Drew is at the beach, the sun is high and hot in the sky, and all the major sports events are either over or in the early going. If there was ever going to be a moment to give the podcast over to a discussion of podcast industry dysfunction, conquering the fear of failure, and the goings-on among the cadre of horned-up half-sociopaths on Love Island USA, this was it. I knew what had to be done, and so I made the call. Or I sent the Slack message, and then I sent a second one, and then sometime later Kelsey and Alex joined me to talk about real-life stuff and reality TV stuff for what turned out to be a pretty delightful 64 minutes.
All of which is to say that, despite my early statement to the contrary, we are not breaking down the NBA draft's winners and losers. Instead we spent the first half of the episode talking about Alex's fantastic Try Hard podcast, the second season of which began last week, and which is also making the move to video. We talked about why she chose to do that, and why so many other podcasts have been doing it—a trend that Alex has written about in the past, but which she understands a bit differently from the inside. Some of this was about the mortifying ideal of being known and the rigors of making yourself into an on-camera performer, but a lot of it was about the way the internet works and doesn't work now, from the daunting challenge of finding places where real people are looking for new things to the weirdnesses of "authenticity" as a selling point. We also discussed what celebrity podcasts are for and why they have proliferated in the ways they have, and what they reflect about an industry that seems not to understand or respect its own business very well. I forgot Mitch Hedberg's name in this segment, for which I apologize, although I did manage to paraphrase one of my favorite lines of his accurately enough.
We also discussed Try Hard as a show, and as a way of trying to be in the world. The question of how a person might get better at trying new things, or just be less fearful about it, is one that's been on my mind for a minute, and is the central inquiry of Try Hard. We talked about practicing feeling like an idiot, learning to tune out the cultural conditioning that tells people they should aim to stay the same forever, and learning to be OK with feeling overwhelmed or bad in the process of figuring things out, whether that means writing a novel (which Kelsey is about to do) or doing a podcast about all of those feelings. I really liked this part, and not just because it involved a brief Davey Praise Break.
After the break, we turned to what really matters: the new season of Love Island USA, to which Kelsey and Alex (among other staffers) are dearly devoted, and to which I have found myself drawn in a much more rubbernecker-style way. Basically what happened here was I asked Kelsey and Alex how things were going on the show, and what everybody was doing and why, and they explained it to me in detail. I learned a lot about various species of horny challenges and perverse gameplay and personality defects, but also about the remarkable and terrifying and frankly inhumane feat of productive capacity involved in creating five hours per week of reality television on a 24-hour lead time. We also talked about the thrill of watching hot people discovering the existence of empathy on live television and the ways in which the show's sex idiots reveal various cultural manias and weird hang-ups through their behavior and misbehavior, whether that means the use of the word "lustful" when "horny" would do or compulsively doing the splits. I still don't know if I've got it in me to watch it, but I left feeling like I had a much deeper understanding of the thrill of watching people who exist without subtext compete and/or lick each other on a television show without legible rules.
We came full circle with a Funbag question about how best to make time for hobbies as you get older. Here we addressed whether sitting on the couch can be a hobby (yes), deciding how to value your time, unlocking the power of Signing Up For Classes, and also the wonder-working power of finding a way to look at your phone less. The Distraction has never been accused of being a self-help podcast, and should not be—on the volume of sandwich chat alone, this show is actively bad for your health—but the conversation about adopting the mindset of thinking about new challenges as treats, as opposed to vegetables, and generally making peace with "your process" is as close as I expect us to come.
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