Armchair Expertise
Big Mood, Little Mood with Daniel M. Lavery
Slate Podcasts
4.4 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 December 2022
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Danny Lavery welcomes Carmen Rita Wong, author of the recently published book, Why Didn’t You Tell Me? A Memoir.
Lavery and Wong take on two letters. First, from someone concerned that her brother has been spiraling since going off his meds. Another letter writer is wondering how to extricate herself from her marriage without devastating her spouse. Plus, a deep dive in to Wong’s memoir, Why Didn’t You Tell Me?
Resources if you know a family member or friend experiencing delusions: https://www.bcss.org/support/how-do-i-get-help-for-my-loved-one/steps-working-delusions/
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Need advice? Send Danny a question here.
Email: mood@slate.com
Production by Phil Surkis
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening ad-free on Amazon |
| 0:01.9 | Music. |
| 0:03.4 | Just a reminder that Big Mood, |
| 0:05.2 | Little Mood with Daniel M. Lavery happens twice a week. |
| 0:08.0 | Slate Plus members get an additional mini-episode or Little Big Mood every Friday. |
| 0:12.8 | Sign up now to listen at slate.com slash mood. |
| 0:15.4 | Music Hello and welcome back to Big Mood Little Mood. I'm your host, Daniel Mlavery, and with me in the studio this week is Carmen Rita Wong, the author of the recently published Why Didn't You Tell Me a Memoir. |
| 0:47.3 | Carmen, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Danny, for having me. Thank you so much for being here. I am immensely looking forward to it. And I've just |
| 0:55.7 | realized that our third letter could potentially solve our first letter because the first letter |
| 1:01.0 | is about dealing with somebody who's having a mental health crisis. And the next letter is |
| 1:05.7 | about how to handle a colleague who has always armchair diagnosing people. And I wonder if we can just get that person involved in the first one, tell everyone what their diagnosis is, sort them all out. Oh, solve the problem completely. Like magic. Yeah. I love that. Okay. That's what we're going to do. I think this is going to be great. From now on, I'm going to be answering questions with an eye towards causing as much chaos |
| 1:28.1 | as possible. And so I will assign people from certain letters to handle other letters on my behalf. |
| 1:34.6 | I will deputize them. Oh my gosh. I will send in agents of chaos. That is very chaotic. |
| 1:40.7 | Then we'll have follow-up. Oh, God. That would be an amazing show. I would definitely listen to that, but I don't think, I don't think that I'm up for doing that. Well, I hope that you are feeling, you know, just incredibly bolstered and your truest self, because we've got some problems to help people solve today. Are you feeling bolstered and like your truest self? Because if not, you should let me know now. |
| 2:01.9 | Oh, let me tell you, Danny. Never in my life have I felt more of my truest self. So you got me at a good time. All right. Okay. Let's dance, baby. Y'all. Would you read our first letter? Sure. Okay. So the first one is, I'm the youngest of six siblings. |
| 2:17.2 | I'm in my 50s, living in different cities. |
| 2:19.8 | My older brother, Barry, lives in Seattle, and our closest sibling is a five-hour drive away. |
| 2:25.2 | Barry was hospitalized twice for paranoid delusions in the early 2000s. He recovered and was able to get a great job and stay married. But about six years ago, his psychiatrist |
| 2:35.9 | encouraged him to discontinue his meds. Since then, he's spiraled. He's divorced and believes his |
| 2:43.0 | ex-wife was trying to kill him. She wasn't. Has lost his job. And since 2019 has believed that the |
| 2:49.4 | rest of his siblings are, microdosing him we're |
| 2:53.6 | worried but haven't been able to do much this week barry's ex forwarded us a foreclosure notice |
... |
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