Episode 190 - Todd Hanson
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Guest:Okay, let's do this.
Guest:How are you, what-the-fuckers?
Guest:What-the-fuck buddies?
Guest:What-the-fuckineers?
Guest:What-the-fuck nicks?
Guest:What-the-fucking-ots?
Guest:What-the-fuck-a-ricans?
Guest:What-the-fuckstables?
Marc:Oh, I'm done with it.
Marc:I am Marc Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Thank you for being here.
Marc:Thank you for...
Marc:listening to the show and enjoying the show.
Marc:I am sitting here alone in my garage, as usual, having a cup of just coffee.
Marc:I seriously am.
Marc:It's late in the afternoon here.
Marc:I went to the gym for the first time in weeks and, of course, overexerted myself in a desperate need to have every muscle that has deteriorated over time reconstitute itself against all odds.
Marc:All right, so I'm here.
Marc:I'm sitting here.
Marc:I'm wasted.
Marc:I overexerted myself out of just this aggravated... There's no angry exercise does not pay off.
Marc:I got the fucked up Achilles heel.
Marc:Not a big deal, except I don't know what's wrong with it.
Marc:I tried to go running.
Marc:I re-injured it.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Don't want to go to the doctor.
Marc:Don't want to go there to spend $150, $200 to have him...
Marc:poke at my heel, and for me to go, ow, fuck, and for him to go, yeah, yeah, you got to stay off of this for a couple weeks.
Marc:Is that it?
Marc:Yeah, I would stay off it.
Marc:You sprained it.
Marc:There's a little something in the thing.
Marc:So you just got to stay off it.
Marc:I'm not doing that.
Marc:I'm not going to spend $150 on that.
Marc:This is an important episode to me.
Marc:Todd Hanson is on.
Marc:Todd Hanson, if you don't know, Todd Hanson is one of the original writers for The Onion series.
Marc:the newspaper as we know it.
Marc:The Onion had a profound impact on my life.
Marc:I remember when it went national.
Marc:It took over New York.
Marc:I know that in the early 2000s, The Onion was everywhere.
Marc:They put boxes up on almost every corner.
Marc:The Onion was out and in the world.
Marc:And it was mind-blowingly funny.
Marc:And it remains mind-blowingly funny.
Marc:And it's an important satirical rag.
Marc:It's an important...
Marc:Bit of literary satire that happens on a daily basis.
Marc:I don't hear about it much in terms of where it came from, what it means to our culture.
Marc:It completely changed the culture.
Marc:I know there's talk of the onion getting a Pulitzer.
Marc:I'm all behind that.
Marc:And I knew Todd Hansen.
Marc:I've known Todd Hanson for years.
Marc:Then Todd Hanson disappeared for a while and I didn't know what happened to Todd Hanson.
Marc:Now, a lot of you people, I just recently got an email from a kid who said, look, hey, Mr. Marin, I'm paraphrasing here.
Marc:I'd read the whole email, but I'll have it with me.
Marc:I don't want to pull it up right now.
Marc:But he basically said, hey, you know, I'm funny.
Marc:I want to be funny.
Marc:I'm starting to be funny, but I'm not fucked up.
Marc:Does this mean that I'm not going to be funny?
Marc:Does everyone who's funny have to be fucked up?
Marc:Now, we've had this conversation before in one form or another.
Marc:I'm not breaking any ground by having this conversation again.
Marc:I do not feel that one needs to be miserable or fucked up or completely consumed by demons and angst and paralyzing misery to be funny.
Marc:But I am saying that it helps.
Marc:It helps if you can get through that to the funny.
Marc:I've learned over the past couple hundred episodes or however many we've done here that there's plenty of different kinds of comedians and some are more deliberate than others.
Marc:Some are more calculating than others, but most of them are sensitive.
Marc:Some of them are depressed.
Marc:Some of them have other problems.
Marc:But if you are a depressed person or you're a hypersensitive person, you're an anxious person or you're an acutely aware person,
Marc:Sometimes you need to be funny in order to level the onslaught of reality, depending on your depth of sensitivity.
Marc:Sometimes comedy or being funny is a way to channel or to understand or to get control of or to get a handle on the darkness, the pain, the anxiety.
Marc:Disarm it.
Marc:It's a way to navigate the swamps of self.
Marc:To cut through that, you know, sometimes a good joke or a good point of view that can make you laugh a little bit can be a machete, a snake killer, a leech getter offer as you're up to your neck in swamp water or darkness or going down a tunnel or
Marc:A good joke can be a navigator, a light can be the little light on your hat when you're mining for a better way.
Marc:That I know.
Marc:But I'm not saying that you can't be well-adjusted and funny.
Marc:There's plenty of well-adjusted funny people that are very deliberate and calculating.
Marc:So this is how this works.
Marc:This is how the joke works.
Marc:But if it's coming from your guts and your guts are in turmoil and you need to be funny to survive or to keep things in proper perspective, you're probably going to be not necessarily funnier, but definitely a little deeper with your funny.
Marc:There's a depth to the funny.
Marc:All right?
Marc:If you want to go a few fathoms down, it's got to be life or death down there, man, so you don't get the fucking bends.
Marc:God, what is this, a metaphor party?
Marc:Holy fuck.
Marc:So, look, I talked to Todd Hanson.
Marc:This conversation is a little unique in terms of what we do here on the show in that it has two distinct parts.
Marc:They are both on this episode.
Marc:I spoke to Todd Hanson in Brooklyn.
Marc:at a hotel i'm not going to mention the name of the hotel doesn't matter wasn't a nice hotel it wasn't an unusual hotel for a traveling person to stay at i didn't know they had one of these hotels in brooklyn but i was at a hotel and i'd been in touch with todd hansen i'd gotten calls from todd hansen here and there okay i knew that he struggled with a certain amount of darkness and
Marc:And that was one of the reasons why he sort of fell out, didn't know where he was for a while.
Marc:And I would get these calls from Todd saying, Mark, you know, do you know any books, man?
Marc:I need a book.
Marc:And there's an urgency to somebody who experiences darkness.
Marc:You know, when they ask you a question like, you know, I need I need a book or I need to know where a restaurant is.
Marc:I need to know what's a good CD.
Marc:Can I borrow that CD?
Marc:What they're really asking for is I need something to throw me a line so I can try to climb up out of where I am.
Marc:Do you have that book?
Marc:Do you have that CD?
Marc:Do you have that flavor of ice cream?
Marc:Do you?
Marc:And I would talk to Todd, but this was the first time that we had really talked to him.
Marc:We've known each other for Christ.
Marc:It's got to be probably 15 years, between 15 and 20 years when he was in New York with The Onion, when he moved out to New York.
Marc:And he used to come around, hang around the comedy thing.
Marc:We bonded very quickly.
Marc:But I had not had this conversation.
Marc:I had not had a long conversation with him.
Marc:Certainly not the type of conversation we had.
Marc:So the first part of this conversation took place in my hotel room.
Marc:And we had talked about some stuff before that conversation.
Marc:And we didn't know whether or not we were going to get to it.
Marc:Because he didn't know whether or not he was ready to get to it.
Marc:It's heavy.
Marc:And we didn't get to it during the first conversation.
Marc:But we did get to it in the second one.
Marc:So let's listen to Todd Hanson and I'll talk to you in between and enjoy this because the onion should be celebrated.
Marc:It changed the entire face of American satire in the last decade.
Marc:So this is me and Todd Hanson at an unnamed hotel in Brooklyn, New York.
Marc:So Todd Hanson in a hotel room in Brooklyn, you wrote for The Onion.
Marc:You're still on the, what do you call it?
Guest:Masthead?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't have any kind of important role at The Onion.
Guest:I've just worked there for like 20 years.
Guest:There's no point in going on about like, what's going on at The Onion now?
Guest:What are you doing at The Onion now?
Marc:No, I don't care about that.
Marc:But I mean, to me...
Marc:When The Onion made its move, there was a period in time when I lived here in New York, in my recollection, where all of a sudden, The Onion was a website that occasionally I would get links to.
Marc:I don't eat a lot of media, personally.
Marc:I don't really either, actually.
Marc:And then all of a sudden, the onion was everywhere on my computer.
Marc:Like, you got to go this, got to go this.
Marc:And then one day in New York, the onion was everywhere in little, I don't even know what you call them.
Marc:Free kiosks?
Guest:The little boxes on the street where you can get the shit for free.
Marc:Is that what they're called when you buy them?
Guest:Can I swear on this?
Guest:Of course.
Marc:I can swear, yeah.
Marc:But I mean, I thought there might be a name for that thing.
Marc:The free newspaper thing.
Guest:Distribution box.
Marc:The distribution box.
Marc:We're all over.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you were part of that.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah, we had moved here in 2001.
Guest:Looking back, it turned out to be just the best possible year to move to New York City.
Marc:Yeah, there was a lot of heat on New York in 2001.
Guest:It was a great, fulfilling, wonderful place to be in 2001.
Guest:And little did we know, we had the most traumatic mass murder of our generation waiting around the corner after we moved here.
Guest:But, yeah, it was around that time that we met.
Guest:And I remember coming to New York and wanting so badly to experience cool comedy as opposed to just regular comedy.
Guest:And I never had access to it before.
Guest:And so I got here, and our PR guy at the time was a guy named Michael O'Brien.
Guest:I don't know if you know him.
Marc:Yeah, he was my PR guy for a while.
Guest:I've known Michael since he was a little PR guy.
Guest:Yeah, he's a good guy.
Guest:And anyway, he said, oh, well, you got to go to... Luna.
Guest:Luna.
Guest:So I go to Luna, and it takes me like two or three visits to Luna to figure out that the guy...
Guest:that is the genius of Luna, is this guy, Mark Merritt.
Guest:This guy, I singled him out.
Guest:It's like, okay, this guy's amazing.
Guest:Kindred spirit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And to that day, since that time, you've moved around.
Guest:You've lived in New York, sometimes lived in California, other times you've lived around.
Guest:And every time I run into you, it's good because I feel like, okay, somebody who can understand me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I do want to say, though, I had the most hilarious telephone call from you about,
Guest:I don't know, three months ago or something.
Guest:Did I call you or did you call me?
Guest:Well, I called you and you called me because I said, hey, we were both in Satiristas.
Guest:We haven't talked in a while.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:And then you called me back.
Guest:And then you even followed up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I told you, oh, man, I'm depressed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you said, oh, you got to read Sam Lipsight.
Guest:He just came out with a new book.
Guest:The Ask.
Guest:It'll make you feel so happy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Read the ask.
Guest:Come on, Todd.
Guest:You're a cheerleader for me.
Guest:You're on my side.
Guest:And I felt good.
Guest:And then I didn't get back to you for a while.
Guest:And about six months later, you gave me a follow-up call.
Guest:Six months?
Guest:Just to be a nice guy.
Guest:And this is the call.
Guest:May I tell your listeners what the call was?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I thought this was classic Merritt.
Guest:The call was, you were driving, okay?
Guest:And you were on your cell phone.
Guest:And you said, hey, Todd, Hanson, this is Merritt.
Guest:Listen, I'm driving right now, and I'm on my way to a...
Guest:psychiatric specialist who specializes in sexual and then it just went because it broke up because you're driving and so I thought the message was over you know like there's like you know 30 seconds and then it comes back in clearly and I hear you go because of my
Guest:Recent behavior.
Guest:So I hope that makes you feel better about your own life, I guess.
Guest:And to this day, I don't really know what was in that missing part of the transcript, but I don't want to know.
Guest:The point is, it did make me feel better.
Guest:It made me smile, made me laugh.
Guest:I thought, that's classic merit.
Marc:Yeah, it was probably a good three minutes.
Marc:How long were you waiting for that to come back on?
Marc:Yeah, well, yeah, that happened.
Marc:And, you know, I...
Marc:Unlike depression, which I've experienced in my life, compulsive behavior is something that you can live with a little more comfortably.
Marc:If you work it into your schedule.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:Or you build your schedule around it.
Marc:The schedule is secondary to compulsive behavior.
Marc:How do I fit a life around this?
Marc:But but, you know, before we get into that now, you came so they you came from Wisconsin.
Guest:I came from well, I lived all over the Midwest, but didn't live in Wisconsin till I was 16.
Guest:But then I stayed there till 2001 when we moved to New York.
Guest:Your family was in Wisconsin?
Guest:Well, my family moved to Wisconsin just for the last two years of my high school.
Guest:Then I went to UW-Madison, dropped out, and then because I was a loser who had no ambition in life, did not leave the town I had dropped out of college from and just stayed there for like 15 years.
Marc:Were you working?
Guest:If you can call it working, I mean, I call it working.
Guest:Minimum wage, unskilled labor, 40 hours a week.
Guest:I think that counts as working.
Guest:What was your last job like that?
Guest:I mean, I know at my last time, I was a restaurant guy.
Guest:I was a restaurant guy, but I was always back of the house because I never wanted to go out and deal with humans.
Marc:I couldn't handle the rejection of being a waiter.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, I couldn't either.
Guest:So what I did was I was just dishwashing.
Marc:I used to grill, make sandwiches.
Guest:Yeah, see, that's skilled labor.
Guest:I was more in the realm of unskilled labor.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I could fuck up dishwashing, but I could make a sandwich.
Guest:I got to be a really good dishwasher, man, if I may brag.
Guest:With the machine?
Guest:With the cable squirter?
Guest:Yeah, with this cable squirter and the pull-down thing.
Guest:I got to be so fast that they would let me break the normal rules of dishwasher.
Marc:You were a dishwashing revolutionary.
Guest:yeah they let me break the rules like like you're supposed to only have a cigarette uh break at certain times you know you're supposed to be on time clocking on time because if you don't clock in by you know one then the lunch dishes are going to pile up too much and they're not going to have enough for dinner whatever yeah but i could come in at 1 30 or 2 you know they didn't care because they knew i was so fucking fast you knew that if the guy in
Guest:No matter how piled up the dishes were, I would just like bam, bam, bam.
Guest:I turned out to be a really excellent dishwasher, which is an awful thing to have to brag about.
Guest:An awful thing to have to hang yourself steam on.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:There's this end to it.
Marc:Because that sound of the coil squirters in the restaurant dishwashers against the stainless steel, which was like a thin stainless steel, had a good pop to it.
Marc:There was a percussion to it.
Guest:Am I right?
Guest:You know what I'm talking about?
Marc:when that hit water it's like you heard that little ping of it yeah but i'll be honest with you some of the best cigarettes i ever had in my life were you know in an apron behind a restaurant yeah yeah you're just out there by the dumpster with the other dude yeah you know talking yeah usually you know you go into a restaurant you've been up all night drinking or on blow or whatever you're on two hours of sleep and you made it through the rush and that cigarette where you're just sitting there like it's almost it's
Marc:It's victorious.
Marc:It's like Robert Duvall on the beach in Apocalypse Now.
Marc:There's a victory to it.
Guest:Am I romanticizing it a little?
Guest:I remember.
Guest:I'm wearing the big rubber apron, and I'm sitting out there, and I'm smoking.
Guest:And some UW college student, hippie-looking, obviously humanities student, comes by and is taking pictures of the sort of urban decay around the back.
Guest:He's doing his photo documentary work?
Guest:Well, yeah, he's doing his freshman photo show or whatever.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he's taking pictures of stuff like gnarled trees that are grown into fences, you know, like broken down brick walls and shit.
Guest:And the name of the exhibition is Why?
Guest:Yeah, and something like that.
Guest:And then anyway, he turns to me and he sees me sitting there in my robe smoking.
Guest:And he's like...
Guest:snap snap snap and i'm like and i'm like okay i've become part of this man's landscape oh his statement about the decline of america i'm like part of it i symbolize it man yeah against nature and decay yeah were you ever already like that was i ever already like that well i used to be a cartoonist i hardly think that counts as arty but before like when you were in college for a year how long were you in college
Guest:Oh, I was in college for like four weeks before my girlfriend broke up with me and I just stopped going to class.
Marc:Is that what spiraled you?
Guest:Well, looking back on it, I realize now that that was just the first of a series of major depressions, what a psychiatrist would call a major depression.
Marc:So she couldn't take it?
Guest:no no no she dumped me and then i and i thought i was upset because i got dumped but i wasn't really upset because i got dumped i was upset because i was going into a major depression and and uh and it wasn't only until much later that i learned more about depression that i realized oh okay i've been through several of this even before her i mean as an adolescent no that was the first one but okay but i had some traumatic adolescent shit go down yeah i mean who didn't right
Marc:Well, I don't know.
Marc:They're all unique.
Marc:Like, what do you mean?
Guest:Freaky parent issues surrounding a divorce and absentee father.
Guest:How old were you when your parents got divorced?
Guest:Psycho mother and what have you.
Guest:Exact wrong age.
Guest:Right at puberty.
Guest:Like 13, 12, 13?
Guest:Yeah, I was like 12.
Marc:So you were trying to define yourself biologically and probably as a person.
Marc:I'm no psychoanalyst.
Marc:And your dad takes off and you're left with a crazy mom?
Guest:yeah now do you have a relationship with your dad now yeah i do how long was he split for um well i mean he he never really split i mean he's a very cool guy so he was always like in touch and everything but but um but
Guest:But yeah, I got a good, you know, I ended up finally moving out from living with my mom and going to live with my dad for the last three years of high school and then ended up in Madison.
Guest:With him?
Guest:I was kind of the guy in the middle of the two, is what I'm saying.
Guest:Like there were three kids, I was the oldest, and I was sort of the one in the middle.
Marc:Oh, so they were like, your mother, you ought to tell her, that kind of thing?
Guest:Yeah, well, you're your father, you got to tell him.
Guest:And so I was like in the middle trying to facilitate communication between the two halves.
Marc:Oh, so you had to be like the diplomat.
Guest:I had to be kind of the adult, which fucks you up when you're 11.
Marc:Yeah, it's horrible when your parents are children.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's what my therapist has been trying to say to me.
Guest:I'm going to my therapist right after this, by the way.
Guest:You get a double dose.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:You can be all prepared.
Marc:Maybe you can walk in and go, I'm okay today.
Marc:What's on your mind?
Guest:Maren, help me out.
Marc:I hope so.
Marc:So now The Onion, how did that come about that you ended up a writer there?
Marc:Because they were not a college operation at that time.
Guest:Well, they were college student run, but they weren't through the university.
Guest:They were just some entrepreneurs who wanted to sell pizza coupons.
Guest:And they thought, okay, well, they're advertising majors, in other words.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, and these two guys, their names were Chris Johnson and Peter Keck, and they decided they wanted to sell advertising.
Marc:So these were the original guys?
Guest:The original guys only ran it for one year, 1988, and they decided that they wanted to sell advertising.
Guest:In order to do it, they had to have a newspaper, and they didn't want to go through all the trouble of actually writing a newspaper and researching things.
Guest:Getting reporters.
Guest:Getting reporters.
Guest:So they just hired a couple of their friends to just make up stupid shit to put between the coupons, and it became a made-up newspaper, and that's how that started.
Guest:but i worked there for seven years from 1990 to 1997 before it was a full-time job and up until then it was just it was just a hobby now wait they so they started in 88 88 and i started in fall of 1990 they started how they find you as a dishwasher
Guest:Oh, well, here's the thing.
Guest:I knew a whole bunch of the people from there because I worked as a cartoonist for the Daily Cardinal, which was one of the UW's papers.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And so I knew Scott Dickers and I knew a bunch of, you know, Christine Wentz and some of the people.
Guest:They liked your comics?
Guest:They liked my comics, and me and a bunch of other cartoonists from that page, from that Daily Cardinal comics page, which was actually a really good, I think it was one of the best college comics pages in the country at the time, if I may brag about that.
Guest:But a lot of those people were very creative, very intelligent people, and they all sort of left the Daily Cardinal and went to The Onion.
Guest:So it was sort of a staff that was culled from a very rich environment of disillusioned and alienated Gen X slacker types.
Guest:Cartoonists.
Guest:That existed at that time in Madison and sort of formed organically almost like
Guest:into almost like a band, a garage band or something.
Guest:And then we would do these improv sessions, I mean brainstorming sessions, and we would make each other laugh and come up with these stories and assign them and do them.
Guest:But it wasn't for money, I think they paid us like
Guest:$5 a meeting and then it went up to like $10 a meeting and I think at one point it went up to like $15 a meeting and that was two meetings a week.
Marc:What was, did you feel the intention of the original Onion?
Marc:I mean, were you like, was there conversations like, we are a satire of news?
Guest:Well, here's the thing.
Guest:I have never owned anything of The Onion.
Guest:I've never run The Onion.
Guest:I know, but you were sitting there.
Guest:I'm just an employee.
Guest:But my attitude toward The Onion was always that it was an underground, subversive publication.
Guest:And our mission statement, or at least mine, was to satirize the society.
Guest:Truth to power, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Satirize the powerful.
Guest:And point out stupidity in society where you see it.
Guest:So I always thought it had a transgressive or subversive agenda.
Guest:Occasionally there have been people on the staff who don't seem to realize that and are just like, hey, let's just make people laugh and make it funny.
Guest:And I'm all for making it funny and making people laugh, but I'm not really into it to cheer people up.
Guest:I don't think you are either.
Guest:Some people go to a comedy club because they're like, oh, I had a long week.
Guest:yeah i want to see a clown i want to see a clown it'll make me laugh yeah make me feel better i'm tired yeah this will make me feel better yeah not my and then they show up at mark maron's show and they walk out just with their head hanging yeah yeah wow he feels worse than me and he seems to have a handle on it yeah yeah yeah
Guest:So that's kind of the same attitude I always had.
Guest:I like artists like that.
Guest:I always like Robert Altman movies.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Because he sets out, he'll set out a genre.
Guest:It's a Western.
Guest:McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
Marc:Best movie ever.
Guest:And it's one of the saddest fucking movies you could ever see.
Guest:And so an audience shows up to that.
Guest:They're like, oh, it's got Julie Christie.
Guest:It's got Warren Beatty.
Guest:They're the two big number one stars right now.
Guest:It's a Western.
Guest:It's from the maker of this big blockbuster mash.
Guest:Let's go see McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
Guest:It's going to be this entertaining Western.
Guest:And instead they see this bleak, horrific vision of... That man never killed anybody.
Guest:Of just human folly and destruction.
Guest:The rise of capitalism.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I always love that when people do that.
Guest:That's one of the reasons I like your work so much.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You said something at the last, well, yesterday at the last podcast you recorded at the Bell House.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And you were reading viewer mail and somebody was saying, listen, you're funny, the people on your show are funny, but you just got to be a little funnier because you're not funny 90% of the time.
Guest:And you got all pissed and said, hey, man, sometimes it's not about the funny, sometimes it's about the sad.
Guest:And I think I yelled out like, hell yeah.
Marc:or fucking a something like that because because uh that's what i've always admired about your work mary but well thank you but you know it comes it's interesting to me that like like i don't know how to make the connection i don't know why you keep every time you bring up the onion you go out of your way to say you were just employ you know an employee or just a writer because you know when you guys came to new york you and uh the other guy the uh the sort of um kind of you know kind of brittle jewish guy what was his name
Marc:Siegel?
Guest:Siegel, the guy that wrote The Wrestler.
Guest:He wrote an Academy Award-winning film.
Marc:My experience with him, I always liked him, but he always seemed like me.
Marc:He's a little neurotic and defensive.
Marc:Jewish.
Marc:Yeah, Jewish.
Guest:But you guys were really the visible... I'm kind of an honorary Jew, I think, at this point, even though I'm not Jewish.
Marc:I think you come from, you know, there's a tradition of kind of, you know, swarthy Midwestern funny guys.
Guest:Yeah, well, my dad was a Lutheran minister, so I don't have much of a claim on a Jewish heritage.
Guest:Well, Lutheran, at least he was Lutheran.
Guest:I do kind of have the Jewish thing going.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:But you guys were very visible in terms of representing The Onion, you know, when there was a panel.
Guest:Well, you know, yeah.
Marc:You wouldn't have called yourself the head writer at that time?
Guest:I was the head writer at that time.
Guest:Somebody else has the title now.
Guest:I'm not even sure what my title is.
Guest:I think my title is like 20-Year Man or something like that.
Marc:But you were the head writer here in New York.
Guest:Yeah, I was at that time.
Guest:And my title has changed at various times over the years.
Guest:The titles at The Onion are very...
Guest:Just kind of like there's a team, you know what I mean?
Guest:And, you know, at times I've been called an editor, at other times I haven't been called an editor.
Guest:At times I was head writer, at other times I was just staff writer.
Guest:At times I was a screenwriter for that awful Onion movie that got made.
Marc:Yeah, I think I auditioned for that.
Marc:yeah well every all the best people in new york auditioned for it none of them got hired i was like what the fuck is going on that should have been an early warning sign that something was going wrong with that but when when when the move to new york happened when the you know the biggest expansion the onion and and i think the the the kind of vortex of its explosion in terms of cultural relevance was you were the head writer then
Marc:fair to say yes okay now uh in terms of where you come from that and you talk about the move in 2001 i mean everybody was excited about the onion and of course you know the horrible thing that 9-11 happened and and you and in several other comedic talents were on this precipice of you know you know when can we do this when can we you know start to make
Marc:not light of it but when can we start doing what we did and and i think that you guys were sort of heralded for for the issue that eventually broke the silence i can't remember what the headline was i think we actually did come out we did start working on that and i think we did come out with that before almost anybody else came back what was the headline
Guest:Well, there were many headlines.
Guest:The main headline was U.S.
Guest:vows to defeat whoever it is we're at war with.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which I thought was quite great.
Guest:There was another front page headline that I wrote, which was real life turns into bad Jerry Bruckenheimer film.
Guest:yeah and it had a photo of you know like the towers exploding and then and then the caption was an actual scene from real life you know because it looked exactly like a hollywood shirt you know you know thing and then um and then uh i wrote the story though that that people always talk about about that issue was not on the front page because the front previous issues front page had been
Guest:A headline that said God finally gives shout out back to all his niggas Yeah, and it was just this big long list that God had announced from heaven of listing all the rappers You know yeah, and and so they didn't want to have God on the front page twice So they put God on the inside But this is a story that people bring up to me which was God angrily clarifies Actually was God angrily reclarifies
Guest:think don't kill rule and he was saying look I've been saying this for thousands of years don't kill each other why are you still doing it in my name claiming it's my will claiming it's what I want I put it in simple one syllable terms that just about anybody can understand how much more can I explain it you're pissing me off now
Guest:Quit it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:And at the end of that story, you know, God actually starts crying.
Guest:And I was actually crying when I wrote that.
Guest:I mean, it was not a cheerful comedy, cheer people up kind of issue.
Guest:It was funny cry cry more than funny ha ha.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is good funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, it's also the only appropriate way to respond to that situation.
Guest:Everybody's freaked out.
Guest:Nobody felt like, hey, hey, let's be anti-establishment while the establishment lays in burning embers at our feet.
Guest:It was just not...
Guest:wasn't anything anybody felt like you didn't feel like being irreverent right um uh normally the onion loves to be irreverent and we love to get hate mail yeah but when we put that out we're just like oh my god i hope we don't get any hate mail because you all felt pretty close to it yeah and we and we did and we did get a lot of hate mail right at the beginning of the day but then throughout the day we started getting hundreds and hundreds more eventually thousands of emails and ninety percent nine percent of them were not only supportive they were like
Guest:ecstatic they were saying things like god bless the onion you know thank you the onion right thank you for giving me the first laugh i've had in you know a week and a half or whatever it was and this was this was literally in september yeah no yeah this was like right after you know
Marc:And did you find that you set a sort of tone?
Marc:Because, like, the interesting thing about The Onion, you know, as a comic, I mean, there's been several, you know, when I did sort of read it or when people would say, did you see this or whatever, there's been several times where I'd be like, well, there goes that fucking joke.
Marc:Fuck Todd.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like, I remember one... Well, just in all fairness to the rest of the staff, I want to point out that it was fuck a lot of other people, too, because I was writing the guy.
Marc:No, I know that, but you were my face.
Marc:And I'm not sure I even really said that I was making a point, but... I just want everybody to get credit.
Marc:Well, even when you did those things, when you would come up with a headline, because...
Marc:When you said clarify or re-clarify, when someone comes up with a headline and it feels like it's got legs, do you all sit around and sort of chip away at the poetics of it?
Guest:Yeah, we do.
Guest:It's very much a team process.
Guest:It's very much like being in a band.
Guest:Now, lately, in recent years, The Onion's become a lot more of a corporate institution.
Guest:I mean, it hasn't been bought out by any corporation.
Guest:It's still an independent little company.
Guest:I still like to consider it an underground publication, although some people say you can't do that because it's part of the mass media.
Guest:Yeah, who says that?
Guest:Who says that?
Guest:Well, sometimes people say that.
Marc:You get those emails, you fuckers sold out, man.
Guest:But it's like, no, but we didn't... I mean, you know, we're not...
Guest:Viacom doesn't own us, you know what I mean?
Guest:And we're struggling in this economy like everybody else, and we're a small business, you know what I mean?
Guest:And a lot of people, millions of people all over the country have no idea what The Onion is.
Guest:It's not like it's shoved down your throat like Shrek 3 or something.
Marc:Well, some people don't know to the degree where it gets used in real news stories.
Guest:Yeah, that's the other thing.
Marc:Your satire runs so close to the bone, the Onion satire, that in the machine that is the media, people pick up stories.
Guest:There's some great examples of that.
Guest:I can't remember who it was, but it was some TV pundit.
Guest:I can't remember her name.
Guest:Anyway, she reported, we did a story about something like 96% of all
Guest:of all exercise in the united states occurs on television yeah and she reported that like is a legitimate legitimate statistic and talked about what a shame it was and then you know yeah there's been other examples of that yeah and whenever that happens that's kind of our favorite thing because uh we like that even more than when people get the joke and laugh it's sort of uh people don't get the joke and think it's real that's kind of our favorite thing
Marc:It's a media, what do they call it?
Marc:What does ad busters call that?
Marc:They call it media jamming.
Marc:Media jamming, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it's a great thing because that, outside of the satire of the piece itself, that when it actually enters the media landscape as a reportable fact, it's almost like that story becomes an assassin.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That, you know, it's sent in, you know, undercover, and then it explodes in the face of mainstream media.
Guest:And speaking of exploding in the face of mainstream media, can I plug some work of a friend of mine?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:There's 10 episodes right now on IFC of a show called ONN, which stands for Onion News Network.
Guest:I wish I could say I had more to do with that show.
Guest:I had very little to do with that show because it was...
Guest:mainly done by a different staff than does the paper.
Guest:Just because there's so much work.
Guest:It's like one staff couldn't do it both.
Guest:But the people that did do it are great.
Guest:And one of them is my very best friend in the whole wide world, Carol Kolb, who I've known for years, knew way back in Madison.
Guest:And she was the head writer.
Guest:And every time I watch that show, I'm amazed they got it on TV.
Guest:It's so dark.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:But hopefully it will, you know...
Guest:live on in dvd form or something like that after that but the point is all of the characters are unlikable like like like it's all got all these great reviews except for some reviews that say this show isn't going to be a hit doesn't have any likable characters and i'm like yes that's the point it's a news crew it's a news crew everyone everyone on the news well it's a pretty kind of like a cnn or right fox news or any one of those like high yeah profile cable news shows yeah and all of the characters on the show all the reporters are just assholes
Guest:They're just awful people in one way or another, especially the main anchor.
Guest:It's just an awful woman.
Guest:But they recently had an episode where al-Qaeda attacked the United States.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they won at the end of the episode.
Guest:Like, al-Qaeda won and defeated the United States.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm just like, how did you get that on the air?
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:It's just so uncompromisingly harsh.
Guest:And dark.
Guest:And that's what I love about it.
Guest:And the great thing is that the woman that they cast in the role is just a real former Fox News anchor.
Guest:No, that's great.
Guest:She's not a comedian at all.
Guest:Well, you love that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:and i and i'm definitely looking forward to watching the show but how do you feel in general about how the onion you know and when you were there you know set the tone of a specific type of satire and and no and nothing ever really did it better and then when you know when stewart reinvents the daily show he pulls from onion writers i mean i it's well yeah he pulled ben carlin to be his head writer is he a buddy of yours
Guest:Ben Carlin was the editor-in-chief of The Onion for a couple years before he went off to L.A., and then eventually made it back to New York to work with Jon Stewart.
Guest:And I'm not claiming that The Onion gets credit for what Jon Stewart does, my God.
Guest:No, of course not, but what I'm saying... That would be ridiculous.
Marc:But it's interesting that, you know, that... But yeah, and same with The Colbert Report.
Guest:My good buddy, Rich Dom, who was the editor of The Onion for many years, was one of the co-creators of... Not one of the co-creators, but one of the people who helped create The Colbert Report.
Marc:That makes sense because The Onion set this standard of effectively and succinctly satirizing the news format, which starts with newspapers and then becomes, I think even in the evolution of broadcasting, that that type of reporting eventually becomes what is a news show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, they also did radio and other things.
Guest:Right, yeah.
Marc:But it makes perfect sense that John and Stephen would draw from you guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, speaking of great moments in Onion history, we also had this thing.
Guest:It wasn't Onion Radio, but I guess it was part of the Onion Radio news, but...
Guest:It was a page on the Onions website, which was the message, the weekly radio address from President George Bush.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because he had one of those on WhiteHouse.gov.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So we created one that looked just like WhiteHouse.gov, but it was on the Onions site.
Guest:And, I mean, it looked exactly the same.
Guest:You know, it was imitating their exact layout and everything.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then we'd have these ridiculous things that Bush would say.
Guest:And the editor-in-chief at the time was Scott Dickers, and he does a really good George Bush.
Guest:And so we would say all these really offensive things, and it would be attributed to George Bush.
Guest:And it was always satirical.
Guest:It wasn't just silly.
Guest:It was always satirical.
Guest:And I was really proud of it.
Guest:Well, we get this letter.
Guest:And this was right in the middle of... Remember when Bush was in all that controversy over the fact that he tried to appoint, like, I don't know, like his personal accountant or something to the Supreme Court?
Guest:Do you remember when that happened?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so there was all this controversy about it.
Guest:And right in the middle of that, we get this letter from the White House, legal offices.
Guest:And it says, on your website...
Guest:you know the george w bush radio address yeah you are using the presidential seal yeah which is illegal you cannot use the presidential seat because we just use it because we're imitating their style they had the president yeah and we it's a cease and desist order and so what dickers did and this is one of the great things in the history of the onion what he did
Guest:is he just sent a copy of it to the New York Times, or he CC'd a copy to the New York Times, and he also wrote back to them.
Guest:And he said, in these times of legal troubles for the White House, I'm really surprised that anyone at the White House legal counsel has time to worry about protecting the president from comedians.
Guest:We've checked with our lawyers, and from what we understand, we're not in violation of any law, and so we're just going to keep doing it.
Guest:And then the New York Times ran a thing about it.
Guest:They ended up looking silly because they're wasting their time sending a letter to the Onion when they should be dealing with the Supreme Court.
Guest:And the great thing about it, we have that letter still framed on the wall at the Onion offices.
Guest:It's signed by the president's lawyer.
Guest:And we never got a follow-up.
Guest:No follow-up.
Guest:It wasn't even like, oh, we're sorry, or anything.
Guest:They just dropped it.
Guest:You won.
Guest:We won.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's hilarious.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And in that White House, it's sort of interesting, especially with that president, George, too, that as a...
Marc:As somebody who myself will obviously focus and obsess on small negative things, and I have found recently that it's just a way for me to get out of myself, to engage.
Marc:Life becomes very overwhelming, but it's very petty that people like Nixon and people like Bush would, that even in his administration, someone would say like, look at this thing.
Marc:And I could totally see that president saying, well, let's do something about this.
Guest:Let's show these little fuckers.
Guest:What do you think?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I like to think that Bush was probably preoccupied with something slightly more important.
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:Like clearing brush at his ranch or something.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Anything to get him out of himself and focus a little bit.
Guest:And it was probably some lawyer of his that just sent out a form letter.
Guest:But, you know...
Guest:Our fantasy is that we took on the White House.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, you did.
Marc:I mean, it's legitimate.
Marc:I mean, they were talking about the presidential seal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we said, look, to the best of our knowledge, we're allowed to use the presidential seal.
Guest:If we're not, you can call our lawyers, but that's what our lawyers said.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:No follow-up.
Marc:There was a thing you ran on the cover that I remember oddly more than other things, only because I think I was doing a bit that was similar, was the Starbucks Phase 2 thing.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Starbucks is entering phase two.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Well, you just showed up, boarded up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They announced, we will no longer be serving coffee.
Guest:We are currently preparing for phase two.
Guest:You know, having established these locations all around the country.
Guest:They never said what phase two was going to be.
Guest:Just some nefarious, unknown thing.
Guest:That is so funny.
Guest:You know, like they're going to open suicide squads there or something.
Guest:I have no idea.
Guest:Was that yours?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:That wasn't mine.
Guest:That was, I think...
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:I used to have the whole Onion catalog memorized.
Guest:I could tell you every writer who wrote every one.
Guest:But I've been working there for 20 years, man.
Guest:I can't remember anymore.
Guest:I wish I could give credit to whoever wrote that.
Guest:That was a good one.
Guest:I think the person who wrote the story was Crewson.
Guest:But I can't remember who wrote the headline.
Guest:what are your favorite headlines of the outside of the god one and and uh you know how you handled uh well the best onion on the headline i ever wrote right i can tell you that what was that well it was it was after um again we're going way back yeah time but shortly after we moved to new york and
Guest:And shortly after Bush had, you know, in theory, won.
Guest:I'm making, your radio audience can't hear me, but I'm making finger quotes around the word won because he didn't win anything.
Guest:But he won the 2000 election.
Guest:And shortly after that, his daughters, who were college age, started engaging in all kinds of crazy kegger behavior and getting themselves arrested and, you know, doing, you know, partying and, I don't know, going on Girls Mound Wild or whatever it was they did.
Guest:and so so Bush made this announcement to the press and he said please lay off my family you know this is my personal family it's my personal life that doesn't belong in the papers from the same you know party that had just spent two years you know examining every single detail of of you know Monica Lewinsky's mouth and just how many inches you know deep it was and everything else so but they're like no it's just personal life so leave it out of the papers yeah
Guest:So immediately Rob Siegel, the editor-in-chief at the time, he comes to the writing staff and he's like, okay, everybody write Jenna Bush jokes.
Guest:Write jokes about Bush's daughters.
Guest:And so we all sat down and brainstormed a bunch of jokes about Jenna Bush.
Guest:And mine is the one that got through and got published.
Guest:And it's my single favorite thing I ever got published.
Guest:It was just a one-liner.
Guest:There was no article.
Guest:But I loved it because it sounded like it was really intelligent, you know, political commentary.
Guest:But it wasn't.
Guest:It was just like a cheap vagina joke is all it was.
Guest:It was vulgar as hell.
Guest:But it was framed as if it was some sort of sophisticated political joke.
Guest:And the headline was, Jenna Bush's federally protected wetlands now open for public drilling.
LAUGHTER
Guest:And I was so happy about combining highbrow and lowbrow.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And people bring that up to me to this day.
Guest:But I think the best thing The Onion ever did in terms of what you said about people taking it seriously and not realizing it wasn't real, is remember when Harry Potter, like there were fundamentalist Christians saying it's Satan, it's teaching children about hate?
Guest:Sure, witchcraft.
Guest:Yeah, it's witchcraft.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So what we did was we ran this headline.
Guest:This is, I think, even before we moved to New York.
Guest:And it said, you know, 20 million children under the age of 12 now swelling the ranks of the Church of Satan because of Harry Potter.
Guest:And it was all this misinformation about just validating this ridiculous, you know, false belief.
Guest:And we got not only, I mean, not only hundreds, but thousands.
Guest:of emails from people that were of one of two types.
Guest:One was fundamentalist Christians writing in to say, thank you for finally telling the truth.
Guest:I'm forwarding this to all the people in my church group.
Guest:This finally a major newspaper has come out and admit the truth.
Guest:And then we also got a bunch of emails from people saying, do you realize that the Christian radio station in my town is reading that out loud and claiming it's real?
Guest:And they're actually saying, and if you don't believe me, you can look it up on the web.
Guest:It's www.theonion.com.
Guest:They would even cite the source.
Guest:And we got reports that people were quoting from the pulpit.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And it made me so happy, especially because, and this is the best part of the story, is my dad is a minister.
Guest:But he's not a crazy Christian.
Guest:He's like a reasonable...
Guest:you know anti-war bob dylan well the lutherans like if garrison keeler is any indication are fairly you know decent my dad's my dad's into garrison keeler sure so and uh so so he went to this ecumenical meeting right of all the different churches in his town that they have once a month
Guest:And everybody went up and said, I think the thing we need to talk about this meeting is this article, which proves the Harry Potter books are satanic.
Guest:And, you know, because it had quotes from like, you know, Rowling saying, the purpose of my books is to lead children into the worship of Satan and stuff like that, which is just fabricated.
Guest:And no one would believe it unless they were retards.
Guest:Yeah, which people essentially were.
Guest:But they were also looking to fuel their narrow-minded perspective.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:They were looking for anything to back it up.
Guest:So anyway, so the first guy gets up and says, oh, I want to talk about this.
Guest:The second guy gets up and says, oh, I want to talk about this.
Guest:My dad lays low, decides to go last.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Waits till everybody goes up and gives their spiel about this article.
Guest:Then he comes up and he says, I think we've learned a valuable thing today about faith.
Guest:Because there's a difference between faith and what you don't understand and admitting your own doubt and leaving it up to God to resolve the questions that you can't answer.
Guest:But there's another kind of faith, which is when you're so willing to believe something
Guest:that you will accept something as true without even looking into whether or not it is.
Guest:And a good example is this article about Harry Potter, which everyone had been talking about.
Guest:He says, this article is in fact not real, it's a hoax, and it's not even really a hoax because it's a piece of comedy.
Guest:that was written by a newspaper called The Onion in Madison, Wisconsin.
Guest:And I happen to know this because my son is the head writer of that paper.
Guest:And so I think this gives us a little lesson about how much we rush to believe things we want to be true.
Guest:And he gives this whole sermon about it.
Guest:And then he goes and sits down and he says, it's just silence in the room.
Guest:Because everyone in the room hates him.
Guest:But they can't say anything because he's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's right.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:You ever been in that situation where everyone disagrees with you, but they can't yell at you because you're right?
Marc:Yeah, and they can't admit how stupid they look.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Their brains are just going, well, how can we spin this misinterpretation into something that still has teeth?
Guest:Yeah, it was great.
Guest:He just defanged them all.
Guest:That's awesome.
Guest:Pluck, pluck, pluck, pluck.
Guest:And nobody said a word.
Guest:Did he call you up and say, I'm proud of you?
Guest:Yeah, he did.
Guest:He did?
Marc:And I said, Dad, I'm proud of you.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:Well, that's a fine father-son moment to have.
Marc:Yes, it was.
Marc:Well, it's clear that The Onion has effectively changed global media culture, and you were part of that, which is exciting.
Marc:Now, we talked a little bit about...
Marc:what fuels us uh you know i i personally found that that much of of my anxiety and depression that you know my you know my father uh is you know bipolar uh so the story goes and uh you know i had those diagnoses are always real up in the air aren't they
Marc:Well, it's just weird because I had to investigate myself, you know, because he's very proud of the possibility that I might be depressive because, you know, I'm his son.
Marc:He's like, that's my boy.
Marc:Look at him.
Marc:You know, it's suicidal.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But I. My suicidal boy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But, you know, as time went on, you know, in the periods that I experienced of depression,
Marc:It's interesting that you cite that first heartbreak as being the trigger of what became a lifelong struggle.
Guest:A repeating pattern.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know about, I can't do any pathology on it, but I just found that a lot of my depression was really an anxiety.
Marc:That I get to a point where my anxiety is fueled by dread and worry and assuming the worst.
Marc:and complete fear to the point where... Which brings you into a major depression.
Marc:Right, which triggers a paralysis almost.
Marc:I literally shut down, and then I'm locked into this thing.
Guest:Yeah, I do the same exact thing, Mark, and it's lucky I haven't been fired.
Guest:I'll probably be fired any minute.
Guest:I'm always on the verge of losing my job because I'm missing a meeting.
Guest:I'm not coming in, or I'm not turning my story in by deadline because I'm in a fetal position in my room crying.
Marc:And it's hard to pull out.
Guest:Yeah, it's very hard to pull out.
Guest:You know, luckily the people at The Onion have been very supportive of me and my friends have been very supportive of me and I've tried as best I can to transfer those feelings into the kind of dark humor that I respect and enjoy and that apparently other people relate to because, you know, we do get fan letters from people saying,
Guest:That was the most depressing thing I ever read.
Guest:Thank you for writing it.
Guest:It made me feel better.
Guest:I'm very depressed myself.
Guest:And then someone will say, hey, Todd, this email is about what you wrote.
Guest:You should have it.
Marc:Well, that's the weird thing is that in thinking about... Well, it's like the blues.
Guest:The cure for the blues is listening to the blues.
Marc:Right, but also being a blues performer or being the type of comic voice that we are is that I've grown to believe, and from talking to you, I think it's similar with you, is that the way we're going to make sense of the world for ourselves to feel like we have a place in it and also to feel...
Marc:you know not overwhelmed by it you know because like if you let the world just keep you know coming at you in the way it's presented to us uh which is usually a lot of that you guys satirize it it would be very hard not to think that you know what's the point well i i i often say if you're not at least a little bit depressed
Guest:You're just not fucking paying attention.
Marc:I've said that.
Marc:If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.
Guest:And I don't mean just about political injustice.
Guest:I mean just about the human condition in general.
Marc:But I think there's a lot to support that.
Marc:I think that's why a lot of things were created, that there's such an insane fear planted in us because of our knowledge of our own mortality that it's not just a double-edged sword.
Marc:It's a multifaceted weapon of personal and mass destruction.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it's not just our knowledge of our own mortality, but our knowledge of what's going to happen before our mortality kicks in.
Guest:What could happen.
Guest:Just what goes on every day in the world.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, man's inhumanity to men, or more likely women.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's just horrifying.
Guest:You pay attention to what's actually happening.
Guest:It's pretty bad.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But there's beautiful things, too, like this moment between you and I, Mark.
Guest:So things make up for it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But how are you at experiencing that?
Marc:Like, I find that when I internalize, you know, when I'm in my head with the depression, that there's some safety in it because, you know, I'm familiar with it.
Marc:But when I have human experience like you and I are having or when I do have the distance from my own brain to actually say, like, this is a joyful moment.
Marc:I don't know what the fuck to do with it.
Guest:You don't know what the fuck to do with the joy.
Guest:Mark?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The very subject that you just brought up is what I was talking about with my therapist last session and what I will be talking with her about just as soon as I leave here and head there.
Guest:What's that?
Guest:That very thing.
Guest:What do you do when you're actually happy?
Guest:I feel like crying.
Guest:Yeah, I do too.
Guest:I do too.
Guest:As a matter of fact, it's kind of a miracle that I'm not crying right now.
Guest:I cry almost every time I talk.
Guest:We used to joke about if we ever get together and do this podcast, we'll both just collapse into a vortex of misery and just vanish from the space-time continuum, and everyone will be like, what happened to them?
Guest:yeah they're gone yeah you know yeah uh but uh neither one of us has shed a tear yet so uh we got that going for us we're professionals at this and i think that like i'm trying to identify that that you know what those tears are but no but what you're saying though about not knowing what to do let me just relate an anecdote yeah a friend of mine was uh going through a hard time she calls me up and she's like i need a friend right now can i come over so she comes over
Guest:and we're talking about one of the worst things that I had personally gone through.
Guest:And I was saying, you know, at the time, somebody came up to me and said, Todd,
Guest:You're looking at the world so negative.
Guest:Look at the positive things in the world.
Guest:Listen to the birds in the trees.
Guest:Can you hear the birds in the trees?
Guest:The birds are singing.
Guest:Listen to the birds singing.
Guest:And I said to the guy...
Guest:I appreciate what you're trying to do, but when I hear those birds singing, I'm not hearing the happy twittering of happy little creatures.
Guest:I'm hearing the screams of territorial animals that are either competing for mates or are competing for some sort of feeding territory against other competitors, which will starve them out if they don't win.
Guest:and in the kill or be killed, eat or be eaten cauldron of murder that constitutes the natural world.
Guest:And that's what I hear when I hear the birds in the trees.
Guest:And also that you're awake.
Guest:And so I started relating this to my friend.
Guest:And my friend said, yeah, but when birds are... She's like, oh, but yeah, but you were in a really bad space that time, so you were...
Guest:You were hallucinating.
Guest:You were hearing something that wasn't there.
Guest:You were hearing these frightening cries of the birds instead of the happy songs.
Guest:And I said, well, I was definitely in a depressed state, but what I was hearing, I wasn't hearing sounds that weren't there.
Guest:I was hearing the real sounds of the birds.
Guest:And she's like, but you were wrong, right?
Guest:Because when birds sing, they're happy.
Guest:And I said, well, technically, they're singing because of territorial.
Guest:And she just cut me off.
Guest:And she goes, Todd, Todd, Todd, don't ruin birds for me.
Guest:And I said, you know, you're right.
Guest:Fair enough.
Guest:I'm not going to ruin birds for you.
Guest:Go ahead and think they're happy.
Marc:Well, you seem like you're, you know, at least in this hour and even the other night, the night before last, you seem, you know, like, and I know...
Marc:The waves of depression and the waves of a depressed personality that you're experiencing some comfort now, at least today.
Guest:Well, I got a couple of good things going for me.
Guest:The last two years have been really hard, but some things are going for me now.
Marc:Well, do you want to talk about this hotel?
Guest:This hotel is a hotel I've been to once before.
Guest:Very generic.
Guest:Microwave in the room, though.
Guest:Microwave in the room.
Guest:And free breakfasts.
Guest:Nice flat screen TV.
Guest:Free breakfast.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's not a bad place.
Guest:It was quite comfortable.
Guest:And I've only been in this hotel once before and never since.
Guest:So this is my second time.
Guest:And you know what?
Guest:Maybe we'll talk about
Guest:Maybe we'll talk about the day I was here on a sequel to this podcast.
Guest:How about that?
Guest:I don't know if I feel like talking about that right now.
Guest:But the point is, this is a big day for the therapy of Todd, thanks to the help of his friend Mark Barron.
Guest:And I sure appreciate it.
Marc:Well, I'm glad you're doing all right, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was great talking to you.
Thank you.
Marc:That was Todd Hanson at the beginning of March.
Marc:And underneath, beneath the surface of what we were talking about, it was a great conversation.
Marc:It was great to see him.
Marc:It was great to learn that stuff about him, about his sense of humor, about The Onion, the history of The Onion.
Marc:But underneath...
Marc:what we were talking about was a much bigger event, an emotional event, an actual event that took place in that very hotel that we were talking in.
Marc:In the very hotel that we were having the conversation that we had, something had happened.
Marc:And it was the first time that Todd had been back there since that event.
Marc:And I didn't know whether or not we would ever talk about it.
Marc:I was more than willing to use that conversation as the Todd Hansen episode.
Marc:But I thought that if he wanted to talk about moving through that event or discussing it in a public way, that we could do it.
Marc:And he thought that he might.
Marc:So I waited until the beginning of June, the end of May, the beginning of June, where we had this second conversation in Todd Hansen's apartment in Brooklyn.
Marc:And he discusses what happened in that hotel room in the comfort of his apartment.
Marc:And it was another great conversation.
Marc:And I'm so glad we had it.
Marc:So here's the rest of the Todd Hansen conversations.
Marc:It's been a couple months since I talked to Todd Hanson at the... Can we mention the name of the hotel?
Marc:I don't think it'd be good publicity for that.
Marc:I don't think it would either.
Guest:I suppose they probably would prefer if we didn't.
Marc:But we are now in your apartment.
Marc:That is...
Marc:It's great.
Marc:This is an apartment with history in it.
Marc:You know Todd pretty well now if you've listened to the last hour of conversation.
Marc:Now this is two months later.
Marc:We're in Todd's apartment here in Brooklyn.
Marc:It's got those great wooden shutters.
Guest:I love it, man.
Guest:You know, like I was telling you before, this is kind of the closest I've ever had to a home.
Guest:I mean, I live... It's just a rental, but... Yeah, but you've got... I've lived here 10 years now.
Guest:I've lived here longer than I've lived anywhere else in my life.
Guest:Some great art.
Guest:Great art.
Guest:You know, some records I have.
Guest:A lot of CDs.
Guest:Which of those records...
Guest:I've got that Replacements record.
Guest:I've got that Modern Lovers record.
Guest:I've got that Ramones record.
Guest:Do you have Wild and Crazy Guy by Steve Martin?
Guest:I've got that Beastie Boys album.
Guest:Boss Hog, I've got that.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:That's the first Boss Hog EP.
Marc:Yeah, not the EP, but I have some other thing of theirs.
Marc:But Miles Davis, I have the Jack Johnson Sessions.
Marc:Yeah, I've got that R.L.
Marc:Burnside record.
Marc:That's such a great record.
Guest:With the John Spencer Blues Explosion.
Guest:Yeah, Blues Explosion with a backup band for R.L.
Guest:on that record.
Marc:Well, you know, we are not unlike each other.
Guest:Well, I've always really related to your comedy, Mr. Marin.
Marc:Well, the happiness poster, see that movie I enjoy a great deal?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I thought that movie was hilarious.
Guest:I laughed continually through that movie, and a lot of people were like, how could you laugh?
Marc:Right, and I did as well, and I also, I'm the kind of person that, when people talk about Altman's shortcuts, I say that was a celebration of life.
Marc:Not unlike happiness, a celebration of life, but not everybody's cup of tea.
Guest:Well, the reason we ran into each other and ended up talking at the, sort of near the bell house where you were doing the podcast.
Marc:Right, and we had been talking about doing a show.
Marc:Now, when I was staying there, I had no idea what that place meant to you.
Marc:I had no idea that going there would be a sort of monumental place
Marc:and cathartic experience for you.
Marc:And we talked a bit after the last conversation we had in a bit before.
Marc:And now, you know, after a few more conversations on the phone, you know, here we are in your house and we have a little more reflection about what that place means and what that is.
Marc:And what was it to you?
Guest:Well, like I said, I'd only been there once in my life, and I had no intention of ever coming out of it when I checked in.
Guest:That was in, you know, it was like January of 2009.
Guest:You went there to end it.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, yeah.
Guest:And it was what the doctors call a...
Guest:Intent to die suicide attempt, as opposed to a call for help or cry for attention or whatever.
Marc:What's the difference?
Guest:Well, you don't want anybody to stop you from pulling it off.
Marc:So you check into that place, not too far from the house, shitty hotel.
Guest:Yeah, I didn't want anybody to find me.
Guest:I lived here with my roommate, Brian, at the time, one of my dearest friends, and I didn't want him to deal with it.
Guest:Right here, yeah.
Guest:And I figured, anonymous hotel, you know, a maid comes in, freaks out for two seconds, they call the paramedics or the cops or whoever deals with it.
Guest:I left a note for the cops.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So walk me through the day.
Guest:Well, I mean, it was a... It was a day that... It wasn't so much a day as it was, like, you know, years and years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, we talked the last time about how much I... I mean, the reason we ran into each other at Bell House is because you said, as part of... You were reading the mail, and somebody had complained about...
Guest:that you weren't focusing enough on laughs or something on your broadcast?
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And you said, oh, fuck you, man.
Guest:You know, sometimes it's not about the funny.
Guest:Sometimes it's about the sad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And as I almost always do.
Guest:Well, always.
Guest:Not almost always.
Guest:Always.
Guest:When I watch you on stage, I related so much to what you're saying.
Guest:And I went, whoo!
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like that.
Guest:A little whoo!
Guest:And you immediately knew that it was me.
Guest:Because we've talked about all that stuff before.
Guest:Sometimes it is about the sad.
Guest:And I've been sad my whole life.
Guest:I had had enough.
Marc:How long have you been thinking about it?
Marc:How long have you been thinking about actively doing it?
Marc:Where the depression was so relentless.
Marc:How long have you been planning that?
Guest:Well, I mean, I hadn't ever really allowed myself to plan it until maybe 36 hours before.
Guest:I mean, there were certain shit I threw away, whatever, you know, I didn't want people to find going through my shit, whatever, you know, private stuff.
Guest:Really?
Guest:But not much.
Guest:Not much.
Marc:What was that, like writings?
Guest:Some, yeah.
Guest:Some pictures of you in drag.
Guest:All the drag photos went straight to the garbage.
Guest:The butt plugs gone?
Guest:Butt plugs were in the curbside.
Yeah.
Guest:certain things i was like i can't you know no one can see know that party the the yeah no one can know about the little bo peep outfit yeah so i hid that no but in all seriousness it was mostly writing yeah and i trashed it you know i trashed some things and um and that was like the night before and then uh
Guest:I mean, but I had been in a horrible state of depression.
Guest:I mean, you know what it's like to go nuts, and you certainly know what it's like to be melancholy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But have you ever been through, like, a major depression, what they call a major depression?
Marc:Well, you know, I lived with a... My father is a manic depressive, and my bouts with depression, I think that, you know, my suicidal ruminations were more, you know, just relief-based.
Marc:I never got really...
Marc:I never felt like, it's been a long time since I was so heavy hearted that I couldn't get out of bed, but I did feel hopeless.
Guest:Yeah, the hopelessness is the thing.
Marc:And I know that feeling to a degree, but I never, like, I was always able to eventually get through it by draining other people.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, I don't know.
Guest:Maybe I didn't feel comfortable depleting any people anymore.
Guest:Maybe I felt... I mean, I certainly have done that.
Guest:You know, I've leaned on other people.
Guest:And I've leaned on other people since, you know.
Guest:I mean, my best friend Carol and her husband Tony.
Guest:You know Tony.
Guest:And it was really other people, you know.
Guest:Like I say, it was... I mean, my mind was made up.
Guest:It wasn't like I was...
Guest:When I did, it was through no fault of my own that I ended up waking up.
Marc:So you decide 36 hours, then you throw away some writing, you throw away some artifacts that you don't want found.
Marc:You call the hotel.
Guest:I mean, I had never checked into a hotel in the neighborhood.
Guest:I didn't know where to go.
Guest:I don't know why I went to the local.
Guest:I just went to the closest one.
Guest:I mean, I guess I should have gone to the palace or whatever.
Guest:The nicest one.
Guest:I should have gone to the grand whatever in Manhattan.
Marc:But I think you're an authentic guy.
Marc:So, you know, you thought.
Guest:I wasn't interested in anything.
Guest:I'm going to do this.
Guest:I just want to get it over with.
Marc:You go to a hotel that seems that it could accommodate that.
Marc:You're not going there because you're happy.
Guest:Well, it's a fine establishment, as I'm sure you can say.
Guest:But it's a little weird going in there to do that podcast because I'm like, well, at least the room is going to be totally different.
Guest:And I was like, no, it's the exact same layout in every way.
Guest:Same little sign next to the bed that says, relax.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, the window was open.
Guest:You remember that detail?
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:When you went, what did you bring with you?
Guest:I didn't bring anything with me.
Guest:I mean, I brought my pajamas and a robe for some reason.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:And then I brought a pad of paper and a pen and, you know, a canister of pills and a bottle of scotch whiskey.
Guest:Because I had read that you need another central nervous system present like whiskey or alcohol to ensure that the pills work.
Guest:Benzos.
Marc:So you did some research on what pills?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Which ones?
Guest:I didn't do good enough research because... What pills?
Marc:Xanax?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I took...
Guest:I took 60.
Guest:I read on the internet that six combined with being drunk would be enough.
Guest:So I took 60.
Guest:But I guess the shit on the internet was
Guest:I mean, maybe I'm the first person to point out that they discovered a factual error on the Internet.
Guest:But apparently, you know, maybe that information wasn't correct or maybe I mean, nobody really knows.
Guest:Like I talked to the doctors and they're kind of like, we don't really know why it didn't work.
Marc:So you drank a bottle of scotch and took 60 Xanax.
Guest:I mean, and I'm not an alcoholic or anything.
Guest:I'm not even a drinker, man.
Guest:I mean, I'm not even like a big drinker.
Guest:I don't, I'm not one of those people that responds that much to alcohol.
Guest:But it was just, you know, it was like, it was like the same thing as the hotel, man.
Guest:It wasn't, it wasn't, there was no aesthetics to it.
Guest:It was just like utilitarian.
Guest:That was the closest hotel.
Guest:I went online, checked to see if they'd let me.
Guest:check in early they said yes they had empty rooms you know i went there i drank the the booze rather methodically out of a water tall water glass i think it took like two and a half tall water glasses to finish the bottle and it was really weird man i was just drinking it like water and it was going down i mean i hadn't slept well for weeks and i only had you know nightmares and then you'd wake up from the nightmare and you're in
Guest:You're back in real life, which is even worse than your nightmare was.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It was weird.
Guest:My body did not reject the alcohol is what I'm trying to say.
Guest:Even though normally I can't have more than three drinks without being sick.
Marc:You probably had so much adrenaline going through you.
Guest:I don't know, man.
Guest:I don't know about the physiology, but I just drank it like water.
Guest:It was just like... It went right down.
Marc:And then you knocked back the pills?
Guest:Well, I drank half the bottle and I took the entire mouthful of pills and I drank the other half of the bottle and laid down and went to sleep.
Guest:What about the note?
Guest:Well, I left two notes.
Guest:I left a note for my family and friends and loved ones or whatever, a short note.
Guest:And then I left another just informational note for the cops.
Guest:I mean, all this stuff later...
Guest:I'm sorry, you're going to have to put an edit in this podcast.
Guest:I just came to a stop for some reason.
Guest:I don't know what I meant.
Guest:I don't know what I was going to finish saying.
Guest:I said all this stuff later, and I don't even know what that... I think you were going to talk about that, you know, you got... What I'm trying to say is that the note to the cops, like, you know, was a red flag to them because it wasn't a sentimental thing.
Guest:Like, I'm looking for help.
Guest:It was like, please call the following people, you know.
Guest:Family, friends.
Guest:You know, it was just like numbers of people that they would need.
Guest:And what did the other note say?
Guest:It said... It said... Well, Maren, it said... It was very short, and it just said that I've been very lucky to have...
Guest:Receive so much love from so many people and I was really grateful and I didn't mean to hurt anybody but I couldn't deal with anymore and I had this sickness for 20 years and and I Was sorry
Guest:But that it wasn't anybody else's fault.
Guest:Because they'd all been way more than nice to me.
Guest:I mean, nicer to me than most people get.
Guest:And certainly more than anybody deserves.
Guest:Or anybody has any right to expect, anyway.
Guest:I felt very privileged.
Guest:And so I didn't want to send that...
Guest:I didn't want to send that love into a bad place.
Guest:But, of course, I did.
Guest:I mean, what else could you do?
Guest:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:It didn't make sense, is what I'm trying to say.
Guest:So you write these two notes and then you went to sleep?
Guest:Yeah, I went to sleep.
Guest:And then I hear a maid banging on the door.
Guest:And I'm like, shit, you know, I checked in early because they said that, you know, I did set this up on purpose.
Guest:They said that the maid would not come at the normal time.
Guest:But the maid must not have got the message.
Guest:Now they're, you know, they're interrupting the thing.
Guest:What if I get discouraged?
Guest:I don't know what's going to happen.
Guest:Well, what I didn't understand, Mark, was that it was actually more than 24 hours later.
Guest:The maid had not come by mistake.
Guest:It was the next day.
Guest:And nobody knows why I was alive at that time.
Guest:I wasn't supposed to be.
Guest:I shouldn't have been, but I was.
Guest:How did you feel?
Guest:I felt like, fuck.
Guest:Well, I didn't know that it was the next day, and I just felt like, fuck, this is going to interrupt it.
Guest:It's going to wreck it.
Guest:And I tried to talk my way
Guest:Out of it, you know, so as not to be discovered.
Guest:Without opening the door?
Guest:Well, no, I mean, I had to open the door, but I tried to hide the notes, whatever.
Guest:You know, but the point is that I was, like, absolutely blotto.
Guest:I mean, it was 26 hours later or something, but I was on so much benzos that I was, I mean, I was barely coherent.
Guest:And my memories of that maid coming in the room are, like...
Guest:you know, opening the door, talking to someone, you know.
Guest:Just kind of like, yeah, I know those kind of memories, blackout memories.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I don't have any experience with blackouts, but...
Guest:just fragments but yeah but at that time yeah it was just it was like i can barely anyway they eventually found me at my house so they i don't know if the hotel threw me out and i was like where do i go now you know you know i just wanted to lay down and let the let the pills finish so somehow or another you you left then you remembered to throw the notes away though well yeah but i mean they were in my pockets you know blah blah but okay so they were just in your pocket so somehow you end up here
Guest:Yeah, and my roommate, well, my neighbor, April, saw me on the street.
Guest:I mean, as she was walking down to the street, walking down the stairs, and I was on the landing, and apparently I had been trying to open the door, but couldn't work the key because I was so sedated that I could barely stand or whatever, and I couldn't hardly talk normally.
Guest:And she's like, you okay?
Guest:And I'm like, yeah, I know, I'm fine, I'm fine.
Guest:and so she said all right and she laughed but then she thought about it she came back and i was still fumbling with the key you know and then she said she noticed that my shoes were on the wrong feet and that i had a bloody nose i don't know if i fell i don't know you know i must have tried to throw my clothes on real quick before i answered the door at the hotel i don't know but um
Guest:I don't remember having the wrong shoes on my feet or hurting my face.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Maybe I fell down while I was staggering home.
Guest:I don't know how I ended up back here.
Guest:Maybe they thought I was a drunk because they found the empty bottle of scotch.
Guest:And they just thought, oh, well, pour them into a cab.
Guest:Maybe they had my address because of when I checked in.
Guest:I don't know how I ended up back here.
Guest:But anyway, they eventually...
Guest:My roommate figured it out because he... He noticed that the cat food was on the floor, Mark.
Guest:Open.
Guest:Where the cats could get it.
Guest:And that's what...
Guest:That's when it made him figure it out.
Guest:You got this cat here.
Guest:Yeah, this is one of the two guys.
Guest:I was trying to... That's the other thing the note said to the cops.
Guest:It said, please find my cat at home.
Guest:But...
Guest:You know, despite the self-serving nature of the note, you know, like, it's not your fault, don't be hurt by this, it's really all for the best.
Guest:The fact is, you know, I left the cat food on the floor for the cats to eat so that when nobody fed them, they'd have some food before somebody had to find them a home or whatever, but...
Guest:I did abandon the cats, you know?
Guest:I mean, writing on the note, find my cats at home.
Guest:I mean, I abandoned them, you know?
Guest:And these little guys depend on me.
Guest:And I abandoned everybody else in the note, you know?
Guest:I mean, I said, thank you for all the love you've shown me, but I didn't show it back.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I abandoned them.
Guest:And that's why now I know that it was the wrong thing to do.
Guest:But when I woke up, I did not think that.
Guest:I was very upset that I had been found and was not in the hotel.
Guest:And when they told me we're calling the ambulance, I was like, no, no, no, don't.
Guest:Who your roommate?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, and then you wake up, you're in emergency, you're in the emergency room, then you're in ICU and they, you know, the doctors work on you for five days until you're out of danger because you're, you know, I don't know the medical details, but the guy comes in five minutes a day, you know, the doctor in charge of you.
Guest:And during his five minutes, he has a clipboard and he says,
Guest:Well, your whatever levels are only supposed to be at 75, and they're at 7,500.
Guest:High levels.
Guest:You know, so we're going to try to get those down.
Guest:And then he comes in, he says, now they're down to 4,500 or whatever.
Right.
Guest:And then you spend 30 days in the locked ward where they take away your shoelaces because they quite correctly know that you do not want to stick around, don't want to be helped.
Guest:And you felt that through that whole time?
Guest:The only thing, you know, I did, Mark.
Guest:And I mean, like I said, I had made up my mind, you know, I had been depressed for decades.
Guest:It wasn't an impulsive thing.
Guest:It wasn't a I mean, I was I was in a horrible, horrible state of of of depression.
Guest:Um, but, uh, but it wasn't impulsive.
Guest:You know, I say 36 hours before, but that's not really true.
Guest:You know, I mean, I, I mean, I had been, it had, it had been many months that I had, I had been in an extreme anxiety and depressive state where I could, I could barely function or essentially couldn't really function.
Guest:And, um,
Guest:And that had happened before, you know, and I just didn't think it was ever going to stop happening.
Guest:So I didn't allow myself to.
Guest:think about it as a plan until sort of the last minute because if I would have put more thought into it, I would have realized, I guess, that it was the wrong thing to do.
Guest:But I don't want people to think that I was impulsive.
Guest:It wasn't an impulsive thing.
Marc:Yeah, and now, okay, so you're in 30 days of lockup.
Guest:Then what started to shift your... Well, you know, it certainly wasn't any therapy provided by any doctors.
Guest:I mean, I was on a lot of drugs just to sedate me because I was in such an anxiety state.
Guest:I couldn't sleep and everything else.
Guest:But it wasn't any medicine they gave me and it wasn't any therapy they gave me.
Guest:It was other people.
Guest:It was other people, man.
Guest:So many people came to visit me.
Guest:So many comedians came to visit me, weirdly enough, you know.
Guest:Um...
Guest:Some of them were people that I'd known for a long time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and other were people that I'd only met a few times.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, but then there were certain people that came over and over again, you know, like Carol Kolb.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She came almost every single, well, she came every single, every single day, unless she had to be on set for her show at the, at the time.
Guest:Uh, in which case she sent Tony, you know, and, um,
Guest:And it was people like that just sticking by me.
Guest:I mean, they'd come and try to cheer me up, and I'd argue with them.
Guest:And I'd say, no, no, you're wrong.
Guest:I should be dead.
Guest:But, I mean, the way I look at it, I guess, Maren, is that, you know, I didn't choose to come into the world the first time.
Guest:You know, I didn't.
Guest:I was just sort of found myself in that circumstance because my parents had sex, you know.
Guest:it was kind of the same way this time at age 40 you know I'm 42 now and I think of it as a second birthday that's what I call it with my friends or whatever because I didn't choose it anymore that shows the first one it was not it was not anything I would have opted to do but I found myself in that situation and so many people showed a lot of love you know
Guest:And I just thought, well, I can't disrespect that, you know?
Guest:I mean, it's too special of a thing, and it's too rare of a thing in the world to take what little of it there is and transmute it into pain by abandoning all those people that, you know, they're trying to tell you they love you, you know?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And somehow or another that...
Marc:That kind of... Yeah.
Guest:I mean, when I finally checked out, I had no... I really had nothing.
Guest:I had not really changed my mind about anything.
Guest:I wasn't really wrong about any of the circumstances that were going on at the time.
Guest:Everything that was going wrong was, in fact, going wrong and continued to be going wrong.
Guest:But...
Guest:I had like two things.
Guest:And the first thing was I had decided that all these people's love was
Guest:was worth preserving and therefore I had a will to live and that was and but I didn't have a desire to do anything I mean you know I had no idea what the future would hold it's like being a baby born and you know so for the last two years I've been kind of crawling back from that and man I'll tell you the whole first year all I did practically was like sit on this couch every night and I had my cell phone and I would just call
Guest:And if I didn't get anyone in line, I'd leave a message and call the next number.
Guest:And if I didn't get anyone in line, I'd leave a whole bunch of messages.
Guest:And then... Somebody would call me back.
Guest:Or they wouldn't.
Guest:But I would lay here on this couch holding the phone like a teddy bear waiting for it to ring, you know?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And if somebody called back, then I'd cry on the phone with them.
Guest:And if nobody called back, then I'd cry alone, you know?
Guest:And it was like that for a long time.
Guest:Um...
Guest:and then there was the first anniversary of it, you know, and that was like second birthday, first, second birthday or second, I guess.
Guest:Um, and then, and then this last January was second birthday again.
Guest:That, that whole first year I didn't,
Guest:I mean, I was just miserable every day.
Marc:But I was not going to... Were you taking any medication?
Marc:Are you going to see a therapist?
Guest:No, yeah, of course.
Guest:I mean, I had been.
Guest:I had been.
Guest:Before?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I had been... I had been seeing a guy ever since I moved to New York, which was the only time in my life I'd ever had enough money to afford to see a dude.
Guest:Prior to that, I had seen some counselors or whatever when I could afford it, but I didn't have...
Guest:I didn't have access to regular therapy.
Guest:Even people with really good health insurance, I think they get like 10 sessions a year or something.
Guest:I don't know what that's supposed to do to help anyone.
Guest:You sort of have to pay out the nose if you want to live.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you know this, right?
Guest:But I'd been doing that.
Guest:I'd been doing that for all those years, and it just seemed like...
Guest:Whatever.
Guest:So yeah, so I was back doing that and I was medicated and they eventually took me off most of the medication as I got better and better.
Guest:But that whole first year, it was just miserable every day.
Guest:And the second year, I actually started counting the days that were quote unquote good days.
Guest:Um, because I realized that I hadn't counted the previous year, but they were surely, I mean, I don't know, somewhere between zero and 10, probably closer to zero than 10.
Guest:And so the, the, the, the second year, like I realized, well, I've had like five good days and then I just kept tracking them in my head and then I've had a sixth one.
Guest:But a good day just meant a day that I wasn't completely, totally miserable.
Guest:I mean, it wasn't really a very high standard for a good day.
Marc:I think it's important to know that when you're in this state, there's no trick of your mind that's going to turn the fucking boat around.
Marc:yeah i mean there's a lot of like you know there's a lot of it's just kind of an endurance right that you just wait it out yeah yeah but like today you know when i i met you in the street you got your madger shorts on you got your hat on you got the roxy music and your ipod yeah buds you seem like you were moving pretty quickly seemed pretty chipper well i
Guest:I got to tell you, you know, that second year, I ended up breaking 100 that year.
Guest:Good days.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, and by good days, like I said.
Guest:I hear you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I didn't think I was going to get anywhere near that.
Guest:I mean, halfway through the year, I was only up to like 30 or something.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:So when I broke 100, it was kind of a big deal.
Guest:And this year, I haven't even counted.
Guest:But some really good things have happened, you know.
Guest:Some really very special things have happened.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Well, I fell in love with a really amazing chick.
Guest:That fucking changes things, man.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, you know, everything had been going south.
Guest:for a long time but uh i don't know we'll see what happens i don't know the way i look at it i'm like what two almost two and a half years old now in this big boy so i'm getting i'm yeah i'm getting ready for toilet training soon you know i have object permanence i've had that for a good while and uh you know i got some things going for me so i figure you know i don't know what the future will hold at all in your writing
Guest:i'm i'm thinking about all kinds of new stuff you know it's a it's a new situation yeah and um i'm talking to some people about a maybe a book and i don't know we'll see what happens i mean i'm 42 i got my whole life ahead of me yeah and you look good man i'm trying i'm hanging in there the last couple times i talked to you and you know you're very um earnest and deliberate and uh
Marc:raw and honest but like I know like I got choked up there like 10 minutes ago and I've been around I can read I can feel deep sadness in others and right now you don't have it you're right laughter laughter
Marc:Well, fuck, dude.
Marc:I'm so glad that you're all right today.
Guest:Well, I am glad, too, and I want to...
Guest:I mean, I owe all of those people more than I can, by definition, ever repay.
Guest:And, you know, I'm sort of impotent to do anything but say thanks.
Marc:Well, I think that's a deep thing.
Marc:And I don't think you should see it as a debt as much as that, you know, you are alive and look at you.
Marc:You're bringing joy to people's lives.
Marc:I mean, people love you, but...
Marc:You know, you give it back now.
Marc:I mean, I can feel that you're capable of that.
Marc:I mean, that's a big change, you know, that you can see past your own darkness to share some light, you know, because you always did that with your humor, you know, and I'm sure everybody was concerned for a long time.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well... You're a good guy, dude.
Marc:You light up a room.
Marc:What are you going to do?
Guest:You're just going to have to live with it.
Guest:I light up a room with my dour...
Marc:No, you know what I'm saying.
Guest:Worldview of the human condition.
Marc:Yes, but that's shining a light in the tunnel.
Marc:When you are just the tunnel, it's a completely different energy.
Marc:But you know, on a good day, all that cat needs is that bag.
Guest:You know, one of the many things that I did learn during my insane reading of...
Guest:everything on Wikipedia about depression was that one of the highest level of the defense mechanisms is humor.
Guest:So we're operating at a high level?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:According to Wikipedia, I don't know.
Guest:Can you trust him?
Marc:Depends.
Marc:I mean, you can't trust that one site where you got the information about how many pills to take.
Marc:Did you call them?
Marc:Did you get back to them?
Guest:No, I mean, I asked the doctor.
Guest:He's like, no, you took way too many pills.
Guest:I'm not sure.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Maybe I threw up in my sleep, Mark.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:whatever it was man it was uh it wasn't my fault what it was it was a gift do you do you attribute any higher powerness to this situation or you haven't gone that far well i mean i do in the sense of all those people coming to see me
Guest:They were all trying to cheer me up, and I was just arguing with them.
Guest:They're like, no, no, it's going to be okay.
Guest:I'm like, no, you don't understand.
Guest:It's actually not.
Marc:It sounds like both my marriages.
Marc:I mean, that's just what we do.
Guest:No, but they were right, and I was wrong.
Marc:It's lucky you didn't have the energy to fully...
Marc:be that convincing in the argument.
Marc:It's hard to make that argument from a hospital bed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, I kind of thought that sort of lended a certain amount of credibility to my assertions, you know?
Guest:But, um...
Guest:A component of mental health is a slight inability to see things accurately.
Guest:People who are mentally healthy consistently test as... They have a slightly higher opinion of themselves than they're actually worth, or they think that their life is just a little bit better, or they think that some looming disaster isn't as bad as it really is.
Guest:It's a survival mechanism.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, what we talked about, though, that you wanted to make sure that we talked about... I just wanted to say I'm sorry to all those people.
Guest:I mean... About their selfishness.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you know, like, I mean, I talked about it just a little bit that I had left this note saying, oh, you know, I'm really sorry.
Guest:But that wasn't good enough, you know?
Yeah.
Guest:It's a selfish thing to do to take people's love and not give it back.
Guest:And if you abandon them, then all of the investment of love that they gave you is you just transmuted into pain.
Guest:And it's not fair to them.
Guest:So, I mean, not only do I thank all of those people, but I also apologize to them.
Guest:I mean, I've said this to all of them many times, and they're sick and tired of hearing it, to be honest.
Guest:But I just thought it was important to say not only thank you, but I'm sorry.
Guest:And it will not happen again.
Guest:Well, I love you, man.
Guest:Well, I think you're a wonderful human being, Mr. Marc Maron.
Guest:And every time you tell your jokes, I relate.
Guest:So thank you.
Guest:I mean, many people have said to me, you know, oh, I'm depressed.
Guest:And I, you know, I love reading about, you know, reading The Onion because it's so much darker than anything else.
Guest:And it's willing to be honest about the real nature of things.
Guest:And, you know, maybe if that helps people, I don't know.
Guest:You doing that same thing has helped me.
Marc:Well, I appreciate hearing that, man.
Marc:All right.
Marc:And it was great talking to you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I feel uplifted.
Marc:You?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, that's it.
Marc:That is the two conversations I had with Todd Hanson.
Marc:And I can't tell you how thrilled I am that he is still with us.
Marc:He's a brilliant guy, sweet guy, and a very funny man, and a very honest guy that came to grips with a lot of stuff.
Marc:And I wish him the best.
Marc:And I wish him, really, I just hope that he continues to flourish.
Marc:And I hope that this spoke to a lot of you people that suffer from depression, because I have it in my family.
Marc:And, you know, it's a horrendous burden.
Marc:And it really requires a hell of a fight.
Marc:But as I said, I'm thrilled that Todd wanted to talk to me about this stuff.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed the show.
Marc:Please go to WTFPod.com for any of your WTFPod needs.
Marc:I feel horrible doing this at the end of this show.
Marc:You know, maybe we don't do it.
Marc:Maybe we just let it sit.
Marc:Thanks for listening.