All Episodes

Wil Wheaton was a child star in Stand By Me, a regular on Star Trek: The Next Generation as a teenager, and has been trying to figure out his role in show business for a long time since then. He was dealing with the pressures of fame and the fickle tastes of Hollywood, all while […]

Season 2 of The Hilarious World of Depression starts on September 25, 2017. Get a jump on it by hearing from some of the comics, actors, authors, and musicians you’ll get to know this season.

What if clinical depression was not just a thing in someone’s brain but an actual other person entirely? What would they look like? Act like? Who would they be? And how would you interact with such a person? It’s a mental exercise that many find helpful in isolating the disease from the self to better […]

If you are having problems with your mental health, please get help. You’ve heard that before on this show and probably plenty of other places as well. But how do you actually do that? How do you go about finding professional help to get things on a better track? It’s a process that can be […]

Depression can be really hard to define, making it difficult for anyone who doesn’t have it to be understand it. And that can make the people who do have it feel that much more alone. We asked our listeners what movie, TV show, artwork, or other piece of culture gets depression right. The answers range […]

When we asked listeners about their favorite songs to listen to while battling depression, The Mountain Goats’ music kept coming up. We caught up with the band’s founder, singer, and songwriter, John Darnielle, to learn about what goes into his process. We also find out about the music he listens to and the other ways […]

There are many ways to address depression: therapy, meds, exercise, music. And then there are our own thoughts. We learn the mantras, reminders, and rituals that some of our listeners use to get through it when Clinny D flares up.

When clinical depression, the ol’ Clinny D, starts getting the best of our listeners, a lot of them reach for the headphones to fire up some choice tunes. We take another spin through the therapeutic playlist and hear from The Beach Boys, the Grateful Dead, and a Taylor Swift cover you simply must listen to.

We asked our listeners to tell us about the songs they use when depression is hitting hard. Take a listen to some of the responses, both the songs themselves and the stories behind them in this highly musical trip through the jukebox that is Clinny D. You won’t often find mix tapes with Doris Day, […]

More ideas from listeners for unusual methods they used to address their depression that actually worked. We’ve heard a wide variety of ideas from all over the world, including Jonna Nummela of Helsinki, Finland who tells about her clown alter-ego who takes lumps so Jonna doesn’t have to. We also hear about what Jonna brings […]

It’s a crossover conversation between The Hilarious World of Depression’s John Moe and Ana Marie Cox, host of the podcast With Friends Like These. Both shows traffic in the idea of having more conversations about things that don’t get talked about very often. In that spirit, John and Ana Marie open about some events that […]

We asked listeners for the strangest ways they’ve tried to treat their depression that actually worked. And boy, did they ever come through. We hear musical solutions, efforts to enumerate animals, and some clandestine harmless vandalism on the streets of Ottawa.

Peter Sagal, host of NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! was our guest on the very first episode of our podcast. He used the occasion to break a long silence and tell the world that he’s struggled with depression, the first time he had told anyone other than a doctor. On this placebo episode, we check […]

March is #trypod time all over the podcast world and we’re getting in the spirit by offering an episode of another American Public Media program. Terrible, Thanks for Asking explores the sometimes difficult answers that people avoid giving when asked, “How are you?”

THWoD stops by to say hello with a mini-episode. A not-really-an-episode. A placebo. Instead of talking to professional comedians, host John Moe talks to some listeners of the show about their surprisingly amusing tales of struggling with depression. We hear about the power of a pair of concert tickets, a very special friend who isn’t […]

Comedian and actor Paul F. Tompkins is known for being friendly and delightful both on stage and off. And that’s pretty surprising given that he grew up in a home where his parents slept in separate rooms, each likely struggling with undiagnosed and untreated depression, and conflict and anger were all around. Hear how comedy […]

The life of a professional comedian and actor can be glamorous at times. You get recognized, go to the occasional celebrity party, maybe have a lot of strangers know your name. But it didn’t feel all that swanky to Baron Vaughn when he was holed up in a Vancouver apartment for days at a time, […]

Before she was a successful LA comic with a new Netflix special, Jen Kirkman was a somewhat confused kid growing up in Boston. Hear how she got screwed up by nuclear war anxiety, found her calling in comedy, and ultimately learned to leverage her creativity and imagination to take on depression and anxiety.