Longer, more in-depth story from Current, the public radio newspaper.
So many people and organizations just continually making everything worse for themselves and everyone else.
The real bomb drop here is that Houston said screw it, we’re dropping the show. That reverberates loudly through the public radio system and, hopefully, at the NYT.
Disclosure for what it’s worth: APM distributes The Daily to public radio stations. I worked at APM for many years and got laid off last summer.
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My favorite tv show is Adventure Time. I am here to argue that if you look at the show from an angle of mental health and managing it, Finn and Jake are not the lead characters. Princess Bubblegum is. 1
The most compelling character on the show, to me anyway, is Lemongrab. He was created by PB, the first of the candy people she created to “go wrong”. Lemongrab has devastating anxiety. He doesn’t know and can’t learn how to interact with the world. 2
When he’s lonely, he sneaks into the castle to stare at people while they sleep. PB tries to teach him to cuddle and play with a candy person but he can only poke and slap. He screams, he calls things “unacceptable”, he sentences folks to the dungeon. 3
My brother Rick would have been 58 today but he’s not. In 2007, he went to a gun range in San Diego and shot himself in the head. This came after many years of addiction, depression, and thinking he was worthless. Each year on his birthday, I talk about mental health here.
The drugs were to kill the pain from the depression. When he kicked his addiction but couldn’t kick the pain, he killed himself. Rick never sought much help for the depression because he thought it was his fault. That he was weak.
In the last years of his life, Rick volunteered on a Narcotics Anonymous hotline. 30-40 hours a week. He’d drive his delivery truck, volunteer, and sleep. He believed everyone had worth and a life worth living. Except for himself.
People have been so nice today about APM ceasing production on THWoD the Pod.
Unlike when Wits ended, there’s no one weirdly being glad because they didn’t like the show and thus nobody should hear it. That was rough.
It’s also been an interesting case study...
Like what happens when am historically depressed person gets whomped like this?
Well, so far, it’s better than it could have been.
For one, today’s events are not the death of me. Because the thing I make is not the same as who I am. That’s an easy trap for creative daddies...
Saddies. Not daddies. Maybe saddy daddies. But also saddie mommies. And saddies who aren’t parents for good reasons.
Hello!
I think the pandemic is awful for people with depression and anxiety in a way that is somewhat different than how the normies experience it.
Folks like us have always gone through the world fearing that something murderous is just around the corner and now: hello!
"Just deal with it" has never been our specialty, you see.
And now the vague fears are the reality. And "I KNEW it!" is no consolation.
It would be nice if getting it right brought us consolation but instead it's just a double helping of the bad thought patterns.
Let me speak to the normies here: Hi. How are you? How are you enjoying your, I don't know, Bradley Cooper films? And Foo Fighters records?
All this terror and anxiety and self-doubt you're feeling about what to do and what will happen?
That's us ALL THE TIME. Sucks, right?
It's August 24th. And this is the day that my brother Rick should be turning 57 years old. He won't do that because he died by suicide in 2007, after a years-long struggle with depression and addiction that went largely untreated because he was ashamed.
So for the past several years, I've been sharing my thoughts on this day here on the oft-problematic but occasionally good Twitter.
A bit of a recap first and then what feels to me like an important update.
Rick was my hero because he was my big brother. But even if we weren't related, I would have found him to be one of the kindest, smartest, and funniest people I knew. What I didn't see when we were young was the pain he was in.