Decluttering expert Tracy McCubbin shares about her experiences being raised by a hoarder and how she helps clients part with their stuff. She and Paul get into the topics of materialism, cheap-goods consumerism, compulsive shopping and using “stuff”, especially collecting to avoid feelings or issues in our lives.
Paul’s friend shares about the co-dependent relationship with his longtime lover that ended in tragedy & Todd’s PTSD, porn & meth binges tailspinning into a showdown on his roof vs a SWAT team, before finally having a moment of clarity and getting his life together piece by piece.
One of our best episodes – recorded in 2015 before she was famous (Girl’s Trip, Saturday Night Live) – Tiffany opens up about her horrific family life, being shuttled around the foster care system and finally finding her voice doing comedy.
The full archive of MIHH shows one year and older can be found exclusively on Stitcher Premium. For a free month of listening, go to stitcherpremium.com/mentalpod and use promo code ‘MENTAL’.
The blues-based singer-songwriter who has written for Bonnie Raitt and other artists started out in the epicenter of the NY/Boston folk scene among contemporaries like Bob Dylan and Eric Von Schmidt reminisces about his career, the art of songwriting, jamming with blues legends like Son House, his battles with alcoholism and what success means both professionally and personally.
He performs Train Home and Leave The Light On.
This week’s post-interview surveys and Chris’ performance of By The Numbers were released as a donor-only ep at www.Patreon.com/mentalpod
The hilarious author and uber-popular Tweeter @SoSadToday delves into subjects covered in her latest book, The Pisces (and reads from it). She and Paul talk about romantic obsession, sexual compulsion that leads to shame and regret; the overall search to fill the nothingness in a futile attempt to know the unknowable and the animal part of the brain that overrides logic.
The comedic actor, improviser and longtime Conan O’Brien sidekick opens up about his battles with depression, worry, anxiety and sadness and how he has learned to manage them with talk therapy. He also shares about the illusion he held that acquiring money and getting married would “fix him”. He talks about growing up in a combative, eventually-divorced house where humor was prized and how he felt shortly after that, learning his father had come out as gay.
The host of the Terrible Thanks For Asking podcast and author of It’s Okay To Laugh (Crying is Cool Too) sits down with Paul before a live audience to talk about how she processed (and still is) the grief of losing family members and dealing with her depression and anxiety. A funny and touching conversation.
The funny and vulnerable actor/comedian (Comedy Central Presents: Cy Amundson) opens up in front of a live audience about his OCD, anxiety and how the loss of his teenage sister affected him and his family.
The Harvard Medical School research psychologist’s recent TED Talk “The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage” went viral a month or so ago and here she sits down with Paul to talk about the human habit of judging ourselves for our feelings, how it affects us, the science behind it and how we can move away from toxic self-judgement.
She also shares some of her personal life; being born and raised in South Africa during Apartheid and losing a parent when she was a child.