Science Friday - Asking For Help, PFAS Chemicals, Plastics Recycling, Depression Book. October 21, 2022. Part 2

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

The Science Behind Why You Should Ask For Help Sometimes asking for help—even for the smallest of favors—can feel awkward, or like you’re inconveniencing someone else. But the odds are, you’re probably wrong. Studies show that people are much more willing to lend a helping hand than you would think, and both parties usually end up happier. Guest host Shahla Farzan talks with Dr. Xuan Zhao, a psychologist at Stanford University, about the psychology behind asking for help.   A Possible Achilles Heel For Troublesome PFAS Chemicals Long-lasting chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are used widely in everything from firefighting foam to microwavable popcorn bags. The chemicals are a popular component of polymer coatings that resist heat, grease, stains and water. PFAS compounds (a family that includes roughly 12,000 different substances are often called “forever chemicals” in popular science coverage, because they’re designed to be super stable and don’t break down in the environment. But what makes them last “forever” from a chemistry perspective? And what can we do about it? Current PFAS disposal methods are expensive and labor-intensive, blasting the chemicals with temperatures over 1,000 degrees C in a high-pressure environment. But a research study published in Science has found a possible Achilles’ heel: a weak spot in the chemical bonds. The research points to a new possible method for disposing of PFAS chemicals, which uses special reagents to knock off a group of oxygen atoms at the tail end of PFAS, triggering a cascade of reactions that breaks the PFAS chemicals down into harmless components. The paper’s lead author, Brittany Trang, joins guest host Shahla Farzan to discuss this development in PFAS research.   Engineered Bacteria Might Help The Dream Of Mixed Plastic Recycling We’ve all been there—standing by the recycling bin, holding some sort of plastic object, and trying to figure out if it can go in the bin. There are many different types of plastic out there, from the film that wraps the meat at the grocery store, to the plastic in your milk jug. But they all differ in their ability to be recycled, and in the specific procedures and recipes that it takes to process them. Writing in the journal Science, a team of researchers describes a demonstration process that can break down a mixed bag of plastics, even dirty ones, and produce a single chemical output that could be used in industry. The process starts with a catalytic oxidation process involving metal salts, an acetic acid solvent, heat, and oxygen. That process is essentially a “controlled combustion,” says Dr. Gregg Beckham of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The oxidation process breaks the plastics in the reaction into a blend of liquid chemicals. Then, that blend of products is fed to a strain of engineered bacteria that have been designed to be able to eat each of those chemical breakdown products, and use them to make a specified product. Beckham says that in the initial experiment, they created two different products—one a biodegradable plastic, and one a precursor to a type of recyclable nylon—but the method could conceivably be adapted to any product that bacteria can be enabled to grow via synthetic biology. Beckham joins SciFri’s John Dankosky to talk about the demonstration, and the challenges of moving this technology out of the laboratory and into an operating recycling process.   How Understanding Depression Goes Beyond The Scientific Method Science has yet to pinpoint exactly why some people experience depression and others do not. And it may never be able to give a fully satisfying answer. While people with depression may have similar symptoms, each person’s story is just a little different. And there’s no “one size fits all” treatment. Guest host John Dankosky talks with John Moe, who has spent a lot of time thinking about the nuances of depression through a humorous lens. Moe is the host and creator of the podcast Depresh Mode and author of The Hilarious World of Depression, which shares a name with his previous podcast.    Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm John Dankowski. And I'm Shayla Farsan. Okay, John, I have a personal question for you. Do you ever have trouble asking for help? Yeah, you know, I used to be really bad at this. I always figured I don't want to feel like a burdened anyone. Yeah, actually a lot of people feel this way. Asking a stranger or even sometimes a friend for help can be really uncomfortable and awkward, even if it's just a small thing. Like the other day I had to ask a friend to water. my plants for me when I was out of town. Small thing. And it was almost physically uncomfortable for me. Like I had to really psych myself up. Totally. And there's like this feeling that you're inconveniencing them. And if they say yes, it's only out of obligation. And nobody wants to make people feel that way. Well, I have some news that might make both of us feel a little bit better about this. Research shows that if you just ask for help, people are much more willing to lend a hand than

maybe you would think. And usually you both walk away feeling happier. Here to tell us about the science behind asking for help is my guest, Dr. Schwen Zhao, psychologist at Stanford University based in Mountain View, California. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you for having me. Your research focuses on social interactions. Can you tell us why it's important to study them? We as humans are social animals. Social interaction is so important to our happiness and well-being, our personal life, and also our work life. No great things are achieved alone. That's why I study social interaction about how we understand each other, misunderstand each other, connect with each other, and oftentimes do not connect with each other. Yeah, so part of your work

actually focuses on how people ask for help, which is, you know, a specific topic. And I'm curious, what inspired you to look into that? There are a couple of reasons. One is, you know, I study social interactions. So I was conducting a research project in Garfield Park in Chicago when I was a postdoctoral scholar with Nicholas Epley at University of Chicago. So at that time, we were collecting some data about compliment giving. We recruited participants in the park. We set up our desk next to a beautiful scenic spot. And we noticed that lots of visitors. they really struggled to get their picture taken in front of the beautiful scene because they were trying to pose for a selfie and the view is very expensive. It's too beautiful to just be captured in a selfie. So we, at that time, we just enjoyed watching these people fumble and try to figure out how they can get themselves a nice picture. And then it occurred to me that actually, why don't these people ask those people around them for help?

We were also looking at the literature for reasons on why people may struggle to ask for help. We noticed researchers have documented lots of reasons, like a way of concern that we might look inferior or incompetent to another person. It feels really vulnerable. We also underestimate how willing other people are to say yes. But we thought that it's also because, you know, oftentimes we do not want to impose other people like you just said. And actually, when another person approaches you for help, you are actually quite happy to help and make a positive difference in another person's life. It's the kind of assumptions we hold in our head that can stop us from connecting with each other and also living in a kinder world.

So we thought there must be a systematic misunderstanding about other people's reactions. And that's how we started this line of work. I love this image of you out in the park watching people struggling to. take selfies and not asking for help. Because I have been there before so many times where you'd almost rather like take a blurry photo or a photo where half of the people's heads are cut off than dare to ask a stranger to help you. To figure this out, learn a little bit more about this, you did a series of social experiments and one of them involved Polaroids in a park. Can you walk me through that one? Totally. So after we realized that people really struggle,

to get their picture. We thought this would be a perfect place to study help seeking. So what we did is we had our experiment table next to the scenic spot, and we had a nice polarite there, and also a sign says a free photo. So people naturally, they were very intrigued, and they decided to ask us for the free photo. And we told them that you can get your photo. There is just one catch. That is, you need to ask another person to help you. take this photo. And people read, then right before they receive the Polaroid, we actually asked them to fill out a really short survey, we sit them down, ask them to predict if they approach another person in the park, how would that person respond to their request? So after that short

survey takes about maybe two, three minutes. They were given the Polaroid. They find some stranger in front of the scenic spot and summon up all the courage and ask that person if that person can take a photo for them. Usually, the person who received this request is a beam with a smile. You can tell that they really want to help. There were a few times when someone is in a rush, they have to leave and said no. But usually that person is so happy to help. And the person who is asking for help felt so relieved. We see this dance. dynamics in plain sight every time. And then they got the photo. It's usually a photo that develops pretty quickly, a Polaroid photo. And then as the person who just helped the other person to

take a photo, they are ready to leave. What they don't know is that our experimenter has been watching this interaction from a distance. And the experimenter actually shows up, almost ambushed the person who helped to take a photo and said that we actually are running a research. study in the park about people's social experience in the park, we have a really short survey. We just saw that you had an interaction with another visitor. Could we ask you to feel this one-minute survey? Usually they would say yes. And then at that point, we ask the questions that we ask the requesters to predict. So those questions are like, how willing are you to help? How are you feeling right now? How happy you feel? How satisfied you feel? Basically, I compare the

question predictions before the interaction with the helpers experience immediately after the interaction. I'm picturing either you or one of your research assistants popping out from behind a tree or a bush saying, this is for science. Will you take our survey? It's not that dramatic, actually, because there are a lot of people in the park. They can't tell someone's watching them. So what was your biggest takeaway from that experiment then? So in addition to these studies, in the park. We also had other experiments where we either asked people to recall recent life experiences or imagine all kinds of scenarios where they either needed to ask another person for help or another person approached them to ask for help. And we also had lab experiments

where participants had to ask another participant for help. So these studies after study after study. One consistent takeaway was that the help seekers, the people who need help, they tend to underestimate how willing the helpers would be to help them. They also underestimate how happy the helpers felt afterwards, and these help seekers overestimated quite a bit, how inconvenienced the helpers would feel afterwards. So they had some very different ideas about the experience of helping compared to the actual experiences of the helpers. That's one big takeaway. Yeah, so it sounds like asking for help maybe isn't as big of a burden as we think.

And those interactions can actually be a really important way to connect with other people. I mean, in your mind, what do you think the benefits are of connecting with strangers in this way? So there has been a lot of research on the benefits of connecting with strangers. usually we underestimate how enjoyable those experiences are. You know, humans are social animals. We spend millions of years evolving our capacity to connect with another person. And oftentimes when we are surrounded by other people, we are often routinely ignore them. So that's the kind of research studying why we routinely ignored other people and opportunities to connect.

and what kind of enjoyment might be missing from that kind of decision. So, you know, their research suggesting that when you talk to a stranger, it's actually more enjoyable than you might expect, less awkward. And oftentimes it's actually more informational than you may expect. You know, I struggle to ask for help all the time. This is a big thing for me. But your research helps me feel like I'm not the only one. And I wonder, how have people reacted to this study so far? Many people resonate with the idea of struggling to ask for help.

And we can all see how it's really beneficial and important, especially during our times. And also, we also know that no good things are achieved alone. So it's really important to ask for help. It's good for your social life. It's good for your well-being. It's good for work. So that's why I think we are getting lots of interests. Yeah, just trying to get this work out there and help people rethink about the assumptions they have in their head and whether that might hinder them to connect with other people and also live in a kind of world.

And I also, for the next step, I would love to keep pushing the idea of perhaps some kind of culture change because, I mean, help seeking is difficult also because you don't know if you are allowed to do so. if you are in a place, maybe an organization, a family, where everyone's expected to be so-called self-sufficient, then you might struggle to ask for help because you think that's not what's expected in this space. And you might not have a safe space to ask for help. So that is something else. I hope to keep pushing about the idea that we are not just doing self-care. We are not, you should not just follow up your problems. And you should not. issues and struggles. And oftentimes we are in this together. And if you can create this kind of space, the environment where people feel that they can trust each other and be vulnerable to each

other, then that will actually benefit everyone's well-being. And that also allows people to be vulnerable and ask for help. So that's the kind of conversations I'm having right now. Great reminders for all of us. Shwen, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you. I really enjoy talking with you. This is so fun. Dr. Schoeng Xiao is a psychologist at Stanford University based in Mountain View, California. We have to take a break. And when we come back, there's a promising breakthrough in getting rid of P-FAS compounds, those things that we call forever chemicals. The question is, what makes them last forever from a chemistry perspective? And what exactly can we do about it? We're going to talk to a researcher who thinks she may have found

an Achilles heel in the structure of P-FAS chemicals. Interesting. We'll be right back after the short break. This is Science Friday. I'm John Dankoski. And I'm Shayla Farsan. You may be familiar with the acronym P-FAS, an umbrella term for a whole bunch of chemicals that are meant to last a long time. So long, in fact, that their nickname is forever chemicals. P-FAS compounds are used in a ton of things, from firefighting foam to microwavable popcorn bags. Because these chemicals are made to last a long time, they're also really hard to break down. And that's a problem as we learn more about how bad they are for our bodies. But new research points to a possible Achilles heel in some PFAS chemical bonds.

And that could make it much easier to dispose of these chemicals and turn them into something harmless. Joining me to talk about this is the lead author on that paper. Dr. Brittany Trang, a chemist and a chemist and also a science reporting fellow at Stat News based in Boston, Massachusetts. She did this research as part of her Ph.D. at Northwestern University. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi. Thanks for having me. Thanks so much for joining us. So when we talk about PFS compounds, there are in a lot of different things like nonstick pans and other things that you might have around your house. Why are we using them in so many different products? It's because they have a lot of really

useful properties. So the reason that we can't find replacements for them is because they have unique chemical properties that nothing else has, which is, derives from their carbon fluorine bonds, which is what gives them their name and also gives them all these really awesome properties like being hydrophobic, so water repelling, being oleophobic, oil repelling, being really thermally stable, which is why they're in firefighting films. All of these things give them properties that we use in all of the really cool products that modern science have given us. But unfortunately, these have come at a little bit of a cost. So what is it about PFS compounds chemically that makes them so hard to break down? So all of those really cool properties that I was

talking about, derived from these carbon fluorine bonds that give perm polyfluor alkalated substances. So because you might learn in high school chemistry that fluorine is the most electronegative element, it wants electrons really bad, and carbon is a pretty polarizable element, so it is relatively willing to share its electrons. So when fluorine and carbon are together, the fluorine will grab on to carbon's electrons and does not want to let go. So this is a little bit of. So this is a little bit of the fluorine. creates a really strong bond that gives it thermal, these compounds thermal stability. But it also gives it all of these properties of not wanting to bond with other things and the bond not wanting to break, which makes them hard to break down.

Okay. So that difference in electronegativity is kind of the recipe for a really, really strong bond then. Yeah. So you're the lead author of this paper that found a possible Achilles heel in some PFS compounds. Walk us through what you found. Yeah. So past research into how to degrade these forever chemicals has focused on the fact that we know this carbon fluorine bond is really strong. And if we want to break it, we should just put a lot of energy into the system, which does work in some cases somewhat, but often leaves partially degraded PFS or harder to break down PFS because

it's just very non-targeted. How we entered this space was saying, hey, we're chemists, and we know a lot of ways to react certain kinds of functional groups, certain kinds of groups on these chemicals. So how do we apply that to this problem? And most PFS have a head portion and the tail portion. So the tail portion is where all these carbon fluorine bonds are. And the head portion is different for different PFS, but in the case of perfluoral carboxylase, acids, which we were looking at, there's a carbicsilic acid, which is a carbon bonded to two oxygens. And so we figured out a way to pop off the head of the molecule, so that carbicilic acid portion. And then we found further ways to degrade the tail of the molecule, where after you, you know, beheaded this molecule, then the tail is actually more reactive.

And we found that using sodium hydroxide broke these tail floral alcohol species down and a lot more mild conditions than previously thought possible. We can do it instead of at like thousands of degrees. We can do it at 40 degrees Celsius, which I am told is the temperature of a hot yoga room. Okay, yes. Hot yoga studios, notoriously uncomfortable. And now when I think about them, I'm also going to be thinking about breaking down PFS chemicals. Okay, so you're applying these two different chemicals, relatively common reagents. What does the PFS compound break down into later?

Yeah. So this is a really important part of PFS degradation because you can see the initial compound go away. and some studies are like, yay, we made that go away, but they have no idea what it turned into. And what you want to see is all the fluorine go to fluoride, kind of like the same stuff that you have in your toothpaste. And so we see over 90% of our fluorines, you know, to fluoride and the rest of it will eventually pretty much break down into that. And then all the carbon in the molecule breaks down into various kinds of, mostly carboxylic acids, that are benign to humans. So these different products you can find in vegetable, you can find sold as skincare products. So these are all not harmful to humans. So this sounds promising,

but do you think that this process could potentially be used on a bigger scale, like a mass scale, to start disposing of PFAS chemicals? Unfortunately, this is where we have to tell people to hold their horses a little bit. Our method right now is not optimized. at all. And somebody is going to have to figure out how to optimize it if we want to use it on a larger scale. And in that process of optimization, we probably will have to learn more about the roles of the different reagents in our degradation process. We don't know enough to figure out, oh, how can we use less of this solvent or how do we maximize the efficiency? But I think what the most exciting thing is would be if other chemists might take a look at the principles that we

discovered were active in this destruction, which people previously thought was not possible. And if those principles get used in other people's work that is probably a lot more industrially friendly than ours is. So much on the horizon for this field of research. Well, we'll have to leave it there. I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Brittany Trang, chemist and also a science reporting fellow at Statt News based in Boston, Massachusetts. She did this research as part of her Ph.D. at Northwestern University. Thanks so much for joining us, Brittany.

Thank you for having me. Okay, so breaking down toxic forever chemicals, that's a pretty big deal for the environment. But what about that jumbled mess of plastic waste that every household makes each week? There's tons of different plastics out there from the wrap on the grocery store, vegetables to the plastic in your milk jug. And then you're standing over the recycling bin wondering, does this go in? Well, when it comes to recycling, not all plastics are created equal. Some can be recycled fairly easily, but others can't. And each type has a different recipe or process. But now, writing in the journal Science, researchers describe a demonstration of a process to recycle

lots of kinds of plastics, even all mixed together. It takes two steps. One is chemical, and the next is biological, involving engineered bacteria. Dr. Greg Beckham is the lead author on that paper. He's a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. Dr. Beckham, welcome back to Science Friday. Great to be with you, John. Thanks for having me today. So first of all, why is it that some plastics can be easily recycled and others just can't?

The two primary plastics that can be recycled today are primarily single-use beverage bottles, which is a polyester, polyethylene terrafalate, often known as PET. And the other is high-density polyethylene, H-D-P-E, which is typically found in, as you alluded to already, plastic milk chugs and things like this. Those are the two primary plastics that are going to be sorted out at a materials recovery facility, and those are then sent off to mechanical recyclers to then put those back into circulation as different materials. Oftentimes, polyester, PET bottles will go to carpet or textiles for clothing,

and HDPE can be sometimes recycled. several times into, again, to milk jugs or to consumer goods that contain things like laundry detergent. But beyond that, there are many other plastics and most of them are not recycled at all. And so you really do have to separate out these other plastics that are easily recycled from the ones that aren't. Absolutely. And that is really the point of when we put things into those blue recycling bins, they're sent to those materials recovery facilities. And they're really trying to fish out primarily those two types of plastics only from myriad other plastics that oftentimes are put into recycling bins.

Talk more about this new approach that you're coming up with here. There's two steps. What's the first part? So the first part, we use a catalytic oxidation reaction. And that basically is a way to say we use a chemical catalyst, which is a metal salt and oxygen from the air. And we put that together with a solvent, in this case acetic acid, which is found in vinegar.

And this is like a controlled combustion reaction. We take that oxygen from the air, and we're essentially using this catalyst to add it to the plastic. And in doing so, it breaks up all kinds of mixed plastics into molecules that are then oxygenated. And that means they're more water soluble and more bioavailable for the next step, actually. So then what happens to these liquids? So then we have this mixture of water soluble, oxygenated compounds that are, you know, essentially breakdown products of these mixed plastics.

And then we engineered a bacterium, which you can find in the soil. basically to be able to consume all of those breakdown products, or at least all of the ones that we can detect and measure. Imagine like a buffet. You've got like all of the entrees and inside dishes on this buffet. We've engineered this single bacterium to eat all of the options on the buffet. And what it does is it can turn all of those mixed products into a single target product that we sort of engineer in on the organism side as well. So it's like an omnivorous bacteria. It likes everything on the buffet. Absolutely. That's a how that's a great analogy. So when you talk about a bacteria that is engineered, what exactly do you mean?

I mean, how do you engineer it? What does it take? So we use techniques from molecular biology and synthetic biology to go in and modify the genome. Mostly what we're doing is we're taking genes from other soil bacteria that are able to consume, say, building blocks of these plastics already in the soil. And we're putting them into this one really robust, quite omnivorous and making it even more omnivorous bacterium. So now it'll have all of the genetic machinery to make the enzymes needed to assimilate and consume all of the products from these mixed plastics oxidation reactions. That's so cool. I mean, we've talked on the program before, and when you were on the show last

year and we were talking about the future of plastics, we talked about enzymes breaking down plastics. Is this a different process than the one you described to us last time? So the enzymes that we have worked on in the past and many other people around the work, are working on those, it's quite exciting topic. Those are only able to break down like your polyester plastics. What we're looking at here now are plastics that are much less bioavailable. So there's not a single enzyme that can break down all of these mixed plastics. We've now made all of those building blocks, much more bioavailable,

just like the building blocks from polyesters already are to enzymes. And the cool part about using an organism now instead of an enzyme is that the organism can make hundreds of its own enzymes that are able to now go and basically pull in and consume all of those building blocks. And so it's like the supercharged version of what we talked about last time on the program. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. We're talking with Dr. Greg Beckham. He's from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. And we're talking about breaking down plastics into something that we can use. So what happens now? The products that this bacteria make, can it be anything? Can we make some new product out of it? Yeah, that's a really

exciting, I think, next step. So in the current study, we demonstrated two products. The first one was this bacterium in particular, this soil bacterium, when it has a lot of excess food source around, but not enough nitrogen or other nutrients, it will store the equivalent of bacterial fat. That happens to be a polyester. It's called polyhydroxyalkinoate, and it is already a product on market sold by some companies around the world for biodegradable packaging and packaging that can behave like some of the plastics we already use today from fossil fuels. But in this case, it's biodegradable. And so that was one of the products we made simply because it was easy. The bacteria, if we give it a lot of carbon and we don't supply it with a lot of extra nutrient,

it will simply make that. And so we showed that would work. We separately made another strain of the bacterium that was able to produce a building block of a nylon-like material, a nylon that is better performing than the nylons we make today and use, as well as much more easily recycled. But that said, to your question directly, John, using the tools of synthetic biology in sort of an ideal world, we would be able to make any target product we would want that you can have a bacterium make. So this is, it's remarkable. It sounds so exciting.

Obviously, Greg, there's got to be a catch. What's the catch? Yes, absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, you know, there's a long way to go, right? we have demonstrated this at, you know, on the 100-moleter scale, so a tenth of a liter. And on plastics, you know, that are about the size of a penny or so. Can we put bottles? Can we put entire pieces of carpet? How do we scale this up? Is it economically viable? How do we best integrate all of the pieces of the process? Those are open questions. And certainly, what do we make?

That's another open question. And all of those things need to be answered and addressed. to basically take this to hopefully a commercially viable process. And commercially viable, meaning you've got to find industry partners who can take whatever you make with these bacteria and want to make it into something else or else there's no economy there. Absolutely. Yeah. And not only does it have to be commercially viable from an economics perspective, but it absolutely

had better be more sustainable than the linear economy of extract petrochemicals, make plastic, use them, put them in the landfill. So it absolutely needs to be better than that current linear approach that we have to think. Well, and I guess for our final question, though, that is really the big piece of this. We're trying to adjust our economy, our energy economy, away from fossil fuels. The inputs in the future might not be the same byproducts of fossil fuel production. So how exactly does a process like this fit in as we start to shift away from the types of things we make and consume overall? That's a great question, John.

hope in the next 50 years or so or, you know, next several decades that certainly bio-based building blocks that go into tomorrow's plastics certainly should be a major emphasis of the research community, the industrial community, and generally of humankind. I view technologies like this as kind of a bridging approach where we're going to continue making the plastics that we use today, probably for many, many years. And hopefully this can be a way to onboard a much bigger, essentially funnel of types of plastics that we're able to currently recycle. And hopefully by doing this and then turning them into building blocks for recyclable plastics, we can then sort of usher in this transition.

And hopefully the technologies like this, many of which are being developed around the world, can help in that respect. You sound positively, I don't know, giddy about these prospects. Absolutely. We are extremely excited about this process concept. We think it's very cool. The ability to recycle mixed plastics is just such a challenge. And right now there's only a few options, and they have a lot of issues with them at scale.

And so I think any and all approaches should be looked at that are able to take in mixed plastics over just a single type of plastic, for sure. Greg Beckham is a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. Greg, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us today. Thank you so much, John. Really appreciate it. When we come back, we're going to take a look at depression. from a bit of a more personal angle. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Shayla Farsan.

And I'm John Dankoski. This week, we're continuing our conversation about depression. Last month, we dug into the science behind antidepressants. We heard about the latest research, using genetic testing to better match patients with medications. And we heard about emerging new treatment options like ketamine and psychedelics. Science has yet to pinpoint exactly why some people experience depression and others don't. and it may never be able to get to a fully satisfying answer. While people with depression may have similar symptoms, each person's story is just a bit different,

and there's no one-size-fits-all treatment. My next guest has spent a lot of time thinking about the nuances of depression. John Moe is the host and creator of the podcast, Depresh Mode, and he's the author of a book called The Hilarious World of Depression that is just out in paperback. He joins us now from St. Paul, Minnesota. John, welcome to Science Friday. Thanks, John. Glad to be here.

So let's start off with the simple question here. What does the word depression really mean? I mean, people toss it around a lot. What does it mean to you? Oh, if only it were such a simple question, that would be really great. The problem with the word depression is that it describes a mood and a disorder both, and those are different things. So people can, you know, be sad about something and they'll use the word depression.

I follow the Seattle Mariners, so I could have said, oh, I'm sorry. so depressed that after finally getting to the playoffs, they get, they get swept by the Astros. And that's, you know, okay, but a depressive disorder is a different kind of thing because it can sometimes be sadness. It can sometimes be despair. It can, you know, it's famous for being immobilizing in some cases. But in my case, it never was. I've always been able to get out of bed and my depression didn't often manifest as just being bummed out. It was things like road rage incidents. It was the inability to focus. It was crying for no reason and physically not being able to stop or to isolate what the reason was that might have caused some of this. So it can mean a whole

lot of different things, but generally the disorder part of it is when those conditions, those symptoms make it harder to live your life. How have you thought about it differently over the course of the last few years since you started a podcast about this? And you started talking to a wide range of people. Have your ideas about what depression has changed a lot in just the last few years? Yeah, I mean, I was a lot more doctrinaire about it when I started out. I thought, well, unless you have had a psychiatrist tell you, you have major depressive disorder or dysthyroid. depression or something, a term that a practitioner would use, then it's not real. Then it's not a real thing.

But I've softened a lot because I would, I talked to the comedian and monologist Mike Barbiglia. He talked about never being diagnosed with depression, but he said, you know, I do have this kind of darkness that kind of envelops me. I'm paraphrasing. And it kind of gets in the way of a lot of things and I've got to kind of try to figure out how I can work my way around it. But I've never been diagnosed with depression. And, you know, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not a therapist. And I'm like, God, that sounds like depression to me. But at some point, you know, who cares? It's a darkness. It's an obstacle that we all need to deal with. And so whether you've walked into a doctor's office and, you know, had them write something down on a notepad that assigns you this particular disorder, feels kind of

immaterial to me. And then the other thing that has evolved in my thinking is, you know, I always assume that it was about a 50-50 setup of how you might have come to have this condition between trauma that you faced or just genetics. And I think much more around like 8515 on the trauma side now. Most people I know who have really dealt with something, it's at least been exacerbated or had the flames fanned by a traumatic incident that by definition they have not resists. in their own thinking, and it's really throwing a wrench into the works.

So let's talk a bit about trauma. There is a clinical definition, which also tends to be pretty rigid. You know, it's really reserved for people who've been exposed to natural disasters or violence, other life-threatening events. But we hear, just like the word depression, John, people throw around traumatic and awful lot. So how exactly is trauma defined? Well, I think they throw it around a lot because there's a lot of trauma in our world, too. Yeah, fair enough. You know, there is the kind of trauma that I've always thought of with the word trauma. Oh, that's when you get mugged. That's when you get in a horrible car accident. But trauma can mean complex trauma as well. If you've been, if you've been neglected throughout your childhood, if you've had a parent with a

substance use disorder. If you've been in danger or not had security when you should have had security, when you don't have safety to rely on, you know, as a child or as an adult, over a prolonged period of time, that eats away at your ability to ever feel secure because of that complex trauma that you've had. I use more of a loose definition of if it's something that happened to you that you was too much for your brain to process. You know, if, like, I, in seventh grade, I was hit by a car on my way to school. And it took me a long time to kind of say, oh, okay, this is, this led to this dread of going to school in the morning that lasted for many years.

And this has led to these other incidents in my life. And that's been the benefit of therapies. I can trace, oh, okay, here's, you know, here's what I'm going through now. Here's where it might have come from. Here's how I can manage that in the future. Because with a trauma, complex or simple, the brain keeps trying to loop back and process it. And it's like turning a car over, but not having it start. Like something is wrong, but you keep going rur-r-r-r with the engine.

And, you know, obviously that means you don't get very far. Yeah. One of the things that I think people who have depression struggle to do is explain how it feels to others who haven't experienced it. So how exactly do you describe it to people, John? How do you tell them this is what depression feels like to me or to somebody else who is experiencing it? Analogies is all I can really use. Lots of analogies. Lots of analogies.

I mean, I have yet to meet someone who can do. describe depression in a way that I think is really complete and accurate. And that includes very distinguished authors and psychologists that I've met and whose work I've read. It defies definition. I will sometimes talk about the relationship between people who have never experienced depression and people who have as like, you know, two cars going over this bridge, right? And in one car are the normies who've never had to deal with it. And to them, it's just a nice glide over a bridge. To people who've dealt with depression, the bridge is missing slats and your car is

breaking down and there's a big sail over the top of it for some reason so that if it's a windy day, you know you could go plunging off the side at any time and you're not sure if you have parachutes for when you do go over the side. And then meanwhile, the people in the fast car, the normies are saying, you should smile more. You should go for a walk. You'd feel a lot better. What do you have to have your car break down about? Your life is going so well.

And you're like, well, that's not real helpful. We've talked about the way that people want to be helpful when they say, smile more, just go for a walk. A lot of people will also say, we'll just go to therapy. We know the therapy works. But as you've outlined it, It's not exactly that simple. You went to a lot of therapists before you found therapy helpful. What changed for you over that process?

I was hosting a show about depression for a full year before I finally got serious about therapy. And here's the insidious part about depression. I thought if I could just help other people through doing a show, then that would redeem me somehow. And then my depression, maybe you'd get. better because I'd be helping people, but I was avoiding the root cause. And so I had done a bunch of interviews where people talked about cognitive behavior therapy, which is about finding the thought patterns and redirecting the harmful ones. And I finally said, okay, I'm going to go into therapy this time and not treat it like it's something that's being done to me. I'm going to treat it

like a collaboration. So I found a therapist who, you know, was of an old enough age that I felt that I could trust them. And they took my insurance. They practiced cognitive behavior therapy. They were near my house. And I went in there with the idea that I was going to roll up my sleeves and like, okay, let's work on this. And that's when things really started to change for me. Because the knock often with therapy is, oh, you know, you're just living in the past. You're just blaming your mother, you're just blaming your dad. And it's not that at all for me. Like my my dad had a substance use disorder with alcohol and we all suffered as a result of it. I know that that was a mental health condition that he had. I know that it was probably a result of a lot of

trauma in his life. He was a child in Norway during the Nazi occupation. I don't think he ever recovered from that. So it's a child. It's not about living in the past. It's not about blaming the past. It's about saying, okay, clear-eyed, here's what went down. Here's what made me into who I am. What am I going to do now? And this cognitive behavioral therapy, which has helped you, has a lot of signs backing it up. It seems as though this has been effective for people, but John, just like everything else with this problem, it doesn't work for everyone. And I guess I'm wondering what the limitations are of relying on scientific-backed methods like CBT

when you've got something as elusive to people as trying to solve their depression. Yeah, it's a real drag because I wish there was one thing that worked for everybody. I wish there was like an antibiotic, a penicillin of mental health. But unfortunately, it's not that way. You know, people respond differently to different medications. You know, there's what I take. I know that somebody I know took the same thing and was in a horrible shape as a result. But for me, it helps me get through the day.

And same with different approaches to therapy. Some people need more of a dialectical-based therapy or some other form. It's such a bummer that the people least equipped to go trial and error on different methods for addressing depression. are the people who have to keep trying things, keep throwing the spaghetti against a wall and see what sticks. You know, even something like transcranial magnetic stimulation, TMS, which is like this relatively new treatment that feels like a sort of magnetic woodpecker

that pecks at your head for several days in a row, and people aren't quite sure why it works, but it often does. Even in that scenario, a third of people are completely evidently cured of their depression. A third of people feel a lot better for a certain amount of time. Third of people have no effect whatsoever. And so it is, you know, unfortunately, it's just this long slog of trying things. And sometimes something works and then it stops working because it's the price we pay for having interesting brains.

Yeah. They are interesting indeed. I'm John Dankosky. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. We're talking with John Moe. he's host and creator of the podcast's Depression and the hilarious world of depression. The book, Hilarious World of Depression, is just now out in paperback. A few weeks ago on the show, we talked about the science behind antidepressants and how they're

not just simply fixing a chemical imbalance in the brain. There's a lot more going on here. How exactly have antidepressants worked or not worked for you? When I got diagnosed for the first time with a major depressive disorder, it wasn't until I was in my 30s because of a lot of shame and a lot of denial and a lot of not really understanding that this weirdness that I knew that I had actually wasn't all that weird. It had a name. It was something that millions of people deal with. And so when I went into and was given this diagnosis being told that I've had this chronic mental illness my entire life and would probably have to manage it the rest of my life. I was elated. I was so happy that it

wasn't, that I wasn't alone, that there was a doctor there who could treat it or could at least attempt to treat it. And one of the first things he did was say, we're going to put you on Zoloft because we want you to feel more functional as quickly as possible. And it worked for a little bit and then it stopped working and I said to the doctor, oh my gosh, I guess meds don't work. He's like, no, no, no, this med isn't working right now. Let's try something else. And he did. And it's like the sun came out and I became more myself.

And that's the other thought that a lot of people have is that it's going to make them into someone else. It's really just a matter of cleaning a windshield so you could see the world more accurately. Why do you think that humor is so important when talking about this really, I don't know, depressing topic? Well, I think it's kind of funny that there's this thing that's invisible and in your head that just wants to ruin everything. Like there's no evolutionary purpose to this. There's no organic parasite in your head causing this to happen, that it's just a drag. I think that's kind of funny. I mean, to me, I've always been a comedy nerd,

and I've done a lot of comedy stuff in my career, because it has the benefit of looking at the world in a different way. Like if you listen to a brilliant comedian, Maria Bamford or Mitch Headberg, it forces you to look at the world in a different way than you normally would, to see kind of the ridiculousness, to see the humor that's, that's baked into unusual situations. And I feel like if you can look at the world and have a sense of humor and find the jokes and find what's odd, then it's empowering, you know, because then you're not stuck with just the traditional narrow way of thinking.

And I think that kind of mind expansion can only help in dealing with something like depression. John Moe is host and creator of the podcast's Depression Mode and the hilarious world. of depression. His book called The Hilarious World of Depression is now out in paperback. John, thanks so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. John, thank you for having me. If you want to find more of our reporting on depression and mental health, you can go to ScienceFriiday.com slash mental health. Once again, that's sciencefriiday.com slash mental health. And if you're looking for another fascinating book to read, the SciFri Book Club is reading The Sounds of Life, how digital technology.

is bringing us closer to the world of plants and animals by Karen Baker next month. Find out how to read along with the book club. Plus, find out about our upcoming events or enter for a free copy of the book on our website, ScienceFriday.com slash life sounds. That's sciencefriiday.com slash life sounds. If you missed any part of this program or you'd like to hear it again, you can subscribe to our podcasts or you can ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. You know, Shayla, every day is now Science Friday.

That's right. Say hi to us on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or email us. The address is SciFri at ScienceFri.com. Send us feedback and tell us what you'd like us to cover, too. I'm Shayla Farsan. And I'm John Dankowski. Have a great weekend.