The Monday Media Diet with Chris Gayomali

On the Enhanced Games, Pool House, and Pay or Dispute

Chris Gayomali is a NYC-based magazine writer. He also runs the excellent HEAVIES on Substack. Check out one of my favorite features on Errolson Hugh he wrote here. -CJN

Tell us about yourself.

I’m Chris Gayomali, a writer, editor, and consultant based in New York City. My current “job” is carved up and distributed into a bunch of different work horcruxes should any of my chosen industries die: During the day I’m the head of editorial at SSENSE, and outside of that I write features for magazines like New York, GQ, and National Geographic. I also run a health and wellness newsletter called HEAVIES and host a narrative podcast about the Enhanced Games on iHeart called SUPERHUMAN. Outside of journalism I work on creative and strategy projects for big brands with the homies at C47 Creative and The Office of Applied Strategy.

I’m also a dad and practice Muay Thai like a maniac and am itching to get in the ring and fight again.

Describe your media diet.

This is perhaps the most undisciplined by media diet has ever been. I was a big Google Reader head back in the day, and then I was reliant on Nuzzle to get my news. I rage unsubscribed from the New York Times over a year ago, so now my media diet is mostly a mix of NPR, Apple News+, and various roundup Substacks like Deez Links that keep me tapped in with whatever’s happening on the Internet. I’m also very fond of this Instagram account called Pubity, which is where I get all my normie news from. Every headline sounds like it was written by a high school sophomore who plagiarizes all his homework with ChatGPT.

What’s the last great book you read?

Muscle Memory by Jenny Liou, a former pro MMA fighter and poet. My friend AJ recommended it to me. The book is short and beautiful, a collage of autobiographical vignettes about language, the inner call to inflict violence, and an attempt to break free from trauma cycles. The warrior-poet is one of the oldest tropes in literature and Liou’s work is such a cool and fresh update on that.

What are you reading now?

My friend Kevin is always reading three books at a time so that he always has something that he’s in the mood for. In an attempt to read more I’m attempting to juggle three: I’m on my fourth and most successful attempt yet of Infinite Jest (eBook only); my wife gifted me an old copy of Franzen’s essay collection How to Be Alone that she’d picked up on a work trip; and I’m reading my friend Mary HK Choi’s new novel Pool House. DFW, Franzen, and Mary Choi — my holy trinity lol.

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

I glance at the New Yorker feature well and skip immediately to whatever one of my favorite writers has been working on.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

Ken Liu’s fiction

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone?

Pay or Dispute, NYC’s parking ticket app that makes it really easy to fight charges.

Plane or train?

Train, slow and steady and humane.

What is one place everyone should visit?

Bangkok.

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

I’m not very tall, and after college long ago I started googling around trying to find ways to grow taller as an adult, which led me into the strange world of artificial leg lengthening in which people get their bones broken and stretched out. I ended up writing a feature about guys who secretly got it done during COVID for GQ in 2022 and it’s still the most viral thing I’ve ever written.