The following episode contains discussion of self-harm, suicide, and suicidal ideation.

John, you ask me, you ask me, John, why do you have so many musicians, so many singer-songwriters on your show?

Surely, John, the world is filled with mostly people who don't write personal, confessional

songs, and then strum guitars and sing those words for an audience or onto a recording

for distribution.

Why, John, you ask me, why is this such a thing on your mental health show?

This singer-songwriter thing, why do you do that?

Well, thank you for asking.

And I'll tell you why I do that on this program.

It's Depression Mode.

I'm John Moe.

I'm glad you're here.

Oh, look, here comes another musician now.

It's Rhett Miller.

Music now. It's Rhett Miller. There are a few reasons why I put so many musicians on depression mode.

One of them is just that I like music, and I consider writing music and playing music

to be a kind of sorcery, a sort of alchemy.

It's magical and neat.

Another reason we book musicians on the show is that we can play samples of the guest's work on the show in a way that we couldn't if we were talking to, say, a plumber.

Nothing against the creative work of plumbers.

It's just really hard to convey that on audio.

This is a little easier.

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