Podcast: One of us Was Naked! Truth or Lie?
“I zone out on a train and I talk to myself on the trains and I was out of it on the train. I kind of left that part out, didn’t I?”
~Michelle Hammer
For the final episode of season 2, we play Two truths and lie. Gabe covers eating disorders, inappropriate behavior, and his hatred of language policing. Michelle covers zoning out, disclosing her diagnosis, and takes us back to her freshman year in high school.
Two stories are true, one is a lie. The rules are in the title. Tune in to find out if Michelle was really naked outside Gabe’s door and see who guessed correctly and won the prize pack.
This podcast is proudly sponsored by Betterhelp. Save 10% on your first month with the discount code “BSP22” or by clicking here.
About the Hosts of A Bipolar, A Schizophrenic, and a Podcast
Gabe Howard is a professional speaker, writer, and activist living with bipolar and anxiety disorders. Diagnosed in 2003, he has made it his mission to put a human face on mental illness.
He’s the author of Mental Illness is an Asshole and Other Observations and a popular podcast host. Learn more at gabehoward.com.
Michelle Hammer is a Schizophrenia Activist and spends her time passionately fighting stigma. She is an NYC native featured in the WebMD documentary Voices, which was nominated for a Tribeca X Award at the Tribeca Film Festival 2018.
Founded and run by Michelle, Schizophrenic.NYC is a clothing brand with the mission of reducing stigma by starting conversations about mental health.
Transcript for One of Us Was Naked! Truth or Lie?
Please Note: This transcript was computer generated. Please be mindful of errors. Thank you.
Announcer: So, what did the bipolar say to the schizophrenic? You’re in the right place to find out. . .
Gabe: Welcome to the final episode of Season 2 of A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast.
Michelle: We want to shout out our sponsor, BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month by going to BetterHelp.com/BSP22.
Gabe: This whole season started off with 2 Truths & a Lie. So we’re going to end it on 2 Truths & a Lie. And at the end of the game that Michelle and I are about to play, we will tell you whether or not the story from Episode 1 was true or false. Actually, I suppose we should use the right parlance, the right words, truth or a lie?
Michelle: What was the story, I don’t remember?
Gabe: Well, thank God we recorded it. Ok. Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. Play the clip.
Michelle: You’re so mean to her. You’re so rude to Lisa.
Gabe: I’m not rude to OK, I, I apologize. Lisa, will you please play the clip from Season 2, Episode 1?
Gabe Howard: Ok, so about four years ago, Michelle and I were at a conference and we were working together and our rooms were across the hall and.
Michelle Hammer: Because, because of our last names, it was alphabetical. That’s why we were across the hall.
Gabe Howard: You thought that was germane to the story?
Michelle Hammer: Well, I’m trying to give everyone a good visual context is that we were directly across the hall.
Gabe Howard: At some point, Michelle got the idea that she needed to wake me up by banging on my door. And you banged on my door under-clothed. The problem was is I was not in my room because I practice good?
Michelle Hammer: Sleep hygiene.
Gabe Howard: So I was already up and at breakfast, so, Michelle, upon realizing that I wasn’t in my room, went to go back into her room. Now the problem when you’re underdressed is you don’t have pockets. What do you keep in a pocket, Michelle?
Michelle Hammer: You keep a room key.
Gabe Howard: And what did Michelle Hammer not have?
Michelle Hammer: A room key. So there I was with no pants on. I had no pants on in the hallway of a hotel room at a conference. Oh no.
Gabe Howard: Yeah, you’re selling it. Ok, so Michelle couldn’t just go down and get let into her room because she had?
Michelle Hammer: No pants on.
Gabe Howard: Yeah, Michelle.
Michelle Hammer: Gabe was not pleased.
Gabe Howard: Gabe was not pleased. You don’t knock on people’s doors naked. That’s not a thing.
Michelle Hammer: No, but the stupidity things I don’t, you know.
Gabe Howard: I think that is enough of the story. You have to decide, is it a truth? Is it a lie? It is up to you to decide. So please email us at BSP@ThisEmotionalLife.org and tell us your guess. On a future episode, we will tell you whether or not it was a truth or a lie, and we will also announce the winner. The winner gets a prize pack
Michelle: Ok. I remember now.
Gabe: Yeah, you remember, you remember. Are you ready to play 2 Truths & a Lie for the final time in Season 2?
Michelle: First of all, Gabe, I have to ask, do you ever look at my TikTok?
Gabe: Do I ever watch your TikTok? No, no, I don’t.
Michelle: That’s going to help me out here with this.
Gabe: It’s going to help you? Because I would know if it was a truth or a lie based on whether or not I checked out Michelle’s TikTok. Just out of curiosity, what is your TikTok?
Michelle: Schizophrenic.NYC.
Gabe: Shameless plug. Ok, go ahead.
Michelle: All right. We always talk about disclosure, when to disclose, when is it right? When is it, when is it too soon? You know, people always ask when, what is the disclose? And I was a very good friends with my next door neighbor, Charles and my upstairs neighbor, Tom. The three of us were buddy-buddy. We’d hang out all the time. This was a few years ago before they moved away, and it was at one point where I was like, You know what? I’m going to tell Charles that I have schizophrenia, and because I just want to like, you know, be cool with Charles and just be a friend of his and stuff like that. So, you know, it was always me, Charles and Tom and so we’re outside the bar one day and I just go, Charles, I want to tell you something. And he goes, You had sex with Tom. I go, No,
Gabe: Oh, my God.
Michelle: No, no, no, no, no, no,
Gabe: Where did this come from? That was like out of nowhere.
Michelle: Yes. I was like, No, but Charles, I just wanted to tell you something because you had sex with Tom. And I was like, No, no, no. I wanted to tell you that I have schizophrenia. It goes, whatever, but you had sex with Tom. I go, No, Charles, I didn’t have sex with Tom. I’m trying to tell you that I’m schizophrenic and he goes, But did you have sex with Tom? And I’m like, No, I didn’t have sex with Tom. What do you talk? He goes, No, no. Tell me you had sex with Tom. Just come on, tell me you had sex with Tom. I go, I didn’t have sex with Tom. He’s like, Well, then why did you bring me out here to tell me something? I go, I wanted to tell you I have schizophrenia. He goes, I don’t care about that. Come on, just tell me if you had sex with Tom,
Gabe: Did you have sex with Tom?
Michelle: I swear to God I did not have sex with Tom.
Gabe: Ok, so we’ll leave that one as a maybe you could have had sex with Tom, maybe you didn’t have sex, you probably had sex with Tom. Let’s
Michelle: I didn’t.
Gabe: But let’s.
Michelle: But that’s not the story. That’s not the truth or the lie. The truth or the lie is that did I tell Charles this whole story? And that was his response, but the hole. But the truth is that I definitely did not have sex with Tom. That’s not the story that I’m telling you.
Gabe: Ok, so, so story number one is whether or not you had sex with Tom, got it. Ok for my first story. You know, I used to be a childlike, like not like a man child, but like an actual teenager. And obviously, I had bipolar disorder even when I was a teenager, and it came out in all sorts of ways that probably have landed my parents in in therapy and confession. One of the things when I was a teenager that that my friends and I invented and by my friends and I, there was only two of us. So my friend and I invented was something called the Moon Game. Now the Moon Game is, well, it’s just showing our asses to people. It started off showing our asses to each other, so I would moon him and he would moon me and you got style points, right? So I imagine like prepaid gas pumps, so he would go in to pay and when he would come out, he would he would, you know, go to open up the thing to put the gas thing in. And he’d look through the passenger side window and my ass would be pressed right up against the window, just a giant white guy ass.
Gabe: Eventually, this this started to grow and we started mooning my mother. I don’t know why we did this. We just did. And my girlfriend at the time, my high school girlfriend, she started mooning people too. So there was just there was just asses everywhere. But here, here is the problem with Gabe. I don’t I don’t have like an upper limit, right? So you got you got to think along the terms of untreated bipolar Gabe. Right. So everybody is leveling up, ramping up, you know, doing a little more, mooning each other’s moms, mooning each other in public, just whatever. And I, Michelle, mania is a bitch. Grandiosity is a . Anyways, I hired a photographer. I hired a photographer to take a picture of my ass so that I could put it in a Christmas card and mail it back to my friend so that when he opened up a Christmas card for me. There was a photograph. Of my giant white. And red ass. That story, number one.
Michelle: That is a very intriguing story. You’ve never mooned me and I feel a little left out, but also how big was your ass when you were younger because didn’t used to be gigantically fat?
Gabe: Yeah. Yeah, I always one for size, like in distance, like size and distance I had, I had down like I could moon you from across town and you’d be like, Damn Gabe’s ass. But but you know, there’s there’s other ways to get style points, I guess. The look on your face right now.
Michelle: I don’t even know.
Gabe: Do you want me to moon you?
Michelle: I don’t know what to.
Gabe: You look upset.
Michelle: I’m just, because, you know, that whole story, I just kept picturing your ass and now I’m traumatized.
Gabe: Why are you picturing my ass?
Michelle: You kept talking about showing your ass, and now I just kept thinking about, Oh, your ass is there and your ass was there and your ass was there, like, why are you traumatizing people with your butt?
Gabe: I mean, I was a teenager, I didn’t I don’t do this now. I got treated, I got, I got, I got treated and I stopped taking things too far. Just, just shut up. What’s your next story?
Michelle: All right. You know, I have my girl, Hallie, who prints the actual T-shirts. You know, I designed them, she prints them and she moved, right?
Gabe: Did you make your second story a way to plug your business again? So you’ve plugged your TikTok and now you’re going to plug?
Michelle: Yes, my business, Schizophrenic.NYC, who Hallie Kruger is the printer, you see, yes.
Gabe: Something wrong with you.
Michelle: She first she lived on the Lower East Side, then she lived on 109th Street. Now she’s on 128th street. She switched to the 4 5 express train. But I was so used to the 6 train going so many stops that I got confused because I was like, really out of it on the train, just listening to the music. And I didn’t realize I was an express train trying to get off at 125th, because I was so used to going like, 68th, 72nd, 86th, 98th, 110, all that to finally get to her. So I don’t get off the express train at 125th and I just kept going and going and going. And I end up in the Bronx and it’s getting late and I’m walking around the Bronx just because I was trying to switch to then go backwards because I was like, How did I end up in the Bronx? Because, as I was explaining, it was much less stops and it was dark. And at one point I’m looking for the subway to go back because I’m so confused on where I am. I maybe at like, 250 or 140, I don’t even know where I was, but a cop rolled up right next to me and goes, Miss, do you know where you are right now? And I was like, Where’s the subway here? I don’t know where I am. And he was like, You need to go home. This is not where you need to be right now. And I was like, OK, OK. So then this whole thing that should have taken me forty five minutes took me two and a half hours to get to Harlem and 128th street.
Gabe: I have no idea if that’s a true story or a lie. I kind of think it’s a lie because nobody would call you miss. It’s definitely, ma’am, you have crossed over into ma’am territory. But putting that aside for a moment.
Michelle: That is so rude. I crossed over into ma’am territory?
Gabe: Yeah, I mean, look, you’re 35, what do you want me to do?
Michelle: I am not 35, f**k you.
Gabe: How old are you, Michelle?
Michelle: I’m 33.
Gabe: Ok. I apologize. You’re lying, aren’t you?
Michelle: Whatever. I don’t, I am not lying. He may not have said miss. He just kind of rolled up and was like, do you know where you are? Because basically I took the train so far into the Bronx that I was like, I stuck out and he’s like, you need to not be over here.
Gabe: Just, let’s say that that story is true, which I’m having serious doubts. Help me with something here. What the hell does that have to do with schizophrenia or mental illness?
Michelle: I zoned out on the train because I was talking to myself.
Gabe: Ooohhhhh.
Michelle: As I usually do, I always talked about that how I zone out on a train and I talk to myself on the trains and I was out of it on the train. That’s, I kind of left that part out, didn’t I?
Gabe: I know that you didn’t do this on purpose, but I think it’s super interesting to illustrate that you knew damn well, it’s because you were you were zoning out, you were hearing voices, you were trying to get everything going on, right? Like, you know exactly what’s happening. But even when you’re supposed to share that, you accidentally corrected it to, Hey, I just zoned out because most people don’t want to hear about our issues, right? So we’re just like, Oh yeah, I forgot. Or How are you? I’m fine. You always describe hearing voices, zoning out, not knowing where you are, losing time as just like this thing that is really relatable to everybody. But in actuality, when Michelle Hammer zones out, it’s much different than when, quote/unquote normal people zone out, right? You didn’t just get lost in the music. You were having a schizophrenic episode and you just glossed right over that. You just glossed over like, Hey, man, I got lost in the music.
Michelle: Yeah.
Gabe: That’s why I want to hug you.
Michelle: I have I’ve gotten off of the wrong train stop a bazillion times, but I usually don’t end up in the Bronx.
Gabe: I have no idea where the Bronx is.
Michelle: The thing is, like every time you hear like the 11 o’clock news, first five minutes somebody got slashed in the Bronx, somebody got slashed on the subway in the Bronx, somebody got mugged on the subway in the Bronx. And I’m not trying to say bad things.
Gabe: Are you stabbing or mugging people in the Bronx?
Michelle: No,
Gabe: Oh, my God, is that where this story ends? Is that why the police found you?
Michelle: The Bronx is got, it’s the forgotten borough. They call it the forgotten borough. The Bronx is has some very nice areas,
Gabe: You’re a mugger.
Michelle: But some of it is not the nicest place.
Gabe: I’m positive that you are committing crimes in the Bronx.
Michelle: Listen,
Gabe: You’re a schizophrenic supervillain.
Michelle: Blanche lived in the Bronx.
Gabe: I love Blanche. Now I like this story more.
Michelle: She lived there for a little while, yeah,
Gabe: Are you going to let me tell a story or?
Michelle: Ok, you can tell a story now
Gabe: I appreciate your permission.
Michelle: Not about your ass though. Not about your ass.
Gabe: Ok, I’m done with the ass stories. I have a niece, her name is Eva. I’m giving her a shout out on the show. She will appreciate that. And she spends a lot of time with her uncle, Gabe, because listen, the only proof that I have that my DNA has survived in this family is all contained within Eva. This is this is excellent for me because I get a little niece that’s like a little carbon copy of Gabe with the energy and, well, the lying and the aggressiveness and the loudness. Oh my god, she’s loud. She gives me a run for my money on loudness, and she’s like a super ham, and she wants everybody to pay attention to her. For real, she’s a mini-Gabe. This is great for me. Horrific for my sister. It’s awful. Except she’s a girl, so it’s like little Gabe plus. But here’s the thing, Michelle. I’m probably not a good role model for children because I don’t believe in this concept of bad words. I believe in bad context. I believe in in appropriate words. I believe in time and place. But eh, you know, I don’t care that my niece is seven.
Gabe: I say the f-word in front of her and this does bother my sister. It bothers her a lot. And I, I took it too far. I mean, I don’t think I took it too far. But for the sake of family harmony, I’ve learned my lesson and I literally sat down with Eva. Lisa, get your beeper ready, and I taught Eva how to say mother f**ker. I did. I did I taught her how to say mother f**ker. I taught her how to how to, how to say what the f**k I taught her, how to say just, I just beeped all over the show. It’s I wanted her to use the word correctly and I taught it. And then she left my house. She sees her parents. She’s using the words correctly. She says, Uncle Gabe taught me to do it. Sister livid, furious, pissed, angry calls me up and said, Eva says that you taught her to say the f-word. And I was like, That is true. And my sister is like, why did you do that? I’m like, look, censoring speech has never in the history of time turned out well.
Michelle: I agree.
Gabe: I probably should have taught her when the appropriate time to drop f-bombs was. Maybe I did not arm her with all of the rules of carrying around this f-bomb knowledge. But my, my sister and my brother in law were not happy that their seven year old was dropping f-bombs correctly and blaming Uncle Gabe. My sister has largely forgiven me, I think, but she still wants to know on what planet did a 45 year old adult believe that it was OK to sit a seven year old child down and teach them how to say the f-word properly?
Michelle: That’s lovely, Gabe. I’m really glad you did that to a child.
Gabe: I didn’t do that to a child, I did that for a child. All right, so see, that’s the cthe, you’re judging me, aren’t you? You know, you swear like a crazy person.
Michelle: No. No, I’m not judging you. I just want to see her in school saying, you know, mf’er teacher.
Gabe: Right.
Michelle: This mf’ing work is so stupid.
Gabe: I did.
Michelle: Mf multiplication. Mf addition, mf subtraction. MF, you know, George Washington.
Gabe: Yeah, you can put MF in front of anything, Michelle. I don’t know why you’re running out of things, MF The microphone, MF the shirt, MF the podcast, MF your sister MF your mom, MF the man. Yes, I’ve already copped to the fact that it’s not my finest moment. That is my story.
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Michelle: And we’re back playing 2 truths & a lie. We’re lying, we’re truthing, what are we doing?
Gabe: All right, before we head into the third round, let’s do a quick, quick, quick recap. The first story told by Michelle, which may be a truth. Maybe a lie was whether or not she had sex with Tom and something about schizophrenia. I was unclear. The first story told by Gabe was me, Mooney and my mother and everybody in town and and ultimately taking a picture of my ass and mailing it across state lines, which may or may not be illegal. The second story was about Michelle getting lost on a train because she was actively hallucinating and hearing voices and zoning out and and just getting completely lost. And while it took us a while to get there, Michelle ended up confessing to being a mugger in the Bronx. My second story was teaching my little little niece the f word. And getting in trouble by a whole family, my sister. All right, Michelle, are you ready to head in to round three?
Michelle: Sure.
Gabe: Bum, bum, bum.
Michelle: Ok. Ok, so we all try new meds, sometimes, sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t work, sometimes they’re beneficial, sometimes they’re detrimental. In my junior year of college, I thought it would be a good idea to try a new medication and not my other meds at the same time. And because of that, I had a panic attack. And what was I panicking about my freshman year English class of high school? I was crying about freshman year English class of high school, saying, Mom, I can’t do it, mom, I can’t do it. I can’t write these essays. I’m going to fail. I can’t read books. I’m going to fail. Why can’t I pass this class crying, crying, crying, crying, crying about when I was 14 years old, when I was a 19 or 20 year old girl? That’s really what this story is because I took a medication that I had just tried. I had a panic attack about ninth grade. That’s really the story.
Gabe: I have one follow up question to decide if that story is truth or a lie. Did you willingly go to your mother and did you find her help comforting?
Michelle: In ninth grade?
Gabe: Yes.
Michelle: Her help was not comforting. She told me I needed to get over it and just read and just write and stop complaining and. She told me, I said I fall asleep sometimes in class because I’m tired. And I said, I can’t sleep at night because, you know, I was in ninth grade, undiagnosed schizophrenic and I was panicking every single night and paranoid every night. So I said, I can’t sleep. And her response was always, You’re not getting sleeping pills. I know you want sleeping pills, you’re not getting sleeping pills.
Gabe: All right. My last story. So as you mentioned during the ass story, I used to weigh over 500 pounds. I had a very pronounced eating disorder. I was fat. All right. I was just. We can. We can clean it up and use body positive language. All we want. But here, here’s the bottom line I I was I was so super morbidly obese. I was really on the fast track to be dead by throw my my friend. Lisa, who edits this podcast, actually called me circus freak fat. And I’m not offended by it because honestly, that’s that’s that’s that’s that’s really what I was. I was really, really fat. When I was a teenager, it took a lot to get it food right. My my parents, they they tried to be a barrier between me and eating them literally out of house and home. And I never really felt full. I never felt like I got enough food, I always wanted more food, I needed more food, and I was constantly trying to get more food and. Luckily, my my parents worked in the evenings and I was in charge of my siblings and you’re thinking, why is that lucky? Did you eat your siblings? No, but it meant that I could order pizza. Now, sometimes I would just have my own money right from jobs, et cetera, and I would order my own pizza.
Gabe: But I was so desperate to get at this food that I would steal money from, from my, my parents. I mean, I would literally take money out of my mom’s purse, my dad’s wallet, and I would use the money to to to order pizza and eat the pizza. Well, eventually my parents got wise to this. They’re not stupid people. And you know, they would. My siblings would rat me out, right? And they’d be like, Yeah, Gabe ordered pizza and they’d be like, Where did you get money for pizza? We know where all your money comes from, and I’m like, Oh, I just earned it. And they’re like, You’re lying and we’re missing $20 from our wallets. So my parents started locking their bedroom door. It makes sense why they would lock their bedroom door, because that’s where they hid all the money. They hid all of the money in their bedroom by locking the bedroom door. I could not get access to the money. Yeah, I really, really wanted pizza. So me, my brother and my sister in in what really should be a family bonding moment. Like, I don’t understand why everybody is about to hear something horrific when actually it was the Howard children working together harmoniously for a common goal.
Gabe: But unfortunately, what people are going to hear is that we would have Billy go into the master bathroom and unlock the window, and then I would go around to the outside after mom left and hoist Debbie up my my little baby sister, Eva’s mom, who was the smallest and and Debbie would then grab the window and open it. And then I would shove her through the window, and then Debbie would climb through the window and then unlock the master bedroom door where I could get in, steal the money and we could order the pizza. So naturally, because we were all involved, we could all get in trouble. So it was a it was the perfect symphony, right? It was it was mutually assured destruction. We kept our mouths shut and we did this for years and we never got caught. We never got caught. It wasn’t until we were all adults that we confess to my parents that, yeah, yeah, we were breaking into the house, into your bedroom to steal money and ordering pizza. And you had no idea. And of course, my mom and dad went apeshit. They were angry and there was, you know, I don’t know. They wanted us to pay back the money, but we didn’t.
Michelle: So what did you do with the pizza boxes?
Gabe: We see this was genius, we took him down to the REC center and threw him in the dumpster. We ain’t dumb.
Michelle: Ok.
Gabe: Yeah, yeah, we we hid all of the evidence, all of the evidence completely gone and we ate the pizza and Gabe got fat and happy. You know, I’m assuming that my brother and sister enjoyed the pizza as well. But yeah, at one point my sister was so tiny and I was so strong I could lift her up and shove her through a window, and she could help us steal from our parents again. I really want people to hear this as a Howard sibling bonding moment, but yeah, they’re probably not going to. That’s it.
Michelle: Interesting, Gabe.
Gabe: That is three rounds of two truths and a lie, Michelle
Michelle: I see, I see.
Gabe: Before you render your guess. Do you have any questions?
Michelle: What kind of pizza would you order?
Gabe: Pizza Hut every time.
Michelle: But, plain toppings?
Gabe: Now we usually got the Bigfoot pizza, the Bigfoot is not around anymore, but it was like a big pizza. I think it had like 21 slices and you got like four slate, but it was you could you could get it and Mountain Dew and all the delivery fees and tip it everything for 20 bucks and it was enough to feed all of us. And because it wasn’t like the Pan Pizza or the gourmet pizza, et cetera, you could just get a lot of pizza for a lot of money. And we were we were targeting like 10s and fives and 20s and things like that. So we had to order cheap pizza. But it was always Pizza Hut. We never ordered anything other than Pizza Hut.
Michelle: Why do your parents stash cash in their bedroom?
Gabe: This is a fair question and one that I have never actually gotten the answer to. I suspect this is between us. They were drug dealers.
Michelle: Ok. Ok, I got you. That’s good, good info. I’m really glad. Yeah. Pizza Hut is disgusting. Pizza Hut is nasty.
Gabe: I can just, I can already. My mother has already started the text message, she’s listening to this, she’s like, how dare you tell people we were drug dealers and I know that I’m going to write back.
Michelle: I cannot believe you ordered Pizza Hut. I just can’t. The Pizza Hut.
Gabe: It’s terrible pizza.
Michelle: I’ve never even had Pizza Hut,
Gabe: It’s not good.
Michelle: I will never have Pizza Hut.
Gabe: It’s not good.
Michelle: I will never I’m sorry. Pizza Hut. I’m glad you’re not our sponsor because I will never eat it.
Gabe: Listen, if Pizza Hut wants to be our sponsor, Michelle Pizza Hut has just agreed to a $10000 an episode sponsorship and what is your favorite pizza?
Michelle: New York City Pizza.
Gabe: Come on, man.
Michelle: I’m not eating Pizza Hut pizza.
Gabe: Just $10,000 an episode.
Michelle: They’re not giving, they’re not going to sponsor us.
Gabe: What could you do with 500 extra dollars?
Michelle: Buy good pizza.
Gabe: I’d take the $9,500. I’m glad to know that that this this is the hill that you’re willing to die on. You will not accept $10,000 an episode from Pizza Hut because you want to be loyal.
Michelle: I will give it to the homeless man on the corner,
Gabe: The Pizza Hut or the money?
Michelle: The Pizza Hut.
Gabe: They’re giving us cash. You just have to say that you like the pizza.
Michelle: They’re not giving us any cash. If you make it happen, maybe I’ll try a Pizza Hut, but this made up story, now that’s a lie. That is one hundred percent a lie that they are not sponsoring us. So I don’t know why. I have to pretend that I don’t get to eat Pizza Hut when I’m not even going to eat pizza. Pizza is disgusting. I didn’t even had it, but I know that it’s probably disgusting. I’m not going to eat it the first time I ever read a Domino’s. I was in college and I said, What is this bread?
Gabe: Yeah, Domino’s is disgusting. Even I won’t accept $10,000 from Domino’s
Michelle: Oh, you have bad, Pizza Hut’s better than Domino’s? No way.
Gabe: Pizza Hut is way better than Domino’s.
Michelle: I don’t stop comparing disgusting pizza with disgusting pizza.
Gabe: That is fair, that is fair.
Michelle: What do you eat, Chuck E. Cheese?
Gabe: Oh,
Michelle: Little Caesars?
Gabe: I like Little Caesars.
Michelle: I’ve never had that either. And I won’t.
Gabe: It’s good, I like it.
Michelle: I don’t even know if there’s a Little Caesars anywhere within a 10 mile radius of me.
Gabe: You know that pizza is good when you can get a whole large one topping pizza for five bucks, I mean, that’s your mark
Michelle: Oh, my God. Stop it.
Gabe: Of a quality pizza.
Michelle: Stop it, that’s that’s not real food.
Gabe: All right, Michelle. I am ready to render my guess.
Michelle: Render away, bitch.
Gabe: Getting lost on the train is the lie.
Michelle: That’s a lie.
Gabe: Yes,
Michelle: I did go one stop into the Bronx, but it was just one stop.
Gabe: Yes, yes. Gabe’s winning streak is alive, even though I lose half the time. Michelle which of the three stories do you think I made up?
Michelle: The pizza one.
Gabe: Nope. Hundred percent true story. Everything about it.
Michelle: That is the stupidest story. That is the dumbest thing. Then what’s the one? The cursing?
Gabe: Yes.
Michelle: The cursing? That was my second choice.
Gabe: The cursing is the one.
Michelle: I just I just could see you doing that. I like pictured you doing that?
Gabe: Oh, that’s so sad.
Michelle: I know
Gabe: That’s so sad.
Michelle: The mooning one, the mooning when I was like, That’s definitely real.
Gabe: Yeah, that’s definitely real, that happened.
Michelle: I was like yeah, he would do that. That one’s for sure. And then the second one, I was like, I could see him doing that, but I’m not so sure. But then the pizza one, I could see you wanting the pizza, but I didn’t know about your siblings.
Gabe: Yeah, they wanted the pizza, too. They loved their big brother, Gabe, and pizza nights. We loved pizza and Mountain Dew, even shitty pizza and Mountain Dew was good.
Michelle: Mountain Dew? I wasn’t allowed to drink Mountain Dew.
Gabe: I’m not saying that I was allowed to drink it, I’m just saying that once you break into your parents’ bedroom to steal money, you drink whatever you want.
Michelle: Do you remember that soda Surge?
Gabe: Yes, we loved that.
Michelle: I wasn’t allowed to drink that either.
Gabe: I mean, your parents loved you. They did, they did love you.
Michelle: Like, somebody brought it to a party and my mom threw it away.
Gabe: I want to circle back. I do swear in front of Eva, my niece and she tells me all the time Uncle Gabe, stop swearing Uncle Gabe, stop swearing, Uncle Gabe, stop swearing. And I do genuinely believe that there should not be forbidden words. I again I censorship has never, ever, ever worked out well in the history of humans and mini censorship that we do to children I am steadfastly against, but I am also steadfastly against not doing what parents ask you to do.
Michelle: Well, when do you think a child should be told the real birds and bees?
Gabe: I think that they should be told. I don’t say things like, hoo-hoo, I say vagina. I don’t say willy, I say penis. Like, I don’t I don’t think that we should have shame surrounding
Michelle: Well, do you tell kids that a stork brought them home?
Gabe: No, I told them that mommy and daddy got down. Boom Chicka Wow Wow.
Michelle: Because my friend in first grade, her mom was a doctor, so she told me what happened. And she told me that a penis goes into a vagina to make a baby. And then she told me, if the guy pees, then the baby has blond hair.
Gabe: Ok, well, see. So she started to tell the truth, and then she just lied at the end. Well, what the hell is that? It’s like, that’s two truths and a lie. You recognize she told you two true things and then the pee lie thing at the end. She was playing two truths and a lie with you when you were little. Michelle, do you remember all the way back at the beginning of the season when we told that story that we heard at the beginning of the show?
Michelle: But wait, wait. We first need to tell everybody. I did not have sex with Tom.
Gabe: Uh.
Michelle: I didn’t
Gabe: Didn’t you?
Michelle: Charles just thought I had sex with Tom, but I didn’t.
Gabe: Fine. The true part of the story was that she confessed that she had schizophrenia, Charles didn’t care and just assumed that it had to be something salacious and that it wasn’t something salacious. It was Michele’s diagnosis, but he didn’t really care about that. He was positive that it was sex with Tom. Was Tom hot?
Michelle: Tom’s good looking.
Gabe: So are you hoping that Tom hears this podcast and gives you a call and says, Hey, what’s up? Are you hoping for the midnight ‘sup? text?
Michelle: Hey, listen, if I wanted to have sex with Tom, I could have had sex with Tom.
Gabe: [Laughter]
Michelle: Trust me,
Gabe: Tom is like married now, and we’re going to get like angry,
Michelle: He’s definitely not married. Well, I can look it up, but
Gabe: Don’t
Michelle: I mean, I’ll find him on Facebook. I’ll find him on Facebook.
Gabe: Do not, I repeat, do not. Do not stalk anybody in the name of A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast. I don’t want to be involved. Stalk on your own time. So the story at the beginning Michelle we were at a conference. You scantily clad banging on my door, getting locked out of your room, running up and down the hall. Is that a truth or a lie?
Michelle: Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? It’s true.
Gabe: It is true; she did that.
Michelle: I did it, I did it, I did it, and you’re jealous, you’re jealous, you’re jealous,
Gabe: Why would I?
Michelle: I did it, I did it, I did it, and you’re jealous,
Gabe: Not jealous.
Michelle: You’re jealous because you weren’t in your room, you weren’t in your room.
Gabe: How?
Michelle: So you couldn’t see me in my clothes that I didn’t have on. You’re jealous. Just admit it, that you’re jealous. You’re jealous. You didn’t see me scantily clad. Don’t be jealous, Gabe. I know you’re jealous. Ha ha ha.
Gabe: You got locked out of your room. You literally got locked out of your room. I wasn’t in mine, so you were roaming up and down the halls.
Michelle: No, the woman next door, let me in.
Gabe: Because you were yelling.
Michelle: And she just got out of the shower, so she was in in a towel, so it was a whole bunch of us with no clothes on.
Gabe: That’s, just, wow. Just do you have any remorse whatsoever?
Michelle: None, none, none, none, none, none.
Gabe: Isn’t interesting, Michelle, like when this happened, I was livid. I was livid.
Michelle: Yeah, yeah, you were livid, you wouldn’t even get on stage with me that night.
Gabe: Yes, furious, and now here we are three years later, and we’re just joking about it on a podcast. There’s no point in holding grudges. There really isn’t. You’re just going to get over it and use it as fodder for a podcast, a blog, a video or a, I don’t know? TikTok wasn’t even invented yet. We should make a TikTok video about this. We could reenact it.
Michelle: No one would watch it.
Gabe: I mean, I’d watch it.
Michelle: Case in point.
Gabe: You’re mean. Now I know some people are listening. Hey, look at attractive young woman bang on your door, scantily clad and you’re pissed off? Yeah, yeah, it was inappropriate. Bad Michelle. Here is the fascinating thing, we got hundreds of emails for this contest and I really expected before we got into this that the majority of them, the vast majority of them would be no, no. She didn’t do it. I, honest to God, thought that this was just going to trick the shit out of people. Michelle, what percentage of people do you think said that you did it?
Michelle: Twenty five?
Gabe: No. Higher.
Michelle: Fifty?
Gabe: 50 percent. It was damn near it was a little under it, the no she didn’t did edge out, but it was like 53% said that you didn’t do it and 47% said that you did. What does that tell you about your behavior? Make changes. Make better choices.
Michelle: Yeah, Gabe was all upset and everything he said, well, well, if I knocked on her door in my boxers, people wouldn’t be OK with that. They would call me a creep.
Gabe: Yes. Yes. Why,
Michelle: [Laughter}
Gabe: Why do you say are you honestly advising all of the of the people living with mental illness, all of the men living with mental illness, listening to this show to go to work and bang on people’s door in their underwear? Really, you’re mocking me? How far lost are you?
Michelle: Listen, why are you wake up at the crack of dawn to go get food, why weren’t you in your room?
Gabe: Really?
Michelle: Whatever, Gabe, whatever. You were, so mad, he was so mad at me.
Gabe: And now we’re like joking about it publicly, like, how did that transition happen?
Michelle: [Laughter]
Gabe: Well, you just, it just goes to show you there’s just there’s no reason to be mad at anybody. The next time you’re mad at somebody just hit the fast forward button and go to when you’re joking on it on your damn show. This is why
Michelle: I know.
Gabe: People need podcasts. Just
Michelle: Holding grudges
Gabe: Yeah.
Michelle: So done with holding grudges,
Gabe: Yeah.
Michelle: Ostracizing, holding grudges, so like it’s not worth it unless they’re really horrible people, but like,
Gabe: I mean yeah. Unless the person who did it is Michelle, you don’t need to hold a grudge.
Michelle: Oh, shut up.
Gabe: Yes, Michelle, I had an absolutely positively awesome time doing Season 2 with you. Did you have fun?
Michelle: I did have fun, yes, this was a lot of fun, get together, hanging out, drink 12 beers, you know, plug it up, you know, smoke a little of this.
Gabe: None of that happened.
Michelle: Smoke a little of that. You know, record some of this all slosh puke after.
Gabe: Not no,
Michelle: Stuff like that, it was fun.
Gabe: No, no, no. None, of that. No, not we did record stuff, but sadly, all of this was when we were sober. Like, I think that’s the most scary part to me.
Michelle: We were? Well, you were? ‘Cause I wasn’t.
Gabe: You were too, you lie.
Michelle: Shut up. If you insist. If you insist, Gabe, but I don’t think so.
Gabe: We are very excited to announce that the winner is Andrea Kenderson. She wins the gift pack. We’ve already been in contact with her via email. She knows we’re using her name. Hopefully, she thinks that it is super excited. Michelle and I will throw a bunch of junk into a box and send it her way posthaste. And next week, listen, this is awesome. There’s a super special eleventh episode. Lisa, our long suffering editor and producer, Lisa, has been saving all kinds of fun things that got cut out of episodes and has made an 11th episode that she is going to play and narrate next week. Now, Lisa Kiner, fun fact, she is the voice of the opening and the closing and of the BetterHelp ad in our show. She’s also the one that cuts out all the things that will get Michelle and I sued.
Michelle: Unfortunately. But are those in the clip she’s going to play?
Gabe: No,
Michelle: In that extra episode?
Gabe: No, no.
Michelle: I can’t wait to listen to that because I can’t even imagine what she has on there, honestly, because what we say, uh, oh, what?
Gabe: It’s brutal, it’s brutal, but I have been assured by her that it is fun. Tune in to that next week and hey, maybe there will be A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast, Season 3.
Michelle: If you want it, it will come.
Gabe: Thank you, everybody, for listening in. My name is Gabe Howard, and I am the author of “Mental Illness Is an Asshole and Other Observations,” which is available signed by going over to gabehoward.com.
Michelle: And I’m Michelle Hammer and I can be found at Schizophrenic.NYC, which is where you can get all my awesome shirts, pill boxes, leggings, mugs, stickers and more.
Gabe: Both of us are public speakers, and you can reach us on our respective websites and listen, do us a favor. Recommend this podcast to a friend, like use your actual words, go up to somebody and say, Hey, you need to be listening to A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast on your favorite podcast player. And you, you, you right now, you, don’t forget to subscribe or follow to the show. It is absolutely free.
Michelle: Thank you to our sponsor, BetterHelp, and listen, you can save 10 percent off your first month by going to BetterHelp.com/BSP22 .
Gabe: Pizza!
Announcer: You’ve been listening to A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast, Season 2. Previous episodes can be found on your favorite podcast player or by visiting ThisEmotionalLife.org/BSP. Have comments or show ideas? Hit up the show at BSP@ThisEmotionalLife.org. Gabe and Michelle are not medical professionals. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice and is for entertainment purposes only. If you need help, please call your doctor, emergency services, the national suicide hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to 741741. Thank you for listening.
