Overview of How Long Gone #948
Chris Black and Jason Stewart cover a wide-ranging mix of New York weather complaints, celebrity culture, music piracy, politics, late-night TV economics, brand activations, and wellness/data obsession. The episode has the show’s usual mix of irony, fashion talk, media critique, and loosely connected pop-culture commentary, with plenty of jokes about how online attention warps everything from Instagram grids to elections.
Main Topics Discussed
New York, rain, and getting around the city
- The episode opens with a familiar New York gripe: it’s raining in Manhattan, especially on the weekend.
- The hosts joke about having to “suit up” just to go to the gym and about how annoying it is to commute with an umbrella, water bottle, and phone.
- They riff on Manhattan navigation, the grid system, and how dependent people have become on Google Maps.
Instagram, celebrity image, and “the grid”
- The conversation turns to Instagram aesthetics, especially the pressure to make a feed look good “on grid.”
- They joke about Bella Hadid as the idealized Instagram power user and debate how much celebrity presence is actually “offline” these days.
- The bit evolves into a broader discussion of online people taking things too far and the weird social value placed on visuals.
Music ownership, SoulSeek, and the collapse of the MP3 era
- A long stretch of the episode is devoted to music downloading, file sharing, and the disappearance of digital ownership.
- They talk about:
- buying MP3s on iTunes/Amazon back in the day,
- SoulSeek as a better value for DJs and people who need high-quality files,
- how streaming has made music feel rented rather than owned.
- Their larger point: the music industry made access cheap and easy, so it’s unrealistic to expect people to go back to buying every album individually.
Trump, Jackson Dart, and political absurdity
- Donald Trump’s public comments about Giants quarterback Jackson Dart become a major joke topic.
- They laugh at Trump openly complimenting Dart’s physique and thighs, then using him in an anti-trans sports argument.
- The hosts focus on the bizarre logic of Trump’s “simpering” praise and how openly he speaks in a childlike, unfiltered way.
Spencer Pratt for mayor and LA politics as performance
- Spencer Pratt’s mayoral run in Los Angeles gets a lot of airtime.
- They argue that LA kind of deserves a reality-star candidate because the city has already created that kind of celebrity ecosystem.
- Chris and Jason compare Pratt’s style to the other candidates and criticize the lack of real debate visibility.
- They also note Pratt showing up in a suit with Vans as a very California way to dress.
Late-night TV is too expensive and not that relevant
- Stephen Colbert’s late-night numbers and reported budget are used as an example of how broken the economics of TV have become.
- They compare the huge costs of late-night shows with their dwindling audiences.
- Their take: the decline isn’t just political or cultural—it’s a numbers problem. The audience moved on, and these shows cost too much to justify.
Drake, Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, and celebrity sports optics
- The hosts discuss Drake’s petty lyric about a wedding venue, seeing it as quintessentially Drake: insulting someone in a very specific, low-key toxic way.
- Travis Kelce’s appearance at a Knicks/Cavaliers game with Taylor Swift also comes up.
- They joke about:
- his beer brand,
- stadium alcohol policies,
- whether he smuggled in his own beer,
- and how much attention celebrity couples get in public spaces.
- They also compare Taylor Swift’s look to an American Girl doll / highly controlled celebrity styling.
Running culture, brand activations, and authenticity backlash
- A big chunk of the back half focuses on the backlash around a Satisfy x Adidas running-brand event.
- Chris explains that a lot of the outrage in running culture is about “authenticity” and whether brands are invading something pure.
- Their point: this kind of thing happens in every subculture once brands put money into it.
- They argue that if artists and athletes are getting paid and treated well, that matters more than purity-policing from online nerds.
Book controversy and fact-checking culture
- They briefly discuss a New Yorker story about a book called Strangers and claims that some details were inaccurate or omitted.
- Their general stance is that if a story is compelling, a few factual embellishments don’t necessarily ruin it.
- They contrast that with the internet’s appetite for gotchas and absolute correctness.
Health data, smart devices, and men ruining themselves with metrics
- The episode closes with a critique of sleep scores, smart scales, bloodwork apps, and overtracking health.
- They argue that too much data can make you feel worse and create problems that weren’t there before.
- Their example: if a device tells you that you slept badly, you start believing your day will be bad.
- They joke that men should stick to beer and shots, not wine and wellness tracking.
Notable Takeaways
- Attention has become the real currency: whether it’s Instagram, politics, sports, or late-night TV, the conversation keeps circling back to who gets seen and why.
- Subcultures don’t stay pure once money arrives: the running-brand discussion is their clearest example of how authenticity debates often collapse when brands and marketing get involved.
- The old media model is fading: late-night TV, MP3 sales, and even certain celebrity moments feel increasingly disconnected from how people actually consume culture now.
- Data can make people miserable: the hosts are skeptical of wellness tech because it turns ordinary life into something to optimize, quantify, and overthink.
Overall Tone
- Sarcastic, fast-moving, and highly referential
- Heavy on jokes about class, style, celebrity behavior, and internet absurdity
- Less about a single topic than about connecting cultural dots and making fun of how modern media works