Recorded at the 2025 Brattleboro Literary Festival, Kurt White speaks with author, designer, and Creative Director of The Atlantic, Peter Mendelsund. Their conversation centers on Mendelsund’s book Exhibitionist: 1 Journal, 1 Depression, 100 Paintings, an unconventional work that pairs personal journal entries with paintings created during a period of severe depression. Through vivid, abstract imagery and unfiltered reflection, Mendelsund explores the lived experience of depression, including its loneliness, alienation, shame, and the difficulty of sharing suffering with loved ones. He speaks candidly about bipolar depression, suicidal ideation, the limits of creativity as a coping mechanism, and the life-saving roles of therapy, medication, and human connection. The conversation reflects on the slow work of getting through each day, the courage it takes to ask for help, and the possibility of greater openness and compassion on the other side of despair.

Links:
Peter Mendelsund's website
Paintings by Peter Mendelsund
Exhibitionist and other books by Peter Mendelsund
Brattleboro Literary Festival

If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available. Dial or text 988 in the US and Canada to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

In this episode of Unravelling, recorded at the 2025 Brattleboro Literary Festival, Mary Wilson sits down with author and literary agent Betsy Lerner for an intimate conversation about writing, mental illness, and family dynamics.
Betsy shares how she began keeping diaries as a child after reading Anne Frank, using journaling to process secret feelings and a sense of being different within her family. She discusses her early diagnosis of bipolar disorder at 15, years of ineffective treatment, and how finally finding the right care in her 30s allowed her to live stably and write clearly for decades.

The conversation centers on Betsy’s novel Shred Sisters, which blends fiction with emotional truth to explore bipolar disorder, sibling rivalry, and shame. Betsy speaks about her mission to destigmatize bipolar disorder, challenge sensationalized portrayals, and validate both those living with bipolar disorder and their loved ones, while emphasizing the importance of boundaries and self-preservation.

She also discusses her popular TikTok diary project! Her social media account encourages young people to prioritize mental health, keep handwritten journals, and seek help.

Links -
Visit Betsy Lerner's website
Buy Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner
Follow Betsy Lerner on TikTok
Brattleboro Literary Festival

This episode explores how the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. continues to shape conversations about mental health. Mary speaks with Kurt and special guest Dr. Nnamdi Pole, who for the past five years have collaborated on annual MLK Day presentations at the Brattleboro Retreat, a mental health hospital in Vermont. The live events draw directly from King’s speeches and writings to examine racism as a central mental health issue. From King’s 1967 APA keynote, where he challenged psychologists to stop pathologizing Black communities and instead confront the psychological damage of racism itself, to his framing of racism as a societal “poison,” the conversation traces how King’s ideas remain urgently relevant amid contemporary racial conflict and political polarization.

They preview an upcoming MLK Day presentation focused on derogatory speech in inpatient settings, using King’s own words as a guide for naming harm, supporting staff, and shaping compassionate but clear institutional responses. Throughout, the discussion returns to King’s enduring challenge-- a commitment to love and hope, even, and especially, in difficult times.

Links:
MLK's speech at the APA's 1967 Convention in Washington, D.C.
I Have a Dream Speech
Where Do We Go From Here?

As the year comes to a close, Mary and Kurt welcome listeners to a reflective New Year’s conversation from Dr. Justin Hecht, Jungian analyst and psychologist. This episode explores the cyclical nature of endings and beginnings, and how pain, grief, and disappointment can be metabolized into vision, vocation, and hope. Drawing on Jungian ideas of individuation, the “wound and the vision,” Dr. Hecht shares clinical insights and personal stories about midlife crisis, creativity, spirituality, and the importance of holding a vision, sometimes with the help of therapists, groups, or community, when we cannot hold it ourselves.

Links:

Visit Dr. Justin Hecht's website - https://www.justinhecht.com/

More about Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D -
https://www.jeanbolen.com/

More about Auld Lang Syne -
https://genius.com/Robert-burns-auld-lang-syne-annotated

More about Year Compass:
https://yearcompass.com/

In this special roundtable episode, Unravelling turns its focus to the complex intersection of politics and mental health. Hosts Kurt and Mary are joined by clinicians Sarah Turbow and Dr. Geoff Kane, and researcher and professor Dr. Nnamdi Pole, for a conversation on how political identity, policy, and power shape our inner lives and the lives of the patients clinicians serve. The panel examines how social and political forces enter the therapy room, from the psychological toll of polarization and systemic inequities to the loss of agency many individuals experience in response to policy decisions.
The panelists reflect on their own clinical experiences navigating political differences, examining how therapists can acknowledge political stressors without compromising the therapeutic alliance. They debate the ethics of neutrality versus self-disclosure and raise broader questions about the role of mental health professionals in engaging with public health, social responsibility, and efforts to address the systemic conditions that shape mental health.

If you enjoy Unravelling, leave a positive review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to us and tell you friends about us!

And listeners, take note! We always want to hear from you with reactions, topic ideas, stories or other suggestions. Send us an email, an old fashioned voice message, or a voice memo by using unravel@brattlebororetreat.org or by calling 802-258-POD3 (802-258-7633)!

In the final installment of our special series, Architecture of the Self, Kurt and Mary dive into the future of mental health through the lens of epigenetics. Featuring Dr. Tesfaye Mersha, epigenetics expert, Endowed Chair, and Professor at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and weaving in insights from earlier guests in the series, this episode explores how genetics, environment, and life experiences shape who we become, and how trauma and healing can leave lasting marks at the genetic level. Discover why adaptation, not destiny, is at the heart of mental health and why new science offers hope for more personalized and effective treatments.

Links -

Learn more about the Mersha Lab: https://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/research/divisions/a/asthma/labs/mersha

Be sure to listen to the other episodes in this series: Architecture of the Self: Diagnosis, Architecture of the Self: Memory, Dissociation, and Traumatic Experiences, and Architecture of the Self: Unlocking Neuroplasticity

In part three of our special series, Architecture of the Self, Kurt sits down with neuroscientist and pioneer in the world of psychedelic research, Dr. Gül Dölen, to explore the concept of “critical periods,” unique windows when the brain is most open to learning and change. Dr. Dölen explains how these periods shape everything from language and social behavior to habits and personality, drawing on decades of research that reveal why early experiences hold such lasting power.

The conversation explores how and when these windows can reopen: naturally, after injury, or through Dr. Dölen’s discovery that psychedelics like MDMA, ketamine, psilocybin, and LSD can create a state of heightened plasticity in the adult brain. She also discusses why environment, support, and therapeutic integration are essential for turning that plasticity into meaningful growth and healing.
Join us for a look at the future of medicine, mental health and the new possibilities for healing, growth, and lasting change at any stage of life.

Links:
dölenLAB: exploring critical periods, psychedelics, and the social brain

On today's episode of Unravelling, we continue our exploration of the architecture of the sellf as Mary sits down with Dr. J. Douglas Bremner, who has spent much of his career exploring trauma, memory, and dissociation. Trauma-related diagnoses are especially significant in the mental health field, because they can be quite disabling and are also not uncommon, and also because they represent a problem that develops at the intersection of mind and body, biology and experience, past experience and the present moment. Mary and Dr. Bremner cover much terrain in this exploration of how memory works, why it gets interrupted by trauma, and what all of this shows us about how the mind works.

Dr Bremner's Bio:

J. Douglas Bremner, MD, is Professor of Psychiatry and Radiology and Director of the Emory Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, and a Staff Psychiatrist at the Atlanta VAMC in Decatur, Georgia. Dr. Bremner moved to Emory from Yale in November of 2000 where he spent the first 12 years of his career.

Dr. Bremner’s research has used neuroimaging and neurobiology measures to study the neural correlates and neurobiology of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to combat and childhood abuse, as well as the related area of depression. His more recent work is expanding to look at the relationship between brain, behavior, and physical health including studies of heart disease and the brain. Dr. Bremner has worked continuously throughout his career as a physician scientist, with the support of funding from two successive VA Career Development Awards, VA Merit Review, NIH, DOD, and various private sources. His research included studies of the neurobiology and assessment of PTSD, hippocampus and memory in PTSD and depression, neural correlates of declarative memory and traumatic remembrance in PTSD, PET measurement of neuroreceptor binding in mood and anxiety disorders, neural correlates of myocardial ischemia, and the effects of treatments on the brain including psychotropic medication, mindfulness training, and Vagal Nerve Stimulation (VNS).

Dr. Bremner has authored or co-authored over 400 peer reviewed articles and book chapters, and written or edited nine books, including Does Stress Damage the Brain? Understanding Trauma-Related Disorders from a Mind-Body Perspective published by W.W. Norton & Co. (2002), You Can’t Just Snap Out of It (2014) and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: From Neurobiology to Treatment (Wiley, 2016, Edited). He is on the editorial boards of several journals and has received several awards for his work, including the Chaim Danieli Award for Research and Service in Traumatic Stress from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and the Millipub Award for highly cited publications from Emory University (2016, 2018). His personal website is at dougbremner.com.