By Josh Gondelman — 26 Oct 2026

#207. Darkness and You

Looking up at the stars, don't you just feel enormous? I bet I could eat those suckers like popcorn.

Hi everyone,

I'm home for a few days in between quick road jaunts across the country. I really enjoyed performing my current assortment of jokes for audiences in Irving and Houston. Thanks so much to everyone who came out to see a show!

Because of some weird little travel hiccups, I didn't get to take in as much Texas culture as I'd hoped. I did get some enchiladas on Wednesday, but I also had an experience that felt extremely Southern or at least WILDLY not northeastern. I had stopped at a Dairy Queen for a little snack and a stretching of legs and also some iced coffee (which it turns out they only have in the form of a milkshake, so I got a lemonade, which also turned out to be a milkshake). The experience: I asked a stranger a one-word question and heard his whole life story in response.

As I sat finishing my DQ salad, a thing that exists, an older man sat down at the next table over.

"Do you live around here?" he asked.

"I'm just passing through this week," I responded. "You?"

My simple question touched off a sixty-year epic entailing moving in and out of the region, seventeen years working in the oil fields where he missed birthdays weddings and funerals, roughly a decade helping build up an exotic deer farm (sounds illegal, but who am I to judge), a determination to raise his kids "in the creeks, not in the streets" (sounds racist, but who am I to judge), and a considerable amount of giving thanks to god for the many blessings in his life (honestly, that was touching but I did start to worry I was a conversion target).

It sounds sarcastic to say so, but I was genuinely mesmerized by both his tale and the fact that he chose to spin it for me, a total stranger in a roadside Dairy Queen. Not to make too many assumptions about this gentleman, but it did strike me as an illustration of the differences between southern conservatism and northern conservatism.

I find basically any Republican voter north of the Mason-Dixon line to be openly nasty. Their political leanings are animated by an ethos of: "I want it to be legal for me to spit on anyone from a different country." There's no like...sweet cultural narrative for people up this way to swaddle their biases in.

There's a lot of nastiness in the South too, but they more frequently cloak it in folksy trappings: "Hey, I just want to keep my family safe...from learning what 'gay' means. Especially my big, strong daughter. She'd take to it like a fish takes to swimming." Not that this stranger was a bad guy! I will say, being afraid of "streets" feels a little dog-whistley. But not that he's a good guy either, just because he was friendly to me! There are lots of good people and vicious people and messy people all over, I guess is the point here!

(Weirdly I feel like the Trump era has inverted the traditional wisdom that northern prejudice is coded and white-gloved. His ascent made unkind people in New York and Pennsylvania among other places say: "Finally! A piece of shit who represents me!" Anyway, I hope that people vote in the midterm elections and the candidates running on the "I'm a huge asshole...what're you gonna do about it?" platform suffer electoral defeats that cause them to experience unshakeable depression!)

Key art for the Backfire Effect podcast from Pushkin and iHeart. — I hope this recommendation doesn't...backfire.

Earlier in the day, while stuck in literally 165 minutes of total standstill traffic outside Dallas, I had an excellent telephone catchup with my friend Erin and then tore through my friend Josie Duffy Rice's new podcast The Backfire Effect. Josie is SUCH a brilliant and humane reporter and broadcaster. Her work focuses on the criminal justice system and its cruelty and unfairness. This seven-episode show details a murder that took place in 1986 and how a (fairly definitively) innocent but (100% definitively) unlikable man took the fall and has been in prison ever since. Josie's storytelling allows for some really murky complications without ever losing sight of the ideals of justice and mercy. It's dark and compelling and unflinching, but not in a lurid way. Really great stuff to listen to when you're losing your mind sitting in one place while your highway exit is within eyeshot but still completely out of reach, or anytime really!

On Saturday night, Leiby and I hosted an improvisational cartooning event as part of the New Yorker Festival. It was super fun to see a bunch of brilliant artists riff gag cartoons on demand. We also had to draw cartoons of our own as a bonus round, and mine really sucked shit, but in a fun way let's say. Then Maris joined us for the afterparty where the great Jeremy Nguyen drew us live! Good old fashioned fun! We love to have it.

drawing of me and maris by jeremy nguyen — The background is for contrast. We were not sketched while being enveloped by a dense fog.

Last night, I went to a really lovely going away party for my friends Chenoa and Jim who are moving to Cleveland (a city popularized by the recent Taylor Swift song by the same name). I am so excited to hear what they get up to in their new home, an adorable HOUSE, but they will be missed here! I am not a New York City supremacist, but I do say often that everyone I like should live where I am, for my own personal convenience. So this is a pretty huge defiance of that wish, and it will take me a while to get over.

On Friday, Alison and I are hosting a great Sup Bro? lineup at Union Hall! We've got Carson Olshansky and Meka Mo and Anthony DeVito and more! And I think we're hosting Frankenstein's Baby next Monday night as well!

Before that, I'm hitting the road via the sky first to San Diego on Wednesday and then to Chandler, AZ on Thursday! Come enjoy some jokes, the Southwest!!!

Oh wait also The Nightly, the podcast I co-host, won a Signal Award for best every-day show! The show is so fun to work on, and I love the whole team!

PEP TALK FOR DARKNESS

Hello, darkness, you crazy bastard! Great to see you at...4:30pm. Sure, humans had to invent a lamp that defies the earth's path around the sun to counteract the depression you cause. But I want to talk about all the good things you do!!!

A couple of times a year you make sure everyone knows how to work the clocks on their oven and microwave.
You allow morning people to feel like they've stayed up late because when they go to bed at 9pm it's already been pitch black out for several hours.
More moon time!!!
You help birds get a good night's sleep.
The sooner the sun goes down, the faster problem drinkers can justify their consumption and feel less shame. That's so important! Shame can be really toxic! I learned that from hearing someone paraphrase Brené Brown's TED Talk.
In the dark, there's no such thing as a stain.
Calculators with solar batteries can't charge at night, which imposes crucial work/life balance on stressed-out nerds.
Frivolous sunglass purchases go WAY down, saving people money.

As the shortest days of the year draw us towards them with the inextricable force of a black hole, it's worth asking: Who needs sunlight anyway?

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I didn't edit this request much at all, but I did add the nickname.

I could use a pep talk for finally paring down all my shit and finding good place to either sell or donate those items. It's such a pain, but I also don't necessarily want to just dump everything at Goodwill either.
- Donation Frustration

It can be a real dark afternoon of the soul looking into your closet or kitchen cabinet or garage, realizing that a particular item holds a great psychic weight for you, but no practical or financial value to you or anyone else. I look at a button down shirt my parents very generously got me as a gift seven years ago, which I've sadly only worn three or four times because it fits weirdly, and the idea of getting rid of it feels like slapping my mom and dad in the face with a dead fish. Every year, we receive a dozen holiday cards featuring our beloved friends and their beloved children, and putting those cards in the recycling seems akin to giving their toddlers each a swirly.

I know your stress well. But here's the truth: The pain you feel in the moment of separation is surpassed only by the joy you will experience at having decluttered. It's possible that I'm uniquely goldfish-brained, but I have never for an instant of my life regretted donating a promotional mug I got from a media appearance, or a pair of shoes that never broke in quite right. The conventional metaphor for this feeling is "ripping off the bandaid," which isn't exactly accurate because the ripping itself does not cause the healing. That figure of speech applied here implies the existence of a zipper-like bandage that sutures your skin together through the act of the rip, which is to the best of my knowledge, a science-fiction concept. I'm getting a little off-topic here though.

As a fellow foot-dragger regarding a cull of old possessions, my heart goes out to you. But I invite you to look past the drudgery of peering deep into your soul and asking whether you will ever wear that one winter hat ever again, or if it would be better off in a more loving home. Look forward to the bare hangers, the empty square inches of cabinet space, the swaths of floor decolonized of Rubbermaid containers brimming with your past's detritus.

You can make this beautiful dream a reality. You will make executive decisions and never look back. You will NOT actually sell your old shirts on Depop because it's an unbelievable amount of work for the sake of making like forty total dollars. There's probably a local thrift store or pantry that will take anything valuable, and if a possession doesn't seem valuable enough that a person would feel dignified accepting it into their life, you can throw it in the trash. No one will be mad at you.

Take photos or scans of anything sentimental, and then jettison its physical form out of your life forever. Tear off the magical, regenerative bandaid. It never hurts as badly as you think.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Che Noir feat. Black Thought - "Fame & Fiction"

Che Noir is an excellent rapper, and "feat. Black Thought" gets an instant listen from me under any circumstances. (Readers, if you have a "feat." that gets you most excited, let me know in the comments!) And on top of that I cannot overstate how goddamn smooth this beat by producer Mathematics is. It sounds like ice skating across frozen butter. It sounds like a line of skincare products brought to you by Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas. It sounds like a ball bearing rolling down an active waterslide.

I listened to this song three times in a row the other night while I walked around my neighborhood because it made me feel like I was a cool private investigator even though I was picking up my dog's poop. It's an instant massive energy shift in song form. A chill pill for your ears. Check it out and feel, for three minutes, like Samuel L. Jackson's wallet from Pulp Fiction.