659. - Joshua Citarella

All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Stateside with Kai and Carter, a new podcast from The Guardian. And they are using this podcast to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions that we all have about what's happening in the world. And they do it three times a week, Jason. Does that sound familiar to you? We don't really talk about, you know, a lot of international global news items and climates and cultures and sports and things like that. We do talk about fashion and wellness, but for everything else, Kai and Carter are a great place. All right, so who couldn't use more news? Listen wherever you get your podcast. or watch on YouTube. How Long Gone special rare Monday edition because of our upcoming touring schedule. Them jeans was really good. i'm feeling crazy as hell man i'm tweaking what in what sense just pre pre travel jitters not even jitters because because my travel muscles are still calloused you know like the i got back a couple weeks ago and i never really unpacked knowing that smart smart this day would be upon us you know but i know you love to do laundry so you didn't take this as opportunity to kind of clean your knickers well i Regardless of my travel plans, I do laundry. Okay. Because of... Okay. Look, I just wanted to make sure. I think it's sexy when a guy wears clean clothes. Look, I think it's super sexy when a guy knows what a dryer sheet is. That's just me. Yeah. That's just me. I've been having to wear deodorant a little bit more lately. I try to go deodorant-free. Carolyn hates it when I wear deodorant, especially when it got aluminum in it. Why would you go deodorant-free? What are you trying to prove with that? There's a large group of people and studies that say that it is not natural and healthy and good for you, especially mass market branded deodorants. Unfortunately, those are the only ones that actually work, and there's a lot of fun memes about it, like the Chapel Rhone show.

needs to learn about deodorant that has aluminum in it it's basically saying like if you want to remove bo from your life completely you will have to enter in microplastics and cancer causing metals and things like that into your bloodstream yeah yeah well i'm sure you're just taking all the precautions to prevent microplastics and stuff from going into do you think there's any microplastics in molly or cocaine or no um just wondering Yeah, I don't could be. I don't. Yeah, of course. Of course. I mean, the FDA barely even tests on cocaine. What do you guys even do? Like, what are you guys even doing? No, I under I'm familiar with the anti deodorant movement. It just seems like a kind of a raindrop in a in a ocean as far as like. fixing problems and i would rather smell good than and die a couple years earlier personally i think that's how a lot of people land um and we obviously we grew up with the the crystal deodorant and all the shit that nobody says works and the dr bronner's and the seventh generation and all the you know it gets worse and worse and all i'm rubbing ghee and beeswax and compost and shit on there i i think that it really is uh you know it's what what goes in the body really dictates what uh what smell comes out of your armpits and how ripe your your cundle odor actually is so whenever i have bo that's kicking i it makes me look at myself what i've been putting into my body and then also i think it involves stress like like when you have stress and anxiety a lot more you become more stank yeah i mean i just never smell bad that's just not part of the equation i just can't it's a non-starter it's a it doesn't i mean i sweat more than most people daily which i think helps me as well i think that we expel more sweat than most people which is helpful but you know there was people yeah you know back in the i mean i think this still happens but it was very popular to get like botox in your armpits to stop sweating which feels that feels

worse to me than using that feels insane yeah it does like not not sweating feels so crazy like that's not that's deeply unnatural yeah that that truly becomes unnatural and also good for good for people like you um not as blessed in the in the hair department i learned from my barber shout out shout out kevin he said that during the summer months the more the more you sweat the more your hair grows literally lubricating your Djokovic Lego, if that's the case. You saw that Alcaraz got a haircut after listening to How Long Gone for Wimbledon. It didn't look great, but he got his little sides cleaned up. There's only so much you can do with that in one pass. It's like when you see that person who goes in for... They got all their teeth broken and you're like, well, we either... We either put veneers in or it ain't going to be a 10 out of 10. Sure. What comes out of it? And he looks fine. He looks fine. But also people were talking about his dinosaur teeth. Look, he's not. So it's only a matter of time until he gets the veneers, right? But they look like veneers. That's the thing. They already look like veneers. That's what I don't understand. Like veneers are when you got meth teeth. You got too much money in meth teeth or you're on TV and you need to be perfect. Like you're an actor or a newscaster. But someone like him. I think, unfortunately, his skill is so great that the rest of it just doesn't really matter. Until he gets a little older, he probably won't care. Yeah, people have been referring to these people for centuries as athletes. That's right. They're not models. They're not actors. They're not front-facing. I mean, they are front-facing, but you know what I mean. That's not their job. I wanted to talk about this comedy special that I watched last night that I was stunned by. Okay. Stunt. Comedy special. On the Max Network. And it's someone who I am a fan of. I thought. Hannah Einbinder, who is the star of the show Hacks, which is a great program. Einbinder! A great program that we all agree on. It gets better and better with every episode. It's so good. This special is...

um not good like i i was shocked at what it was and how like kind of theater dork it is i just didn't i don't know why i didn't expect that did you have a chance to catch any of it yet or no no i think i'm gonna watch it tonight um but also you know this is this is sort of categorically designed for you to not like it like all the words that you just said are all you know you're allergic to all of this but i'm a when i'm going in as a fan i'm optimistic like i'm not allergic to it if i'm a you know if i'm a fan like good point some of these things are very very funny i just was like i couldn't i didn't even crack a smile it's it's worse than dave chapelle okay so what chapelle is doing is known as stand-up comedy in the traditional sense and is what hannah einbinder is doing different than that is it a little this is my one person show x instead of e in the word person it's a little more like it's a little more uh there's a lot of like body movement i wouldn't say slapstick but there's a lot of like cues and like lights and like clip it's it's just it's there's it's not that it's not just someone standing there with a mic She is standing there with a mic, but she falls to the ground. She does this, she does that. There's this cue and this sound and that kind of thing. Right, ticking a page out of Cat Williams' newest special. Interesting. It is just not good, man. It is not good. I couldn't believe it, kind of. I'm still reeling from it. Yeah, I mean, I'm really curious to watch it. I mean, you always, I mean, outside of a couple Cat Williams specials, you... Like I said, you're allergic to anything like this. I watched Joe Coy at a basketball stadium. It was unbelievable how bad it was. He's known as a very bad... not funny person in the comedy world. Well, sure. But I mean, he's selling, yeah, but he's selling 30,000 tickets. So like somebody thinks he's funny. Of course, of course. You know, Chris D'Elia might not, but I do, you know, I do. Yeah. No, I'm just kidding. It was bad. The films of Vin Diesel perform better than any other films financially.

i'm saying though that means something like i take that into account when i'm that that's why i'm even watching joe coy is because i know how popular it is so i want to try to understand it and then i watch it and i do understand it and it's just bad so you you do a you do a a left set style watching like i've been here see what all the fuss is about style of watching yeah but left sets likes it like he likes things too much he's he's getting soft He likes some garbage lately. Well, I'm very curious to watch it. I think I'm going to come into it with a little... It's weird when you watch stand-up specials like that or one-person shows where this is my life and I've poured over it and I've done it 20,000 times and it's like this tapeworm that's been living inside of me and I can't wait to share it with the world and get it out of there and it's my therapy and I'm also getting paid for it. You're going to love it, and it's going to change people's lives and all this stuff. But if the first five minutes gives you the ick, the whole thing is dead on arrival. And it's so important in our trying times where our attention spans are fucked. If you don't get them, I mean, any comedian who does huge shows will tell you that. well get ready to be first five minutes it's over i don't like to say that phrase because i'm not 14 but get ready to be icked because it's gonna fucking put you down and if it doesn't put you down i'm gonna think differently of you i hate to say it oh i don't care i want you to think different of differently of me um like steve job style but i'm gonna watch it i'm obviously gonna be enjoying it a little bit more on account of the thc in my body sure sure always always The same way I enjoy food at restaurants more with my wine pairings and knowledge of the way those things dance with each other. Your palate is a little more stainless steel, flat. That's fine with me. But there's also a very good chance that I will hate it. If I'm wrong about this, I would be shocked. Before we get to our guests, I want to give a shout out to Scooter Braun for such an incredible run. 28.

28 years. No, I'm kidding. He had a great run managing so many great artists. He made so much money. He bought Taylor Swift's catalog. Just want to give a shout to him as he retires from the management game. And I know you feel the same way. Nothing but respect for our leader. What do you think he's going to be focusing on now? He's got some CEO job. I don't know. Moving money around, probably. I'm going to be moving money around. Okay. My job? Making tough decisions. All right. So, yeah, our guest today, Josh Citerell, a fellow podcaster. content creator. He's a little too smart to be talking to us, so hopefully he dials that down a little bit too much. No laughing, Josh. Shut the fuck up. We bring him down to our level. That's our job. He's also a fitness and gym enthusiast. He's not a biohacker, but he's not not. He also has a role-playing card game involving class systems so okay all right well i'll see you guys later thanks for joining us i'm very curious to see but he also is uh is severely online like you chris and that might be the only thing you two have in common so i look forward to of course of course all of this stuff let's give him a call this episode of how long gone is brought to you by a new podcast from the guardian stateside with kai and carter this is covering a lot of our bases jason it's a it's trying to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what's happening in the world and i know you particularly have quite a lot of questions a lot of questions but how often because we do this podcast three times a week and that's a sweet spot how many times do they do three times a week and i i have a feeling just based on the platform and these talking points that they're maybe going to be covering different stuff than we do that's just a guess the guardian is not some billionaire owned They're not afraid to say what they want to say, brother. Yeah, Rupert ain't sniffing around in what journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman are up to over there at Stateside. But yeah, listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch it on YouTube. It's three times a week. And who couldn't use more news? You know, especially when it's not, you know, from here, let's say. Give it a listen. Give it a listen. This episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Squarespace.

Obviously, Jason, you and I spend a lot of time on the World Wide Web. So do our peers, our listeners, our friends, our colleagues. Obviously. Maybe even your parents if they're freaky. And if you're doing anything in the world, writing, taking pictures. I do topless boxing. You need a website. Exactly. A website that works, that does what it's supposed to do, that allows you to be creative but also business-minded. Jason, there's one place to go for that, Squarespace. Yeah, Chris, I'm over here. I'm modifying calculators and putting Claude inside of them so you could cheat at school. And I just want a place where I could, you know, have everything all in one place. I can have the SEO tools so those future graduates can find me. And, you know, I'm able to accept, quote, unquote, donations for my services that might be gray area. You know what I mean? And then email campaigns. Hey, I got a new 2.3 version upgrade. Boom, boom, boom. Get the analytics going. Raise some money. Show your investor all of your cool analytics of what's going on. They're going to want to get in early. And we can use Blueprint AI to make your website look as professional as your competition, if not more. So head to squarespace.com slash how long for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code how long to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. Well, this is okay. So Josh is coming to us from what looks to be an office environment. Is that fair? This is a subterranean bunker that is below ground. It is technically a cellar. It's beneath a basement. I used to stream from my mom's basement when I started this project. And every time I graduate, I move lower. So I'm just saying, okay, so you're going to be touching the core of the earth soon. We get really popping. This is in New York City. I'm in Tribeca, yeah. Okay. Well, look, there's worse subterranean basements to be in. I'll tell you that. You could be in Bushwick. I'm pretty fortunate. I'm on Broadway, so it's the address. When I get mail, it looks pretty fucking swanky, and they don't realize it goes to this dank dungeon in the basement. But you've outfitted it. It looks bright enough. You've outfitted it. You have your soundproofing. You have your nice big desktop. It seems pro.

yeah yeah i mean i've been doing this long enough uh four years or something like that twitch streaming podcasting i've got a whole setup here i know a little bit about what i'm doing okay do you also do you have a blow-up mattress there in case you're burning the midnight oil i i don't do that anymore i used to when i was younger but uh this day and age i i try not to do overnights because At a certain point, you've got stuff to do in the morning. I have a pretty rigorous fitness plan. I'm in the gym like four days a week, so I can't be up until like 3 a.m. Four days is rigorous. Interesting. Well, do you have any? Now, a real question. There's no bottles of piss in this room, right? None yet. I emptied them yesterday. Okay. I knew you were on top of it. I knew you were a clean guy. I could tell. See, you're drinking a lot of water. This is a fair question. I assume that his Tribeca bunker has a bathroom or something like that. But do you have, like Chris mentioned, very well lit. You are using it to stream out into the world. Do you have a daytime and a nighttime setting on the lighting concept? Are there an LED colored strips where, all right, it's time to jack off now. I hit a button and the lights change and it turns into a different type of cave. The one rule is that you never look up porn on your streaming computer. There's a very notable YouTube guy. We don't need to go into names or the specific incidents or what type of cartoon characters recently showed up in his download folder. But that is the one rule for this job is that you do your jerking off on a different computer. Okay, so because everybody can see what's going on on your desktop when you're streaming, people have made mistakes. These wizards of... the internet these guys making fortunes streaming everyone is everyone can fall victim yeah yeah chris even your even your friend academics you know you're you're watching uh ice spice video yeah and then you're in the discord over here and you hit one minimization button and then oh shit and then you see a glimpse of you know cartoon

donkey porn or whatever it is yes and it only happens for a split second but that's all it takes for the internet to screen grab it and spread it all over the world and ruin your life yeah in that case it was uh goblins and horses so pretty close wow wow wow i mean yeah the only the only uh streamers i'm really familiar with are are like jason said academics and and kai senate um who just i guess broke the record like didn't he break some crazy record last week with that kevin hart stream Are you familiar with this? I think we're in like we're in different spheres where like the field, the group of people that listen to podcasts and the people who listen to live streams are almost like totally unconnected worlds. Like the people who listen to podcasts, I think, are generally in our like age bracket, like professional milieu. They listen to it while they're commuting. They listen to it while they're at the gym. And if you're a live stream type of person, because I've interviewed a lot of like a lot of young people who are into radical politics and all sorts of interesting ideas online. at home a lot of the time maybe you work from home and you've got it open in a window because you're working on your desktop and those are basically like totally non-overlapping spheres at this point right much younger too yeah because it's not it's not passive consumption it's people that work in toll booths and things like that i think of it as i definitely think of it as younger but that's good to know from a pro that that is that's true and and you're saying that that's across the field for all podcasts and live streams not and not just yours so you have two separate fan bases or customer bases we'll call them yeah in the fredigan sense of the word i think everybody now like uh Everybody has some version of like they do their podcast. They also have their book. They also have their newsletter. And, you know, I've worked in like art media stuff for over a decade now. So I do a little bit of everything. Primarily what I started doing when I was live streaming is that I teach my syllabus that I used to teach at SVA in New York or RISD in Providence. And I just started over the pandemic like doing that on Twitch. So that was a lot of fun. But that's probably a minority of my audience now. That might be like 10, 15 percent. OK, so I'm logging.

onto Twitch. Other guys are playing video games. You're teaching me a college-level course free of charge. Not free of charge, but discounted compared to those RISD tuition rates. Oh, it's pretty significant. It's about a $49,995 discount. That's a big one. That's a great deal. No one's offering that, but I do think that we did a Twitch thing for a little while during COVID, and it was very interesting to see how it works and how quickly it can kind of work. You know what I mean? But I can't... The distraction of the chat, obviously you can block it and blah, blah, blah, but the chat thing throws me off personally. I can't see that while I'm trying to create. It's a learned skill. It's a learned skill. You get used to it after a while. You bring in the chat. You have to reward the good ones because there's a lot of terrible contributions in the chat. And then people who have really good ideas, you try and highlight those. You learn to ignore the bad stuff. Yeah, you filter it out because a lot of times if you're doing a live stream, you know like what we were doing which is just you know let's just turn hit record and just talk and see what happens people in the chat will propose interesting premises or questions or things and they could really help you out and it's throwing you a life preserver in a sea of content but you have to train your eyes like a Navy SEAL to spot them through the sea of shit, right? Yeah, especially when you're doing, I mean, the gutter of the internet that I spend a lot of time in. If you're looking at radical internet politics, there's a lot of people who come into chat with some very interesting ideas. You know, who controls the media, who controls the government, things like this. So you learn to filter pretty quickly. It's a good skill. Different ways to make swastikas out of different symbols on your keyboard, creative ways to do that. You just mentioned spending time on, What did you describe it? The internet, the dark circles, the depths, the worst part of it? The gutter, maybe. Yeah, it was the gutter. The gutter. I think a lot of people, and gutter is a great term for it, I think a lot of people who are online, who fancy themselves edgelordian, or like I was on 4chan in 2000, you know, whatever, everyone thinks that they are in the gutter. They think that they're seeing the gnarliest shit. What is the actual gutter of the internet? Is there a real bottom to it?

Or is the bottom so low that we don't have access to it, nor do we even want to figure it out? Yeah, I mean, whenever you think you've seen the depth of human depravity on the Internet, there is always something worse. I mean, the bottom, for me, clearly, is people who get into doing violent acts in the real world. That's obviously where a lot of these things lead. But each of these niche ideologies and unconventional perspectives, let's say, so many of them, there's such a phenomenal number of these insane belief systems that once you think you've exhausted one category, you can easily move to the next. And they're very fuzzy around the edges. You know, you can be a techno libertarian, national conservative, paleo conservative, fourth positionist, cyber nihilist, like all of these things are just granular. Hold on, hold on, bro. I've never heard those words used together before. And I like how you kind of just rallied them off like that. That's impressive. I guess these niches are a kind of if-you-know-you-know situation. Is that fair to say? It's kind of like a scene. I mean, our generation might have been into music. I was really into post-hardcore, and there was math rock, and then there was calculator funk. And there was metalcore and screamo and like all of these different like the niche vacation of those genres are part of the game people play. Right. Like how much of my really particular corner can I get into? And kids today are doing a very similar thing with ideology, such that they write their own manifestos. They make up their own political iconography. They they produce memes and all sorts of podcasts, videos, propaganda for it. So it's a really fascinating field. And I mean, I come from like professional art, like like capital A art. I just did a talk at MoMA literally last night. So spending time in this, what you might call like a folk art, an emergent folk art over the over the Internet, like the memosphere, broadly speaking. That stuff is very interesting to me because it doesn't have a canon. Anybody can do it and they can just literally make shit up, which is. Really fun and really exciting. See, that's my problem. That's my problem. We've got to level this stuff out. That's my main gripe with the internet is that anybody can do anything and I have to hear about it. You know what I'm saying? And most of it is not worth hearing about. I'm sure you would agree. Well, somebody's got to read it. Like with these ideologies or philosophies or music genres in the post-hardcore world or the...

the post uk funky dubstep world whatever it is at a certain point you've created a sub genre that is so niche that the rest of the world is just like okay fine like it needs to have some like it can't be distilled down that much to where it has nothing to grab on to i think one might think so until the people who have political influence and resources then decide to act on those things or to take those labels and apply them to their own project. For example, you might think of Mark Andreessen's The Techno Optimist Manifesto, which is literally citing anonymous meme accounts alongside like Adam Smith and Ricardo and all the things that you might think of from liberal political philosophy and so on. Some of these places are pretty influential, you know, Elon Musk, maybe another example. So from the fringes, sometimes it moves into the center. Yeah. Do you think that's partly because people are just looking for something like everybody is just searching more than maybe they ever have been for something to latch on to? And since we are post religion America, I would attribute I mean, I think the thing that's driving everybody crazy now is just how the mainstream media is just so flagrantly out of touch with reality. So when people are looking for. Thank you for not saying thank you for not saying lamestream. I try. I had to get Jason to stop saying that he cannot quit for a while. But yes, thank you. No, I'm joking. That's where it's coming from. Right. That's where it's coming from. Like people just see things that are blatantly untrue in the news and then they look out onto the Internet to find some narrative that makes more sense. So it's hard to blame them. You know, the problem, the call is coming from inside the house. No, but people are more. I mean, obviously, there's more information than ever before to dig into, but people feel more susceptible to things that may be. in left field let's to be nice you know what i mean i think people are i think regular quote-unquote regular people are more comfortable now with latching on to ideas and ideals that are a little more extreme than maybe when we were younger yeah well i mean the the social media researchers there's often a case where people who are working to debunk a certain conspiracy theory or narrative or something like that

They end up doing the deep dive, getting really into the weeds on this information, and then all of a sudden their opinion changes. They turn. Because they get pilled by the facts. It's like Jason in 9-11. Jason in 9-11 all over again. The amount of times that I've said, this MF spitting, and I had to switch my whole style up, it's crazy. To bring up post-hardcore, Chris and I also come from a hardcore background. We're a little older than you are. You speak a lot about characters along the lines of a hardcore record that I've listened to many times as well as Chris. Earth Crisis, Destroy the Machines. Let's fucking go. There's a lot of people that you've spoken with, very young people who are anarcho-environmentalists, guerrilla, whatever. Why do you think that is on the rise nowadays? And is there an actual... plan for these people to destroy the machines that is actually feasible in the real world? To be clear, the machines aren't on factory farms. I think we mean bigger machines. Yeah, the version I'm speaking of is, you know, like people in a village on an untouched island and, you know, throwing rocks at a helicopter or the bulldozer that's tearing down the rainforest and the local village people are... trying to smash the tire with the stone or something like that obviously it ain't going to work out for them but what about nowadays yeah i mean i interviewed one person in particular who was prominently featured i wrote this book if i can back up for a second i wrote this book in 2018 called politogram in the post left that was uh a kind of ethnography of this mimetic subculture. A lot of kids who at that time were ages 12 to 17 and were producing memes in the vein of what you might call anarcho-primitivism, as you mentioned, eco-anarchy, anti-civilization, post-civ, various types of eco-extremism and stuff like this. One of those people actually went on a few years after that book, they're anonymous, so I won't mention their name, to become a pretty prominent hardcore musician.

toured the country had a lot of success all of the lyrics the branding for the band is this kind of like and prim luddite type of destroy the machines yeah um i mean obviously like climate change is the primary concern for people who are like 18 years old right now so that part of it makes sense and i've seen a pretty big resurgent subculture of that stuff in the last few years interesting i you know i we talk about hardcore a lot and and one of the things that i think his Ben, something that I've noticed is that when you become older, you think the stuff you were into when you were younger just kind of doesn't exist anymore. You know what I mean? If it's like a niche subculture, like, oh, well, I did it. It was great for me, but it can't. And now it's had such a resurgence and there's such a new energy with it that you're kind of forced to be like, oh, yeah, things go on. It might even be better now than it was for me or Jason. And that's a hard pill to swallow. Thanks to technology and machines, we're able to protest technology and machines better. Yeah. I mean, I remember being in high school and... we would go and protest the carnival because of the unethical treatment of animals. And people would get kryptonite U-locks and chain their neck to the entrance and superglue their hands to all that shit. And I think nowadays people can organize and get some actual real work done instead of just a guy having to bring the jaws of life and cutting your neck off and throwing you in jail. They're still doing the superglue. That's still happening. Hell yeah. If it ain't broke. My favorite is the climate protesters at museums where they glue their hands to a painting. And it's just like that. Honestly, from the physical, it just seems uncomfortable. That's all. It doesn't seem like just like. Back in my day, you would do that to win a car on a radio station. Oh, yeah. And it's also very much as a criminal who wants to get away with the crime.

super gluing the the perpetrator to the evidence of the crime doesn't seem that smart i want to i want to throw that red paint and be gone but i think they want the i think that's the difference and partly due to social media and josh you could probably yeah it's there's glory involved there's much more of like a i want to be recognized for this versus i want to be cloaked in mystery yeah yeah i got sued for seven million dollars and i went to jail for three months start sucking bitch that kind of vibe exactly exactly i'm uh well look i'm uh i'm very sympathetic and i care seriously about the climate but i am happy to shit on these people all day did you ever see the original batman with michael keaton where jack nicholson is the joker of course at some point in my life yes yes yeah yeah i i mean old film but you know one of the best films like 89 i think Something like that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was a kid. I might have been two years old or something like that. So Jack Nicholson as the Joker walks into what looks like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He's playing Prince on the boombox. And they have this red spray paint where they're going over and graffitiing and vandalizing all of the iconic pieces of... you know, Rembrandts and Francis Bacon's and things like this. And it's a very like anti-social type of act. And if you look at like the history, the emergence of museums as a form in society, straddling the division between feudalism and capitalism, this was a way of just appropriating literally the fucking monarchy and holding all of these works in the public's trust that they're available to the public. Everybody has a stake in them. And the idea of like walking into a place where these incredibly valuable cultural objects are there for everyone and then fucking destroying it. It's just like insanely antisocial. So the idea that that could be attached to any type of progressive politics, I promise I'm not going to lecture on this podcast. But this is a deeply, deeply mistaken belief system. Too late for that. Too late for that, Josh. Too late for that. We have a lot of mistaken belief systems here. Don't worry. We've got plenty to debunk.

The over-under on your mention of Joker, we came in a little under. I thought we were going to get halfway through. But no, I didn't even think about that. That makes a lot of sense that nowadays we see the Joker spraying red paint all over a priceless work of art, and we're desensitized to it the way we are watching other footage of insane crimes. This is the 17th. thing i've seen this month where a billion dollar piece of art has been destroyed click next whatever who cares and back then the gasp i would let out in the theater yeah the attention economy the attention economy has just desensitized everybody to everything you're telling me i watched the i watched there's a guy there's an unhoused guy on my block that i see all the time and he's definitely not all there you know what i mean he's got like real issues and i watched a tourist get in a fist fight with him yesterday in front of my house like a tour a tourist wearing a balenciaga t-shirt got in a fight and i'm like and i didn't want to i didn't want to i i guess what my point is it was shocking to see something that happen in lower manhattan no one videoed no one no one was filming it and i felt like it was happening just for me and i didn't know what i didn't know what to do like i didn't i didn't know i was like this is But the homeless guy kicked his ass. That was the cool thing about it, is that he beat his ass. But it was just surreal to see something like that and not see cameras out at this point. And also, you didn't film it yourself, Chris. Why not? I don't do that. I hate stuff like that. What am I going to do, share that with my followers? That's not what they want to see from me. Well, maybe all the other people surrounding the area who saw this bum fight felt the same as you. Maybe the tide has turned and people are like, I'm going to make a meditated decision not to pull out my phone and film this. But we need to stop. Josh, what do you think the rules are on the public filming? Obviously, your Equinox membership will get canceled if you're caught taking pictures in the locker room. Jason knows firsthand. Still disputing that. We're in litigation. Why is it so accepted? There was this New York Times story this week about...

Like noise pollution, how no one wears headphones and no one gives a shit anymore. Like, are we just so self-involved that we don't care about our fellow man? Is that what's happening? Only the poor people. I think something happened. Something happened during the pandemic where the state response, like the society's response to the pandemic was just so incompetent that the general. fabric of society began to break down it was just really clear to everyone that it's every man for themselves like no one is coming to save you on the smaller scale it's like well why hold the door when you're walking into the coffee shop for the person behind you just fuck everybody i'll get mine and then that's that's kind of like a cascading problem throughout the rest of society that we're actually all in competition with each other for the very scarce resources that are still left And yeah, that that becomes manifest as a lot of weird antisocial behavior of like just generally like. breaking the rules, behaving poorly. Speaking of gyms, my gym, which is across the street from my dungeon studio, has been shut down. The sauna in particular was shut down because of some interesting activity happening there repeatedly for a few months. Hey, we don't need to beat around the bush here, Josh. We know guys were jerking each other off. There's a chance it could be non-sexual activity as well, Chris. People could do something. People could be pissing in there. You sound real sure of that, Jason. Maybe they're reading a book. All right. This episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Quince. Jason, the temps are warming up. It's getting hot out there. Summer always changes how I get dressed. I need pieces that feel lighter, more breathable, and they're just easy but still put together. I don't want to look like a slob. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high-quality essentials that feel and look amazing. Breathable linen and soft organic cottons. Well-made basics, but without the luxury markups. That rare balance where everything feels elevated, but still effortless. Yeah, Chris, linen season is here. I wore a linen blazer to dinner a few nights ago in the warm California sun. But, you know, you got that Italy trip coming up this summer. And quality European linen pants and shirts.

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It was in a very, this is why we can't have nice things, like y'all keep jacking off so saunas, pools closed. Well, yeah, it was collective punishment for the rest of us because some people who weren't doing the jerk-offs would probably like to use the saunas. And we weren't allowed. Collective punishment. Very unfair. Yeah, it's like we have to drink our beers out of a plastic cup because one time one guy threw the beer bottle. And it hurt someone, and now everyone has, you know, one shoe bomb, and we all got to take our Yeezys off at TSA. And now you're getting the phytoestrogens from the beer, and you're getting the xenoestrogens from the plastic cup. Wait, hold on, bro. I don't know about these estrogen brands. You don't want to know. Am I going to grow titties or not? Yes. Oh, hell no. This is a one-way trip. You don't want to crack this open. Okay, Josh, ironically, we were talking about deodorant on the intro, and I brought up microplastics. What are your thoughts on deodorant maxing? Do you have a natural remedy that you've shared on your sub-snack? Or are you just no deodorant? Well, I'm using the TOMS right now. I was trying to point back, but I don't think you can see it on the Zoom. But it's not the microplastics so much in the deodorant. It's the phthalates. The phthalates are a byproduct that's used in refining crude oil to make petroleum, to make fossil fuels. And this is built into basically every plastic product that is flexible. And it allows it to have that plasticity, as we might think of it, because plastic is actually a pretty rigid molecular form. Once you introduce the phthalates, then the plastic can bend. And there's pretty comprehensive data. There are studies spanning several decades now. In particular, I would reference Dr. Shanna Swan, who's the head of research at Mount Sinai. These things are metabolized as a category called xenoestrogens. So it's not just the possibility of growing titties. It's also all sorts of other things, particularly the development of...

testes, the penis length, what is called the andogenital distance in fetuses. Oh, hell no. You're saying my dick's shrinking because I wear deodorant? Your dick is shrinking and your balls are getting smaller. Yeah. It's not good. I would recommend Aaron Brockovich has some great reporting on The Guardian and also The Intercept has some good reporting about this as well. But I'm using Aesop spray deodorant. Do you think that's a little better maybe than some kind of... over-the-counter CVS crap. I'd have to read it. I'd have to read it. Oh, you know what? I'm going to buy you a bottle, have it Ubered over there, and have you kind of take a look at it for me. You're my representative now. This is a whole side business. If you could unbox it on livestream, please. Yeah, if you could do it on livestream just for me. It's a private livestream. I guess we call that a FaceTime. Is your Toms of Maine deodorant featured in a hard plastic? container or is it soft at all? It's a hard plastic. What is worrying about the phthalates is that they're not only used to make plastic pliable, they're also put into other products to carry a scent. So anything that you spray like perfume or lotions that feel slippery, like you can physically feel it in your hands, it's a texture, that is phthalates, which is impregnated with the scent that carries it, allows it to stick in your skin and so on. And it's absorbed, all of these things are absorbed. subcutaneously, just directly through your skin. So once you make physical contact with them, your body metabolizes it, even though it's not something that is endogenously produced. It's metabolized as estrogen, and you're spiking your endocrine system each time you touch it. The worst example of this is receipts. If you're touching receipt paper, which is bisphenol A, all of that stuff that's thermal paper, literally the top of it is just xenoestrogens. That's why receipts feel slippery. That's that same texture. That's why I always say I don't need a receipt. I knew there was a reason. I don't want that Casanza wallet, but I knew there was more to it. I knew there was more to it. This is my walking nightmare. Now you're all infected with having to know this. I think there's a growing movement of people who are receipt refusers. I'm trying to think of what the worst. It explains why.

People who play so much frisbee golf have man titties, but, like, is it even possible to avoid all, like, if anything can happen just by physically touching it, not ingesting it on your body, or like, you know, applying into your pores, but just by picking up a frisbee, a bendable piece of plastic, that stuff is entering my bloodstream. Yeah, the people who are most affected by it are cigarette smokers, because these chemicals are... Also used in the filters. Uh-oh, Jason. So if you roll your own cigarettes, if you roll your cigarettes and you get the kind of natty, you know, natural filters, you're exempt from this. That's okay. But if you get the pre-rolled cigarettes in a pack. Yeah, but we all know pre-rolled cigarettes is an affectation. It's like keeping a tattered paperback in your back pocket to attract women. Yeah. In America. It feels a little cheesy to bring it out. In Europe, it's a lot more. It's worse in Europe, actually. It's even more effective. I would say. it's more widespread by the common person in Europe than in America. It's a decision. The other group that's really susceptible to this is people who work in the service industry. Because if you touch one receipt throughout your day, your exposure is pretty limited. But if you're touching it every two or three minutes, you're spiking your estrogen repeatedly throughout the day. You know I'm copying a lot. I'm buying a lot of stuff, so there's an opportunity for me to touch a lot of receipts, but I'm avoiding that. Okay, so Jason, no more receipts. I'm going to keep you to this. Okay, I also always refuse a receipt. Is it possible to reverse this, or is it once it's in you, it's in you forever? No, so that's a common misconception. If you avoid contact with all of these endocrine-disrupting chemicals, your hormonal equilibrium restores. You'll be totally fine. There's another thing called PFAS, which are referred to as forever chemicals. And those things will stay with you forever. They get stored in your fat. You basically can never get rid of them. That's much more concerning. But there are, you know, practical just like, you know, consumer responsibility type things of like purchasing the product that doesn't have phthalates in it. Stuff like that makes sense. Drinking out of glass bottles instead of plastic. Common sense things that you can avoid wearing cotton.

versus polyester, stuff like that. All of that really helpful will also limit your exposure to microplastics. People are generally not aware of this, but polyester as a fabric sheds. It basically, you're walking around in a cloud of microplastics basically all the time. So if you need to wear it for the gym, like take it off after your session, put on your cotton clothes, things like that will actually go a really long way. That is very helpful. And then forever chemicals is, you know, you've got to be careful about where you source your food and stuff like that. You know, less processed, obviously, the better, more natural, the better. This is this is what I meant by like, I didn't care or think about this stuff before I started doing this work and researching these weird political belief systems on the Internet. And then I encountered things that were. You know, not like made up right wing conspiracies from crazy people on the Internet, but they were well, to be fair, they were crazy conspiracy people on the Internet, but they were citing these like very liberal, progressive scholarly sources from Berkeley, Mount Sinai and so on. And so if the scholarship is correct, it doesn't matter who's saying it. The thing is just true. Preach. All right, Josh, when do you chill, bro? Because I'm a little – you've got a lot going on in there. Are you able to kick back and watch TV? I do. I have my gym time. I do that. Okay, so you're going to the gym four days a week, which is commendable. And we're doing a combination, I imagine, of strength training as well as cardio. Yeah, I'm trying to cut now. I bulked this year, and I just put on way too much fat. I'm like, it's way too late in the summer for me to be this fat. Okay. Okay. Wow, you sound like the rest of us. For listeners at home, Josh looks disgustingly obese. It's kind of crazy. It looks like he's wearing a fat suit. It's really weird. I was going to say something, but no. So are you counting macro? How serious is the science behind your exercise versus like I'm going to go in there to do something to feel good? Yeah, yeah. I mean.

I like the game of it. I used to be a pretty serious gamer. Like, you know, MMORPG. I played World of Warcraft at the global 1%. Like, I was probably better at that than I was at art or being a professor or other stuff. Like, that was a big part of my life. That was your true calling. Yeah, yeah. One day I'll just, I'll quit. And I'll go back to it. Global, global 1%. That sounds like where I'm trying to get financially. I didn't know that existed in video games. Josh, for the heads listening in their basements, what was your name on World of Warcraft, if you want to shout out the fans? Gamertag. I won't reveal my character because I don't want people to dig up, I don't know, my chat history or shit that I said when I was like 19 or something. Jason, we're not going to get this guy. All right, Jason, this guy ain't going to fall into one of your little traps. Can't cheat a cheater. I got it. I got it. So you're saying that your body was destroyed from sitting for 14 hours a day. Oh, yeah. That is, like, that's your schedule. If you're playing that seriously, you're like, you wake up, you read the forums, you see what's the meta for the new patch update. Who's ranking on the ladder this week? Who are you going to queue against? When are your opponents queuing? Who are you in competition for those last few spots at the top of the ladder? So it's kind of a full-time job. There's all these tasks. There's an in-game economy. You don't really have the time to do that and anything else. You definitely don't have... friends right and you and you're and this and you're unable to really make money playing games at this point and yeah not when not when i was around no now it's like a whole industry but yeah not back then so then you were being subsidized by other forms of income or were you just were you still living at home with your parents i was a student and a freelancer yeah so uh i just I squeezed in the time between like freelance jobs where I had a very high set of technical skills. I did photography and retouching. So I was very well prepared, like in the fine art printing, commercial photography and the wage that you get just coming out of school, especially at that time was like pretty good. You know, it was like you could basically work part time being a retoucher and then have all your free time to do other stuff. And you chose World of Warcraft.

But all right, let's just hypothetically, if you returned to your throne as the top global 1% of World of Warcraft, how much bread are we taking home annually? What are we looking at? Your liver might stop working, but are we going to be rich? You know, they don't actually, if you look at the prize amounts for the pro gamers now, they're like not actually that big. It's like a team of three people who are splitting $100,000 and you work like two years to get up to this tournament. No one is living off of it. So it's like the Olympics then. Okay, but then you can make money streaming on Twitch then, right? If you're like a top player and people want to see you pwning, right? That's where the real money is. Yeah, yeah. That's where it actually is. It's with the Twitch subs. And, you know, you compete for the glory. It's not the money. It's the glory. That's what I always say. That's what I always say, Josh. It's not about the money. It's about the glory. That's kind of what I always repeat, my mantra, if you will. Yeah, that's why we do this podcast, the glory of podcasting. So, yeah, Chris, I want to talk about a few other things. But just to finish up the fitness talk, you said you're cutting right now. How many calories are you eating a day, and what is your cheat meal, and how often are you cheating? Yeah, yeah. It's okay to do a cheat meal once a week if you're going to do that. Different programs for everybody. Right now, I miscalculated my maintenance calories, so I put on too much body fat this year, and I'm going to be going down to, I think, 22 or 2300 calories a day. I'm going to be lifting for an hour, four days a week, and then I'm going to be doing 40 minutes of cardio. Pretty much every day, and maybe I'll take off Sunday. Because I'm shooting a video podcast series this summer, and I got to look a little bit more sharp than I do right now. You got groupies, bro? Let's be honest. My DMs are full of very aggressive gay men, almost exclusively. Welcome to the club, Chief. Welcome to the club. Welcome to the club. Are you receiving unsolicited photography? Not for retouching, but for touching?

I've actually, I don't think I've gotten, maybe I've gotten one or two of those. Is this a reoccurring thing for? No, no, no, no. I'm joking. This podcast is famous for our gay baiting. And a large portion of our listeners are also gay. We're friends to the community. So we understand where you're coming from. And now I have a newfound appreciation for having you on this podcast because we're feeding our gays what they want. You're the slop that they want to swap out. So thank you for that. I just feel like once you do anything, how often are you responding to people that are coming to you with comments, questions, et cetera? What's your left on rhetoric? I tend to not respond to DMs pretty much anymore. And I don't do that for a few reasons, mostly because I was writing about people who are political extremists on the internet. And some of the messages that I would start to get were people who would, you know, I was on, I think it was like Mulberry and Grand Street or something like that in New York. Oh, yeah. And somebody messaged me. It's like, hey, I just passed you at this cross street. It's like the degree to which people will find ways into your lives and like identify the food that's on your plate and the restaurant that you're eating at. Geolocate your location in real time. I tend to just, I have a blanket policy. Like I don't respond to DMs anymore because most of those people are crazy. If you want to talk to me, come into the live chat. You know, I'm live on Twitch and I may or may not choose to respond to you. They can get, yeah, they can find your ass. I'm not hidden. Anytime. Like it's not, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not hidden. Yeah. I mean, that's probably a good policy. It feels, I feel like you're also dealing with a different corner of the worldwide web than we are. Maybe like people being like. Where should I eat in Chicago is a little different than like my grandmother died from a Facebook group that she went down a hole too far. It's a little different. It's a different element of person that I think you're dealing with. But is there been a situation where like a commenter or like someone that frequently is in the stream?

you've with your own eyes kind of seen them go deeper deeper deeper into something and then kind of lose yeah i mean not necessarily on the stream but i've definitely watched people like crossover you know they were kind of like curious about this stuff and they're doing some edgelord jokes or whatever and then you know six months later it's like oh they just think this for real they're like hanging out with these people they're going to the conference or something they're like they're not ironically posting anymore they actually like chris brown like it's not a bit it happens all the time no breezy no one can dance like breezy no one yeah i mean i i i just think that because i think that during covid you know and with like qanon and shit a lot of people saw this in their in their kind of regular life you know like civilians saw it and it seems like something you would be um uniquely exposed to at a high rate based on what you do for a living yeah yeah we saw it we saw it a lot and the pandemic was like this massive incubation event that said i feel like social media has really cleaned up in the last few years like do you guys feel like your feed is just a lot like my feed is my feed is jokes and workouts man it's great i love it Honestly, I talk about this all the time, and I really mean it. Twitter is better than it ever has been, and my for you is only funny shit that feels for me, actually. You know what I mean? It's not too far. Actually, that reminds me, sorry to interrupt, Chris. We just had Scott Galloway on the podcast last week, Josh, and he does a podcast with Kara Swisher, an older... tech journalist woman yep and she complains about how every time she opens her twitter it's non-stop pornography and she can't turn it off and i was thinking like chris and i are aren't we're not in the gutter of the internet on twitter but like i have some pretty offensive shit going on in my feed um it's not like you know insanity but it's it gets pretty dark and i i i never have pornography on my feed How do you think that got on her feed and why it's not on anyone else's?

Yeah, yeah, this algorithm that recommends things to me based on the stuff that I tell it I like. Why is it giving me so much pornography? I can't even imagine what kind of thesis. Damn freak. All that lesbian porn is because you'd be clicking. That's why you're clicking. Would it be too conspiratorial to suggest that, like, because I think Elon Musk has some, like, he has individual people that he likes to target. Could he be fucking with people? By name, you know? Her specifically, yes. Because of what she does and what she talks about. I'm sure she's been a thorn in his side at the Wall Street Journal and on this podcast for years and years. That it's very possible. And that, honestly, is what being rich affords you. You can really fuck with your enemies in a way that us civilians cannot. When you control the rails, not the train, you can start doing that. I'd like to think of Elon feeding her nothing but... violent straight porn and it turns her off and then start feeding some some e-girls some light touch yeah you know get her back on just to smash it again it sounds like a lot of fun it does it does sound i mean what would i do if i was in control of twitter i don't know if i would do it that differently you know i wouldn't i guess i wouldn't let the because i guess people are actually mad at him for letting kind of hate speech and donald trump back on the platform that was the major thing that people turned on him for that and taking away the likes the public likes that is a service uh and i but i mean look i don't know if i don't know i i just don't know if it's better or worse than it was and that's the that's the question because i don't see this bad stuff i know it's bad but i don't see it what you were originally talking about i do feel like social media and the internet aside from a few dark corners and a few people's close friend instagram stories has sort of self-policed it and raised the level of you know like let's be a society and not be completely i think i mean maybe people are are more afraid of being caught or being canceled or exposed so they're more cautious or

I'd like to believe that we really have just improved. I don't think we've improved. I think people are less online. I think we were so online during COVID that it got insane. And then once people were able to go do something and enjoy their lives in a more normal way, the internet kind of means less, it feels like, to an extent. We actually wanted to touch grass. We weren't doing it because we thought it was a... would be good for us. Exactly. Yeah, I wrote an essay called The Platform Wars on my Substack. This is maybe, oh, I don't know, maybe six, nine months ago. Not too long ago, but not too recent. And, you know, I'm agnostic about whatever Musk does to Twitter because I never spent too much time on it. It doesn't affect me personally. I know some people have a lot invested in that platform, but... I'm just, I don't really have a dog in this. I don't have a dog in this. You're more of a threads guy. I got it. My kind of like long take on this whole thing is that Elon Musk is just saying the quiet part loud. But if you look at the actions of all of these other platforms, like they are all integrating basically the same services to all of them. $5 rolling subscriptions, premium posts for long, premium, long form posts for premium users. People uploading video content. YouTube has shorts. Instagram has reels. TikTok has its own thing. Basically, every platform now has the identical set of tools, the same suite of tools. And they're going to move towards what Musk calls the everything app. X is the everything app where like WeChat in China, you're going to be ordering your ride share service. You're going to be ordering your seamless and making your doctor appointment through this one. one app right like twitch is already amazon and whole foods and now amazon health so we're just looking at the emergence of these different little like company towns for the 21st century and elon musk just has like the audacity to say it but zuckerberg and everyone else are just they're already building it basically like six months behind him do you remember how much shit elon musk got for selling the blue check and then meta did it like literally 30 days later and they made it 15 they made it more expensive and nobody cared like some of these things are just not being hot now he does mma he wears a chain i think things are different you know i think he looks good he looks good i will give it to him he does look good i mean i don't know if he's all there but i don't know if anybody's all there yeah what's he doing brazilian jiu-jitsu is this his thing yeah he's doing bjj yeah

Speaking of Zuck looking good, what year was your glow up physically, Josh? Or have you always been this? I'm assuming 14 hours a day playing World of Warcraft. It was a different story going on. No, no, it was basically a hideous creature, just, you know, like a Lovecraftian monstrosity up until around 2021 or something like that. So it was in it was post pandemic. But I started doing you've guys you've heard of mewing, right? You've heard of. Yeah. this thing where people like they knew they like uh you see these like plastic bite guards that people do and they like um and it builds up your jaw muscles that you have this more like chad chad chewing gum and things like that we've been exactly on joe rogan twitter yeah yeah so i was i was just kind of like messing around with that and i was doing this thing where you know i thought it would be funny like to do a bit for the stream if i just like tried out all these gums that definitely couldn't work because this is like silly internet And I got the phallum gum. And then I got the Tears of the Chios, which comes from this tree that grows off of a single island. They open for Walls of Jericho and 23rd. Yeah, that sounds like a bad hardcore bed. It really does. Like more than anything we've ever said on this show, maybe. Sorry for interrupting. It's got a very poetic, very poetic name. Overly poetic for a gum, I would say. Well, it's not even this is the thing. It's not even a gum. This is like the deep cut for like the hardcore maxers. The hardcore looks maxers is that it's just the sap of the tree. It's the Chios tree and the tears of the Chios, which sounds like a hardcore band, is just a sap that like drips off of it. So you get this little kind of like white chunk, this like little like white chunk. That's probably the size of a dime or something like that. And you chew it, you chew the sap, and it's so hard. It's like resistance training for your jaw muscles. And over time, it builds up the volume of your mastocers, which are your jaw muscles as a sign here. And it actually builds out your jaw and gives you this more Chad-like appearance. It can cause, to be clear, a variety of other...

health problems, including... I just looked at it, Josh. I just checked the Wikipedia for this shit. It looks like crack cocaine. It literally looks like crack, yes. The picture on Wikipedia looks like a nice pile of crack cocaine. I was trying not to say that, actually. Yes, it looks like a lot of crack. A couple thousand dollars worth. I want to be clear. You can't smoke it. You just chew it. A small white chunk. Only chew. Okay. Only chew. So you just chew forever. So it actually worked on you, is what you're saying. How many hours a day? Does one have to devote approximately to see some results and how long would it take? So I am a nicotine gum chewer. I don't smoke anymore. I chew the gum and it was very easy for me to kind of swap out the nicotine gum with phallum or tears of the chios. So I was probably clocking. I don't know. I could be doing four to six hours a day or something like that. I was really doing it. Because I'm just used to having it in my mouth. You know, you don't even notice it anymore. It's in the side of your lip or whatever. And I was honestly, I was shocked because I was just looking in the mirror, seeing my own reflection, and I could see the contours of my jaw. I could actually see the volume that had built up within a few weeks of doing this. Oh, that'll get you in the steam room is what that'll do. Once you see that jaw cracking, oh, baby, Equinox, here I come. And that... That experience just kind of like opened up all of these other questions. It's like, well, if mewing is real, how much of this other stuff is real? Like what's in the deodorant I'm putting on? What's in the food that I'm eating? Are there microplastics being shed by the polyester clothes that I'm wearing? How is this affecting my fertility? So this was pretty, this is pretty recent. I mean, in the scheme of things, this is like a fairly recent development in your life, but it feels like it's. kind of reshaped everything in some regard yeah it's it's like a pill that you don't come back from it's like you learn this thing and then you know it now you can't unknow it and it just made me start to ask all these other questions of things that i had disregarded before but now might be true they might be true for some unexpected reason and yeah that just prompted this whole investigation and so from being this like

you know, hideous monstrosity. I think part of like why my audience is so dedicated to me, uh, through the podcast and the Twitch stream, they watched me physically transform. Yeah. Yeah. You could just see it over the course. Like I stream every week and be like, yeah, his jaw muscles are really coming in. You're like, I got, you're like, I got a jawline and I'll whip your ass at world of Warcraft. Let me, let me tell you something, little bitch. Okay. Was what, what, what about the body transformation? Was there a weight loss? Was there. Were you already low, but you put on muscle? How did the transformation happen? No, I was definitely heavier before, and I did what is actually very rare. If people are listening to this and they're interested to do some type of transformation of their body, like they're untrained is what we would call it. They're out of the gym. They put on a little bit of weight. They've lost some muscle. You are uniquely positioned to do what is called recomp, which is very rare. It's the ability to both lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. Jason, you listening? Once you've been doing this for a few years, you can't recomp anymore. So if you go back to the gym and you do these programs... Yeah, you can you can have a lot of growth, what they call newbie gains. You can have that pretty explosive growth for the first like six months, first year of doing it. And I had trained a little bit in like when I was in high school and my friend Brad and I used to train in like 2014 or 15. We did it a little bit, but I was like pretty untrained for like five or so years at that point. And then I went to the gym and I went from being like a little bit heavier to then being just like the growth was I had all of this. Myonucleotides from your muscle cells that were grown before have just shrunk, but all the cells are still there. So the amount of muscle you put on is a lot of volume and very quickly. So it was really exaggerated in the transformation that I did basically within like a six-month period of, yeah, really looking pretty dramatically different. Now what I have to do, because I'm beyond this kind of newbie gain phase, is you have to do sessions of bulking and cutting where you strategically gain or lose weight.

It's impossible to put on muscle growth unless you're putting on a little bit of fat. And so now I'm in the period where I have to do this cardio to kind of like trim down for summer. Okay. Okay. I guess my question for you, Josh, if we're talking with you for an hour, can you be interested in something on a surface level or if something grabs you, you have to go deep? Yeah, I have like the autism internet brain. that i yeah i chase these things we know we know but i just wanted you to say it i just wanted you to say it yeah yeah a touch of the tism maybe more than a touch uh i definitely have there's these iceberg memes people have probably seen these it's like this giant iceberg and then you go all the way down through the ocean and there's like many many different layers like yeah i will do all of those i will do every single one i spent 26 hours on one of these iceberg memes looking up every like niche political conspiracy theory philosophy thing so i'm a completionist i'm a completionist for internet culture and yeah yeah i chase it to the bitter end you have the degree in the background in art art collection historic history it seems like with your podcast the people that you're talking to and interviewing you're kind of collecting these characters of people like some art um what else are you do you find yourself collecting and Other than creating this card game, how are you using this cast of characters that you're collecting? Yeah, I actually pick up, you know, weird internet culture artifacts. from people. Like if someone, if a meme maker makes a t-shirt or makes a book or something like that, I tend to collect those things. I consider myself just an enthusiast for internet culture. So a friend of mine, Ruby Fellow, who's, you know, teaches at NYU is not like a political shit poster or whatever, wrote this incredible book called, it's about checkpoints. It's like viral YouTube video where people would like post these diaries over the course of 10 years. Really phenomenal story. So I just kind of like pick all these things up. And that's a big part of my work is making this giant archive of Internet culture that takes the shape of newsletters and podcasts where I interview people about the YouTube videos that they watched, the podcast they listened to, the memes that they looked at, how their political belief system evolved over the course of a few years.

And those things are, you know, in a kind of scholarly, lofty academic sense, their primary source research, which is pretty hard to come by outside of the context of a university or a think tank. And I just I do it all independently, you know, as like my own kind of niche interest. But you're still currently teaching, correct? I actually left. I left and I started this arts organization called Do Not Research that now publishes people. There's an educational component. We've been running that for about three years. But yeah, I got this. I had this opportunity to return to teaching at RISD. And I was just I was so busy with my own thing. I thought, you know what, I'll make the leap. I might regret it later, but I'll make the leap now because if I don't do it now, when am I ever going to do it? Yeah, yeah. I think it was the right choice. No, sure. I mean, I feel like I feel like teaching is also I. I really do respect our teachers. I can't imagine a harder job, even at college level, even when they want to be there. Speaking of deodorant, I'm sure there's not a lot there. Thank God we went virtual. Lightning bolts set the tone over there. What was your interaction with students? Were you able to... obviously you're you're very bright and you know how to give them the information but when they're coming to you um what were your interactions like were they mostly positive were people argumentative like did it just span span the entire spectrum yeah i mean i think i picked up pretty acutely at some point that the type of stuff i was publishing was um a little bit sensitive, let's say, like the topics that I was talking about, and that that may be at some point in the future looked at by the academy as being beyond the pale for, I mean, I'm interviewing people, you know, we're pretty deep into the podcast now, but I'm interviewing people that have pretty reprehensible belief systems in some cases, you know, people that think like, Racial groups should live separately and just like, you know, really grotesque. Yeah. Yeah. And that's I mean, it's important because those are stories of how people get to these weird belief systems over the Internet. But it's the kind of thing that could be clipped out of context. It's it's difficult work. And I thought that that may as a prestigious adjunct professor, I would soon be on the chopping block. So making the leap was actually not that risky of a decision. And I should just I should go out as I should.

Some of those people then, oddly enough, invited me back for independent studies because they couldn't get this kind of content anywhere else in the university. So that's kind of what I do now is that people will often reach out to me when someone is writing, for example, this is a practical example a few years ago. Someone was writing their thesis, their dissertation on QAnon, and so I was their outside advisor. So I have an engagement with universities in that capacity, but otherwise everything I do is online and just under my own independent project. Okay, good to know. to know okay so people can if they want more of you they can go subscribe wherever subscriptions are available yeah sub stack is probably my home for right now that's uh that's serving me the best i podcast also on all the platforms and Yeah, I'm happy to be out on my own, I think. Yeah, no, look, I see what you mean. The restrictions of higher education, they can only keep you so long. You're busting at the seams of the rules and regulations. Doing Lord's work. Well, as we're closing out, let's talk a little bit about the game, just because I know that's a big reason why you're probably playing on a lot of pods. Now that I, as I've talked about my... scholarly academic bullshit for an hour. I can tell you about my elaborate shitpost for edgelord teenagers. I've made this game. I was sitting on this for many, many years. I'll hold it up to the camera here, but you've probably seen these political compass memes. The game involves the political compass overlaid with the Dungeons and Dragons alignment grid, where you have the libertarian quadrant as the chaotic alignment and the authoritarian quadrant as the lawful alignment. Left is good, right is evil, because I made the game, and if you disagree, fuck off. And in the game, there are these 12 different classes where if you want to play as an anarcho-capitalist, you are the thief from Dungeons & Dragons. So this is about as deep and niche as it gets, where I mapped all of the conventional political ideologies to the characters of World of Warcraft and Dungeons & Dragons. You can be the anarcho-primitivist, who's the druid. You can be the paladin, who's a civic nationalist.

You could be the Crusader, who's an eco-fascist. And yeah, and so on and so forth. So I've been playing it a lot. I just took a trip to Toronto with some good friends who are relatively big YouTubers up there. And we were playing it all week and had a real blast doing it. How much is this game, Josh? The game is, I think it's like 60 bucks. It's like the cost of printing, essentially. It's a 90-card deck with 12 different classes. Okay, guys, so if you're that beautiful crossover... If you're an adult man, if you're an adult man and you like memes and you are maybe emotionally stunted and underdeveloped and you're still addicted to role-playing games... This is the perfect game for you. What a pitch. Thank you, Josh. We really appreciate it. Does it have the same gameplay as Dungeons & Dragons, just with different characters? And is that a copyright infringement, or is it public domain by now? Chill, Nark. Damn. I don't know. Like, are we allowed to do this? The rules for Dungeons & Dragons, I mean, they've updated over the years, but the kind of conventional role-playing game rules that are used in D&D or Vampire or Werewolf or all sorts of other games... It's basically the same set of things and they just change the labels of some of these, you know, initiative is quickness in this game and so on and the other way around. It's basically kind of like an open source set for every role playing game. But I'm taking inspiration from D&D and World of Warcraft and Magic the Gathering. So if you have like basically the ground floor of any type of gaming experience and you're interested in political memes, that's all of the knowledge you need to get started. And people have picked it up pretty... Pretty quickly. Yeah, if you went to high school and you did magic or you did D&D, you're prepared to do this. So it's not too complicated. Okay. Josh, I love you. I'm never going to play this game. And I really appreciate you being on How Long Gone. Hopefully some people that do listen will pick it up. And if not, they can at least subscribe to you on Substack, follow along as the journey continues. But thank you for your time. Honestly, it was very interesting. Thank you. Thank you so much, Chris, Jason. This was fantastic. Lovely to be here. We'll see you soon. Our pleasure.

Later, Gabe. Good to see you. Thanks, Josh.