If you’re like us, you’ve probably wondered what everyday stuff famous people add to their carts, like hair spray or an electric toothbrush. We asked Jason Stewart, co-host of the podcast How Long Gone with Strategist contributor Chris Black, about the only grippy socks that fit his size 16 feet, the beard trimmer recommended by his barber, and the chef’s knife he’s been using for a decade.
These are basically the same thing as a foam roller, except they’re tiny, hard rubber balls. They come in different sizes. I like one that’s about the size of a baseball or so. If you’ve had a long, stressful day, you can put a yoga mat on the ground and just lie on it on your ass, on your ribs, on your side, your chest — everything. And then you can also stand on it and rub your foot on top of it, and it kind of breaks up a lot of tension there. They also make balls that are smaller, like an inch tall or whatever. They probably get into some dark and sinister places of your body.
A Berkey is a water filter that cool people who have a little bit of money have. The travel size is better. I’ve never traveled with it. That’d be insane. But because I live with one person, we don’t need a giant family-size Berkey. The best part about it is you can try to figure out an accessory or a stand for it so it’s not just sitting on the counter. So if you elevate it up, with enough room to put your Nalgene underneath it, it’s very convenient. And then it’s a satisfying thing to clean as well because it has a mirror finish and it gets dirty easily. It feels like you’re washing a car when you take the time to buff it real good.
I started doing Pilates maybe a year ago or so, and I’m a big fan of it, but I’m really tall, and not a lot of companies make socks that are XL in the yoga-grippy-sock department. They’re just so ugly that I like them, if that makes sense. They’re not trying to be stylish. But they feel good, they’re high quality, and it doesn’t really matter. Everyone’s Pilates socks look ridiculous, so who cares?
This is the same clipper that my barber uses. I used to just have hair clippers that I would get on Amazon, and they’d be okay. They wouldn’t be bad, but I wasn’t feeling like I was using a professional tool. It’s nice to have a quality tool. It’s very heavy-duty, very solid, very industrial, no frills, no bullshit, no gizmos and flips and switches. It’s very, very precise, and very powerful. You turn it on, you turn it off, it’ll survive a nuclear attack kind of thing, and it has a thick cord and a thick cable.
I got this knife probably ten years ago as a gift from my old roommate. He’s really into cooking, but he has the crazy $500 Japanese blades that are all super nerdy. It feels a little overkill unless you’re literally making sushi every day. But he gave me this knife, and it’s kind of similar to the clippers. It’s just a straight-ahead, no-nonsense, high-quality knife. And I like it because it’s very light, but the weight is still really balanced. It’s a thin blade that gets really sharp. And the thing that sort of sealed the deal is that whenever I go in and get it sharpened, wherever I go, the guy will be like, “Ah, good knife, bro.”
We obviously have a Swiffer that we use for our house, but I have this mini one, and I keep it in my car underneath my seat. If I ever get to a destination too early, or I need to kill time, or I’m sitting in traffic, I will pull out the Swiffer and dust my car. You can leave it there forever and you never notice it, but then when it looks like a damned ecosystem on your dashboard, you’re like, I’m going to start dusting.
Definitely don’t buy any weed products because the branding or the name is cool — except for Pure Beauty or Rose Los Angeles. Those are cool ones. This brand I discovered originally because their flavors were real, interesting things, like marionberry, which is an actual berry. I think they have blackberry, huckleberry, raspberry — so they’re like real fruit berry flavors instead of what you normally get with edibles, which is like children’s candy. It’s not too sweet. It’s delicious and fun to eat. This particular kind of indica just clicks with me. It’s very consistent. I know how I’m going to feel, and it’s easy to bite it in half if you want a little bit.
I have a kink for awful masculine-smelling drugstore colognes and body washes, but it’s hard to find a masculine scent that doesn’t disgust my loved ones. This unisex floral scent is the perfect compromise, with a modern manly note from the cypress, leaving your whole body smelling great. Plus, the packaging and design are as cool as it gets. My wife swears by it, too.
The sauna is literally warming up right now as we’re talking. A couple years ago, my wife and I decided, “Let’s not get each other any Christmas or any birthday presents this year. Let’s just pool our money and straight-up buy a sauna.” They come to your house and set it all up for you. It’s the biggest one you can get that doesn’t need weird power or anything like that. It has Bluetooth, it has red lights, purple lights, blue lights, green lights. There’s a little thing where you can put your iPad inside behind glass, so I’m just watching movies or I’ll just put on an ambient chill mix and read a book. It’s a good way to sort of create space in between two people and have your own private time, your own kind of decompression time, even if it’s just behind the glass door. There’s a respect that we give each other when we’re in the sauna.
I don’t really need to tell people why to use Nalgene at this point, but I just like our design: clear plastic with a black lid. It’s just kind of like a refreshing regular thing. Obviously, you don’t need to get my logo on it, but I truly use it every single day of my life. I fill it up with my Berkey. I’m a big fan of the narrow mouth hole instead of the full size. It’s still big enough to put a little ice cube from my ice-cube machine in for a chiller during the hot months.
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