The Daily Show: Ears Edition - TDS Time Machine | Mental Health Awareness

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so take a look back at some of the recent mental health discussions with The Daily Show's guests. Lil Red Howery and Michael Kosta talk the beauty of therapy. Singer Raye sits down with Desi Lydic and discusses singing about anxiety. Olivia Munn joins to talk postpartum anxiety. Author and social psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb joins Jon Stewart to break down productive vs. unproductive anxiety. Author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt talks the effects of social media on "The Anxious Generation." Actor Mark Duplass opens up about anxiety and depression. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart podcast. You're listening to Comedy Central. You've been doing stand-up specials. And in this last special, well, you've talked openly about how vulnerable you've become in some of your stand-up and you even spoke openly about some of the therapy you've tackled. Oh, yeah, I love therapy.

Tell me about it, I love therapy. Tell me about it. I love therapy. Give it up for therapy. Yeah. Yeah. You get therapy, and you get therapy, and you get therapy. Talk to me about the love of therapy,

because it's nice to have two men openly talking about therapy. It is. Yes, it is. There we go. And those are the women that are trying to bring us down. No. You know, it's that are trying to bring us down. No. You know something, it's changed my life in so many ways.

I think it's made me a funnier comic because it's not everything from a very dark place anymore. I'm able to like just pretty much talk about anything. But therapy has been so beautiful. Like I'm at the happiest I've ever been because I've been able to unpack things over time. So yeah. Yeah.

You're a busy guy. Are you doing, is it like phone therapy? Is it Zoom? Are you on set like, and this is the way it made me feel and that type of thing? And then a PA knocking, hey, hey, time. I do both, actually. It depends on what my scheduling is,

because I do like going in person. It's just in person is always so crazy, because especially if you've been crying a little bit, it's like awkward when you leave. Yeah. You can tell the therapist wants you to go because it's time they keep doing this. Yeah.

But you like this. You're like, and then. And so they're like, yeah, so. Yeah. That's the. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that I appreciate so much about your music and that I think sets you apart Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that I appreciate so much about your music and that I think sets you apart from so many other artists is the way that you juxtapose these big sort of joyful,

big band, jazzy music along with lyrics that are really raw and vulnerable and about very serious issues you talk about body dysmorphia, you talk about mental health, sexual assault. How do you even begin building music around those lyrics? Well, you know, I do think, I think music is medicine. I always say that. I think, I think like even sitting here and talking to you about these sort of heavier subjects,

I get nervous, I don't really know how to address it or what to say and I think music is a safe space to kind of be raw and honest and for me, that's my safe place, it's my therapy. And yeah, you know, I think there's a lot, a lot of us are really broken and a lot of us are hurting and a lot of us are dealing with things we don't know exactly how to speak about or express, even with the people

that we love. And I think music is a safe space to do that, to find healing or talk about it or just, I don't know, process it. So that was really important to me as an independent artist. I just wanted to be honest about those things you're quiet about, you know? You have, you actually took quite a bit of time away from acting to spend the time with

your family. You had Malcolm and you were very open about experiencing postpartum depression. Yeah, postpartum anxiety. Anxiety? Yeah, so I had, I had, I'd been prepared for postpartum depression because we hear so much about it. But postpartum anxiety came on, and it was, I don't know if anyone here has gone through that or their partners have, but it is, it is one of the worst experiences of my life.

It came on like a month or two after I had Malcolm, and I woke up at four a.m., my eyes just pop open, and I started going, ah! And I keep breathing like that all day long and I keep waking up like that every day at 4 a.m. for a year. Oh my God for a full year. I just couldn't breathe. I just had so much anxiety and it wasn't there was no actual thoughts and thank

God. I didn't have any thoughts of self harm or harming others. I have so much compassion and sympathy for mothers who are going through that and I think that people don't understand it enough. of self harm or harming others. I have so much compassionate sympathy for mothers who are going through that. I think that people don't understand it enough. And we're not compassionate enough about what it's like to be a mother and to birth a baby and everything that happens to your body and the hormones.

But it was incredibly difficult, but I did make it through to the other side. Well. Well. Well. Well. Well. Well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For social media to keep people engaged, for news organizations to keep people watching,

they have to ramp up the urgency and the existential nature of the crisis. So you're sort of torn between these two impulses. One is to not participate, which would be abdicating civic responsibility. But the other would be to bathe yourself in this existential crisis. What choice do you have?

Right. Well, we do have a choice. So look at anxiety. There's productive anxiety and unproductive anxiety. What? Well, think about it. If you didn't have anxiety, you wouldn't be able to be safe. That's why we have anxiety.

It was like, there's a bear. You better have anxiety. Your unproductive anxiety is, I'm just going to stand here. Productive anxiety is, I'm going to do something about this. See that's so weird because my anxiety has never saved me from bears. But it often convinces me I'm not lovable. So how I share to.

I want I didn't want to watch the debates tonight, but I do work once a week now so I have to because that it's it's toxic to me I know that I have to participate. But how does that anxiety of watching it. How is that a relic of something that's good for me. It's good for you because then you can take action by the way hope you're taking action on the unlovable thing I hope

you're getting some help with that. Little thing called mushrooms baby. Microdose away. But it's helpful because you say OK there are 2 ways you can respond to this you can say I'm going to put my head in the sand and not engage which is I hope not the option that people here are taking. And you can also say I'm just spinning in anxiety and doom scrolling I'm just you know getting all worked'm doom scrolling. I'm just getting all worked up.

That's not helpful. That's unproductive anxiety. And then there's productive anxiety where you say, what can I do? Well, you can get involved in a campaign. You can volunteer. You can please vote. You can get the people around you to vote.

There are things that you can do. The thing that you want to do is you want to say, what can I control here? And that's where you take your anxiety. And you say, it's going to motivate me to do is you want to say, what can I control here? And that's where you take your anxiety and you say, it's going to motivate me to do something productive. What happened in the early 2010s? Something happened in the early 2010s. And my argument in the book is a tragedy in two acts.

The first act is the loss of the play-based childhood. It's what anybody over 40 in this audience had. You were out with your friends after school. There was nobody supervising. in this audience had. You were out with your friends after school. There was nobody supervising. You had to learn how to work out conflicts, how to face adversity. So that's what kids have had for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years. It's part of being a mammal. You play, you develop skills. We began to crack down on that, to lock kids up in the 90s, to not let them out. So we're restricting what they mostly

would just play from the 90s through the 2000s. But mental health doesn't collapse then. It's actually pretty stable. Then we get act two, which is the arrival of the phone-based childhood. And what that is is in 2010, everybody had a flip phone. The iPhone had come out, but most teens had a flip phone. No front-facing camera, no social media a flip phone, no front-facing camera,

no social media on the phone, no high-speed data. And by 2020-15, everyone's got all those other things. Now suddenly everyone has a smartphone, front-facing camera, high-speed internet, social media, especially Instagram on the phone. And almost like someone turned a switch in 2013, girls in America and many other countries suddenly become very anxious, depressed, and self-harming. -♪ You mentioned that you've talked very openly about struggling with anxiety and depression.

How did that feel to share that? Were you surprised by the reaction that you got? 100% surprised. And here's the thing, it didn't feel weird to share because I live in Los Angeles amongst a group of artists where this is just dinner table conversation. We're all anxious and depressed, and we're always talking about it all the time.

We're trading therapists. My therapist is right under the desk right now. She's waiting on call. Yeah, and so it's like, what medication are you on? Well, I'm switching over to Selexa now. You know, these are our conversations. But what I didn't realize is that, you know, as you well know, because I don't know if you guys know,

Desi was with me on the league like 10 years ago as a guest star. Oh, my gosh. It was amazing. But it's a great show, and a lot of the men who watch that show are not the men who watch that show are not the men who are comfortable with talking about their mental health because they're football dudes and whatnot.

And so when I started going on my social media, I got this outpouring, particularly from men, just being like, I can't believe you're saying this out loud. And it makes me feel really good to know that someone that I view as somewhat successful is still on their feet despite this and offers hope in that way so I never really planned on being some sort of mouthpiece for I was just sort of whining on social media. It kind of had this effect so my goal this is

this is something. It's so it not only but brave, it's a generous thing for you to do to help support others so it's really meaningful that you did that. Explore more shows from the Daily Show Podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes

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