Speaker 1: Hello.
Speaker 2: This is Why We're going to Hell, our special normally
Patreon exclusive podcast where we take our guests from the
show and ask them all the reasons why they might
be going to Hell. Are a little confessional, but because
we had such a good time with Zach, we wanted
to release this publicly as a sample as a holiday gift.
So enjoy, and if you want to see more of
this or want to support the show, go to Good
Morning from Hell dot com and you can watch all
the episodes of Why We're Going to Hell. Welcome to
Why We're Going to Hell. I'm Krista Maris with Blaine Gibson,
and we're joined by Zach Aner.
Speaker 1: We're joined together.
Speaker 3: We have to like shake off the vibes from the
recording with depression.
Speaker 2: It's really weird to try and be funny and energetic
and entertaining while also being depressed.
Speaker 3: And it's also crazy too because Austin just got hit
with kind of a cold front, so the weather's like
perfect for that recording.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's ninety degrees and sunny here in.
Speaker 3: Los Angeles, so good for you.
Speaker 1: That's the best acting I've ever done.
Speaker 3: It is funny having Zach come on to play the
most like sad down in the dumbs character because I
feel like I relate so much like joy and optimism
from you. So like the total antithesis is Zach.
Speaker 4: As somebody who has you know, experienced seasonal depression. And
that's part of why I got out of Buffalo, because
you know it is mostly that season.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 4: It was just so fun to put a character to
my own.
Speaker 5: Feelings of worthlessness or like the hopelessness. And I hope
that people actually going through the depression could relate to
what that feels like, because you know, it's a bitch man,
no need to make.
Speaker 1: Light of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but we did.
Speaker 1: Well, that's kind of the whole point, I guess.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but like, have you guys experienced seasonal depression?
Speaker 3: I get it terribly. And I remember, you know, when
Rooster Teeth shut down, I was talking about, well, like
we could move, you know, like we don't have to
stay in Austin. So I was talking with my partner Kristen, like,
you know, maybe we go to like someplace else, like
I've always liked Seattle. She'd be like, you would be
unfucking bearable because I get a hit bad and that's
in Austin, and it's like sunny ten months out of
the year here.
Speaker 4: You know, if it's a rainy day, my whole outlook
on life will change. Like I'll start like like my
my my feelings about my finances.
Speaker 1: I'll feel poor on rainy days where it's like on
sunny days, I'll be like I gotta go buy something.
Speaker 4: Like We're around doing fine, I'm proud of what I've done,
and then it.
Speaker 1: Just gets cloudy. It's like I've wasted my life.
Speaker 2: I can't even afford an umbrella.
Speaker 3: Let it rain on me.
Speaker 2: Obout you, Chris, not as much. I mean, I think
I don't think you ever get depressed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, always happy. I can't always happy, Chris.
Speaker 2: I can get depressed. I'll prove it to you next
time we're hanging out, I'm gonna be miserable.
Speaker 3: Chris rarely does get sad, and he does. If he does,
then he does a great job at concealing it because
I think, even like going back to Rooster shutting down,
I remember I was so down to the dumps, and
then I talked to Chris. In my perspective completely flick.
You were having a fine day and I.
Speaker 1: Was like you're like, oh my gosh, I can't wait
for what's next.
Speaker 3: Yeah, truly, I was like, what the fuck?
Speaker 2: Well, you were getting a massage, going to the premise
of why we're going to hell? What's the worst thing
you ever skipped out on or did because of seasonal
depression or any or just depression, Like, what's the worst
thing you did because you were just like not feeling
up for it? I know this.
Speaker 1: I didn't go to a wedding that I said I
would go to bump as I was depressed.
Speaker 2: Were you in the wedding?
Speaker 4: No, thankfully, so they were like, but I just was like.
Speaker 6: I had I had the the save the date on
my fridge, and I was like, I literally had been
depressed for like weeks.
Speaker 1: And then I looked.
Speaker 4: I was like, shit, I was supposed to be there
to Oh my god, that's.
Speaker 1: Probably the worst one.
Speaker 4: And then also just like not showing up for friends,
but because I feel like, oh, they don't really need me.
Speaker 1: What's the worst thing you've ever done?
Speaker 4: Probably like, oh, I went I went to the I
went to an amusement park.
Speaker 3: Chris rarely says no to a social event. I think
you're pretty down for everything. Yeah, I'd be surprised to
hear a story of you skipping out.
Speaker 2: Skip out on a band. I wanted to go see
another punk band. I was going to go see Afi yesterday.
But well, this is timing, giving context. I'd been hosting
our editor Nick and his wife Shelby for a week
there in town for a wedding. I was just like, oh, man, like,
you know, it's like you're you're hosting, You're going out
a lot, you know, we're doing general stuff. And I
was like, man, I just kind of need to I
need a date to myself. I just need to be inside.
So it was like the reverse, So.
Speaker 4: Is that were you supposed to go with friends or
do you feel like the band themselves?
Speaker 1: No, I hosed you.
Speaker 4: They saw one empty seed and they're like, Chris said
he was gonna be here.
Speaker 2: Well I hadn't got a ticket, but I wanted to,
and I wanted.
Speaker 1: But this is in real depression. You were maybe thinking.
Speaker 4: About going to a concert and then you decided to
like to have the night off.
Speaker 1: That's not depression, Chris.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, I can tell you a sin I've done
around other people who were in bad moods, suffering from
seasonal depression.
Speaker 3: All right, let's hear it.
Speaker 2: I remember one time I was traveling with someone and
they were in a bad mood. I think it actually
might have been in No, No, it was. It was
in like Denver or something, and they were in a
really bad mood. And we were at like some sort
of museum or something, and I kept doing impersonations of
celebrities or there was one in particular. I just kept
doing it. I was doing a bit, and I just
I know that I was annoying them and making it worse,
but it was making me. It's like I was, I
was trying to make they were in a bad mood
and and not.
Speaker 1: Was killing your vibe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I was like, I have to counter this
by making myself laugh, so.
Speaker 1: And I would.
Speaker 2: So I was going around, gosh, what what character was
I doing? Anyway, I was annoying the crap out of
them and making them more depressed, but I was able
to like make myself happier.
Speaker 3: Oh great, at their expense, just digging them further.
Speaker 2: So you can r.
Speaker 1: That is a jam like this. I know this podcast
is supposed to be just fun.
Speaker 4: That sounds generally like very shitty grit well, I would
take a bit like the way that you phrased it
of at least at least I.
Speaker 2: Was doing well, well, I was like, I'll I'll elaborate, right, So,
you know, on vacation, you know, have it doing things
that you know paid money for. You do all these things,
and then if someone was in a bad you know,
depressed or in a bad mood, I I, you know,
you try cheering up. And then when that wasn't working,
I was like, I have to I had to do
something otherwise the just be going through a museum in silence,
you know, So I just started talking.
Speaker 4: But like I was not supposed to be, like we
need to when somebody needs to be doing bits for
this PICASO.
Speaker 2: Well, I wasn't. I wasn't doing it to make them
more sad or depressed. I was trying to just be
like light in the mood or you know. And it's
just you're supposed to take.
Speaker 3: In the art that also kills the mood. Sometimes when
you try to overcompensate for the bad mood, then you
just make oh yeah, because I've been around you when
I've not been in a great mood, I'd say, oh,
the two of us you're the one that's a little
bit more like happy, go lucky. And so when I'm
feeling blue and Chris is going, I'm just kill you.
Speaker 2: It doesn't work when you're trying to cheer people up
by doing bits that they want. Yeah, especially if it
wasn't even good impersonations of whatever celebrity I was doing.
Speaker 1: What was it though? I want to know what it was.
Speaker 2: I think I recorded a bunch of videos because I
was just like, so so he shown a phone time
filming them. I was like filming myself giving commentary on
the museum or something. Oh look, y'all, do you tell me?
You go? Blaine.
Speaker 3: Most of my depressive episodes have taken place around binging
television shows. I get really into the escapism of it all.
So then when I like kind of pull back and
I'm in reality, I'm super bummed. And I remember Game
of Thrones I binged like five or six seasons.
Speaker 1: I went out.
Speaker 3: The only time I went out was to go to
Best Buy to buy the Blu ray sets so that
I could just sit there. And I remember my ass
atropheed because I wasn't getting out and moving around and
using my body, and so that happened, and then, uh,
I remember when Avan Gellian came to Netflix. This wasn't
seasonal DEPRESSI because it was during this but I binge it
and that's a horribly depressing show. And I remember thinking
like I need to go out and do something and
like be out in nature. So I went to a
bodega that's near my house and I looked on the
TV and they're playing fucking Evangelion and I was like,
I can't skape. This shit is so bad.
Speaker 4: Did you when you are depressed? When do you does
your workout schedule change or do you still work out?
Speaker 3: Like they go hand in hand where I will talk
myself out of exercising and then when I don't exercise,
I feel even worse about myself. And yeah, if I've
gone like a week or two without exercise, I am
terrible to be around.
Speaker 1: I don't see.
Speaker 4: That's why I can't start exercising, because I know if
I start depending on it, it'll become a crutch.
Speaker 3: But we're out Wednesdays though else it's my favorite, I know,
but we didn't actually work out.
Speaker 2: The biggest people I'm familiar to, Zach has a workout
show on his YouTube channel where he works, does weird
workouts and gives inspirational advice. But it's very funny. You
should go watch it. But the biggest workout to people
who are filming it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because they have to make sure that I don't
hurt myself and that's a full time job for two people.
Speaker 2: Or if you're like, you know, in a canoe and
you fall out, then we got to get you back
in the canoe.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We have a mutual friend, Josh Flanagan, who's on the
show recently. You guys have history, like you guys went
to college with Josh and stuff. But I remember you
guys had a fitness show at Rooster Teeth and the
fitness show just.
Speaker 4: Became about how we weren't doing our workouts.
Speaker 1: Right, buff buddies.
Speaker 3: We went to a five k race and I remember
I purposely followed Josh within ten feet just so that
I could beat him at the finish line for the
five k, And it was efforts. I was just like
jogging behind him and doing stupid shit and then we
see the stretch and then I just fucking sprinted. He
was not happy about it.
Speaker 2: I figured out what it was.
Speaker 3: Who's who who the impersonation.
Speaker 2: Was every exhibit I would go that belongs in a museum.
Speaker 7: Fucking annoying, maybe funny once, not every exhibit.
Speaker 1: Fifteen times.
Speaker 3: That a camping trip I went on, we went in
it was like November December to the Rocky Mountains. It
was like me and a group of friends to all
these different national parks. And I had one friend who
clearly hated hiking, and they had romanticize the trip to
be this big thing. And they were also going through
a breakup. So when we're out hiking, I'm having a
great time and they're like one hundred yards behind us,
and I was just like, fucking leave him, Just like, guy,
I hope you get attacked by a bear because you're
b on the mood.
Speaker 4: After a breakup, I went on this trip that I
thought was going to be like this, this great trip
to Colorado by myself. Oh, and I was like, you
remember that I went to Colorado by myself. And I
was like this will feel good, This will make me
feel great, yeah, you know, just to like realize that
I can still experience things. And I had been wanting
to take a trip from myself the longest time. I
was like, this will be wonderful. And then literally an
hour after I got there, I got a weed chocolate
bar and I didn't know that you weren't supposed to
eat the whole thing.
Speaker 8: Whoa oh it was like it was and then all
of the emotions of the breakup hit me as the
like the full try. So it was like I couldn't
escape time and just was like I remember like sobbing
to Taylor Swift's nineteen.
Speaker 4: Eighty I know it just like like realizing, like and
I couldn't like stretched everything out to like feel twenty
times as long.
Speaker 1: It was the worst.
Speaker 3: There's a prisoner of time.
Speaker 2: That you that, Zach, and you also didn't even you
never got high.
Speaker 1: No, No, I was like, this will be not it
would be great. I'll have like a little little buzz.
Speaker 4: But like what happened though, is I knew that I
wasn't supposed to eat as much of the chocolate.
Speaker 1: But then I got I took out the chocolate bar
and it was melky.
Speaker 4: So it was.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, I just gotta get
I couldn't chocolate on.
Speaker 8: My hands or no, and like someone went to this
existential crisis.
Speaker 1: Where where it was just it was the worst.
Speaker 2: You were like, I can't let this go to wait, it's.
Speaker 3: No Oh you know roughly how much it was?
Speaker 1: I bet you it was least one hundred milligrams.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Oh dude, that changed your fucking DNA. Dude,
that's like you didn't walk away from that the same.
Speaker 4: I did not walk away from it, because you don't.
But so what's funny is like I it hit me
as I was like out eating a pizza.
Speaker 1: Somewhere, and then I had to get back.
Speaker 4: To the hotel, and I have no idea how to
like function, and I could I could tell that people
could tell that I was not right because the only
thing I remember from trying to get back from to
the hotel is that a guy stopped me and said,
I don't know where you're going, but I hope to
meet you there.
Speaker 2: What did that make you think? In the moment, like
what were I.
Speaker 4: Was like, oh my god, this guy knows I'm Maya's
Shiit like it's it's just the worst.
Speaker 3: Oh fucking fucking fuck.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I have a terrible sense of direction, Like.
Speaker 1: Zach, you, mine is the worse. Yours is worse.
Speaker 2: I don't know, how did you are you sure you
made it back?
Speaker 1: Are you sure you didn't imagine a hotel?
Speaker 3: What if you're still there right now, still in that
that that like you've lived a life and it's still
going on right now.
Speaker 1: Oh no, oh no, just coming down just now.
Speaker 3: Your marriage wasn't real. It's all of us. That dog's
not real.
Speaker 4: But I made it back to the hotel, and I
was just sobbing the whole.
Speaker 2: Time and crying on the way to the hotel.
Speaker 4: I wasn't crying on the way to the hotel. I
know I was still high the next morning because I
was crying at the breakfast with that.
Speaker 3: You're right, there's some person that lives in Colorado and
you're like a cryptid to them like that. He's just
the moaning man.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: You were.
Speaker 2: You were the manifest of seasonal suppression then, because people
were on there like on vacation, starting their day. And
then there's this guy.
Speaker 1: Crying at the buffet.
Speaker 2: What do you think the.
Speaker 1: Chef thought it was? It was the food that bad?
Speaker 2: Fuck?
Speaker 4: I mean also maybe he just saw me struggling with
the buffet and he's like, this guy's really taking it
hard that he's having trouble playing these like berries or
something like like, because the guy did come up and
eventually like help me with the buffet, but I was
still quietly weeping to myself.
Speaker 2: You need to eat potatoes or eggs or welp U turn.
It's funny too, Zach, that that was in Denver, Colorado,
because their museums are great. That's the museum I was
at when I was really Yes, that's how I was.
Speaker 1: Able to figure out the clip I had to.
Speaker 2: I knew it was in Denver, so I went to
I went to the my trips and went to Denver,
and that's where I was like looking through my clips
of me at the museum.
Speaker 3: Also, that altitude there is so high that I bet
whatever you took was hitting extra hard because like, oh damn,
you're man, that was not a good trip.
Speaker 2: I not a good trip in many ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Zach.
Speaker 2: Have you ever tried to cheer someone up who was
depressed and it failed miserably?
Speaker 4: I think I've gotten better at it as I've gotten older,
because I know that it's not my job to cheer
someone up.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the best thing you can well.
Speaker 2: Technically, Zach, it is your job as a motivational speaker.
It's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. That's true. But I think it like sometimes.
Speaker 4: Just being there and sitting with someone who's depressed as
the best. But like back in the day, like the
worst thing to do is to try and cheer someone
up after a breakup by telling them that their acts socked,
because like they're in the I can't believe, like, oh
alone now, I just like being like, oh is that.
Speaker 1: Don't worry. They were always terrible.
Speaker 3: If it makes you feel any better, we all hated
them behind your back, so we didn't like you told.
Speaker 4: You that we thought you were this was a terrible
person for you. We were never being honest.
Speaker 3: We've been lying to you for the length of your
relationship with this person.
Speaker 2: I mean, And then sometimes that could just be be like, hey,
you're better off now, So it's not always they were.
Maybe they're just trying to give you a different I
don't know. I probably have done that.
Speaker 1: You probably have done me at a bunch, but it's fine.
I don't actually know.
Speaker 2: I learned not to do that because then they get
back together with the person and you've you've laid all
the cards out exactly inevitably. So I learned not to
do that. I learned to keep my mouth shut.
Speaker 3: To super date this episode. But we just got a discord,
so we're going to be trying to do more maybe
community things, So we're gonna hop over there. And if
you're listening to this, it's past. Yeah, you're not going
to be able to make it.
Speaker 2: Sorry, but we probably will put a recording of it
up on if I could get it recording time. Zach
You're welcome to join if you know what discord is. Nope, okay, bye,
right coolick. Tell people where to find you.
Speaker 1: Find me at.
Speaker 4: I got a podcast, trivia podcast, Answer for It with
James and Elise Williams and aj Locasio.
Speaker 1: It's a trivia podcast or comedy podcast. Just Guys is
a trivia podcast.
Speaker 4: You can find me at zach ander dot com and YouTube, Instagram,
all the things.
Speaker 1: Ye thank you so much for having me. This has
been great. Bye bye