This episode contains discussion of sexual assault and suicide.

I think a lot of us have been at work, at a job, and thought, this isn't natural.

Spending eight hours a day, ten hours a day, just here in this place, doing this task over and over for decades?

This is weird is what it is.

This is not what my body or mind are meant to do.

This isn't my natural state.

And maybe that wears on you.

Maybe that wears you down.

I don't know.

Maybe you're listening to this podcast while you work, and I hope that helps.

It's DePresh Mode.

I'm John Moe.

I'm glad you're here, even if you have to also be there.

Now, take the strangeness and fatigue of a demanding job and stretch it out past 8 to 10 hours all the way to 24 hours.

A job where you have to live there.

So even if you're not on the clock, you're still there.

Even when you're not on the job, you're at the job.

That's the kind of environment that Kate Beaton writes about and draws about in the graphic memoir, Ducks, two years in the oil sands.

It's a remarkable book and has been on several 2022 best books of the year lists.

Kate Beaton is also the author and artist of Hark

A Vagrant, a very popular historical comic series that is much more lighthearted. Ducks, and we'll

explain the title later in the interview, is about the period after college where Kate worked

...