A warning, this episode talks about suicide and the aftermath of it.

A lot.

It's Depression Mode. I'm John Mo. I'm glad you're here.

I say I'm glad you're here every week, in part because not everyone is here, and I wish they were.

I make the show. I do all the work I do to enable open conversations so that more people we love can be here so we can love them more.

And sometimes that's a struggle.

Struggle is all over that proposition of staying, of being here, of sticking around.

For a lot of people, just staying alive takes so much work.

It is so much struggle all the time.

They are fighting a battle. And if they leave, there is permanent

damage to everyone they left behind, which is a struggle as well, an ongoing struggle.

Something especially hard about advocating positive mental health, pushing for more open

conversations, is that I know I'm not going to win.

We're not going to wipe out mental illness or stigma, no matter how hard I work.

I can have every person in the world listening to my show every week. It wouldn't prevent all

suicides. But I got to keep going. I got to fight and struggle and I got to get in there

every day anyway. A lot of us have to. Ivan Maisel knows what I'm talking about. You might have seen

Ivan on ESPN or in Sports Illustrated. He's been covering sports, mostly college football for decades.

In 2015, Ivan's son, Max Maisel, died by suicide.

Max was 21. And Ivan has been talking about Max, about Max's life and death. He has a new book

out called I Keep Trying to Catch His Eye, where he does exactly that. He talks about it. It's a remarkable book about life

and death and love. It's about memory and grief and how you manage those very powerful forces.

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