wellness theories

The Boys of Chapo Trap House Share Their Wellness Secrets

Clockwise from top: Matt Christman, Will Menaker, Felix Biederman, Brendan James, Virgil Texas. Photo-Illustration: Stevie Remsberg

The leftist comedy podcast Chapo Trap House launched back in March 2016 and quickly distinguished itself with an irreverent and vulgar style that skewered conservatives, centrists, and liberals alike. It’s since grown wildly popular, with the hosts — Felix Biederman, Matt Christman, Amber A’Lee Frost, Will Menaker, and Virgil Texas — now pulling in more than $100,000 per month from listeners. This week, they released their first book, The Chapo Guide to Revolution, a deranged political satire for the current moment.

The Chapo boys call their fans “failsons,” young men who live with their parents and are primarily occupied with “gaming and masturbating.” The group also identify as proud representatives of the “Dirtbag Left,” a term that was coined by Frost and defined by Menaker and Christman as people who “sleep on a mattress and fuck on the floor” and “if you are bearded and have no headboard.” They themselves are mostly bearded, mostly into gaming, and mostly extremely online. Overall, they seem profoundly unwell — so, naturally, we wanted to ask them about their wellness habits.

Here, the guys of Chapo, plus co-author Brendan James, talked to the Cut about their daily routines — from erratic tooth brushing to winding down with Vanderpump Rules.

How I start my morning:

Matt Christman: I get up somewhere between 9 and 10 and then I go on the internet. Twitter, of course. I don’t put anything on my face. I admit it, I don’t shower every day. I will often leave the apartment without having looked in the mirror.

Virgil Texas: Short answer: mornings, hard pass, don’t do ‘em. If I’m up in the morning, it’s because I’m checking my premium apps for bonus energy, bonus coins, bonus tickets, bonus Candy Crush, things of that nature.

Will Menaker: I usually get up around 10, 10:30, 11. Or later than that if I’ve stayed out the night before. But my morning routine starts the same way every day: C for cordyceps. I wake up, do my cordyceps. And then I do 20 minutes of breathing, and then 20 minutes of looking. Another very important part of my morning routine is having my cat, Marty, watch me do a BM. He’s a bathroom sicko.

Felix Biederman: The ideal situation for me is I wake up around 11 or 12. Not because I’m lazy or because I’ve been reading the first three sentences of Wikipedias or watching Twitch compilations but because I consider myself a professional athlete first and foremost and I want my body to peak during combat time — which is either when I’m playing computer games with my friends at night or I’m recording.

What I eat for breakfast:

WM: I’ll blend up some ferns into my cordyceps, and make a good cordyceps green juice, and drink that. Then I’ll have some maybe zucchini ribbons, if I’m feeling a little bit more peckish. If I can make it to about 3 or 4 o’clock, and I’ve had a productive morning and early afternoon, then I’ll reward myself by smoking weed for the rest of the day.

Brendan James: I don’t normally eat breakfast, so I’m not gonna answer that one.

MC: I usually don’t have breakfast. Sometimes I’ll have yogurt, if it’s in the house. FAGE. Or the Siggi’s.

VT: Pain.

FB: I eat a protein bar that, due to advances in technology, now taste like cardboard and Splenda. They used to just taste like cardboard a few years ago. I will either have coffee or be out of coffee and drink the type of Monster energy that Boomers drink, the kind that comes in a white can. It tastes like a non-naturally occurring fruit.

How I exercise:

MC: Mostly just walking around the city and stuff, no routine.

WM: With every minute I continue to breathe, I am getting fatter and my body is falling apart. So now I’m sort of confronted with my own mortality, and I have decided to run, occasionally. I’ll run until I can’t anymore.

VT: I get mental exercise, at the literary chess board of blog comment sections.

FB: I will go to the gym and depending how many people are there, I’m going to do Olympic lifts because, really, if no one’s there they’re not going to yell at me for doing that. I do that for about two and a half hours.

My nighttime routine:

WM: I’ll have a nice dinner, and that’ll tide me over until about 2 or 3 in the morning, which is when I usually have my second dinner. That’s like, a bag of tortilla chips and salsa, or maybe just a sleeve of Oreos, right before I go to bed. I definitely brush my teeth every night. For sure. I have never ever once forgotten to brush my teeth before going to bed, or just actively made the decision not to because the bathroom is too far away and I’m already in bed.

MC: I go to bed around 1 or 2 on a normal night. I brush my teeth but at like, some point during the day. Sometimes it’ll be in the morning. Sometimes I’ll forget in the morning and do it in the afternoon, sometimes I’ll forget in the afternoon and do it in the evening. But it’s never really consistent.

BJ: I’ve been flossing more. It’s never really been explained or exposed, but flossing is actually very good for you. I recommend it. It makes me feel better. Makes me know that I’m looking my best, and I’m feeling my best when I go into any kind of social situation. So floss has changed me. It’s good.

VT: First off, I put on my evening blazer, have a few aperitifs. Then I have a light din-din, rich in nutritious carbohydrates. And then it’s off to my polypod, where we play Twilight Struggle and do whip-its into the wee hours.

FB: I have a very European dinner, like 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock. I try to carb taper, to get a lean protein and a vegetable. That’s one of my fears, just forgetting to eat vegetables and getting some type of disease. Then I’m watching Vanderpump. It puts you in a good enough place to go to sleep. I think Jax Taylor is like a Dr. Manhattan type. He has one of those brains — the brain that Donald Trump has — where you can’t really feel bad about anything, you can’t be embarrassed. You just have enough charisma to get what you want, and he has one of the most powerful of those brains that I’ve ever seen.

What wellness means to me:

WM: Wellness basically means to me staying cool, getting fucked up, and smoking weed every day.

VT: Wellness means taking it easy, having fun, and being loyal to your friends.

BJ: I hope to someday discover this, but I don’t know the answer to that question, ‘cause I’m desperately trying to figure it out.

FB: I feel like it’s a good word in general, but it got taken over to mean a very generalized Instagram thing. For me, it has a very specific definition: it’s just like, you don’t have diarrhea all the time, you can see the veins on your lower stomach, and you don’t get tired completing minute tasks.

MC: Not dying.

The Boys of Chapo Trap House Share Their Wellness Secrets