Podcast appearances and mentions of chris sean

Dennis is joined via Zoom by actors Michael Sturgis & Sean Luc Rogers from the Echo Theater Company's production of Samuel D. Hunter's play Clarkston, which is playing at the Atwater Village Theatre in LA through October 21. Here's the synopsis: "Welcome to Clarkston, Washington, where Jake (Michael) and Chris (Sean) meet working the night shift at Costco. Jake, a middle-class, educated new hire who's a distant relative of explorer William Clark, has fled his privileged life in Connecticut after being diagnosed with a serious illness. Chris, a would-be writer with a meth-addicted mom, is stuck in what he fears is a dead-end life in a dead-end town. Soon, their tentative attraction develops into something much deeper and more complicated. The two actors talk about what drew them to the project, the play's complex themes around friendship, loyalty and the things in life that we don't even give ourselves permission to want. Other topics include: taking a field trip to Costco and gorging at the food court, hearing the audience cry during intense scenes, the emotional hangover from doing the show, and taking an onstage selfie every night and seeing friends in the audience in the background. www.echotheatercompany.com

On this episode, my guest is Sean P. Smith, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Culture Studies at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Much of his research has focused on the relationship between social media and tourism, and how colonial histories shape today's ideologies and visual cultures of travel. The inequalities that result from many forms of tourism development, he argues, are intimately linked with how tourists create content for Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and the ways tourists frame themselves in landscapes and alongside local residents often replay colonial hierarchies.Show Notes: Why Study Instagram?The Pre-tour Narrative (Edward Bruner, Raul Salazar)The Habitus of Tourism (or How We Got Here)The Promontory Witness (or that photo)The Logic of InfluenceEmptying the Landscape (John Urry)The Techno-Generational DivideMedia EcologyOther Horizons in OmanHomework:Sean P. Smith - Tilburg UniversitySean P. Smith: Twitter / X | Instagram | Google Scholar (Articles)Transcript:Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome, Sean, to the pod. Thank you so much for being willing to join us to speak about your work. Sean: Thanks very much for having me. Chris: My pleasure. I'm curious, Sean where you're speaking from today and, and how the world is, how the world might be housing you there. Sean: Well, it's very rainy and dark. I'm in the Southern Netherlands, an area called North Brebant, where I just moved less than a month ago.So, in many places of moving around, if so, getting used to this one. Chris: Sean, I found out about your work from one of the pod's listeners who sent in a link to one of your academic articles entitled, Instagram Abroad, Performance, Consumption, and Colonial Narrative in Tourism. Now, I've been ruminating on the effect that social media has on tourism, spectacle, surveillance, and cultures of disposability for a long time now.So I'm really excited to speak with you today. And [00:01:00] likewise parts of the podcast are shared via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, so there's always this sense of kind of feeding the machine. unaware and perhaps more aware each time. And so first then, I'm curious why focus on Instagram in the context of critical tourism studies? What makes it different from say Facebook or Twitter?Sean: Yeah, that's a really good question Chris. I think with Instagram, in many contexts around the world, certainly not universally, but it's the social media platform that is most readily identified with not just tourism, but the way that people represent themselves engaging in tourism. It's very image driven.Of course, people do write captions, they do engage in other forms of storytelling, but nowadays it's mostly pictures and especially reels, arguably in the last few years. And for a long time, this [00:02:00] has been could almost say the dream work of tourism going back 200, maybe longer years. So even though today, I think you can find forms of tourism well represented TikTok to varying degrees on Facebook.Instagram, at least in many of the places where I've conducted research, is the place that one goes to both learn about places to travel and also to show how oneself travels.Chris: And I'm kind of imagining that we're more or less in the same age range, but I'm curious if on your travels, you mentioned just briefly that you had also spent time backpacking as a younger person and I'm curious if Instagram existed at the time and also if this dream work was evident to you in your travels.Sean: It was. I think I was relatively young when I got my first [00:03:00] smartphone, but certainly not as young as people nowadays. I must have been maybe 22 or 23. So I did have some years of traveling before I think Instagram really reshaped the way that tourism is done, not just for people that actually use this app, but regardless of whether or not anyone's ever downloaded it on their phone, I think Instagram has had a significant impact on the way that tourism is done. So when I first got a smartphone, I was in a period of my life where I was able to travel quite frequently and that was something that I was really pursuing at the time. And Instagram was a way that I was able to engage in a long running interest in photography, but also kind of a diary of where I had been, but certainly one that was legible and sort of visible to other people.And it was through that, you could say "performance" of travel that began to think a bit more critically about this app and other social media [00:04:00] platforms as well. And the way that it was reshaping tourism destinations. Chris: Mm. Mm. Yeah, you mention in your work this notion of the pre tour narrative.And I'm wondering if we could unpack that a little bit for our listeners and what part Instagram plays in this pre tour narrative. Sean: Yeah, I'm very happy to point that out, because I think this is, this is an important way to think about tourism, and that particular phrase I'm drawing on the work of Edward Bruner, who was an American anthropologist.And that's also been picked up in other realms to be identified as what other people have called tourism imaginaries, such as in the work of Raúl Salazar. So what this concept of the pre-tour narrative describes is that before people travel to a particular destination, they are exposed to [00:05:00] various forms of representation.And oftentimes this is very image based or narrative based. So we would see this maybe thinking back in the era before social media, images encountered in magazines and films, perhaps novels, other forms of storytelling, such as just talking with people who have been to places that one wants to travel.However, in social media, as it's become more integral to the way that people conduct their everyday lives, let alone traveling. It's become the dominant engine for the way that the pre tour narrative is formed. Many people who use Instagram as a space to learn about places to travel, they will encounter images of these of these places on this app or and not just sort of the way that it's portrayed, but what people do in these spaces, the people that live [00:06:00] in the places they're going to visit. So, this process of the formation of a pre tour narrative has really always been a part of tourism. But I think it perhaps it's if not accelerated, then certainly taken a bit of a different form with the advent of social media.Chris: So on some level, it's not just the question of what you're going to go see, but also how you're going to see it, how you're going to stand in front of that tower or restaurant and see, experience, what's there. Sean: Yeah, that's a really good way to put it. Chris: And I know it's a little early in the interview, but I'd like to jump into the heart of the matter and your critiques, if we can. You know, you wrote this incredible article Landscapes for Likes, capitalizing on travel with Instagram. And, in that article, you wrote that, deep breath, "Instagram's networked architecture and affordances produce three [00:07:00] outcomes that circulate and magnify utterances about travel to a degree impossible in pre-networked media.One, a mediated travel habitus hegemonically informs prevailing aesthetic norms. Two, the scalability of embodied performances entrench the motif's narrative underpinnings. And three, the monetizable market of Instagram encourages neoliberal notions of the branded self." Now that's a beautiful mouthful. And so I'm wondering, if you might be willing and able to flesh out these three outcomes for our listeners. Sean: No, that's brilliant. And it's nice to talk about these things, perhaps when they're written that can be quite a bit denser.So maybe we can start with the first idea, this mediated travel habitus. And with the word habitus, I'm trying on the work of [00:08:00] the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who theorizes he's talking about class and culture and ways that people display their belonging within a particular class.And the reason that I'm looking to Bordeaux here is tourism and travel, really, it's important to look at this as a practice that has been connected to what Bordeaux might call the pursuit of distinction, to the search for an acquisition of cultural goods. You know, we might think of cultural goods as being a painting or a taste and a particular kind of music, clothes, certain way of speaking even. And when one amasses certain, certain cultural goods, and they're recognized as being part of the upper classes, being marks of somebody who is [00:09:00] sophisticated, somebody who is typically from a fairly privileged financial background, these cultural goods are desirable.So, this background I think is important because tourism from its modern beginnings in the 18th century has been obtaining these experiences and often physical artifacts that can be a way of claiming a certain social status. So, maybe you've discussed this in other podcasts already, but, when the Grand Tour began in the 1600s, but really took off in the 1700s there was this process in which the aristocratic men, young men, were sent on a tour around Europe, and they would go to capitals like Paris, later Vienna, and then especially places like Rome, and, where they could encounter the remnants of the Roman Empire and classical learning. [00:10:00] And this was meant to do a few things in the first sense. It was meant to introduce them other parts of the world, to certain historical understandings. They could refine their Latin. They could get better at French and then they could go home and be recognized as a sophisticated member of the aristocracy. And this practice really became quite popular up until about the turn of the 19th century, when it stopped briefly because of wars on the European continent, and then after the Napoleonic Wars ended, it basically exploded. So when we think about over tourism now in 2023, this was, you know, 1815, 1820s, and this was a period where all of a sudden there were more tourists than ever before.And what that meant is this practice, which had only been done [00:11:00] by the wealthiest classes, was now something that the middle classes could engage in and that produced a kind of anxiety, where how was one able to become a distinguished or sophisticated traveller. How was one able to obtain the cultural goods provided by travel if everyone was doing it?So, the habitus of tourism, the kind of implicitly learned practices and sensibilities that developed during the Grand Tour experienced this period of challenge where people had to look for a way to find distinction by other means. And I think this beginning led to this friction where now you see people who are trying to go places that no other tourists go, trying to take pictures that no other tourists have taken, trying to be the only person in a picture of a [00:12:00] famous place. So this way of understanding how to be a tourist has become enshrined in the kinds of images that we see in a space like, like Instagram to the extent where I think these images are circulating the ideologies of tourism. The scalability refers to, in social media studies, the way in which a single image can achieve a degree of circulation that is not really possible in pre-networked media. So, by networked media, we can think of platforms like Instagram. We can think of Twitter, anything where the possibility of likes and retweets or reposts achieves a degree of visibility what we might call going viral.So what I was writing about in that article was this particular composition called the "promontory witness" where you have typically one [00:13:00] person who's standing on a promontory or we can say the edge of a cliff the top of a building, in front of a waterfall and they're looking really, really small as compared to the vast scale of nature.And people see these images and they understand through the mediation, the widespread circulation of these images, that this means something important about travel. This is what I mean by the mediated habitus of travel, that taking an image like this and being a person in a promontory witness image has a particular value. It is a way of claiming distinction, again, in Rodrigo's terms. And by taking a promontory witness image, one is able to circulate that image on Instagram in a very different way than before the social media platform existed. So, you know, we think about images circulated in tourism before Instagram.It would either be, say, in a family photo album. That people used to have projectors. [00:14:00] People used to maybe send holiday pictures to family and friends, basically whoever they could, you know, show it to, but this is a really, really small circulation, unless somebody was able to get an image in a magazine or some sort of formal publication. But what really shifts with scalable social media is that somebody can take an image and there really is the potential to go viral.I think in Instagram, the potential to have an image seen by a really significant number of people is less than on a platform like Tik Tok. But there remains the possibility if I post a promontory witness image and I put a geo tag in a place that is particularly trendy at this, at this moment and I put the right hashtags that thousands of people can witness this image and because of that possibility, I think there's a degree of enlistment, a degree of interest in [00:15:00] participating in this trend because taking a promontory witness picture is going to have much more possibility of going viral of leveraging these architectures, these scalable architectures.Much more so than if it just take, if I take another image that isn't so popular on a platform like Instagram. Chris: Thank you. Thank you, Sean. Yeah. So there's, there's a lot in there I'm going to come back to in just a little bit. But I wanted to just finish off this one last part because you kind of, you know, mentioned it a little bit.The monetizable market of Instagram that encourages neoliberal notions of the brand itself. And, you know, I pulled this, this other sentence from one of your articles where you write that "as a banal mediator of travel and tourism, Instagram can encourage tourists to imagine themselves as a capital generating brand." Sean: It's really a comment on the attention economy structure of social media platforms, [00:16:00] where I want people to see my pictures and I want to get likes.And I say that very much as being somebody who continues to study social media and tourism from a critical angle. When I post something I'm always aware of how it's going to be received. Some part of me, even when I'm very aware of the issues with thinking this way potentially is I always want it to gain more visibility.If I post something and it has less likes than something I posted previously, this will likely incur some degree of thinking, what did I do wrong? What could I have done differently? You know, maybe I'm just produced such interesting content. And what I think is really taking place there is that we're constantly thinking about ways to achieve visibility in a way that is not dissimilar to the kind of negotiation that celebrities and [00:17:00] other public figures have to go through when managing their, what we might in today's terms, call their brand, where because there is always this metric of how popular one is or how visible one is in the form of likes or in the form of reposts or retweets or what have you it's means that we develop a way of always orienting towards this possible public. We're always thinking about the people that are going to see whatever kind of thing we say online, and we, I think much of the time, are hoping that it's going to be received.If not, you know, people are going to like it, if it is going to maybe change the way that people think about something, if it's going to influence them in some way. And Instagram, of course, is like other social media platforms, is monetizable in the sense that when one gets a lot of followers, you know, if I continually create fantastic travel content and I get tens of thousands or more followers, then [00:18:00] that means that I am able to start making money from it. I'm going to be paid by different companies to come and stay at a resort or go on some sort of guided tour and take an image or make a reel of this experience and post it on Instagram, talk about how great it was, and then tag the company.And that's a way of them bringing in business. This is how advertising works. So, people become advertisers. But even before that influencer level, I think those of us who are not influencers, and I am certainly not, there's a degree to which we are participating in this logic because even if we don't have any designs of becoming influencers, we still want our posts to be liked and this ultimately influences not just posts we make, but the kind of traveling we do and the kind of relationship we have with the places to which we travel.Hmm. Chris: Well [00:19:00] contentious at the very least. But thank you for that, Sean, for being able to flesh that out for us. And I'd like to return back to this notion of the promontory witness, and you know, because even before Instagram I remember seeing in my backpacking years, these same photos, right?The photo of the person, of their back to the camera facing the open horizon, you know, whether it be a cliff face or a desert or whatever it is, and spreading their hands or arms and, just this kind of emanating freedom, I guess.But you also mentioned that this kind of perspective, if you want to call it that, manufactures emptiness because there's nobody else in the photo, and this is so much a part of the kind of sometimes they're Instagram reels, or sometimes they're photos of people, what it looks like when people are at tourist destinations, actually taking the [00:20:00] photo in front of the Eiffel Tower, or the Great Wall, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or whatever, and there's actually hundreds.And thousands of people taking the same photo or trying to, and everyone wants to have that photo without anyone else in it. And so, just a little preamble to the question again, in Landscapes for Likes, you write that "this manufacturing of emptiness privileges tourists as the sole consumers of a landscape, and with its residents hidden from view, a landscape is voided of its human and temporal context. Thus abstracted, place is relevant as little but a visual commodity." And then just another quote that I think brings a little something else to the picture is that "the promontory witness motif scrubs the landscape of the tourist destination of any sign of human habitation, but that of the tourist, singularly pictured in a position of mastery that confers [00:21:00] possession over the destination." And so there seems to be a kind of shared understanding in critical tourism studies that modern and especially social media based travel photography emphasizes empty spaces, of course, minus the Instagram user, the person photographing question. And so I'm curious, why is identifying the emptying of the landscape so important for our understanding?What does it do to us as photo viewers? Sean: Yeah, that's an excellent question and I think I'm very, I'm very interested in this composition, which the lone tourist and the landscape, which, mean, other people before me have pointed to, and at least John Urry.And I think there are two things happening here. For one, it's the kind of picture that's due to the mediation of what we can think of as a travel habitus, due to the way that [00:22:00] people have learned about how to do tourism and to represent themselves doing tourism and the most sophisticated way or in the way that is the most likely to gain them social distinction. They take these images because they've seen these images before and they're attractive images as well. Maybe they're attractive because we have, through seeing so many pictures like them, we've been taught or sort of subconsciously imbibed the aesthetics as being something that we value and are attracted to.One degree of what's of what's taking place. And to another extent, when it comes to this notion of possessing something of being the only person that that goes there, this kind of image of the tourist being the only person in a landscape or in front of some sort of cultural monument is , a way of [00:23:00] claiming a symbolic status, which links back to this ideology of getting off the beaten track. So, I imagine if you're experience backpacking and my own there's a real interest in getting off the beaten path, of going to places that aren't touristy, of being a traveler and not a tourist. And part of the way that the success in getting off the beaten track is signified is being the only person in a photograph.You know, we as backpackers or tourists don't want to be associated with other tourists. And there's very little better way to represent not being another tourist than being the only person in a particular image.Chris: Yeah, it [00:24:00] makes you wonder. And putting together the research for this episode, I came to this, this kind of possibility, question, consternation, And it arose in this way. And so the, the next question, which kind of relates to the last one is, do you think there might be, or is a connection here between the emptying of the photo of humans or locals and the emptying of places of humans and locals, and that is in the context of the gentrification of local people and culture in tourist destinations. Sean: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a very good point. I think especially because gentrification is aesthetically produced through a kind of emptiness or a kind of minimalism. And this gentrified neighborhood is not something that is crowded. It is not some place that there are a lot of wayward signs, [00:25:00] wayward, quote unquote.It is a space which is typically designed according to what might be understood as a globalized regime of clean lines and interesting fonts and a lot of white space. So thinking about the way that that works and everything from upmarket coffee shops to designing neighborhoods that are meant to attract capital on upper middle class consumers and residents.I think that does link quite persuasively with this desire to be the only person within this landscape. I mean, what ultimately is taking place in both processes is that, no matter where somebody is going and taking a promontory witness picture, there are people who live there. There's people who've always lived there and been a part, in many ways, of the land that is being made into a landscape.And by not including [00:26:00] them, within these pictures or in processes of gentrification, actually through state-sanctioned programs or other forms of state-sanctioned investment, local residents are being pushed out to make way for different people, the tourist in this case. There is a process of erasure and, and often what can be conceived as really a very colonial process of taking over, taking over a space and privileging the owners of capital, who in this case, typically are tourists.And of course, it's a little bit different when you're taking a picture versus when you're taking a picture in a place that is not considered part of the Global North. But tourists typically have a lot more privilege and financial resources than local residents.And when they're not in these images, but the places in which they are are included, then at least when we're seeing pictures of it, how [00:27:00] do we imagine who, who controls the space? How do we imagine who has a right to this space? It would be the person in the photograph, the tourist, rather than the people who actually live, work, and, and shape these landscapes.Okay. Chris: Since Instagram tends to be the go to medium for these images and for images in general, as far as social media is concerned, do you think that Instagram then is a tool and driver of gentrification? Could we say that with a sense of coherence? Sean: I think it's as much a tool as, as many other tools and it is very easily leveraged to that end by actors who are seeking to mobilize processes of gentrification. And then I think this is pretty well documented for instance, in Yoo Jung oh's article Instagaze, Aesthetic Representation and Contested Transformation of Woljeong, South Korea.Well, she was [00:28:00] writing about Jeju Island in South Korea, and how once tourists started to take particular forms of images often of being one person in a beach, then different interests were able to move in and realize the value of this image and find ways to capitalize on all of the tourists that wanted to come and take that same image. So what that led to was the beach front where, this is largely a fishing community and other sort of small scale, more artisanal economies, was remade into cafes and restaurants and guest houses in a process that.I think it can be widely recognized in tourism development around the world. But what the author, Yu Jung Oh, is saying, is showing there, is that this was largely motivated by the ability to take this image, that [00:29:00] a tourist could go and purchase a coffee or something, and they would be able to take that image for their Instagram. So there's a really clear linkage there and I think that linkage can be made in many other places as well. But I think in that sense, Instagram and social media is, is can be leveraged for gentrification as, as many other tools can be and are being.Chris: Thank you, Sean. And so, know, for the rest of our time together, I'd like to kind of lean on you a little bit for your personal opinion. I know that sometimes working in and living in academic worlds that's kind of something to be left the doorstep before you walk in. But you know, you mentioned this notion of networked media and pre networked media and kind of social media falling into this wider term of networked media and since these mediums have only come to exist, in terms of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, [00:30:00] we're talking 15 years at the most, and then the extension or prototypes of those existing in the previous 10. So about 25 years, maybe. And I'm curious in this regard you know, I imagine that you're about my age, maybe a little bit younger so I'm curious if you have a lived memory of how things were before social media and perhaps even before the internet, what do you think we might be losing by virtue of not being able to remember the world without social media Sean: yeah, great question. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, very good question. Very, of course, fraught. So I guess for context, I was born in 1988. And. So I, got a cell phone at 16, and again, I got a smartphone and Instagram and WhatsApp. So I'm really in two minds about this. And in the first sense, I think it's important to be aware of [00:31:00] how with any new technology there's a great deal of anxiety and resistance and what might be called panic. And this isn't just social media or it's not just television, but we can go all the way back to radio, to novels.People were worried about that, to the written word back in the ancient Greek era. People were concerned that when we start writing things down, this is going to make it very difficult to remember things, and we're going to be less successful orators and our reasoning will be diluted because we start writing things down.So there's always this kind of fear of new technology, and part of me wants to recognize that this is just another one of those periods in which some sort of transformative technology comes along and many of [00:32:00] the generation who can remember what it was like beforehand is going to feel varying degrees of nostalgia for that period.That said, it's also difficult to not, at the same time, say that something really significant has, has, has happened, to not feel, I mean, honestly, I do certainly feel nostalgia for periods before social media. Some of the things which I think have been changed is the interest in finding ways to represent oneself, traveling. And this isn't to say that whenever one goes somewhere, one is always sort of seeing it as if from the viewfinder or, well, it wouldn't really be a viewfinder of a camera so much as, you know, one's phone screen.But that leads to. In being very interested in taking images that would be successful within the attention economies of a platform like Instagram, it can be difficult to [00:33:00] not see the world as if from the perspective of what would make a good picture for Instagram. There's a lot of different people who've come up with critiques of this process.I mean, if you think about it in terms of spectacle, you know, like Guy DuBord's idea that we're no longer, and he was writing in the 60s, you know, that we are seeing relationships, not between people, but between people and images. And so some sort of fundamental human connection is being lost because all we're doing is just relating to images and using images to relate to other people.I'm not so sure about universalizing that idea, but the ubiquity of social media and the Challenges to not somehow be on one of these platforms, in some even practical way does mean, I think, that there are significant influences in tourism as much as anything. Chris: Yeah, my my phone died the other day, abruptly. [00:34:00] And you know, I still have this computer that thankfully allows me to have this interview with you. And I can still access Facebook and Twitter, but for whatever reason, I can't access Instagram. And you know, it's been a few days and I'm really loving it.And then this morning I realized that I had planned to upload a post for the podcast. And then I was just like, okay, well, my best recourse of action is to just stay calm and wait, right? Yeah, and it's a big question, and I think it's something that, I wonder if young people, say people born, you know, 2000 or after would be able to answer with, with any, without having lived in a time without social media, for example. And so this kind of like brings us a little bit towards the towards theme of media ecology, which, you know, we talked about just very briefly before we started our interview here and I had taken Andrew McLuhan's Understanding Media [00:35:00] Intensive last year.He was also on the pod in the, in season three and just generally speaking for our listeners media ecology, within media ecology, the focus is on the medium and not just the message. It's a way of taking to task the context of our technology and not just the content.And so this manufacturing of emptiness of people and places as brands and I'm curious, isn't this to a large extent, also contingent on our tools, on the limits and architecture of the camera, for example? You know, do we stop with Instagram or do we look at all social media and later all tools? Because these media exist within each other, right?Instagram is a medium within the internet, I suppose, and then the internet is a medium within the phone. Maybe you could make that argument. It's not to say, if we didn't have these things, if we didn't have Instagram, if we didn't have [00:36:00] social media, would the promontory witness just disappear? I don't think it's as easy as that. But Would it be as intensely magnified in our time? Sean: So yes, I think the question of magnification is really what sits at the heart of social media because if we're looking at the medium of Instagram, then we have to think about photography and which was invented in the 1840s.And then if we think about photography, we have to think about painting the way that landscape has been represented in many different cultures, both in painting in the Western, Chinese and many other traditions, but then also in poetry and literature. So with all of these things, there's a precedent.And I think if you look at something like the Promontory Witness, this composition and this the visual formation of having one person immersed within a landscape or standing at some edge of a cliff, that's been around for [00:37:00] 200 years at least. You can see some in the later 1700s that look like this, but then the desire to be the only person in a particular place to have gotten off of the beaten track and be the distinguished traveler, that's also been around for, for a very long time. So that's why I think I'm hesitant to sort of pin the blame on Instagram.And I think my thinking around this has taken a bit of it, not exactly a turn, but it's changed a bit. So I think there's a real tendency to look at platforms like Instagram as only being spaces in which processes of gentrification can gain momentum, or only be spaces where one is almost disciplined into being a neoliberal subject who, is working sort of subconsciously thinking about how to brand oneself all the time, specifically in places of tourism, you know, that it's a way that people [00:38:00] only think about the pictures. They only want to go take a picture in these places. They don't actually want to have any experiences in this place or relationships with the people there. And I think that really exists. That is absolutely one dimension of what takes place with social media platforms. But as many people I've spoken to say, social media is a double edged sword. And where that's really been driven home to me has been where I've been conducting research for the past almost two years now. Sometimes they're in person, other times digitally, in Oman, a country in the Arabian peninsula where I was interested initially because it was becoming more popular as an international tourism destination. So, I went there after the pandemic expecting to meet all these people who were experiencing the problematics of international tourism as we know well, I think from your podcast among other, among other spaces.And there's some of that, absolutely. But what I also found was that, in the past few [00:39:00] years, people who are living in Oman, and this is both Omanis, people who have citizenship and then also residents, so there's about 40 percent of the country is made up of people who don't have citizenship in Oman, like many other Gulf countries.And in the past few years, I mean, we're talking five years, maximum ten years, there's been this surge of interest in nature, or we can say is the non human or even the more than human environment and what's can be understood as domestic nature tourism, I think, like many places around the world, domestic nature tourism in Oman became was very popularized during the pandemic when people could not travel abroad. But what this meant is that people saw these images on Instagram and Instagram is really most popular app in Oman, next to WhatsApp, and that introduced them to parts of the country that they'd never [00:40:00] interacted with before.And Oman is this incredibly various and fascinating environment where there's mountains that are, you know, over 3, 000 meters higher, what is that 10, 000 feet you know, all of this coastline and with coral reefs and these waddies or slot canyons. And people began to engage with the environments in a very different way to go on hiking trips, to go on canyoning trips and social media was this massive part of that. You know, this is where people learned about this possibility, this is where people met people to introduce them, to take them safely into these spaces. They'd never been on a hike before. You know, Instagram is where they're going to meet somebody to go out into nature with.And it's not to say that this doesn't have problems associated with it, and everything I suppose related with tourism does, but I think it also represents a case where Instagram, in this sense, was a way that people are actively connecting to nature, and in a place [00:41:00] where, you know, Instagram existed and was widely used before nature tourism was a thing.And I think this kind of flips the narrative a bit where in Western Europe, where I'm sitting right now, for instance, there's been this long time practice of nature tourism, you know, going back to, again, the 1900s. You know, people started climbing Alps in the 1850s and so forth. And then Instagram comes along and everybody's saying, oh, people just want to climb the mountain to take a picture. you know, they don't actually care about nature. Well, in Oman, people weren't really, not that many people were climbing mountains, before the ability to take a picture existed. So, there's a bit of a different trajectory in which people began to relate to a particular space and to the kinds of experiences that one can have engaging in nature tourism.So in that sense to go back to your to your question about what do we essentially do with this platform? [00:42:00] And how do we address the problematics? I don't think that I mean, I think that Instagram will not be the most popular platform forever, certainly, but social media, or this kind of connected media, barring some kind of unforeseen complication. I mean, looking at you, AI. But this sort of communication is here to stay probably. So, can we find ways in which this space is can be generative of community could be generative of care and ethical forms of travel? What might that look like? And what kind of imagery might be associated with it?Chris: I'm curious in that regard, Oman to me is someone who's never been and probably, you know extremely ignorant to any of the nation's culture or history. I imagine modernity to be something of a recent arrival in that place, relatively speaking, correct me if I'm wrong, of course. And I guess what I'm curious about in the context of your research and most [00:43:00] recent research is if you've seen the conflicts that might arise in terms of traditional hospitality? What it means to be in a place, as opposed to a landscape, what it means to be a host, as opposed to, I guess a landlord, in the Airbnb sense of the word and perhaps also what it means to be a traveler as opposed to a tourist within the context of these new economic dynamics in Oman and if Instagram has anything to do with that? Sean: No, that's, that's a wonderful question. It's one I really appreciate as I continue to work there and spend time with people who've been incredibly generous showing me around and introducing me to what their life is like as people who participate in tourism. I mean, the first thing I would say is the Oman, the Arabian peninsula and really Arabic speaking cultures generally is hospitality is one of the most fundamentally [00:44:00] important things in social relationships. In what it means to be a part of this culture, one is hospitable to guests, to friends, to family members. It's almost difficult to understate how integral this is. I mean, it is, in many cultures, hospitality is big, but it's very big in this space.And so I think it's a particularly well suited question to, you know, how is tourism and how is social media impacting this code of conduct and, you know this really wonderful practice that I think, you know, the rest of the world can stand to learn a lot from.So, to your question about sort of where my mind sits in this span of development. Oil was discovered in the 1960s and kind of transformative effect as it has everywhere. And in this time, there was a great degree of urbanization. People could get services rather than relying on culture, trading, which comes from a pre oil economy.[00:45:00] Now, you see, I think, a couple things. For one thing, cultures of hospitality, I think, were already being disturbed by the way that neoliberal capitalism tends to work, not just in Oman, but anywhere around the world. It encourages people to find ways to profit themselves and to think as individual agents rather than as being part of a community, having responsibilities to the humans, but also nonhumans to the land as well as to one's family.So that process is already in it's already taking place before tourism began to take root. And I think there are some spaces in which tourism is developing in such a way that it's very profit oriented. And where people are incentivized to privilege [00:46:00] their own gains over those of others.However, there are other ways I think in which people who, say we're living in the city, are meeting people who live in fairly remote areas, under the auspices of tourism. Because they're engaging in tourism, they're meeting people who are living in these spaces and often chatting with them or sharing a meal or sharing coffee or something like this.Sometimes these people who are living in places that are becoming tourism destinations are part of the industry and sometimes people are not, but as it stands now, it seems as very much a preservation of hospitality within this, this particular context. As with anything, I think the question of tourism is to what extent this will become commodified or not, like how do we make money off of this culture of hospitality?How do we turn it into a tourist product? You know, we can sell Oman as being it's hospitable, come meet the locals. But in the way that people continue [00:47:00] to practice it, both people who are living in Oman and being domestic tourists and also people who are seeing tourists come to where they live in ways that they haven't before. To me, it still seems like it's very robustly in place.Chris: Good to hear. And I very much look forward to the publication of your research. Hopefully it'll see the light of day soon, perhaps. Sean: I hope so. Yeah. Things are in process for sure. Chris: Okay. Well, I'd like to thank you, Sean, on behalf of our listeners for joining us today. And you know, this leads me of course, to the question of how might they be able to get in touch with you or follow your work. And if that includes an Instagram handle. Sean: Yeah, that's, that's fine. So I I recently started another Instagram account. I had my own account and stopped posting about 2019.And then I got interested in it again. I opened a new account, which is sort of more research facing. So yeah, if people wanna check that [00:48:00] out, it's @SPSMITHS, so S-P-S-M-I-T-H-S or email spSmith@tilburguniversity.edu. So always pleased to hear ideas and of course things that I've missed because of course I have so much to learn in this space.So I would really look forward to feedback and ideas. Hmm. Chris: Well, I'll make sure all of that's on the End of Tourism website and the podcast page when the interview launches and as well as the other authors, researchers and works that you mentioned earlier on. So once again, it's been amazing, Sean, thank you so much for being able to really flesh these complex ideas out for us and we'll see what happens, right?Sean: Absolutely. Thanks very much for the invitation. And as always, I'll look forward to continue listening. This is such an excellent project. Chris: Thank you, Sean.This episode and others like it are created and made possible by the generosity of Substack subcribers like yourself. Similarly, I have subsidized the work of the pod with my own time and money. This is a labour of love and lineage that requires the support of others. Please consider offering a gift in return, whether that include upgrading to paid subscription, making a one-time donation, sharing the podcast among your people or being willing to reach out and assist in production (as others have). Thank you. Bless. Peace. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

During Hour 2 we were joined in studio by former NHLer and author Sean Pronger and former Oiler, Stanley Cup champion, and Hockey Hall of Famer Chris Pronger to talk hockey and their new whiskey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to "The Kasabian Lavoe Show"! Today, we dive into the latest buzz with Chris Sean's rock face tattoo, Griselda Blanco's Netflix movie, and Snoop Dogg's UnderDoggs. We'll unravel the intriguing connection between Taylor Swift and Trump, explore Lisa Ann's unexpected legal troubles, and mourn the passing of Jesse Jane, the renowned porn star. Get ready for shocking revelations, as we discuss Nevada's surprising rank in car insurance rates and the questionable proclamation from a pastor claiming divine endorsement for a scam. Plus, Alyssa Milano's unconventional GoFundMe for her son's baseball trip, the mystery behind Killer Mike's incarceration, and the unforgettable SNL moment with JLo and Ayo. As the plot thickens, discover why Trump is nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and witness Jay Z's latest venture. Buckle up for a rollercoaster of celebrity news and intriguing stories on today's episode! #Subscribe #kasabianlavoe

Despite the title of this episode, our three fearless podcasters have mostly nice things to say about the three 60th Anniversary Specials.  Like the Tenant Doctor, JB, Chris & Sean come to terms with slowing down in their advanced ages while the world of Doctor Who moves on to a more fantastical direction.  It gets kinda philosophical, but we get in a few lewd comments along the way (hence the double meaning of the podcast episode).  

Hey! Let's unbox this new phone! And this new thumb drive! And this multi-million dollar SaaS platform…

In this episode I'll be talking about just random things and Chris Sean and blueface

Book a 1:1 w/ me! - https://topmate.io/realchrissean Zero To Mastery Courses I That I Recommend Below: - Master React.js Here: https://bit.ly/LearnReactNow - Complete Jr to Sr Web Dev Roadmap: https://bit.ly/Jr2SrRoadMap - Master FAANG Coding Interviews: https://bit.ly/FAANGPREP Chris Sean Talks Podcast: https://spoti.fi/2YuqPEY TikTok & Twitter: @RealChrisSean --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/chrisseantalks/support

Argo Bounce Podcast is a weekly live audio show about the Canadian Football League's Toronto Argonauts in 2023 with co-hosts Nick Small and Chris Pomay as we break down the Canadian Football League's Toronto Argonauts previous games both at home and on the road and preview their upcoming opponents from around the Canadian Football League with special guest(s) from time time to time. #argobounce #podcast #weekly #talkshow #torontoargonauts #canadianfootballleague #bmofield #cohosts #nicksmall #chrispomay #audio #applepodcasts #googlepodcasts #spotifyforpodcasters #spotify #iheartradio #amazonmusic #castboxfm #stitcher #tunein #pocketcasts #radiopublic #linkedin #youtube #facebook #twitter #twitch #linkedin

On the episode this week we recap the latest regionals and special event and we also take a look at the Obsidian Flames pre-release promos. Also on this week are special guests Chris & Sean of Marley TCG who will be filling in for Alex & Cath.

In which JB survives his first New Orleans Mardi Gras experience, Colin Baker gets cancelled, Doctor Who officially becomes part of the Marvel Universe, and Chris & Sean are tested on their knowledge of Doctor Who incidental and source music.  

December 20, 2022 ~ Matthew Schneider, Former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan and Honigman Attorney talks to Chris & Sean about the January 6th committee's decision to recommend criminal charges against Former President Donald Trump. Photo credit to © Pool Photo.

December 20, 2022 ~ Reed Allmand, Expert on personal debt has some great tips for Chris & Sean on how to erase holiday debt in January.

December 20, 2022 ~ Steve Courtney, WJR Sports Analyst talks to Chris & Sean about the Detroit Red Wings and he says they are struggling.

December 20, 2022 ~ Kim Muench, Certified Parenting Coach & Founder of the Real Life Parent Guide tells Chris & Sean some Gen Z's are refusing to teach their kids about Santa Claus because they claim it's traumatizing.

December 20, 2022 ~ Eben Brown, Fox News Correspondent & WJR Contributor talks to Chris & Sean about Elon Musk's Twitter poll and he says there's still no word on whether the Twitter Owner will step down.

December 20, 2022 ~ Fr. Tim McCabe, Executive Director & President of the Pope Francis Center tells Chris & Sean the winter weather is tough on the homeless and this week they are honoring those who died on the street in 2022. Photo credit to © Ryan Garza / USA TODAY NETWORK.

December 19, 2022 ~ Steve Courtney, WJR Sports Analyst talks to Chris & Sean about the Lions' win over the Jets on Sunday and he says this team is getting closer to a possible playoff spot. Photo credit to © Danielle Parhizkaran/NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK

December 19, 2022 ~ Bill Keenist, Detroit Lions Expert & Co-Host of Gridiron Wrap talks to Chris & Sean about the Lions and he says the fans are really enjoying this year's team. Photo credit to © Danielle Parhizkaran/NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK

December 19, 2022 ~ Nolan Finley, Detroit News Editorial Page Editor talks to Chris & Sean about the relationship between Twitter, Democrats and Big Tech.

November 30, 2022 ~ Todd Flood, Detroit area attorney talks to Chris & Sean about the Supreme Court decision to send the Crumbley case back to the Michigan Court of Appeals for clarification and he explains the issues involved in the case. Photo credit to © Detroit Free Press-USA TODAY NET.

November 30, 2022 ~ Jonathan Savage, Fox News Correspondent & WJR Contributor talks to Chris & Sean about the U.S. win over Iran at the World Soccer Cup tournament in Qatar. Photo credit to © Yukihito Taguchi-USA TODAY Sports

November 30, 2022 ~ Scott Weidenfeller, Attorney with Grewal Law talks to Chris & Sean about his lawsuit representing Oxford parents and he explains why they want class action status in this case.

November 30, 2022 ~ Lloyd Jackson, WJR Senior News Analyst talks to Chris & Sean about a story out of New York City where the Mayor has announced a plan to have mentally ill people living on the streets and subways involuntarily hospitalized.

November 30, 2022 ~ Dan DiBardino, Crime Stoppers President & CEO talks to Chris & Sean about crime prevention in Metro Detroit and he also says they are getting ready for their annual Christmas party for kids.

November 29, 2022 ~ Mike Bouchard, Oakland County Sheriff talks to Chris & Sean about his "Coats for the Cold" drive and he says they are collecting new and clean used coats through November 30th. He also has some thoughts on the Oxford school shooting tragedy.

November 29, 2022 ~ Bill Donnelly, Former Oxford School Board President & Bill Seikaly, Detroit area attorney talk to Chris & Sean about the Oxford school shooting and they say school authorities could have done more to prevent the tragedy.

November 29, 2022 ~ Frank Ragnow, Detroit Lions Center talks to Steve, Chris & Sean about the Lions season and he says it feels good to be getting better.

November 29, 2022 ~ Tom Watkins, expert on China talks to Chris & Sean about the ongoing COVID protests and he has an interesting perspective on how the Chinese leaders will deal with the protestors.

November 29, 2022 ~ Tom Izzo, MSU Basketball Coach talks to Steve, Chris & Sean about the Phil Knight Tournament and he also has some interesting thoughts on the $100,000 fine leveled against the MSU football program.

November 28, 2022 ~ Steve Courtney, WJR Sports Analyst talks to Chris & Sean about the college football weekend and he says Michigan had a great game and MSU struggled.

November 28, 2022 ~ Bill Seikaly, Detroit area attorney talks to Chris & Sean about the ongoing investigation into what happened a year ago during the tragic Oxford High School shooting and he says there's more to the story and it will be coming out later today.

November 28, 2022 ~ Jonathan Savage, Fox News Correspondent & WJR Contributor talks to Chris & Sean live from London about the drama surrounding the World Soccer Cup playoffs and he also addresses the massive protests in China.

November 28, 2022 ~ Edgar Dworsky, Lawyer & Consumer Advocate talks to Chris & Sean about "shrinkflation" and he explains how consumers are getting hit by smaller packages and higher prices. He also talks about digital discrimination when it comes to using coupons in grocery stores.

November 15, 2022 ~ Frank Ragnow, Detroit Lions Center talks to Steve, Chris & Sean about the Lions big win on Sunday against the Chicago Bears.

November 15, 2022 ~ Steve Courtney, WJR Sports Analyst tells Chris & Sean the Miami Marlins have appointed a woman to the top management job in the organization.

November 15, 2022 ~ Tim Walberg, Republican Congressman talks to Chris & Sean about the mid-term elections and his recent trip to the climate summit.

November 14, 2022 ~ Nolan Finley, Detroit News Editorial Page Editor talks to Chris & Sean about Former President Donald Trump's influence on the Republican party and he says the GOP needs to move away from the former President.

November 14, 2022 ~ Steve Courtney, WJR Sports Analyst talks to Chris & Sean about the great Michigan football weekend and he says once again the Spartans, Wolverines and Lions are all winners.

September 29, 2022 ~ Marie Osborne, WJR Senior News Analyst has the latest on the Hurricane Ian and she tells Chris & Sean that Lee County has been hard hit and it looks like there may be some casualties. Photo credit to © The News-Press-USA TODAY NETWORK

September 29, 2022 ~ AAA's Howard Hughey talks to Chris & Sean about this Saturday's Auto Fest and he says if you love cars, come check out the event at the company's main headquarters in Dearborn.

September 29, 2022 ~ Eben Brown, Fox News Correspondent & WJR Contributor talks to Chris & Sean about the hurricane damage in Florida and he says Lee County has been hit very hard and the damage is devastating. Photo credit © The News-Press-USA TODAY NETWORK

September 29, 2022 ~ Kathy Hoekstra, Development Communications Officer with the Pacific Legal Foundation talks to Chris & Sean about the lawsuit filed challenging President Biden's loan forgiveness plan.

September 6, 2022 ~ The Detroit area attorney talks to Chris & Sean about the weekend decision from a U.S. District Court Judge in Florida ordering the appointment of an independent master to review the documents seized from Former President Donald Trump's home. Photo credit © GREG LOVETT/THE PALM BEACH POST / USA TODAY NETWORK

September 6, 2022 ~ The WJR Sports Analyst talks to Chris & Sean about the first weekend of college football and they say it's going to be a great, competitive season for many teams including MSU and U of M.

September 6, 2022 ~ The Fox News Correspondent & WJR Contributor talks to Chris & Sean about another delay for NASA's Artemis space mission. Photo credit © Craig Bailey / USA TODAY NETWORK

September 6, 2022 ~ The Detroit News Reporter talks to Chris & Sean about his investigation into unusual behavior involving several state lawmakers and he says not enough is being done in Lansing to make sure ethics rules are followed.

September 6, 2022 ~ The WJR Senior News Analyst tells Chris & Sean one of the suspects in the stabbing deaths of 10 people in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan has been found dead, as police continue the search for a second suspect.

Chris Brailey joins the podcast to tell the story of a chance meeting with Noah in 2010 that led to moving in, trusting people too much, Hob knobbing with a rockstar, the tech elite and one of the strangest stories of fate you'll ever hear...

April 8, 2022 ~ The WJR Senior News Analyst talks to Chris & Sean about the great Detroit tradition of Opening Day and she says the bars and restaurants in Detroit are ready for the big day.

April 8, 2022 ~ The President & CEO of the Detroit Opera welcomes Chris & Sean back to the beautiful venue for Opening Day.

April 8, 2022 ~ The WJR Senior News Analyst talks to Chris & Sean about the great Detroit tradition of Opening Day and he says police are expecting big crowds in town for the event.

April 8, 2022 ~ The President & CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago talks to Chris & Sean about his upcoming appearance at the Detroit Economic Club and his says the conversation will be all about the economy, U.S. monetary policy and inflation.

April 8, 2022 ~ The Former Detroit Tigers Pitcher talks to Chris & Sean about the Tigers season and he says the team will be fun to watch.

April 8, 2022 ~ The Detroit Tigers Pitcher talks to Chris & Sean about Opening Day and he says it's going to be a great season of baseball in the D.

March 2, 2022 ~ The Blogger for "Bless You Boys" talks to Chris & Sean about the ongoing baseball talks and he says money is the main sticking point in the negotiations.

February 21, 2022 ~ The Baseball Blogger with "Bless You Boys" talks to Chris & Sean about Major League Baseball negotiations and he says the owners and players are far apart.

While many of the Doctor Who podcast community squee away at Gallifrey One, our fearless three have their usual drunken ramblings over Skype. Topics include: Moving to N'awlins, ketchup on hotdogs, JB's podcast anniversary, lurking thru the tweets from Gallifrey One, Paul Cornell gas lighting a fan on Twitter, apparently criticism now equals toxic fandom, the f*cking David Tennant rumors, Chris & Sean present The Doctor Who Book Club, Sean insults Gary Russell to his face, Chris gets triggered by Jacqueline Rayner's writing, JB gets dissed by Graeme Burk, what pronouns we should be using for the Doctor, the Venn diagram of the transgender community and the Doctor Who fan community, JB is the rim-shot king, Thasmine wasn't planned, the true definition of fangirls and fanboys, recording The TARDIS Tavern at a VFW, getting traumatized by a William Hartnell love scene, Sean can't remember Christopher Eccleston's name, Lydia West will probably be the next Doctor, farewell to Chicago motherf*ckers!

Whenever you strive for a goal, there are most likely people who have achieved that goal. People you look up to and admire. Since I first started learning code and set myself the goal of becoming a software engineer, Chris Sean has been one of the people I looked up to. Today I am honored to have him as my podcast guest. Watch the video version here: https://youtu.be/gz74l8jlNPY Follow me on: YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/codestories Twitter | https://twitter.com/_codestories LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathaniel-idahosa/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/_codestories

Imagine that as a teenager you had the life anyone could only dream of. You had everything you wanted. Your family was well-off. Money was not a problem. But then, all of a sudden on your early 20s, the rug gets pulled from under your feet and the family business goes under. You and your loved ones loose everything you have. I spoke with Chris Sean. Chris was able to turn his life around by learning how to code and this is how he did it. Enjoy his amazing comeback story. Full show notes and links: https://SoloCoder.com/69

Me and Chris go on an interesting journey throughout this episode talking about some reasons you should become a developer as well as what to look forward too! There may or may not be some tangents in this one as well.. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/saylesss/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/saylesss/support

JB, Chris & Sean take turns acting as prosecutor, defender and judge as they place a handful of Doctor Who stories on trial. This is probably the crudest episode we’re recorded thus far from beginning to end, so we apologize in advance. TODAY’S (randomly picked) TRIAL DOCKET: “Listen”, “The Rescue”, “The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood”, and “The End of Time, Parts 1 & 2”.

0:00 - 3:18 Intro 3:42 - 6:41 Thoughts about School 7:10 - 8: 42 How did Chris get exposed to coding 8:50 - 13:34 Bootcamps/College VS Self-Taught 13:40 - 15:57 Team Treehouse Experience 16:00 - 18:03 Confidence / Imposter Syndrome 18:05 - 20:18 How Team Treehouse helped Chris get a Job 21:20 - 24:00 Patience is key and the hard work pays off 24:12 - 32:00 Roadblocks 32:12 - 34:50 Planning for the Future 37:50 - 40:12 Feeling lost / How to find your own path 40:19 - 47:20 What Chris would go back and do differently 47:27 - 50:32 Closing Tips and Motivation Chris Sean Social Media: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu1xbgCV5o48h_BYCQD7KJg Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realchrissean/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/RealChrisSean --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/saylesss/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/saylesss/support

The podcast officially regenerates for the new age of uncertainty and social distancing over Skype. JB, Chris & Sean cope with the new normal by playing “the Game of Rassilon” where Doctors and companions are randomly mixed and matched into stories which were also mixed and matched to other writers. CONTENTS INCLUDE: Doctor Who DOES give a fuck, “that’s what she said!”, Graeme Burk writes a decent comedy sketch, Big Finish, Tom Baker’s voiceover outtakes, not buying the Blu-Rays, midwestern accents, 4x3 vs 16x9 aspect ratios, killing off Nardole, “it was Earth all along!”, fake plastic tree monsters, Neil Gaiman grudge match, a cameo from Reed, Amanda Fucking Palmer, ASMR in space, “Ben”, HIP mall, Project Runway rejects, non-recyclable Autons, gay spiders, killing off Lee from the TV movie, racist jokes from The Walking Dead, the dark side of Patrick Troughton, convention sex, virtual conventions, RIP MLB, enjoying social distancing, hoarding TP and eggs, political memes on Facebook, Dystopian or Star Trek future?, “It’s Gonna Get Better”.

Ep 5!  The guest this week is Joey Greer.  He's a talented young comedian who can be seen in at least 3 different shows at Westside Comedy at any given moment.  The guys talk road gigs, Joey's hard knocks upbringing in Miami, and how Noah, from the Bible, was sexually abused.  There's a lot on religion here, as up top, Chris & Sean lay it out about their own religious beliefs.  Enjoy! 

Our guest this time 'round is Lloyd Ahlquist, AKA EPICLLOYD (EPIC RAP BATTLES OF HISTORY).  He's one half of the biggest show on the internet (1.2 Billion views and counting) and our longtime friend.  The guys talk Lloyd's rap game, advice for new/aspiring rappers, and duck dicks.  Up top, Chris & Sean talk about internet articles you just can't not read. 

Chris & Sean introduce themselves in their first official podcast! They discuss some of gaming's recent news, set the rules for the 'Pitch Fever' feature and Sean's phone rings!