Late in this week's episode of The Distraction, after Drew, returning champion guest Rohan Nadkarni, and I talked about local politics, lamentable trends in sushi roll naming, and the Miami Dolphins, I explain "gooning" to Drew. A Funbag question started it, Drew repeatedly asked for more elaboration, and a sprawling and excellent new Harper's story on the subject had armed me with plenty of unpleasant information to share on the topic. I would have bet that we'd get through the lifespan of this podcast, even if it had gone on for another few decades, without having done any of that. I would have lost that bet.
Rohan is a wonderful guest—it's why we keep having him on Defector-related podcasts—but the man is going to talk about what he wants to talk about, as it occurs to him. Episodes with him are not derailed by this so much as they abjure the concept of rails entirely. They move in their own non-linear direction for about an hour; they can reliably be counted upon to include Miami-area sports and also virtually any other topic or thing.
It began with some politics, which is my fault. Andrew Cuomo will not be the mayor of New York City, which had me in a good enough mood that we talked about that outcome, and the deep exhale that followed the blunt-force racist fearmongering of his campaign coming up short. From there, we zoomed out to questions of who votes, what they want, and what they actually know, then how optimistic to be about the future, and how different that future is going to have to be. Imagining it—even, tentatively, talking about it—was bracing not just in considering the alternatives, but this oafishly aestheticized political present.
A Rohan episode will have a food section, and this one did, too. We explored the promise of a Universal Basic Sandwich policy, took a strong anti-drenching stance, and rebuked American-style sushi stunt rolls with names like "The Hot Naked Lady Roll." This led to one of the stranger portions of the episode, in which a conversation about The Rideshare Experience led Rohan to talk about his experience of acting like a totally different guy in an Uber, down to pretending to be from Denver, in Denver. We never did quite pin him down on why he did that, but we did begin talking sports in earnest just before the 39-minute mark. After that, we were in the Funbag, and you already know what happened there. You have now been warned twice. I can't be held responsible for anything that happens from here.
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