The actress (Hung, True Blood, Date Night, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Reno 911) and solo theatre artist (Bust) opens up about being an adopted child growing up in a family uncomfortable with emotion, her food and weight issues and the manipulative, alcoholic 23 year-old who wouldn’t leave her alone when she was 16. She also talks about a lie that snowballed out of control and why she had trouble stopping it.
Nerds get bullied – but nerds who are also “spazzes” as Dan describes his younger self, get the worst of it. The comedian/writer opens up about the abuse he endured as well as the tactics one can employ to minimize it. He and Paul talk about science, Tycho Brahe, atheism, hostile audiences, the questioning of one’s sexuality and the difficulty in silencing internal messages that were literally pounded in.
Paul shares a single day of feeback from the listeners, including various surveys from the website, fears, loves and several emails. Topics include the cloudiness of depression, a 13 year-old boy who was seduced by two of his friends’ mothers, and a mom who is ashamed at feeling overwhelmed by her disabled child.
The comedian / actress / musician opens up about her childhood, the impact of her parents’ divorce, her obsessive worrying, her aborted engagement to a crack addict and what she learned about herself. People know Kerri from Reno 911, MTV’s The State, the sitcom Still Standing, and the indie rock band Cake Like.
The writer (Huffington Post), stand-up comedian (Late Late Show w/ Craig Ferguson), podcaster (My Picker is Broken) and longtime friend opens up about everything. From his abusive mother, his 5x married father, his summer of daily acid trips, his odd wet dream about his aunt and much, much more. Do highly disciplined people have more trouble accepting their partners flaws? Update: Todd is no longer doing the My Picker is Broken podcast.
The standup comedian and Long Island native opens up about her struggle to live with various mental illnesses, especially PTSD caused by childhood and adolescent sexual abuse. She and Paul discuss having compassion for oneself and how to learn to trust after being abused as a child. They also discuss social anorexia as a byproduct of depression.
African-American and gay, Derrick has always struggled with the fact that he doesn’t put his mother on a pedestal. Quite the opposite, he doesn’t feel safe around her. He opens up about her mental illness, her sexualizing him at an early age and the effect it has had on him and his sexuality, including sex addiction and attending a support group. Derrick is mail carrier and lives in Southern California.
A former Marxist revolutionary who fled her native Iran after the capture of her husband in the mid 80’s, she eventually settled in San Francisco and became a nurse at a psychiatric hospital. The fact that we never even discuss what she has experienced as a nurse in two hours speaks to the amount of drama she has endured. Survivor’s guilt, betrayal, loss, discrimination and poverty have not stopped her. A truly incredible story that is still unfolding.
The comedian, writer and podcaster talks about being neglected as a child, his self-sabotaging and the out of control anger that almost destroyed his life. Dave has appeared on The Office, Entourage and in the film Recount. He has written for The Talking Dead and he co-hosts the podcast Walking the Room.