PJ Vogt
Writer, Wronger
“I have to be vigilant about a part of myself that I do not understand who wants things I don't agree with and who I can't kill. … If I try to kill him, all I'm doing is putting him in like a ninja suit.”
Search Engine · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · October 2026
Vogt, the host, relating his guest's memoir about addiction to his own habits, starting from a confession that he had eaten four popsicles that day while on a diet. His system, he says, is to keep watching what he actually does and be honest about it, since trying to suppress that part of himself only makes it harder to see.
Transcript
and my partner saw me eating a popsicle and was like, didn't you say you wanted to eat healthily? And my brain flashed to the wrappers of three other popsicles.
Yeah.
…popsicles are a problem. Like I don't know. I know that, you know, in seven days, I'm going to talk to my psychiatrist and I'm going to be like, hey, just so you know, I'm stealthily eating popsicles. Do you make something of that? And like somehow that feels like my system and the system feels like a commitment to trying to observe what is happening and be honest about it and to know that I, I have to be vigilant about a part of myself that I do not understand who wants things I don't agree with and who I can't kill. Like I can't, if I try to kill him, all I'm doing is putting him in like a ninja suit. And like, I relate to your book because that struggle feels to me like a fundamental struggle of being a person.
Yes. Yeah. Oh man. I mean, that's, this is like the most baffling thing is that when you do have that deep problem, it's almost like your efforts to quell it is like working against yourself.
Yeah. Right.
That you're actually getting in your own way. The more you try willfully clenched to fight it, the more you end up just needing it more, right? Because I think, especially when it's something like food or alcohol where you get this release, it's like the effort to resist it is also creating the…
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