Hey everybody, this is Richard Deich, and welcome to the sports media podcast. My producer, as always, is Lou Pellegrino. Our guest this week is Kirk Minahan, a long-time sports talk show host in Boston, most recently, WEEI, where he's the co-host of the Kirk and Callahan show. In Boston, sports talk is exceptionally popular, fierce, and very parochial.

There are two all-sports talk stations in that city, and they are both frequently at the top of the ratings among all stations.

Kirk Minahan has not been on the air in Boston since September, and we will get into that right away as he

joins me on the sports media podcast. Kirk, thank you for coming on. Let's work present day,

and then we'll work backwards from there. First of all, I have to say, pleasure to be here,

Richard. Thank you for having me. It's a nod to my good friend Chris Curtis from when he was on the program last time. That's correct. Sending the

dialogue for the city. And I am sober. I just want you to know for the record. We appreciate both.

No problem. All right. Let's start here, Kirk. Why are you not on W.E. now? It's, I would say, a number of reasons. First of all, if we're going to go all the way back,

in August I was hospitalized, checked myself in the Winchester Hospital outside of Boston

with suicidal thoughts. I've battled depression, you know, my entire life.

I was institutionalized, I guess you would call it, my senior year in high school,

and then for a little bit, a few years later.

And I've battled with it ever since.

And it grew and grew over the, I've had some stuff in my personal life

and over the last couple of years and stress,

and it built up up and I found myself

wandering around train tracks in Winchester in August and said this is I don't want to really

live right now but I don't want to die right now if that makes any sense and so I said I'm

going to check myself in the Winchester Hospital which is in that town and they said you're

going to McLean which is a mental health facility about 10 or 15 miles away from there, where I spent about

five days, came back on the air too fast. I came back on the air after a few days, which is a big

mistake in retrospect on my part, and I think the station's part, they would tell you that, too.

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