You Might Also Like: No Magic Pill with Blake Mycoskie

**Cory Richards** (0:06)
If you solve or heal bipolar disorder, you erase 80, 90 percent of the world's greatest art.

**Blake Mycoskie** (0:15)
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to No Magic Pill. I'm Blake Mycoskie. You'd think the most dangerous place in the world for a renowned photographer and mountain climber would be in an avalanche in the Himalayas. But for Cory Richards, the most frightening place he's ever been was inside his own mind.

**Cory Richards** (0:32)
Being bipolar and the story I lived with for so long was something was fundamentally flawed in me and I was broken and beyond repair.

**Blake Mycoskie** (0:41)
Cory lives with bipolar disorder. And for most of his life, he's been running. From his childhood, from his diagnosis, from himself.

**Cory Richards** (0:49)
Everybody keeps secrets. That's just part of life. And we learn to hide what we believe is unlovable in us.
The more we hide those things, the more unlovable we believe ourselves to be.

**Blake Mycoskie** (1:04)
In 2024, he wrote The Color of Everything, a memoir that really goes through his adventurous life and his mental wellness journey.

**Cory Richards** (1:13)
The lesson is you are enough as you are.

**Blake Mycoskie** (1:18)
The timing of this book coming out was divine in my own life. I read it as I was coming out of seven years of depression. I was dealing with so much confusion, having been misdiagnosed with bipolar, and in the process of trying to put my life back together again. I literally could not put this book down. By the end of the story, I learned a lot about what it actually takes to face oneself, as well as being inspired to pick up my own camera again, which I'm super grateful for.
I had so much fun prepping for this interview and it really started over two and a half years ago when I read the book. And the book, I just want to start off the conversation by saying thank you because you were just so raw, so honest and that book did two things for me. First is it encouraged me to start being open and honest about my own mental health journey. During my darkest times, I was so ashamed of how I was feeling and I didn't think that I should be able to talk about what was going on because I had all this privilege and so many other people are suffering in other ways. When I read your book, I had been feeling better for about six months. I've gotten through the darkest time. When I read your book, I was like, you know what? I think it's time for me to start talking about what's been going on in the past three years. The most important thing for me, and I think of all, was I picked up my camera again. Yeah. I was so inspired just reading your book and seeing your photography. That really led to this thing that was a huge part of my healing and still continues to be, and that is this birthday project I did. So basically, I am turning 50 this year.
Nice. Yeah. So I had this big birthday coming out, and I was trying to think of a way to celebrate it. I decided that I was going to spend about a year and a half traveling around the world and taking a portrait of every person that had a huge impact on my life. And so that was like, and then for my birthday, instead of having just a big party where it's like, look, I'm turning 50, I'd actually have a gallery show, and I had every single person who impacted my life. I'm talking like high school theology teacher, to my first girlfriend, to the person that taught me to drive. Like literally, I went through like all these important moments. And so there'll be about 75 portraits all in all, from early childhood up until just a few months ago. It all started reading your book.

**Cory Richards** (3:44)
Wow.

**Blake Mycoskie** (3:44)
And so I feel like this is like such a full circle moment.

**Cory Richards** (3:47)
Well, thank you. Thank you for, I mean, first of all, thanks for giving the time, right? The time here, the time to read the book, because I really do believe that time is this thing that Seneca said, it's not that life is too short, but that we use time poorly. And I think giving time to these things, whether it's joy, rediscovering photography, whether it's reading people's words and really taking it on, I just, it's such a gift to be given that time. I mean, we've been so excited about this one. I've been waiting for it, which is rare, because I generally, I don't wait for podcasts anymore. You know, I'm like, okay, let's do it. Let's get through it.