Depression-Free After 40

Let's talk about the “question” most of us spend our whole lives avoiding.

Not what do you do. Not how did you get here. 

But why are you here?

Today's guest built an entire career, and a movement, around that one question.

Gerry Visca started out as an architect, learning how ideas take shape in physical space. He later became a Creative Director, leading more than a thousand marketing campaigns and winning three international branding awards. 

Then he became an author, a Book Architect, and the founder of a global movement called WHYTIME, all built around one idea: that purpose, not performance, is what actually lasts.

He is an international award-winning author of more than twenty-five books, a speaker who has inspired audiences across eleven countries, and the person more than two hundred fifty authors have trusted to help turn their ideas into finished books.

In this episode, we go past the standard advice to “find your passion.” 

What does it actually mean to know your WHY? How do you build a career, a company, or a life around it? And what is lost when we never bother to ask?

This isn't about chasing inspiration for its own sake. 

It's about building something that means something. 

Watch the Podcast on YouTube Here.

TIMELINE:

0:55 — Carl Jung: "Who are you?" 

2:48 — The one question that matters: "Why am I here?" 

5:55 — The Why Equation: Passion + Purpose = Outcome 

7:51 — Steve Jobs and Oprah as models of passion and purpose 

9:54 — "I exist to…" — defining your reason for being 

10:45 — The psychological cost of success without feeling alive 

12:34 — "The Life I Didn't Notice" — transformational storytelling 

19:52 — Men vs. women: inside-out vs. outside-in 

28:10 — Book architecture — designing books as emotional experiences 

31:40 — Living your why ignites innovation

CONTACT GERRY VISCA:

Website: https://www.gerryvisca.com/

Book (The Quiet House): https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-House-Mr-Gerry-Visca/dp/1067556613

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerry-visca-b53509338/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gerryvisca/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GerryVisca

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gerry.visca/

Email: [email protected]

CONTACT DR. ARDESHIR MEHRAN:

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Bestselling Book

What if looking good has become a cover for not feeling good?

We spend so much time caring for what people can see. Our skin. Our face. Our appearance. But sometimes the real story is underneath.

In this deeply personal conversation, with Dr. Keira Barr, dual-board-certified dermatologist, bestselling author of The Skin Whisperer, and expert in skin care, stress, and emotional wellbeing, we go beneath the skin.

Keira brings her own story of facial birthmarks, childhood teasing, and melanoma to a conversation about what it really means to be seen.

We explore what our skin may be telling us, why looking better doesn’t always make us feel better, the hidden cost of beauty and perfection culture, and the surprising connection between emotional boundaries and skin health.

We also examine how caring for our appearance can become compulsive checking. 

How stress, anxiety, and depression intersect with skin conditions, and how we can learn to trust our bodies again.

Because flawless skin is not the goal. 

Living fully is.

If you have ever looked in the mirror and felt that what you see doesn’t tell the whole story, this conversation is for you. Listen in

TIMELINE:

 0:30 — Psycho-dermatology and skin as storyteller 

4:22 — Skin as a living boundary wired to the nervous system 

10:10 — Skin's own stress response machinery 

12:31 — Internal feelings and skin sensing safety 

13:30 — Touch as the first sense developed in utero 

16:00 — Observable skin shifts reflecting inner emotional states 

18:00 — Dr. Barr's personal journey to mind-body dermatology 

23:30 — Curiosity over criticism — skin as dashboard dial 

25:00 — Gut-skin-brain axis and the stress-inflammation loop 

34:03 — Skin as relational organ and healing through touch

CONTACT KEIRA BARR, MD:

Dr. Barr Website

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Bestselling Book

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Bestselling Book

YOU KNOW THIS PERSON.

When something goes wrong, everyone calls them.

A relationship is falling apart. A colleague is overwhelmed. A child is struggling. A friend is in crisis.

They listen. They step in. They solve.

And eventually, they become the one who is exhausted.

My guest, psychotherapist and author Leah Marone, calls this person the Serial Fixer.

In this episode, we explore the hidden cost of being the person everyone depends on, and why the most caring, capable, high-performing people can be especially vulnerable to burnout.

We unpack the difference between helping and fixing, how over-functioning shows up in families, relationships, and workplaces, and why taking responsibility for other people's problems can slowly make you disappear from your own life.

Leah introduces her powerful Support, Don't Solve™ framework and her idea of “empathy with edges”, a different way to be there for people without carrying what belongs to them.

We also challenge the self-care industry and explore what real self-care looks like when you're accustomed to putting everyone else first.

Because boundaries aren't about caring less.

They're about caring without losing yourself.

And sometimes the most loving thing you can do is stop fixing what was never yours to fix to begin with.

TIMELINE:

2:43 – What is a Serial Fixer 

4:58 – Why We Serial Fix 

6:58 – Fixing in the Workplace 

8:40 – The Exhaustion of Being Steps Ahead 

9:46 – From Athlete to Clinician 

11:48 – Toxic Positivity & People-Pleasing 

14:14 – Control Disguised as Compassion 

20:03 – Curiosity Over Shame 

23:10 – Support, Don't Solve 

33:12 – Resentment in Relationships

See the Podcast on YouTube.

CONTACT LEAH MARONE:

Website

Book — Serial Fixer

Take the Fixer Quiz

TEDx Talk

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All links (LinkedIn / TikTok / YouTube / Substack)

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Bestselling Book

Beginning A New Life. 

At 26, Dr. Peggy DeLong lost her fiancé to cancer. Six weeks later, her father died suddenly of a heart attack.

Two devastating losses. One after another.

But that grief would eventually shape her life's work as she became a leading psychologist.

In this deeply human conversation, psychologist and author Dr. Peggy DeLong, known as “The Gratitude Psychologist,” shares what happens when we stop running from painful emotions and finally allow ourselves to feel them.

We explore why we cannot heal what we don't feel, and why labeling emotions as “negative” can actually distance us from what they are trying to tell us.

Peggy challenges another popular idea: that happiness is simply a choice. We talk about what real healing asks of us when we are grieving, numb, exhausted, or afraid that if we surrender to our pain, we may never climb back out.

The conversation moves from grief to gratitude, exploring nature and awe as sources of healing, how to practice gratitude without slipping into toxic positivity, and Peggy's practical Prioritize, Plan, Practice, Prosper framework for bringing more meaning and joy into everyday life.

We also take the conversation into the workplace, examining burnout, emotional wellbeing, and why the joy of people inside an organization may matter far more to performance than leaders realize.

Ultimately, this is a conversation about something bigger than gratitude…Life!

TIMELINE:

1:06 — Feel it to heal it: the necessity of allowing yourself to feel emotional pain 

1:36 — Personal loss: fiancé's death and choosing to face grief head-on 

3:50 — Discovering the power of gratitude through a cup of hazelnut coffee 

6:46 — The danger of masking pain: emotional numbing and losing access to joy 

8:56 — Ambiguous and disenfranchised grief: losses society doesn't acknowledge 

11:52 — Healing methods: journaling, bereavement groups, and grief walks 

13:59 — Healed by the mountains: nature's capacity to contain grief 

16:33 — How to reach out to and support someone who is grieving 

21:14 — Grief in the workplace: supporting colleagues within corporate boundaries 

26:33 — The neuroscience of gratitude: reticular activating system, serotonin, and dopamine

Watch the Podcast on YouTube.

CONTACT DR. PEGGY DeLONG:

Website   

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Books  

CONTACT DR. ARDESHIR MEHRAN:

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Bestselling Book

She spent years mistaking exhaustion for failure, until a bicycle accident forced her to meet the brain that had been protecting her all along.

This episode challenges a familiar internal narrative, the voice that tells a woman "I'm not enough," and reframes it not as truth. 

It could be echoes of physical trauma, exhaustion, hormonal shifts, and private stress that the brain has been absorbing all along. 

The conversation asks what happens when we stop treating that voice as a verdict on our character and start treating it as a signal from a brain that's been working hard to protect us.

Jocelyn Pepe is the founder of Leni Health & TrU and the author of Claim Your Brain: Your Practical Guide to TrU Mental Health. 

She holds graduate degrees in psychology and the neuroscience of mental health, speaks and researches women's brain health, and created the Cognitive Resilience Method for Women. 

The discussion traces the early, often-missed signs that Jocelyn's brain and body were under strain long before anything visibly broke, and how she habitually interpreted that strain as personal failure rather than a legitimate signal. 

It examines the "invisible load" of raising three children while working and achieving, and what a competent exterior can hide from others and from oneself. 

We learn what "claiming your brain" means in practice, and a broader critique of workplaces that treat women's mental health as a matter of individual resilience rather than one shaped by biology, life stage, and caregiving demands.

Watch the podcast on YouTube.

TIMELINE:

1:52 — What brain health means and how lifestyle factors impact women's aging

2:23 — From a traumatic cycling accident and the journey into brain health

3:32 — Post-injury symptoms: brain fog, headaches, vertigo, exhaustion, and disconnection

5:59 — Rebuilding after trauma: social support, children as motivation, and resilience

7:48 — Shifting from external validation to internal listening (inside-out vs. outside-in)

11:30 — Living in alignment: boundaries, courage to say no, and finding purpose

17:05 — Shifting the "I'm not enough" internal narrative to self-acceptance

19:45 — The power of doing: action over mirror affirmations

22:30 — Women's brain health: underfunded research, hormones, and perimenopause

25:43 — Women's health in the business world: flexibility, peak performance, and bio-individuality

CONTACT JOCELYN PEPE: 

Website

LinkedIn 

Instagram

Book 

CONTACT DR. ARDESHIR MEHRAN:

Dr. Mehran Website

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Bestselling Book

Let's cut through the hype and stigma and learn what ketamine is, how it works, and who it may help. 

For someone who has lived with depression for a long time, hope can begin to feel very far away, especially when the usual treatments haven't helped. 

Ketamine may offer some people better results and hope.

For people living with persistent depression, ketamine has become a source of intense interest, uncertainty, and debate. 

Is it a meaningful clinical option, an overhyped promise, or something more complicated?

My podcast guest is Nico Grundmann, MD, a board-certified emergency medicine physician who left the ER to focus on a different kind of crisis: the emotional pain that seems hard to treat.

He is the co-founder and CEO of Ember Health, a physician-led IV ketamine practice that, according to his guide, has delivered more than 40,000 infusions across five New York City locations since 2018.

In this episode, we move beyond the headlines. What is ketamine? How is it being used in mental health care? Who might be considered for treatment, and who might not? What can patients expect, what risks and unanswered questions matter, and how can someone identify responsible medical care?

This is not an endorsement or a miracle-cure story. It is a fact-based conversation about evidence, safety, uncertainty, and what hope can look like when familiar options have fallen short. 

**Disclaimer. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not medical or mental health advice and should not replace care from a qualified professional. If you have concerns about your health or well-being, please speak with your doctor or mental health provider.**

TIMELINE:

3:22 — What is ketamine?

3:42 — Ketamine as a battlefield anesthetic

5:30 — From ER doctor to depression treatment

7:50 — Clinic’s early outcomes

9:05 — Depression's hidden prevalence and healthcare gaps

12:41 — Measurement-based care and collaborative model

17:06 — How ketamine works: three distinct effects

23:00 — Who benefits from ketamine treatment

28:27 — What patients experience during a ketamine infusion

38:00 — Ketamine safety, misuse, and Matthew Perry’s public case

Watch the Podcast on YouTube.

CONTACT NICO GRUNDMANN:

Ember Health: https://emberhealth.co/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicogrundmann/

CONTACT DR. ARDESHIR MEHRAN 

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Bestselling Book

What if the body remembers what the mind tries to forget? 

What if touch is medicine, not just contact? Let’s explore the path back to wholeness.

Somatic Trauma Therapist Barbara Collier on Why the Path to Wholeness Runs Through the Body, Not Around It.

For more than 30 years, Barbara Collier has studied what touch can heal that words cannot. 

A Licensed Professional Counselor, certified Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, and Embodied Psychosexual Practitioner™, she was among the first therapists in Arizona to bring touch into psychotherapy, introducing a massage table into her office. 

She is the co-founder of Equinimity Tucson, a longtime collaborator of Dr. Peter Levine, and a trauma survivor whose own trauma recovery shapes her clinical work.

In this podcast, we talk about what happens in the nervous system the moment safe touch occurs, and why so many of us are severed from our own bodies in the first place. 

We examine why talk therapy alone often can’t heal a traumatized body, where grief actually lives in the body, and how she knows the difference between touch that heals and touch that re-traumatizes. 

Barbara also shares what a horse can teach a nervous system that a human often can’t.

What we learned is that healing isn’t only something we talk our way into. It’s something we feel our way back to.

TIMELINE:

0:30 – Touch as a primary human need

3:20 –  Non-verbal communication: the body's language

6:00 –  Barbara's path into touch-based therapy

8:50 –  Presence as touch & ethics of touch in psychotherapy

11:10 – Somatic experiencing & the business executive case study

17:00 – The original wound: separation from nature

19:30 – CEO loneliness and the autonomy-connection paradox

24:10 – Touch, trauma, and sexual abuse healing

26:30 –The massage table practice & the anesthesiologist case

31:30 – Grief in the body and touch in daily relationships

Watch the Podcast on YouTube.

CONTACT BARBARA COLLIER, LPC:

Website: https://www.barbaracollier.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/headhearthandsjourneyinc/

CONTACT DR. ARDESHIR MEHRAN:

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Bestselling Book

She's interviewed thousands. Now she's the one being asked.

What does it take to be the voice a whole city wakes up to?

What does it take to be warm and steady before the sun comes up, every single day, for forty years?

We hear from the anchorwoman who has spent four decades telling Cincinnati's stories, and who is finally telling her own.

Sheila Gray hosts Good Morning Cincinnati on WKRC Local. She's a member of the Ohio University Broadcasting Hall of Fame, a magna cum laude Scripps journalism grad, and a community fixture through Pink Ribbon Girls, the YWCA Career Women of Achievement, and as a Key to the City. 

In this conversation, we talk about what it actually takes to be publicly cheerful on privately hard days. 

Sheila reflects on what her mentor saw in her before she saw it in herself, and what thousands of interviews with accomplished people have taught her about who they really are once the camera stops rolling.

We get into what her reporting reveals about the quiet challenges families don't talk about enough, what separates a story that truly connects people from one that simply informs, and what she's noticed people rarely say out loud, even when their lives are public. 

We also talk about what Cincinnati still understands about belonging that bigger, faster cities have forgotten, why the people who hold everything together for everyone else are so often the ones nobody checks on, and what local television still knows about trust that national news and social media have lost.

After four decades of telling everyone else's stories, it turns out the best one Sheila had was her own.

Watch the podcast on YouTube.

TIMELINE:

1:21 — Career origins: from West Virginia reporter to Cincinnati morning anchor

2:25 — "Sheila energy": bringing warmth and consistency to work every day

4:04 — Building trust and storytelling with genuine care

7:45 — Losing her father young and how grief shaped her values

10:06 — Choosing kindness over bitterness through hard times

11:06 — How celebrities and public figures behave on camera vs. off camera

15:15 — Balancing facts with human connection in interviews

24:39 — My mentor on finding the human story

30:02 — How news consumption and media trust are evolving

37:34 — Cincinnati culture and identity (Skyline Chili, goetta, community spirit)

CONTACT SHEILA GRAY:

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Bestselling Book

What if being normal is a myth?

What if there is a quiet cost of always being normal?

Let’s look behind the composure.

We hear from the psychiatrist who studies why the strong ones often struggle quietly.

For nearly 30 years, Dr. Peter Zafirides, MD has sat across from people who seem to have it all together, hearing the things they never say out loud. 

Dr. Zafirides is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Ohio State's College of Medicine and co-founder of Central Ohio Behavioral Medicine in Columbus, Ohio, where he has spent nearly three decades treating depression, anxiety, and trauma. 

A seven-time Best Doctors in America honoree and recipient of the Compassionate Doctor Award, he built his career around one uncomfortable question: what if being normal is a myth, and there's a quiet cost to always holding it together?

In this conversation, we talk about why the people everyone else depends on are often the least likely to admit they're struggling.

Someone can be lonely while surrounded by others every day, and why closure is something we create rather than something we receive. 

Dr. Zafirides breaks down the two layers of suffering, the loss itself and the fight against it, and explains how anxiety and depression can quietly become someone's lifestyle without them ever noticing. 

We also get into what the body knows before the mind admits it, and what nearly 1,000 lectures and thousands of patient hours have taught him about when people finally reach out for help.

What we learned is that strength was never about carrying it alone. 

It's about knowing when to put it down. 

If you're the one everyone else leans on, consider this your sign to lean on someone too.

Watch the podcast on YouTube.

TIMELINE:

3:54 — Living "normal" while secretly battling anxiety and depression

6:03 — The tipping point: when suppressed struggles start to "break down" relationships, work, or health

7:58 — "Death by resiliency,"  the cost of always pushing through

8:14 — When it's time to see a clinician

9:42 — How medication helps (and its limits)

11:30 — Healing as a complex interplay of biology, psychology, and human connection

15:59 — The power of simply asking "Are you happy?"

24:59 — Loneliness as an epidemic, even in a room full of people

28:22 — Understanding closure: pain vs. the suffering we add through interpretation

37:06 — The two layers of suffering explained

CONTACT DR. PETER ZAFIRIDES, MD:

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Bestselling Book

Let's Learn to Listen to Depression.

Depression is never the enemy. It’s often the most honest voice in the room, asking to be heard.

 ABOUT DR. LARA HONOS-WEBB

PhD clinical psychologist and author of seven books, including Listening to Depression and The Gift of ADHD

Listening to Depression was named one of the best therapy books of 2006 by Health Magazine

Longtime Psychology Today contributor; completed her postdoctoral fellowship at UC San Francisco

Known for finding the gift inside the diagnosis; depression as a wake-up call, ADHD as a strength

Dr. Lara Honos-Webb is a clinical psychologist licensed in California. Honos-Webb completed a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco, and has been an assistant professor for graduate students. She has published 26 scholarly articles. Her website is www.addisagift.com

She is the author of six books: Tools to Help Teens Improve Focus, Stay Organized, and Reach Their Goals (2020), Brain Hacks, The Gift of ADHD, The Gift of ADHD Activity Book, The Gift of Adult ADD, The ADHD Workbook for Teens, and Listening to Depression.

Dr. Honos-Webb shared that “Depression is a signal that something new has to come into your life.” 

There are 4 Ps that accelerate depression healing: The Permission Principle, the Pleasure Principle, the Presence Principle, and the Power Principle. 

Watch the podcast on YouTube.

TIMELINE:

0:06 — Welcome & Introduction

0:35 — Depression Has Wisdom, Not Just Symptoms

2:53 — Disclaimers & Session Purpose

7:21 — The Hero's Journey of Healing

10:32 — Depression as Self-Communication

15:45 — The Four Ps: Presence, Pleasure, Permission, Power

26:32 — Discovering Your Strengths

34:01 — Purpose and Enthusiasm Over Prestige

43:36 — Momentum: M&M for the Soul

CONTACT DR. LARA HONOS-WEBB:

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Bestselling Book: You Are Not Depressed. You Are Un-Finished.