Can Pop be a cure for the melancholy and pain of our age? Has it always been? Today we bring a practicing NYC-based psychiatrist to probe the music of Taylor Swift and Lana Del Ray for pain, therapy and mental health. Given the resounding dominance of their prolonged success, sustained depth-analysis is more than called for. The hopes, fears and travails of generations and millions is now projected onto the mental screen provided by these artists that have captured the age.

For rights reasons, musical selections this time are limited to an innocuous cover.. We are featuring a brief excerpt of Sara Bareilles cover of "Clean," as well as a snippet of "Dark Paradise," by Lana Del Ray, which could well be taken as the actual Heartbroken National Anthem.

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In this episode we explore:

Pop as a symptom of America's ailments.
How we can and should think of pop intellectually/psychoanalytically:
What is the role of eros, drive theory and repression in pop?
How has pop inherited and activated the language of mental health, crises, narcissism etc?
Is pop about converting depression erotically?
How does pop surveil our emotions especially those that are potentially pre-political?
How does Taylor Swift enact a balance of power of the two americas and two worlds of : red state/blue state; girl/woman, adult/child, sex/love, etc.

Stay tuned for alot more coming up this season and thanks so kindly to Dr. Zimmerman for his participation!