Jake Shane needs to make you laugh – but his “Therapuss” ambitions are no joke

Jake Shane knows what he likes. He arrives at a members-only club in West Hollywood, his amiable personality fitting for this breezy and balmy August afternoon. He immediately reveals to what extent Sabrina Carpenter's Short and sweet takes up his brain space (“'Slim Pickins' is actually stuck in my head and I can't wait to listen to it all the way home.”). He feels like french fries and asks for the tuna melt. “It’s not really one of my favorites,” the waiter says hesitantly. But Shane is undeterred: “The tuna melt is my heart.” Deciding what to have for lunch may seem inconspicuous, but Shane works hard to trust his intuition.

“For a while I was very unsure of my preferences,” says Shane TeenVogue. “I always thought that sharing what I love made me less cool. But that's not true. Share what you love and do what you love – forget about being cool. That makes you do what you’re supposed to do, fall into the patterns you’re supposed to fall into, and meet the people you’re supposed to meet.”

Shane, 24, loves making people laugh above all else. He expresses several times that he “constantly needs reassurance,” and laughter is a uniquely reliable source of reassurance. To therapistOn his wildly popular podcast, which premiered last January, Shane has forced the likes of Charli XCX, Glen Powell, Reneé Rapp, Snooki and Tate McRae into childlike fits of giggles. Shane hopes to provide the same catharsis to his fans, affectionately known as Pussies Therapuss Livehis first-ever tour begins October 7th.

Therapuss Live represents everything Shane has ever wanted, so he's afraid to admit it's happening. Every now and then leaves fall onto our table, an ironic-metaphorical evidence of what Shane describes: a pervasive superstition that his sky will fall.

Shane's memory bank overflows with experiences that reinforce this fear, but none is more vivid than a day at Claire's retail store shortly after he graduated from eighth grade. He had fun and realized how good it felt to be accepted by a group of friends. The feeling didn't last.

“Things didn’t go well after that,” he says. “I remember thinking: Oh my God, I can never be complacent in my happiness again.” His blue-green eyes widen and his lips tingle, a regular occurrence when Shane crosses a vulnerable threshold in our conversation. “I literally can't make myself happy, and I don't know if people understand how debilitating that is.”

therapist catapulted Shane into the zeitgeist – and landed him Rolling Stoneis one of the “25 Most Influential Creators of 2024” and grows his TikTok fan base to 3.2 million. Its platform is larger than anyone could control. This is problematic for Shane because he was diagnosed with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder when he was seven years old. According to him, if dreams come true so quickly, couldn't everything disappear just as quickly? “That’s all I think about every day,” he says.