NK

Nicole Kelly (frequently known as just NK) is a writer, audio producer, and story editor who lives in Mexico City. She was one half of bitchface, an experimental audio project about art and power, and her audio memoir “Divesting From People Pleasing” (The Heart, 2020) was called “a shockingly intimate portrait of what it means to be alive in a human body.” She has published fiction, performed personal essays, and edited Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication for Co-Conspirator Press. She is now a story editor for TransLash Media and is writing a TV series about social anxiety and the art world. 

She is the host of Basket Case.

Describe Basket Case in 10 words or less.
femme, mixtape, queer, vulnerable, playful, contradiction, decoder ring

How is it unlike most mental health podcasts?
Most of the episodes contain intimate narratives (although some are essays, and a few are standalone interviews), and in most cases the show takes a birds eye view of those experiences to talk about the social and historical and economic and cultural forces that lead someone to, say, see therapists as authority figures or to take a particular medication or to seek a particular kind of therapy or to feel ashamed of a certain diagnosis or to seek a certain diagnosis or to mask their neurodivergent traits.  

So it’s more about illness and what creates it than it is about “mental health” – although most of the stories are about people who have found ways to feel good, ways to feel supported and connected and self compassionate instead of inadequate, inferior, isolated, and ashamed. 

I like to think of it as for basket case/by basket case – I don’t want to uphold a hierarchy between mental health professional and mental health patient, expert vs… whatever the opposite of expert is. And most of the “experts” (people with PhDs or people who have published books or people with bylines) I talk to are queer and/or neurodivergent and/or mentally ill themselves. 

I do hope it is helpful and a resource, but I also want to undermine the idea that you are a problem to solve, or that your mental illness is your problem to solve alone.  

I love self help tbh, I’m always trying to be more confident, more intentional, the most expressed version of myself (after having to unlearn antiblackness, and unlearn white supremacy, and unlearn heteronormative thinking) and often consume “personal development” and CBT type stuff. But to the extent that our mental health, mental illness, and/or mental distress is in response to these kinds of structural and systemic forces, addressing that requires a collective, not individual response. 

This podcast isn’t full of tricks and tips in the traditional way, but can you offer some advice from what you’ve learned about unraveling ourselves from the sociopolitical conditions that cause mental distress? What’s one thing we can do?
I’m learning as I go, alongside everyone listening, so this is what I know so far: Start with seeing your own experiences with mental illness/neurodivergence as points of connection with other people — even people who have a different diagnosis than you. See those experiences as potential avenues to political solidarity.

And then: There are issues you can organize around – universal health care, universal basic income, access to affordable and stable housing, and legal rights for disabled people. Those are all systemic issues that would have an impact on the rising levels of mental distress in the US.

Why are you the perfect host for it?
I’m a neurodivergent bad bitch with a probable anxiety disorder and no shame, and I love asking questions, telling stories, and connecting seemingly disparate ideas in a way that feels chill & fun. 

What’s a podcast you love that not enough people know about?
I really love this series Julie: The Unwinding of the Miracle. It’s about a woman who is preparing for death. I listened to it right after my mom died and I felt like I got to have a conversation with Julie that I didn’t get to have with my mom. Podcasts are healing! 

Loving plug for Juventud Maldito Vacío para los que escuchan podcasts en español. My friend Laura Ubate made it when she got laid off and it’s a poetic reflection on the confusion and possibility of early adulthood, from the perspective of someone que ya esta grande (someone who is now grown). (We started producing our shows around the same time and Laura talked me off the ledge more than once.) The first episode of the series came out in late September, the same week as Basket Case.  

Shameless plug for the other series I work on, The Anti-Trans Hate Machine. The new season dropped Oct 8 and is about how since January 6, far right militias in the US are using transphobia and violence to enforce their white supremacist patriarchal world view. It's kinda scary, but stay ready so you don't have to get ready, ok?

What’s a podcast you love that everyone already knows about?
Heavyweight. Bring it back!

Thanks, NK!