Michael Brose is a former police officer turned recovery counselor. He’s also one of Paul’s support group friends. He talks about what led him to become a cop, how it magnified his anxiety, hyper-vigilance, and addiction, and how he finally got out.
Susan Cain is a best-selling author and someone who thinks very deliberately about emotions. She sits down with Paul and shares her journey from attorney to writer and how her appreciation for melancholy turned into her new book, Bittersweet.
Originally aired in 2015. The USC professor of law, psychiatry and psychology (in addition to a PhD in Psychoanalysis) talks about her history of schizophrenia, her multiple hospitalizations and how she has learned to manage it. They also talk about mental health and the law. We will be back with new episodes in August.
Originally aired in 2013. A father/brother figure to Paul, the high-school teacher reflects on his Mexican heritage, violent upbringing, tour in Vietnam, stints as a bouncer at a Hell’s Angels bar, and a Club Med guide, his getting “struck sober” and how he has evolved into the man his father never was. We will be back with new episodes in August.
Originally aired in 2013. The actor/comedian (Conan, Jimmy Fallon, Comedy Central) talks about his struggle to feel “authentically black” without betraying who he is, the state of comedy in the black community, honing his artistic voice, and his nerdish, turbulent childhood especially with his alcoholic mother. Follow him @BaronVonBlaq
Originally aired in 2015. Sold by her mother to a pedophile ring led by powerful politicians and aristocrats in her native Belgium, Anneke’s story is about more than just survival. She talks about the ways her PTSD affects her life but also about the empathy she learned at a young age that inspires her to teach yoga in prisons, especially fellow survivors of sex-trafficking. Anneke has a book out entitled Quest For Love: Memoir of a Child Sex Slave
Dr. Edward Shahrokh is Paul’s support group friend who also happens to be a psychologist. He studies addiction relapse and is well-versed in the psychology of “rescuers”–particularly because he used to be one himself.
Mary Mack (@MaryMackComedy) is a comedian, writer, and actor. Today, she sits down with Paul in an episode that takes place LIVE at Sisyphus Brewing in Minneapolis where she talks about growing up in a very small town and navigating her complicated family when she’s the only one in therapy.
Rebecca D is a friend from Paul’s support group. She opens up about her experience with covert incest (a father who treated her like his “wingman” when he was dating or weighing a woman’s attractiveness), her love-avoidant behavior, and her addictions to fantasy and marijuana.