

John Moe ​Boy, the couple that really struck me, one was Neal Brennan, who is a
comedian. He co-created Chappelle's Show with Dave Chappelle and he talked about the
achievement illusion, of if I could just get to this point. You know, if I could if I could, in his
case, direct a major motion picture, then I won't be depressed because who could be
depressed when they've achieved that? And then, of course, you still are. And he talked
about actors that he knows, like Academy Award winning household names, who figured,
well, if I got an Oscar, this will all go away. But it's it's not coming from the achievements.
It's coming from from inside. And that that really struck me because I've been I've been
achievement-oriented my whole life. I just thought, well, if I could get you know, if I can do
this thing, if I have a choice here and this thing brings me more fame or money or
whatever it is, if it looks better on a Facebook boast, then I'll be fine. And I've been chasing
that forever. You know, I thought, well, if I could publish one book, you know, that's great.
Well, I should probably publish a second book so it'll prove that I wasn't a fluke the first
time, you know, and I'm up to four now, five, actually, because I ghostwrote one for a Vine
celebrity, but I didn't even put my name on it. And so that struck me, the other one that I
did last fall was with DMC from Run DMC. And that's somebody that I've been listening to
for, for decades. And to me, even more than the other guys in that group like DMC was the
pillar of strength. Like that was you know, he was the one with the big thick glasses and
the crossed arms come to find out. Those were all masks. Those were all protective
barriers. I'm going to hide behind the biggest glasses I have. I'm going to put on this hat
and went across my arms and then nobody can get me. And he struggled. He had
problems with alcohol. He was suicidal. And he was you know, he has a wonderful story
that he first told on the moth, but he shared again on our show of of the redemption that he
found in a Sarah McLachlan song. You know, it just the weird path that he took and so to
me, like, if DMC can be in that spot of just thinking that he's nothing, you know, then it

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doesn't it doesn't care. It doesn't. You can't achieve your way out of it. I mean, he told his
story. He's a people pleaser. He says, you know, he'll he'll sacrifice anything for himself in
order to please those around him because that's typical when you have a diminished
sense of self. And so he he said that he was on tour with Run DMC and they were in
Japan and he wanted to kill himself. And so he would go to you went to a Japanese
hardware store to buy rat poison. But he didn't speak Japanese. And the guy there didn't
speak English. And he says, so just picture me in a Tokyo hardware store yelling "rat
poison mother fucker." And I said I said, "well, why didn't you know? You're presumably
staying in a hotel. You have access to tall, you know, high floors. Why didn't you jump?"
He said "I didn't jump because if I died running, Jay would get mad at me." So that the
people-pleasing was such a barrier that it transcended mortality itself.

Alice ​Oh, my God.

John Moe ​So, yeah, it was it was amazing. I was I was just vibrating after talking with
DMC, that was amazing.

Alice ​Yeah.

Imani ​I love your description of normies versus the saddies. And, you know, one of the
things that I find about, like the quote unquote "normies" is that, you know, a lot of people
have this very wrong idea of what depression looks like. I was that person at one point
where I thought that it had to be something so dark and then like years after my first, like,
move abroad, I moved to Egypt. I was doing, like, all of these amazing things. But I cried
for maybe 60 days straight. I was crying every day for 60 days. And I kept calling my dad.
And I was like, I don't know what's wrong. Like, you know, I'm doing things. I'm going to
the mall. I'm going shopping. I mean, I think I'm enjoying my life. And then I realized I had
an incredible sense of loneliness an incredible—like something that I couldn't even
describe. And I did realize that I was a functioning depressive, like I was functioning. I was
doing I wasn't, you know, in black all the time. And, you know, my windows weren't drawn.
I was going outside. I was living my life. What is a thing that you think that the normies get
wrong about the saddies?

John Moe ​[00:21:28]​Well, we have this word depression. And it means so many things,
like it has a geological meaning, and has a weather meaning and it has all these different
meanings. And among them, it's an emotion and a disorder which are so close together.
And I think that's the big misunderstanding, is that, you know, you may be sad when
something happens, but that doesn't mean you're unhealthy. It means you're healthy
because you know, you're not depressed. If your team lost the World Series, that's that's
how one would feel like here. You're having an average emotional life. But it's when you're
sad. Out of nowhere for no reason or in my case, like I've never been I've never had the
kind of cliche depression, like you say, you know, cover the windows and listen to the
Smiths. I don't even like the Smiths. Yeah. So for me, it always came in the form of
agitation or anger or a lot of these other things. So I thought, well, it can't be depression
because I'm not like that. But that's the mood. The disorder is. Everything has been muted
and diminished. And your capacity for dealing with it has been ratcheted down like it's it's
more of like a sort of a universal fader kind of thing. ​[86.3s] ​So, yeah, I think that's that's
what they don't get. I it's funny. People write to me now and say, you know, "I'm a saddie
and I really appreciate it" or, you know, "I'm more of a normie. But but this you know, I now
I understand it better." And those terms came from from booking the show where my
producer and I would just have all these names on post-its and put them on the wall and

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and be like, "oh, you know, I wanted to get Hodgeman. But John Hodgman is a normie."
"Really? He's a normie?" "Yeah. Yeah. But, you know who's a saddie? Paul F. Tompkins."
"No. He always seemed like a normie." So like we would we would toss those around. And
then when I had to write the book, I'm like, I'll just save myself some effort. And. And you
know, go like that.

Imani ​You have a great episode on The Hilarious World of Depression, on your podcast,
where you talk about movies and you bring in people from all over the world that talk about
movies that are as accurate of a depiction of depression as possible, which I thought was
fantastic because a lot of times we say that art imitates life, but a lot of times it's a it's a
real, like, super dramatization or it falls under the radar. I was recently watching Thirteen
Reasons Why on Netflix. And it was probably so eerily close to a real life depiction
surrounded by a girl who tells why it is that she chose to commit suicide. And it was I
mean, till this day, it's like very triggering. But I think it's also cathartic in a way, to see it in
entertainment. How important do you think, as far as I mean, because you also do a
podcast, you're also a comedian, and so you bring these things in the form of
entertainment. How important is it for, you know, even just the newer generation to be able
to see these things in as realistic ways as possible?

John Moe ​I think, you know, any movie, any play, any novel has its own scenic reality, has
the rules that it builds around itself. So, you know, like you might like the show, the
Leftovers, but it's not realistic because you don't live in a world where two percent of the
population vanished. I think truthfulness is more important than realism. And so if you're
going to present a character who's depressed, you know, I think it's I think it's important to
to honor what happens to the human mind in that situation. And if you're not going to do
that, then get some other explanation going so people aren't confused. It's that the
challenge is that, again, as with medical imaging, it's not a dramatically exciting disorder.
It's not it's not like dissociative, you know, multiple personality, which I think is played for
for laughs or lack of realism more often than it should. But it's you know, it's all happening
in the area where the cameras can't go. But I think anything that makes you feel
understood like that makes you feel like you're not a pariah. I mean, I walked around for
literally decades with this thing thinking that I was the only one who had it, you know, and
logically, that can't be true. But when you decide that at age 12, it stays true and from
some deep down voice. So I think, you know, finding those movies, finding music that
speaks to that, finding literature, finding a painting. I mean, I remember like the first time I
went to the Art Institute of Chicago and it was the first big museum I had ever been to and
walking around and like, you would see a painting from like the sixteen hundreds. But
there was something about the eyes of the person, the painting you're like, "I understand
you, I get you right now." And, you know, that's that's the highly democratic and beautiful
function of art, I think.

Alice ​So obviously right now, lots of people who define themselves as "normies" are now
feeling for lack of a better term, saddie. Right. Like, there's stuff that's—

John Moe ​Welcome to the jungle.

Alice ​Exactly. It's like there's stuff that's legitimately causing great depression, anxiety,
sadness. How do you know whether, because there's lots of good reasons to be anxious
and sad, how do you know whether your anxiety, your sadness, is situational and logical
and therefore short-lived or or how do you know when it's becoming a real diagnosable
problem?

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John Moe ​You know, it's we are we are going through extraordinary times. And I think that
a lot of people are experiencing symptoms similar to what major depressive disorder offers
or or, you know, what trauma introduces. I think we're nationally traumatized at this point
from this these events. We're going gonna have to deal with it for a long time. You know, I
will say that very few people describe themselves as normies in the same way that nobody
says, "oh, I was popular in high school," like everybody thinks like I've been hearing from
literal cheerleaders from my high school from this book saying, "oh, God, no, I was just
hoping not to be exposed the whole time as being the fraud that I am." You know, I can't
diagnose what anyone has, but I think if if it's creating an obstacle again in your life and if
your if your thoughts are not within your control, try to see someone. And if it's not a
therapist or God forbid, a psychiatrist, because the wait for those people is forever, try to
get into a GP, try to get into just a regular family doctor and say, here's what I'm going
through. And then they can get the referral going. They can take a look at the the
pharmaceutical options and get it looked at and, you know, in the same way that like, oh,
my elbow has been feeling weird, you know. Did you fracture a bone or did you just
hyperextend it and it'll be fine in a while? You know, they can they can make those calls
that that you and I can't. But, you know, ​[00:29:13]​the big thing for me is just to listen to
listen to your mind in the same way that you listen to your body. And unfortunately, people
with who really do have depression, that's a taller order because you don't value yourself
enough to to get that checked out. ​[15.2s] ​But it's you know, it's as you know, from reading
the book, my my brother died by suicide after a lifelong depression that he felt he
deserved. You know, he felt that that he wasn't worthy of treatment because that's that's
the evil trick that it plays on you. So my my message is just go get it checked out. And if
they say no, you're just a little bummed out. What wonderful news. And if they say no,
you've got a chronic mental illness, here's a way to treat it. What wonderful news.

Alice ​John, thank you so much for joining us.

John Moe ​Oh, my pleasure. Thank you.

Alice ​And now it's time for upgrade of the week. Every week we talk about that one tiny
thing making a big difference in our lives. John Moe, what's your upgrade this week?

John Moe ​It's jigsaw puzzles. I am a fan of crosswords, and I do the crossword as just an
everyday thing. But ever since, ever since Covid started, I've gotten way into
thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles. And it is a restful mind exercise because you have all
these pieces and you will assemble them and you make steady progress, sometimes very
slow progress. But it's all, but it does get slowly easier as it goes along. You start with a
thousand pieces. And when you find those two, those first two together, it's very exciting.
But, you know, I'm on I'm probably about eight hundred pieces into the one I'm doing now.
And it just gets easier and easier and easier. And when I'm doing that, I can't think about
anything else. Like it occupies my mind. And we have a little little part of the house set up
for it. And the kids kind of come and go, but they know Dad's zoning out. And. And if you if
your mind can go somewhere else right now, that's a great thing to do.

Alice ​That's excellent. I've been trying to get into meditation and failing, so maybe that's
my meditation.

John Moe ​Yeah.

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Alice ​I need to try jigsaw puzzles.

John Moe ​Yeah. No, I haven't been meditating is as much as I have, although MBSR has
been helpful to me. Mindfulness-based stress reduction meditation has been...Like I. I try. I
stayed away from meditation for a long time because it was some hippie shit. But.

Alice ​Yeah.

John Moe ​But now I enjoy it quite a bit.

Alice ​Wow. Okay, cool. This week we get to upgrades for the price of one.

John Moe ​There you go.

Alice ​Thanks so much.

John Moe ​Thank you.

Alice ​And that's our show, the upgrade is produced by Micaela Heck and mixed by Brad
Fisher.

Imani ​And please, rate on Apple podcasts. Five Stars is ideal. I mean, obviously,.

Alice ​Five stars is the only the only one.

Imani ​That's it. That's it. There's no other stars, there's just five guys. It really helps other
people find our show. And if you're feeling extra generous, we'd love a review, too. But,
you know, make sure it's nice. You can also reach us—

Alice ​My feelings get easily hurt.

Imani ​Absolutely. We're fragile on the side of the world. OK? Know you can also reach us
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