Suicide Buddies: Suicide is very near the top of the list when it comes to comedic taboos, so it’s interesting to think that a new podcast would try and put such a tightrope act of a topic front and center, but here we are. The show, Suicide Buddies, is spearheaded by intrepid Los Angeles-based comedians Hampton Yount (who you may know as the voice of Crow T. Robot on the most recent iteration of Mystery Science Theater 3000) and Dave Ross. Early in the first episode the two admit that their approach — loose riffing up front, followed by a deep dive into a relatively famous suicide — is biting a bit from the inescapably successful podcast My Favorite Murder. But we’re talking about a medium where the structure of two-reasonably-personable-people-chatting has been run through the wash so many times that you probably wouldn’t even notice the similarities if they didn’t say it. Besides, Yount and Ross’s moxy at tackling the act of offing yourself is worth overlooking whatever comparisons there might be.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that suicide might be too controversial for the cavalier attitude these two bring to the table, and it’s certainly not a show for everyone, but there’s an undeniable rough-shod charm to the three episodes I’ve heard so far. Despite their bubbly enthusiasm and infectious comedic energy, Yount and Ross wear their personal histories of dark thoughts, depression, and even suicidal contemplations on their sleeves, so they’re clearly punching up at a mutual enemy. They make a good faith effort to frame the show as an affirmation of life, which I only have so much truck with, to be honest. They also make the (more convincing) argument that joking about suicide minimizes the stigma around it. Despite my reservations about the show I laughed out loud when, after Yount spent considerable time describing in great detail the way he would hypothetically hire a hitman to kill him, Ross caps the moment by waiting a beat before plainly saying “...I think I would drink cement.”
The historical aspects are interesting, if haphazardly researched; but the banter generated while they stumble through their sources makes up for their amateur-academic approach. They started off with Japanese author and political rabble- rouser Yukio Mishima in the first episode, moved on to Florence Lawrence (generally regarded as "The First Movie Star") in episode two, and in their third and most recent entry explore the death of Nicholas Hughes, the scientist son of Sylvia Plath. It’s a surprising list of lesser-knowns to reach for right out of the gate — which shows that despite their macabre focus, the creators of Suicide Buddies have a genuine interest and curiosity in their thesis and are not looking to exploit anyone’s self-inflicted demise for simple shock value. As I said above, it’s not a show for everyone, but those who wander past the obvious trigger warnings are guaranteed to find a unique show that only these two friends could produce.
The Hilarious World of Depression: When the news broke a couple of years back that John Moe’s comedy/interview/music/variety radio show Wits was coming to an end, I was crestfallen. Recorded in Saint Paul, Minnesota’s Fitzgerald Theater, I had nursed a futile hope that Moe’s show would be called up to the big leagues as a replacement for fellow American Public Media program A Prairie Home Companion when Garrison Keillor left, but it was not to be. Moe took some time off and has dabbled in a few other projects since then, but his most effective and meaningful creation so far is without a doubt The Hilarious World Of Depression, which is currently wrapping up its second season.
Moe has long been an open book about his battles with depression, so a show where he maximizes his Rolodex of talented and famous friends from the fields of comedy and music for the explicit purpose of plumbing the depths of depression is a natural next step. The guest list from the first season was as far ranging as Andy Richter, Dick Cavett and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me host Peter Sagal, with the second season bringing Aimee Mann, Neal Brennan and Jeff Tweedy to the table to probe the intersection of mental illness and creativity. It’s a testament to his ability as an interviewer that Moe, who breaks the conversations into chunks to which he adds context with thoughtful interstitial segues, manages to pull some truly revealing and raw stories out of his subjects. Focused on artists in varying stages of managing their emotional responses — and thus can reflect on their darkest days, now in the past tense, from a more objective perspective — each episode is a potential lifeboat for anyone who might be experiencing something similar.
While it’s perhaps unfair to compare The Hilarious World Of Depression to Suicide Buddies, there are some differences that are worth poking at. Both seem to come at the topic of mental illness with an eye toward normalizing the potentially debilitating feelings that practically everyone experiences, at least to some degree. But Hilarious World does a much better job of pointing its listeners towards a comprehensive partner site like MakeItOk.org, while the Suicide Buddies goes as far as mentioning a helpline for people to call and not much else. I wouldn't say that Suicide Buddies is reckless, by any stretch. I only point it out in order to help present The Hilarious World Of Depression as having a more mature approach to the heavy and potentially upsetting topics being discussed. There’s a lot to be gained by shouting at the devil of depression and its associated self-destructive impulses, but I highly recommend Yount and Ross’s barbaric yawp as the shot, with Moe’s more substantive and articulate show as the chaser.
You Must Remember Manson: At the risk of totally bumming everyone out with more talk of death and mental instability, I wanted to finish off with a look back at a series that is suddenly topical again: You Must Remember Manson. It’s been more than two and a half years since these dozen installments of the long-running podcast You Must Remember This put Karina Longworth’s self-described tour “through the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century” on the map. In the wake of the frustrated-pop-songwriter-cum-murderous-cult-leader’s recent death, all those episodes have been repackaged as a standalone show. It’s required listening for any murder and/or movie nerd who missed them the first time around.
It’s fascinating to revisit this series on the heels of so many true-crime series and documentaries that have made waves since the Manson episodes of You Must Remember This first plopped into my podcast feed back in 2015. Compared to those other hit shows similarly “ripped from the headlines,” though, Longworth is much less interested in the murders themselves. Who did what, and when, and where — that’s all in there, of course, but she uses the Manson story to explore some of the less notable aspects of Hollywood in that era of upheaval as the town was being reshaped by the incoming easy rider upstarts. It was right around the third episode, dedicated almost entirely to one-time Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, that I realized this series was going to be something much different than what I had been expecting — and exceptional. Along the way, Longworth revels in exposing tangential characters from Manson’s fringes — Kenneth Anger, Doris Day, Joan Didion, John Waters and Roman Polanski — as well as the (quite literal) usual suspects. Ever the academic, Longworth has done her legwork here, with each episode’s page on her site including a list of sources that she had clearly dogeared before masterfully combining them all into this addictive and stylish recontextualization of Manson’s Hollywood.
