A quick note, this episode contains mentions of suicide.

Limber up your fingers and fire up your vulnerability.

We're going righten.

It's depression mode. I'm John Moe. I'm glad you're here.

My guest this week is Anna Marie Cox.

She's a writer.

Founded the politics blog, Wang Kett.

She's been an interviewer for the New York Times magazine, a correspondent for MTV News, a podcaster.

She's at work now on a memoir.

Recently, Anna has become a writing instructor as well, running a series of writing classes called Third Story Workshop. She'll explain what the term third story refers to in a minute here. Stay tuned. The classes are built around identifying the story you have to tell about yourself and getting those stories written. For publication,

maybe, but maybe just so you have it. I was interested in how Anna was teaching people to write because I thought it might help some of you write about what you've gone through in your own life.

And I'm interested in all of that because I just believe a lot in writing.

I'm a fan of the creative act of getting your thoughts into words and those words onto a page.

For one thing, I believe it can really help unlock a lot of mysteries about why your mind works the way it does.

That was my experience writing my own memoir,

The Hilarious World of Depression, which came out in 2020.

I'll talk about that in the interview as well.

So let's just start the interview.

I'm Marie Cox. welcome back to Depression Mode.

It is really good to be here.

Tell me about, I was going to say tell me about the writing you've been doing,

but tell me about the teaching of writing that you've been doing.

...