You Are Not So Smart · You Are Not So Smart

321 - Easy Crafts for the Insane - Kelly Williams Brown (rebroadcast)

September 1, 2025·1 hr 18 min·5 clips

Adulting author Kelly Williams Brown on the moment after her divorce when everything spiraled into a high-lethality suicide attempt.

Kelly starts after her divorce. She remembers being proud that she did what she knew was right, while also saying nobody feels proud of divorce itself. Then everything drops. The episode does not turn that collapse into one neat cause. It sounds more like a pileup: related disasters, mostly separate, until Kelly says she went crazy. The host says plainly that her attempt to end her life will come up, and he gives the conversation a careful frame. Kelly talks about punishment. She had followed the script, done what she was supposed to do, and then felt punished as soon as she stepped outside it. Then Sam enters the story. The host stays with him for a bit: very handsome, impractical, and someone who lets Kelly briefly stop obeying what the world thinks. A rented beach house, skipped work, and playing hooky become a strange little counterweight to collapse. Tinder also matters more than expected. Kelly gives the sharpest rule in the excerpt: never swipe on the man who says good vibes only. It is funny, but it also points toward her interest in heterosexuality, masculine energy, and how attraction can feel different and fun. She still calls herself a Tinder apologist. That lands because she never really had a simple dating phase. She went from a college relationship to a post-college relationship to marriage. So the episode lives inside that contradiction. A story about trying to end her life also becomes a story about dating, chosen family, and the first awkward signs of wanting another future.

As heard by us

Kelly Williams Brown turns divorce, dating, and a suicide attempt into a frank, humane study of agency under pressure.

Kelly Williams Brown's return to You Are Not So Smart is candid, uneven in the way grief and recovery often are, and grounded in the messy aftermath of a divorce she believed would open a chosen life.

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Why you'd press play

When you want the real story of falling apart -- no softening, no rush to the silver lining.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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