It's John Moe. We're taking a brief breather here at Depression Mode for this week, so we're

bringing you an encore presentation of one of our favorite episodes. It's a conversation that I

had with David Sedaris, the author and humorist and all-around hilarious guy. We taped this

last summer, summer of 2022. He was fresh off the publication of his latest book where he shares

some amazing stories, especially about his father. We'll get into that in this conversation.

And we had this conversation when he had been freshly diagnosed with COVID, which is kind of

interesting as well. It's a great episode. We hope you enjoy it. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode featuring a conversation with former supermodel Paulina Poritzkova. It goes to some interesting and some very deep places. So you'll want to come back next week for that. Until then, enjoy David Sedaris.

A brief warning before we get started,

toward the end of this interview,

there's some conversation that gets into accusations of sexual assault,

including some graphic descriptive terms.

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

David Sedaris first became widely known as a humorist and storyteller with the broadcast of his story, The Santa Land Diaries.

That was in 1992. 30 years ago. Santa Land Diaries is a recollection of his time spent as a costumed elf and Macy's during Christmas, and it's hysterically funny,

made him a star. It's so funny that it's easy to miss in that essay the pain that he expresses, the poverty, the humiliation

of the whole thing. The anger in that story is a bit easier to notice. The shopper who says

she's going to have him fired, to which he thinks, quote, go ahead, be my guest. I'm wearing

a green velvet costume. It doesn't get any worse than this.

I'm going to have you fired. And I want to lean over and say, I'm going to have you killed, unquote.

Notably, he wants to lean over and say that, but he doesn't because he can't because he needs the job. He wants to speak

his anger, but is prevented from doing so by life circumstances. And then 30 years pass,

and here we are today at the publication of David's new book, the somewhat deceptively titled

...