Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Minimalism

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

The life-changing magic of tidying up gave a shiny new rebrand to age-old ideas that owning less stuff can be connected to enlightenment... but are there people taking the "cult" of *minimalism* too far? Can stripping down your material possessions actually cure the sorrow and ennui of contemporary existence? Isa and Amanda chat with Joshua & Ryan, "cult leaders" of The Minimalists website, podcast, and documentary, and more to find out...  https://www.theminimalists.com/   For a limited time, new users can get $10 in free Bitcoin when you sign up today at Coinbase.com/cult  Go to Cerebral.com/CULT for 65% off your first month. Go to Grove.com/CULT to get a free gift set worth up to fifty dollars with your first order. For 50% off your first Care/of order of $40 or more, go to TakeCareOf.com and enter code cult50

This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Issa Medina and I'm a comedian. And I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism. Every week here on our show we discuss a different fanatical fringe group from the cultural zeitgeist that puts the cult in culture, from hypebeasts to mom flu answers to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? To join our cult, follow us on Instagram at Sounds Like a Cult pod. I'm on IG at Issa Medina, ISAA, and I'm on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montell.

And for bonus material, juicy cult discussions and more, feel free to hit us up on Patreon at patreon.com slash soundslikeacult. Now let's jump into this week's topic! Or would they want us to jump into this week's topic or is that not minimalist enough? No, they would want us to like walk calmly and with equilibrium. Okay, let's walk calmly with sandals into this week's topic. I also feel like they would wear those kinds of shoes that are like toe shoes. You know the ones that have like individual spaces for your toes? Oh my god, yes. My high school calculus teacher would wear those.

Of course. He was just sitting around thinking about numbers wearing his toe shoes. I don't like people who wear those shoes. They are. I don't want to see like your toe crevices. Yeah. But this is not the foot fetish episode. No, we already did that one. This episode is on the cult of minimalism.

Which is a word that can mean many things. I mean, when I think of minimalism, I think of a couple of things. I certainly think of Marie Kondo. Yeah, of course immediately. And the life-changing magic of tidying up. You touch something. If it doesn't spark joy, you throw it away. So I think of that whole trend. I also think of like the minimalist aesthetic.

Yeah. Like Japan style and Scandinavian mid-century modern furniture. Yeah. Today I think of the Kardashians home. Oh, yeah. Which like LOL is so ironic and we'll talk about this later. The juxtaposition of like extreme wealth and so-called minimalism. Yeah, it's insane. Their house looks like a museum. And it's like, if you didn't want anything in it, then why did you spend it?

Were you just watching that Kim K House tour? No, I was. I was just watching it today. I do think of like this aesthetic that's like rich as fuck, but at the same time like has no personality. Yeah, it's like when you watch HGTV for three hours straight, the first hour you're like, oh my God, everything is so beautiful and clean cut. And then the second hour you're like, all right, I'm a little numb.

And then the third hour you're like, this shit is basic and not cute. Yeah. But at the same time, minimalism is also this promised lifestyle that like if you can just get rid of all the excess consumerism in your life, then you will have less stress and more enlightenment. And it's supposed to heal you in the ways that cults often promise to. When you go to divine minimalism online, like what comes up? It's actually like an American visual arts movement from the 1960s and early 1970s,

which entailed like architecture and like it was a style more so than like a life idea. And I feel like now it's more so like get rid of all your shit and. Yeah. And move away from it because it doesn't give you joy. Right. Right. So I was reading this piece from The Guardian that was talking about how minimalism as a lifestyle really spiked after the 2008 recession, like out of necessity.

Yeah. We're now none of us have any money. So we're going minimalist and consuming less because we have to. Yeah. And I also think it was a combination of like in 2008, that was right when like marketing started to become a thing in our lives. Like internet marketing. Yeah.

Internet marketing and like social media marketing with like Facebook coming up. And so like everything was about branding. So I remember like the cool girl from high school was like started going, you know, thrift shopping. Right. And like I thought going to Abercrombie was cool, which is like expensive and annoying. And then she was like, oh no, like we went thrift shopping and all of a sudden,

like just cause she said it with confidence. I was like thrift shopping is the new thing. Well, I think it's no accident that thrift shopping and the exercise of self branding and the recession all sort of happened at once because people needed to be minimalist out of necessity. But also like it became this brand like it became this sort of hipstery thing. And then as we started to come out of the 2008 recession, that's when the idea of minimalism was not really necessary anymore.

It was just kind of bougie. Did the 2008 recession ever end? I don't know. I mean, I feel like maybe it started to and then the pandemic hit and that's why millennials are depressed. Yeah. Millennials have been through a lot. I identify as Gen Z by convenience, by convenience by one year.

Yeah. You are a cusp. I'm a cusp baby. But yeah, I think it's funny because they made the branding into like all things that were like uncool. Like what was it? What was it? Like mason jars and like rustic chic, rustic shabby chic.

Yeah. Or like remember when like Chipotle opened and all their pipes were showing like all the pipes on the ceiling. That's like that just looks like an unfinished business. Right. There was also this morality attributed to it because you know how like during times of economic crisis, hemlines get longer. I did not know that.

In the roaring 1920s, like everyone was wearing those short little flapper skirts because the country was thriving. And then in the 40s when we were having like rash and shit, skirts were long. Wait, that's nuts. Like so women like are allowed to show leg when like the country's doing well, but like when it's not, it's like hide the legs. Like symbolically. Yeah.

It happens naturally. It's not like someone makes a rule. Well, do you think it still happens today? Yeah, I definitely do. Yeah. Think of like maxi skirts emerging during the 2008 recession. It's like no one's doing well. So we like cover up.

Oh, that's so funny because I feel like no one in LA is doing well, but we don't cover up everyone showing leg all the time. And I think that says more about our mental health than we want it to. So then it's no accident that shortly after the recession, that's when Marie Kondo and the life changing magic of tidying up really started to take off because it's like during times of larger cultural tumult, we look to something new to heal us, to fix us, to make us happier. And here was Marie Kondo with her pretty face and her well packaged brand being

like minimalism will save you now. Yeah. What year did her book come out? It was 2010. Oh, so Marie Kondo's book came out right in 2010. Literally during the 2008 recession. Yeah. So I think then minimalism caught on as this movement that had an aesthetic

associated with it, a morality associated with it. Now we can all identify minimalism on Instagram and Pinterest. Yeah. And in that time period is when Pinterest started to blow up. Yeah. Or what's that blog that gave everyone an eating disorder? Tumblr? Yeah.

Or like Tumblr. And it's like all of these brands of like beautiful, just simple, restrained. And I think that's also when like the branding of this product is going to save your life developed. Mm-hmm. Like the branding of like you don't need anything else. The only thing you need is this product and this is the final product that you're ever going to buy.

Right. Because millennials are less brand loyal than previous generations. So we need brands to represent more than just a product. Like it needs to represent an identity and a way of life. Yeah. So a lot of brands were like, we're minimalist, we're restrained, but we're still luxurious. Yeah. I also feel myself doing that same thing that people did during the 2008 recession.

Like as a young adult with like not that much money. I'm like, I'd rather just have like a couple cute outfits and be like, I'm simple. That's my style. But it's because I can't afford to shop as much as like everyone else in LA. So I'm like, oh no, this is just my style. Yeah. Right. So consumerism as a brand or as a lifestyle gives people this sort of illusion of choice.

Yeah. And also this illusion of power because it has some like individualist undertones, like by you being a minimalist, you single-handedly can heal your life, be less stressed, but also heal the planet because consumerism is destroying the planet. Yeah. So if you go minimalist, you're going to help climate change, which is a much larger issue that requires corporations to participate, not just us, you know. Minimalism.

So when you think of it, you see this idea that's like, it's going to help you save money. It's going to make you a better person. It's going to make you a healthier person. It's going to bring back like relationships and joy into your life. Yep. It only gives and it doesn't take, which is ironic because it literally makes you throw all your things away.

Yeah. Yeah. And like there is plenty about minimalism, which by the way was not invented in 2008, you know, like, and not even just talking about the art movement from the 60s and 70s. Like minimalist, like ideologies have been around for centuries and we'll talk about that more with our guests. But I watched our guest's Netflix documentary about minimalism and I was super inspired by it.

And my boyfriend and I started doing minimalism Sundays after we watched it where we would every Sunday throw away five things or get rid of five things. What did you throw away? Your house is full of stuff. Yeah. Exactly. So we would like, I would get rid of like an old shirt that I don't really wear anymore. But it still is.

Yeah. I know. This is the problem because I myself am a tchotchke queen. Yeah. You reacted to minimalism the way I reacted to Cowspiracy. Like I was a vegan for five minutes and you threw away four things. I was a minimalist for five minutes. So speaking of that documentary, those are our guests for today.

Joshua Fields Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus, who actually go by the minimalists. They have a cult following of their own of over 20 million people who they've inspired to live with less through their ideas in their books, blogs and podcasts and their Netflix documentary, which clearly made you throw away five to seven things. I think it's really important to hear from them because they have such a fair perspective. Like by the end of the episode, you'll see why we interviewed them in a minimalist themselves. Like, you know, yeah, coming from a fair source. Can you guys briefly tell us who are each of you and how you beat the minimalists?

Sure. Yeah. I'm Joshua Fields Milburn. I'm Ryan Nicodemus. And yes, we are the minimalists. I really started with Josh. So you should probably start explaining who we are. Well, the short answer is we're the minimalists because the domain was available for seven

dollars. Yeah. We're the minimalists.com, but we stumbled into minimalism over a decade ago. My mom died. My marriage ended both in the same month. And I started looking for the right cult to join. And no, I was just looking to figure out what had become my life's focus. I realized I was focused on all the wrong thing, the cult of consumerism in a way, right?

I was so focused on so-called success and achievement and our culture, that's the accumulation of stuff. I know you're successful, but success was kind of making me miserable. And so I knew I needed to sort of simplify my life. Brian and I grew up really poor and we thought the answer to happiness was making a lot of money. So throughout our 20s, we climbed the corporate ladder and we actually made really good money back in Dayton, Ohio.

And I was a director of operations. I ran 150 retail stores. I was living the American dream, but it was kind of a nightmare. And so when those two events happened to me, I just started looking around and I stumbled across this thing called minimalism. And I saw all these different people who had simplified their lives. There were young people, old people, rich, poor, black, white, people with families, people who were single.

But they shared a few things in common. I realized that they had simplified their lives in order to make room for something that was more meaningful. It kind of started with the stuff, and I think that's what we think of minimalism, we think about the stuff. But it went so far beyond that. So I simplified my life over about eight months, got rid of about 90% of my material possessions, which sounds really radical at first, but I don't think minimalism is really that radical.

I think it's a practical lifestyle because the average household has about 300,000 items in it. So if you get rid of 90% of your stuff, you're not living like a monk or an ascetic. You're getting rid of the excess stuff and people at work started coming up to me and saying things like, you seem less stressed, you seem so much calmer. You're glowing with emptiness. It's a memoir title. Yeah, glowing with emptiness.

At one point, our boss did ask me if Josh was trying to depress or trying to kill himself because he was giving away his stuff. Oh, and they were scared you were emptying the house for the event. They didn't understand what was going on. It's funny. It's conscientious. That's one of the telltale signs of someone who's suicidal, strangely, at least in our culture is like we're letting go of our stuff.

That's how much importance we assign to our things. Ryan came up to me one day. We were at work. I've known him since we were fat little fifth graders. And he came up to me and he said, hey, why the hell are you so happy lately? And that really opened the door for me to talk to him about minimalism. To evangelize. That's right, yeah.

When you said I got rid of 90% of my material as a comedian, I was like, oh my gosh, did you throw away your notebooks? I was like, what are you going to talk about? I understand by jokes. Oh man. Yeah. He introduced me to minimalism. I just went to him and kind of asked him like, what is going on with you, man?

Because he was visibly happier and he wasn't supposed to be happy. I mean, his marriage and his mom passed away. So yeah, I'm like, what are you doing, man? What drugs are you on? I was very into drugs back then, so I was hoping he had that drug that I'd never heard of before. Just the right cocktail. Right, exactly.

And he talked about minimalism, which really, to me, was just some common sense stuff. Stay out of debt, simplify, don't cling to material possessions. So I got excited, I'm like, hey, if it works for Josh, it'll work for me. All right, dude, I'm in. I'm going to be a minimalist. Now what? I didn't know what to do. What's next?

Yeah, so Josh had simplified over about eight months. That was a little too slow for me. I'm a little bit more radical, so I needed a faster approach. And Josh and I came up with this idea called a packing party, where we decided to pack all my belongings as if I were moving. And then I would unpack the items as I needed it over a three-week period. I knew it would like, A, force me to confront all my things, and by doing that, it would shift my perspective.

That's what I was hoping to get out of it. And I did. Think about it. Don't you hate moving, right? Yeah, of course. I'm about to move, and three weeks is a good time period. You hate moving because you're actually confronted with all of those things, and sometimes we move one box and it doesn't even get opened before we move again.

But then we feel compelled to move that box on. And so that was the one time, I'm like, Ryan, you're not moving, but if you want to confront all of your stuff, pretend you're moving. Yeah. And I tend to anthropomorphize my belongings. So if I don't use something in a certain period of time, I tend to feel bad for it. And then I'll want to use it, but I don't actually need it anymore. Yeah.

Don't you feel bad for the clothes you don't wear? Yes. I feel bad for them. And then there are shirts that I'll try to wear because I'm like, I have them, and I'm like, they just look so bad. Yeah, I know. And so that's a lot of emotional energy we're spending on a thing. Yeah.

My mom, on the other hand, though, she threw away everything growing up. If I left my homework on the kitchen counter, it was gone the next morning. So I feel like she's like a minimalist. Yeah. She's comfortable with letting go. And I think that's become a problem in our culture is we're so attached to things that we cling even when they stop serving us. As minimalist, Ryan and I aren't against material possessions, but I don't want to pick up a

bunch of baggage and then drag it along with me. Everything that I picked up, I chose to put it down when it started weighing me down, sort of preventing me from going where I wanted to go. Yeah. Yeah. So at the packing party, we did that for three weeks. I had 80% of my stuff still sitting in those boxes. And I got rid of it.

I donated, sold, and recycled, just got rid of 80% of my stuff. And that's where the minimalists.com started. It was with that packing party story. I know if I'm going through this, there's someone else going through the same thing. And this is really going to help at least that one other person who's going through it. And Josh always loved to write, just put our story out there. And yeah, that's where it all started. And a lot of people have, have flocked to hear it.

So can you define for us what exactly is minimalism, at least according to you, because I think of like a minimalist aesthetic, but then I also think of sort of like monastic minimalism that's connected to like Eastern religious practices. I think of minimalism in many different ways. So what is minimalism the way you see it? And who gets to call themselves a minimalist? So that's a great question. First off, I'm still trying to figure out what minimalism is.

And I don't feel like us being the minimalists, I don't feel like we have the authority to do that. In fact, when we were coming up with a website name, Josh was like, what do you think about the minimalists? And I'm like, it's okay. But I didn't want to like just all of a sudden be the authority on minimalism, especially because like I was just starting out my journey, I still had a lot of stuff to go through. So I'm like, let's name it something else.

He's like, okay, do you have a better idea? The trying to be minimalists? Yeah, I came up with some really bad ideas. What was the really bad one? Turning over a new leaf. Yeah, aiming wonderfully or something. I don't know, grabbing your things and throwing them away without knowing what's going on. So Josh is like, I couldn't come up with anything better.

Josh is like, well, let's just use it as a placeholder for now. We didn't expect it to be what it is now. And turns out it's still a placeholder. We're still looking for a better name, so yeah, let me know. I love it. I think it's minimalists. Yeah, it is. It's minimalists.

But minimalism really, it's a thing that helps us get past the things so we can make room for life's most important things, which aren't things at all. But really, minimalism comes down to living intentionally. And as Josh mentioned, the average American has over 300,000 things in their home. So when you have that many things, you need some kind of tool to help you filter through it all. So American really too, I mean, a lot of different cultures have a lot of things. But I feel like in other countries, you don't see as many storage units as you do in America.

Yeah, that's a uniquely American thing. So I don't think hoarding is uniquely American, but 90% of the world's storage units are in the United States of America. Oh, really? Yeah, so it is a uniquely American issue. But we have a lot of stuff. But our podcast is about half of the listeners are in the United States, about half are overseas. We have people who email us from Kenya, hey, can you come do a tour stop here or Afghanistan?

And it's like, wow, I didn't know that this message would resonate because it's not just about overconsumption, it's about this desire. And so when I'm talking about minimalism, Ryan and I are talking about this lifestyle minimalism. There are other types of minimalism, like literary minimalism, like Laurie Moore, Brennan Wallace, you go back to the 80s, or Raymond Carver, or you go back to like minimalist architecture like John Paulson. There are different types of minimalism, right?

When we're talking about minimalism as a lifestyle, we are talking about simplifying our lives in a way that identifies what things add value to my life. Yeah. So it's not about deprivation. And I think that's a common misconception. We're not the deprivationists, but it's not about simply getting rid of things that I would enjoy. In fact, I remember one of our tour stops, a guy came up to us afterwards, where he

said, it seems like you guys just didn't get rid of anything important. I said, yeah, that's the point. But there's no such thing as like, if you own, say, I don't know, 30,000 things, like you don't get to call yourself a minimalist. Like you have to wear all black. You have to wear sandals. Ryan, though. It's a great hair.

Yeah. It's a hilarious personality in this room right now. Yeah, truly. If you own 30,000 things, Ryan and I will shun you. We won't talk. You definitely don't get a certificate. Right. We'll fast light you until you feel compelled to let go.

No, like, and that's the funny thing is like, I don't want to convert anyone to minimalism. Like we, I don't even go around talking about being a minimalist. You're like, it's just my Instagram handle. I didn't jump in. Ryan said, why the hell are you so happy? That opened the door for that conversation, but I didn't say, hey, look at me. I'm a minimalist and you need to be too because I need you to get rid of some stuff. It's not about convincing anyone of anything.

It's simply sharing a recipe. And so, yeah, we'll share some boundaries that have worked really well for us, but I don't really get caught up in rules or legalism. That's a great way to also like spread the message is like not intentionally spread the message is just like you're telling people your experience and how it made you feel. I think I would be bad for your movement because I would be like, I'm a freaking minimalist and you should all do it with me. There's quite a few of those people though and, and, you know, so be it.

I mean, I think some people might find value in setting up some boundary for themselves and we all want the answer. And that's why we turn to cults or to religions or whatever it might be. We turn to these things because they have the sort of the rule book, right? Yeah. Ironically, Ryan, I wrote something called the minimalist rule book. People can download it for free on our website, but it's you soon find out it has nothing to do with real rules.

They're sort of just these boundaries that work for me and Ryan and they're, they're expandable, they're contractable. And the reason that I appreciate that is boundaries aren't bad. I mean, we are in a studio right now. You have four walls. These are just boundaries. I think there are like 18 walls in here. Yeah.

It's a oddly shaped room. And the reason we set up boundaries is because we've realized if we, if we go too far outside those boundaries, there's some sort of discontent. The life that I was leading before, there was a whole lot of discontent misery. It's in the founding documents of our country about the pursuit of happiness, but it's that pursuit of happiness that is the path toward misery. We think buying the things is going to make us happy. Yeah.

And the problem is the reason it's so insidious is it does make us happy and that's sort of the problem is the, getting those bits of happiness that we don't actually experience the contentment, the peace, the freedom that we're actually looking at. Because when you buy something, you get like a spike of dopamine. Oh yeah. Yeah. But that's not sustainable. Like eventually your dopamine response is going to get worn down.

And then what? Yeah. As an immigrant, my, my American dream is to like buy a home. And it's like, it, like, I can't buy my first home and then be like addicted to buying homes. That's not really healthy, but I still would like to at some point. But what do you guys think are like the origins of minimalism in terms of like how it became so buzzy in the West?

Yeah. Yeah. So, so I think it is an old answer to a new problem. And so the old answer, you see it in all the ancient sort of wisdom traditions, every, whether it's Hinduism or Christianity or Islam, Buddhism, et cetera, any ancient wisdom tradition, you'll see similar discussions around living simply. Bows of poverty. Yeah.

Absolutely. Not living with excess, not living beyond your means, et cetera. The problem is new though. Never before have we had so much access. I mean, literally one click, same day delivery access to virtually anything that we want. Right? But in a way, like we've created the Star Trek version where something can simply materialize on your doorstep.

Now the cost of that though is there are a lot of underpaid workers, people who are taking advantage of, and there's a lot of misery that goes into that entire system, right? Of consumption. We don't see that. We just simply see the nice shiny gadget that shows up same day, right? And so the problem is new. And that problem is we have access to more things than ever. And that would be wonderful if it was making us more joyous, more peaceful, more tranquil,

but it's doing the opposite. That device in my pocket is that now not just comparing me to my next door neighbor, sort of keeping up with the Joneses, it's comparing me to everyone I've never met. And because I'm comparing myself to everyone I've never met, it's a perpetual cycle of discontent. I'm not good enough. I'm not enough. In fact, we never even stop to think about what is enough.

In our culture, it's always more, more, more. How do I get more? But the path to enough is usually through subtraction, through less. Yes. Oh my God. We already have more than enough. We have this, I'm sure you know, about additive bias versus subtractive bias. Like studies have been done that show that when people are presented with a problem,

their impulse is to fix it by adding something, a gadget, a person, an app, whatever, when oftentimes the solution is just to take something away, like if you have a junk drawer full of bullshit, like your impulse might be, oh, I need to order like a drawer organizer from Amazon.com. Yeah. When really the solution is throw that shit away. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. Totally. I saw this TikTok the other day about how we're not supposed to know what everyone else is doing and what everyone else has. Of course. All of the time. It kind of applies to dating too because with dating apps, it's so unhealthy to know how

many single people exist out there because then you're reminded, you're like, then why am I single if all of these things exist? Our ancestors knew like 50 people their whole life and had like 50 things. Right. Yeah. We're not built for this. Right. Okay.

So let me ask, whenever something kind of ancient or Eastern and kind of like spiritual in the way that minimalism can be makes its way like into like commercialized culture, it tends to get kind of culty kind of fast because people start to capitalize on it and make these gigantic promises. What do you think is like the most realistic single promise and how do you think some people take its promises too far? When it comes to like the one single thing, I don't make any promises. I don't promise anything, you know, like I don't, I don't have like a prescription to

be like, if you do X, Y and Z, you're going to feel better. I think minimalism, what I will say is it offers an opportunity to people. So for me, when I saw minimalism, I saw an opportunity for me to kind of step outside of my tornado of a lifestyle. I was drinking a lot. I was doing drugs a lot. I was spending all types of money. Like as soon as I got my paycheck, it was already like all spoken for.

And I was just, you know, trying to have all of the ephemeral pleasures that we all desire. Right. And I was the hedonistic. Yes. I was like being, you know, as hedonistic as, you know, 150,000 bucks a year can buy you in Ohio. Like I was living. Weird.

Yeah. I just saw an opportunity for me to step aside from that lifestyle. And then what minimalism helped me do was make room for other things in my life. Like the one thing that really stands out to me is when I was confronted with 80% of my stuff in those boxes after the packing party, I'm like, wow, look, here's like tens of thousands of dollars worth of things. I've brought into my life, uh, trying to make me happy. And like here they are, like obviously not doing their job.

And then I started to think about like what my priorities were. So you know, at the time I'm sitting there, I'm like, what are my priorities like health? Like you got to be healthy. Right. You're not healthy. You know, health as well. If you're not healthy, you don't have anything. You got to have good relationships in your life.

You got to, you know, have that passion project that you're working on. You got to contribute beyond yourself in a meaningful way. You got to grow. And I'm having this kind of, you know, internal dialogue and I'm like, I'm not focusing any of my time and energy on those things. Like that's maybe what I value. But again, like that, that stuff, that horde of stuff, like that's where all my energy was going.

So for me, like minimalism helped me to uncover what was important to me and really helped me get clear on like what I was doing with my resources and I'm not just talking about my money. I mean, I know that that's like the number one resource that comes up, but we have our time, we have our attention, we have our creativity. We've got all these other resources that we just give away all the time. Was there like a moment of anxiety when you guys finally like kind of got to a place where, you know, you got rid of a lot of things and you had time and space and like mental capacity

to like focus on those things? I mean, we were like the go to guys in our corporate days. Like, I mean, like if our, if our phone wasn't ringing, like then the phone was turned off. Like something was wrong. So you know, we were the go to people needed us every single minute of, you know, every single working day when I left my job, I got laid off. Congrats. Thank you.

Yeah. I love that for you. Well, you know, we started the minimalist when we were in the corporate world and like I knew it was a matter of time and really thank God they laid me off because I don't know, I just kept telling myself like one more, I'm just going to save up for like one more month and then like that month would come and like, well, I could go one more month going from a hundred miles an hour to like zero. That was that was anxious.

That was anxiety inducing for sure. You know, that word busy. It's the worst four letter word in the English language, right? Because when I say I'm busy, what am I really saying? My life is out of control. Yes. Other people are dictating my schedule or my inbox or my text, whatever it is, I'm responding to everyone else's emergency, right?

So just because something's urgent to you doesn't mean it should be urgent to me and vice versa. It doesn't mean that it's unimportant just because it's not urgent to me. But then we treat everyone else's emergency as though I need to react to this right now. And so I found that that I'm a lot more focused now, far less busy for our material possessions are sort of this, this physical manifestation of what's going on inside us. Yeah. So when we have a lot of external clutter, probably because we have a lot of internal

clutter, mental clutter, emotional clutter, spiritual clutter, whatever you want to call it. There's some sort of psychological clutter, the stuff that's going on inside us. And when you start dealing with that access stuff, you realize how frantic it is in here. And I'm sure excess can be defined differently depending on the person, like, because I love a chachki I cannot lie, but there is a threshold past which it's chachki excessive and that threshold might be here for some people and for me it's here. It's probably a harder question.

But as thought leaders who have an amazing way with words, who are very inspiring to a lot of people, how do you make sure that you're leading a purely positive cult rather than a morning? You are inspiring thought leader, Joshua. You are. And it can't be denied that you do speak with this very emotive, almost creature's lilt. Well, I feel like even just talking to you right now, you think about what you're going

to say before you say it, I can see it. But it's smart. I think everyone should do that. We ultimately want to connect with other people, not even like-minded people necessarily. That's what Ryan and I have learned. He and I are definitely not like-minded. We vote for... Yes, we are.

You're playing a war against everything. We vote for different people. We have different religious and spiritual beliefs. We have radically different personalities. And yet, we've been best friends for 30 years, and it's because we're not trying to convert someone to our singularly correct point of view. I've let go of the convincing. I've been trying to change my dad my whole life.

Yeah, you and me both. That always, it turns out in a way, what's the old quote, a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. I think that's like- He's just like, yeah, I say that all the time. I'm like, I love that quote, I actually have a tattoo to it. And so we can try to drag someone kicking and screaming through our worldview, but as soon as you let them out of your sight for a second, they run back to their preformed

dog life. Yes, that's true. Okay, so now we're going to play a game. This is a game that we sometimes play on our podcast. It's called culty quotes. And it's basically a game of who said that. So we're going to read you a series of pithy quotes, and you're going to have to determine whether or not the speaker was an infamous cult leader or one of you.

That's so good. We've never done it where it's the guest's quotes. But you kind of repeat yourself. Yeah, this is exciting. Okay, ready, you want to start the first quote? And I have all of these tattooed on my body. Okay, first quote, B, don't try to become that is like some sort of religious spiritual. Yeah.

That is Osho, the Rajneesh poem guy. Quote number two, presence can't be gift wrap. That sounds like something that we said. Yeah. It does. Sounds like something Josh would say. Do you have the actual person who said it? Oh, no.

No, but undoubtedly it was you. Yeah. Beautiful quote. That's great. Okay, next quote, if you want to live a life of purpose, get clear on your value. Oh, that's us. Yes, that's us. Absolutely.

Yeah, I've heard Ryan say that. They have everything they've ever said meticulously recorded in documentation. Yeah. Okay, next one. Life's too short to hang out with people who aren't resourceful. That's not a. Yeah, that sounds like it. That does not sound like us.

You guys know yourselves really well. That's the opposite of you. That's Jeff Bezos. Your antithesis. Oh, wow. All right. Next quote. You are not you.

You are just reflections. You are reflections of everything that you think you know, everything that you have been taught. That sounds like Chuck Paul on it. It's Chuck Manson. Charles Manson. Yeah, I'm Chuck's. Wow.

Wow, that's wild. Okay, next one. Everyone is hungry for praise and starving for honest appreciation. That's someone else. I don't know who that's someone else. Yeah, that's David Berg. That's a bad one. David Berg.

He was the Children of God leader. Oh, that is a bad one. Not good. Should I say the last one in a British accent? Yes. If you refuse to change, then perhaps you deserve the life that you already have. Definitely not us. Not us.

No. That was you. Really? Maybe it was the accent that tripped out. It was the accent. It was totally accent. Sometimes we'll do an interview and the reporter, I have in the past given the reporter permission to be like, hey, look, if you needed to change something a little bit around to make it

sound better for your article, feel free to shift the code a little bit. Yeah, I do the same thing. I might have been something like that. But other than that, like I would never look at someone and be like, you deserve what you got. You're the one refusing to do the work. All right. Contested.

Contested. I think it. Well, it's like, I feel like it's the end of a longer sentence. I think it's the end of a longer sentence that might have been twisted by the cult of the media. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for playing Colty quotes with us.

If folks want to keep up with your work, your books, your podcast, your content, your cult, where can they do that? You can just go to the minimalists.com and Josh, what's your only fan's page? It's just him in black t-shirts. Or because it's the only fan, just him in like orange t-shirts. Right. That's what people really want to see him in different colors. Any color of him in black.

Yeah. Let me give you a chance to plug the rest of the things. Oh, yeah. Go for it. All right. Just all that. The minimalists.com, podcast, whatever else you want, or don't, you can let it go to. Social media.

Yes. You can send it for a weekly newsletter. Yeah. Everything's there at the minimalists.com. Amazing. I love that. Thank you so much. Thank you guys for coming on the podcast.

This was great. This was awesome. This was so fun. So, Issa, out of the three cult categories, live your life. Watch your back. Or get the fuck out. What do you think about the cult of minimalism? I think it's a live your life.

Uh-oh. Yeah. I think that minimalism is a live your life because after literally interviewing some of the leaders in the space, I think they handle it so well. And as I always say, leadership can tank a cult or raise it to the moon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I was just like, yeah. I've heard that. Uh, no. I think, you know, obviously there are bloggers out there who have really commodified minimalism and made sort of larger than life promises about it, what it can accomplish in people's lives. And when you're preaching to a vulnerable population, say people who are unhappy and like want to make their lives better, then there is a risk.

But this kind of reminds me of our astrology episode because there really is no like single unifying leader in astrology. And there's really no single unifying leader of minimalism. Yeah. And I also think the idea itself is so broad that like minimalism is like sex. Like you need consent, you know, and it's up to you to throw the things away. Like no one's forcing you to throw those things away. So like you're the one who decide, who decides the boundaries.

And it's clearly defined in so many different ways. I can easily see how there could be a watch your back or a get the fuck out level cult that incorporates some of the tenants of minimalism, like in Jonestown, they lived with very little. But that wasn't a minimalist cult, you know? You have to take it for the raw, like broad idea that it is for it to be a live your life. Because if you take it for like the capitalist version that it is, like if you take it for like the Instagram version that it is, then I think it's like, sure, it's a watch your back, like everything in capitalism or like everything on social media.

Yeah. But if you take it for like the idea and apply your own vision to it, then it's a live your life. Right. And I think the key is just like, if you're interested in minimalism, follow a wide array of people who talk about minimalism, don't put all of your eggs in one basket. And you can say that about anything. Like you should always have multiple sources.

Exactly. And that's how you find yourself stranded on an ideological island when you only submit to one person. Yeah. That's why I highly recommend the public library, as I've said before. Check out a book or 10. Yeah. Don't let the algorithm follow you.

Yeah. I would say it is a cuspy live your life to watch your back. You always end up adding a watch your back. I love a bit of new world. Well, that's our show. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back with a new cult next week. And in the meantime, stay culty, but not too culty.

Sounds Like A Cult is created, hosted and produced by Amanda Montell and Issa Medina. Kate Elizabeth is our editor. Our podcast studio is all things comedy and our theme music is by Casey Kulb. Thank you to our intern slash production assistant, Noemi Griffin, subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult wherever you get your podcasts, so you never miss an episode. And if you like our show, feel free to give us a rating and review on Spotify or Apple podcasts and check us out on Patreon at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult.