Episode 104: Zak Sandler

What happens when the same mind capable of extraordinary creativity also becomes difficult to control?

In this conversation, composer, writer, and Broadway musician Zak Sandler joins Patrick Huey for an honest and deeply thoughtful discussion about bipolar disorder, creativity, identity, shame, and healing.

Zak has performed on Broadway for productions including Wicked, Mean Girls, and The Color Purple. But behind that success was a deeply personal journey involving hospitalization, racing thoughts, psychosis, depression, and the difficult process of learning how to understand and live with his own mind.

Throughout the conversation, Zak reflects on the experience of mania and depression, hearing voices, and the complicated relationship between creativity and mental health. He also shares how growing up unaware that a bipolar condition ran through his family shaped his understanding of shame, silence, and self-acceptance.

Together, Patrick and Zak explore questions many people quietly carry:
What is the line between brilliance and instability? How do we support people whose minds work differently? And what happens when we stop viewing mental conditions only through the lens of brokenness and begin approaching them with curiosity, compassion, and understanding?

At the heart of this episode is a conversation not only about bipolar conditions, but about the universal human desire to feel understood, accepted, and unafraid of our own inner world and our histories.