WTF is Clavicular - And Should You Care?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Entertainment

Episode: “WTF is Clavicular – And Should You Care?”

Hosts: Richard Osman & Marina Hyde

Release Date: February 24, 2026

---

Overview

This episode plunges into the viral rise of “Clavicular” (real name: Braden Peters), a controversial new internet influencer and “looks maxing” icon. Richard Osman and Marina Hyde unpack who Clavicular is, what “looksmaxing” means, and why this subculture is suddenly in the media spotlight. They explore the broader implications of this phenomenon on masculinity, internet fame, and cultural nihilism—before segueing into a discussion about Logan Paul’s record-setting $16 million Pokémon card sale, and the strange economics of collectibles.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who (or What) is Clavicular? (03:39–05:35)

• The hosts introduce Clavicular (real name: Braden Peters) as an “influencer” and self-styled king of the “looksmaxing” community, famous for livestreaming his “extreme” self-optimization techniques.
  • Quote: "[Clavicular] is an influencer, he livestreams in real life... But his shtick is, he is a looks maxer." – Richard Osman (04:26)
• Clavicular’s sudden popularity is highlighted—mainstream media outlets like GQ, NYT, and The Guardian have recently profiled his movement.
• The episode promises a deep dive: “Is it dangerous? What happens next? What is this weird new world where celebrities come from completely different places?” (Richard Osman, 05:05)

2. Explaining “Looksmaxing” (05:38–08:01)

• Marina sketches the “looksmaxing” philosophy: extreme, sometimes medically-enhanced self-improvement to become as attractive as possible, often justified by reactionary ideas about gender and romance.
  • Quote: “The only thing that really makes sense... is extreme physical optimization in this kind of crap Zack world that you have to live in.” – Marina Hyde (06:20)
• Richard gives tongue-in-cheek metrics for Clavicular—height, weight, clavicle width, chin-to-philtrum ratio—with mock seriousness.
  • Quote: "Biochromial width... is 19.5 inches, which is pretty much perfect if you want to be classically handsome." (07:11)
• Marina and Richard both dismiss the faux-scientific approach as “bullshit maths... kind of eugenics-adjacent nonsense.” (Marina Hyde, 07:55)
• They highlight the gendered element: this is men monetizing the “male gaze” in a way previously reserved for women in pop culture.

3. The Dark Side: Misery, Irony, & Internet Subcultures (08:01–11:54)

• The extreme (and sometimes dangerous) practices among looksmaxers are covered—cheekbone “fracturing,” black-market peptides, long-term steroid use.
  • Quote: "He says he’s been on steroids since he was fourteen..." – Marina Hyde (12:26)
• Richard is explicit about the emotional futility: "This is not the route to happiness in any way whatsoever." (09:16)
• The conversation detours into the misogyny and coded homoeroticism on the online right, comparing looksmaxing forums to “homoerotic” subcultures, with Richard joking: "It's the single most homoerotic... even more so than ice hockey." (11:00)
• Marina notes how this scene blurs into the manosphere, incel, and alt-right internet ecologies, questioning whether Clavicular is earnest—or just a dark ironist.

4. Is Mainstream Fame the Beginning or End? (15:12–18:04)

• The hosts question whether Clavicular is already “over,” noting his mainstreaming across media and the rapid life cycles of internet trends.
• They narrate his “frame mogging” incident at Arizona State University, a moment instantly meme’d by the “extremely online”—where a frat house leader “physically outclassed” him during a livestream.
  • Quote: "I can't believe I remember where I was when Clavicular got frame mogged." – Marina Hyde (17:17)
• Discussion ensues about how fickle such internet notoriety is—one viral embarrassment can spark "a form of dark irony" that turns quickly into decline.

5. Fame, Influence, and Right-Wing Pipelines (18:04–20:41)

• Richard and Marina delve into the increasing mainstreaming of the online “edgelord” right, with Clavicular’s collaborations suggesting ties to figures like Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens.
• They pose the critical question: Do figures like Clavicular exacerbate pipelines from toxic self-improvement to more radical politics?
  • Quote: "It's not clear whether Clavicular, who is only 19, can get sort of sucked into that ecosystem and be used as a way of pipeline lining young men to something much more extreme." – Marina Hyde (19:01)
• Both hosts lament the gamified, nihilistic culture driving these trends.

6. The Problem of Longevity and Legacy Media (20:41–26:10)

• The hosts compare Clavicular’s prospects with “traditional” fame trajectories—from comedian to presenter—versus influencer cycles fueled by numbers and short-term notoriety.
• They stress, as Richard says, “If you don’t have any actual skill, you’re in trouble”—and contrast this with talents like Rylan, who leveraged reality TV spectacle into a stable career.
• Marina critiques legacy media’s “cargo cult” coverage of internet phenomena, showing how platforms rush to profile viral stars to preserve relevance but end up accelerating hype cycles.

---

Segment: The Pokémon Card Sale & Culture of Collectibles (27:48–39:13)

• Timestamps: Pokémon Card Discussion 27:48–39:13

The Event: Logan Paul’s Pikachu Illustrator Card Sale

• Logan Paul sells a Pikachu Illustrator Pokémon card for over $16 million to AJ Scaramucci (Anthony Scaramucci’s son), setting a world record.
• Richard describes the provenance: "It was made for a 1998 illustration competition, only 41 exist." (28:05)
• Once the domain of “kids trading things,” Pokémon has become an elite investment class, on par with rare whisky, art, and even dinosaur bones.

Why Do These Things Matter?

• Richard argues that nostalgia, rarity, and the ability to authenticate such collectibles makes them the perfect speculative asset.
  • Quote: "Trading cards are a huge part of [collectibles]... anything that has rarity and anything that people want." (29:29)
• They discuss how brands, auction houses, and reality TV (King of Collectibles) fuel these economics.
• The growing criminal market and counterfeiting surrounding portable assets like Pokémon cards is flagged by Marina, with several UK cases recently reported.

Larger Cultural Trends

• Richard and Marina link the collectibles boom to post-pandemic market psychology, a culture-wide trend towards “owning” pieces of nostalgia, and rapid cycles of hype-driven investment (NFTs, rare objects, etc.).
• The market’s “nihilism” is noted: it’s all “what anyone will pay for it. That’s what markets are.” (Marina Hyde, 33:06)
• Sidebar on dinosaur fossils: The scramble for ownership (Nicolas Cage had to return a T-Rex skull to Mongolia) and the booming auction prices for natural objects.

Final Thoughts

• Richard is philosophical about the absurdity but also the cultural value of these trends: "If whisky can be an asset class, why not Pokémon? It’s no more stupid than a load of Andy Warhols." (39:04)
• To him, collecting is “something that gives such joy to generations” (38:30).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Looksmaxing:
  • "This is a whole community where the only real job is to make themselves as handsome as possible…" – Richard Osman (04:26)
  • "An enormous amount of bullshit maths, kind of eugenics-adjacent nonsense…" – Marina Hyde (07:55)
• On Irony and Nihilism:
  • "A lot of popular culture is an ironic Pearl Harbor these days." – Richard Osman (17:58)
  • "My life is a horror story. I shouldn't have to do this. I shouldn't have to inject myself. I shouldn't have to have made myself infertile." – Marina Hyde, paraphrasing Clavicular (21:38)
• On Market Absurdities:
  • "If whisky can be an asset class, why not Pokémon? It’s no more stupid than a load of Andy Warhols." – Richard Osman (39:04)
• On Fame & Decline:
  • "If you don't have any actual skill, you're in trouble." – Richard Osman (26:23)

---

Recommendations (39:11–39:58)

• How to Get to Heaven From Belfast (Netflix, Lisa McGee): described as “brilliant,” “bonkers,” and “a real treat.”
• Witch Trial by Harriet Tice (new thriller): praised as “really, really, really great... the absolute real deal.”

---

Closing

• Reminder of upcoming Q&A (“a lot of Prince Andrew questions”) and a bonus Top Gun anniversary episode for members.
• The tone remains wry and irreverent throughout, balancing sharp criticism with cultural curiosity and humor.

---

Navigation/Quick Reference

• Introduction and Clavicular: 03:39–05:35
• Looksmaxing and Influencer Culture: 05:38–14:46
• Mogging, Internet Irony, and Mainstreaming: 14:29–18:04
• Fame Cycles and Political Pipelines: 18:04–20:41
• Legacy Media & The End of Gatekeeping: 22:48–26:10
• Pokemon Card & Collectibles Economics: 27:48–39:13
• Recommendations & Outro: 39:11–End

---

Listeners get a shrewd, entertaining analysis of not only the “Clavicular” phenomenon but also the newer, odder forms of influence, status, and value now shaping 21st-century entertainment and culture.

Transcript

[Richard Osman]

This episode is brought to you by our friends at Octopus Energy.

[Marina Hyde]

Some people in the entertainment industry are successful, but a much, much smaller number are genuinely admired.

[Richard Osman]

I was trying to think in tv who everyone likes.

[Marina Hyde]

I mean, Attenborough, in movies, Julia, Meryl, these. You will not hear a bad word said about any of those people. There are actually very few that no one is rude about behind their back. But those two, a certainty two of them.

[Richard Osman]

Can I tell you about a company that no one is rude about behind their back and that people admire? Would it shock you to learn it is our friends at Octopus Energy. Octopus Energy has ended up being named Britain's Most admired company. 2025.

[Marina Hyde]

That's nice.

[Richard Osman]

That's really nice, isn't it?

[Marina Hyde]

I'm sure companies are like Hollywood, just absolutely vicious behind each other's backs. But to be, to actually be elected, most of my.

[Richard Osman]

All the other companies, like there's, you know, all the other companies just sitting around going. So I tell you who I met the other day. Octopus Energy. Actually, you know what, lovely bunch. Really, really lovely bunch. All of them the most admired company in the UK 2025. Which is why we're very, very happy that they are our sponsors.

[Athletic Brewing Company Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Company. No matter how you do game day on the couch, in the crowd or manning the snack table, Athletic Brewing fits right in with a full lineup of non alcoholic beer styles you can enjoy. Bold flavors all game long. No hangovers, no buzz, no subbing out for water in the second half. Stock the FR tip off with a variety of non alcoholic craft styles available at your local grocery store or online@athletic brewing.com near beer fit for all times.

[Marina Hyde]

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina

[Richard Osman]

Hyde and me, Richard Osman. Hello, everybody. Hello, Marina.

[Marina Hyde]

Hello, Richard. How are you?

[Richard Osman]

I'm very well. I just had a lovely weekend in my hometown of Brighton, going to see my brother's band and that was really, really fun.

[Marina Hyde]

Oh, that's fun.

[Richard Osman]

Playing at the Brighton Center, I was going to say, which is where I saw my first ever gig, which was Toya Wilcox back in, I want to say 1981, something like that. And my second ever gig, which was Jasper Carrot, which even to this day, one of the greatest things I've ever seen.

[Marina Hyde]

I saw him right back in the day and it was extraordinary.

[Richard Osman]

Just one of the funniest evenings of my entire life. Swayed were less funny, but very, very,

[Marina Hyde]

very good at what they did.

[Richard Osman]

Very, very good at what exactly? Listen, they don't compete you know, Jasper does what he does, Suede do what they do.

[Marina Hyde]

And in many ways part of their success has been based on that just being allowed to be on twin tracks.

[Richard Osman]

Do you know what, it's fascinating when you see Suede and Jasper Cara, in a room together because you think that they would clash and actually they don't because they've both got their own orbs, you know. How about you?

[Marina Hyde]

I am very well. I have been away, but now I'm back and I'm very excited for our subject today.

[Richard Osman]

Yes, we got the first thing we're talking about. Some people would have heard of this gentleman, others won't. Others will wish they never did when we talked about him. But his name is Clavicula.

[Marina Hyde]

Clavicula. Listen, Clav for short.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah. You are gonna have quite enough Clavicula by the time we are done, I promise you. He's quite extraordinary.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, although also is he.

[Richard Osman]

So we'll be coming and talking of extraordinary, but is he? And you know, occasionally someone comes along, you think they're gonna end up being a friend of this podcast. Logan Paul, friend of the podcast, sold his Pokemon card for $16 million. We'll talk about that. But sold it to Anthony Scaramucci's son aj. We're gonna be talking about that. I feel like it won't be the last time we talk about AJ Scaramucci.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah, it's a sublebrity special.

[Richard Osman]

It really is, isn't it?

[Marina Hyde]

Let's get into it.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah. Clavicula.

[Marina Hyde]

Okay. I am not aware of a well known public figure called Clavicula. Not my words, Richard, but the words of hugely popular AI platform ChatGPT. When I asked it to retrieve a specific quote this individual had made besmirching the physical appearance of US Vice President J.D. vance, who ChatGPT is aware of. But so who is Clervicula? You may have seen a lot suddenly about this person if actually if you're sort of more extremely online, you might have seen him sort of particularly surfacing towards the end of last year. And like many people, your question like often happens these days, your question will be, do I actually have to find out who this person is and if so, why?

[Richard Osman]

In the next 10, 15 minutes you will learn all you're ever going to need to know about. You can then if you wish to stick him in a drawer. Yeah, forget about him forever. So clavicular to catch you up, here is your basic thumbnail sketch of this guy. He is an influencer, he livestreams in real life he goes out in the real world, goes on dates and stuff like that. But his shtick is he is a looks maxer. And this is a whole community of people that only real job is to make themselves as handsome as possible possible. Whether that's with the use of cosmetics or whether with with the use of medical procedures. But looks maxing is the community. This guy Braden Peters, who is clavicular is the absolute king of this. And in the last couple of weeks there have been profiles of him in so many major newspapers. Is is having one of those things like a moment where this idea of looks maxing and this idea of this guy clavicular have gone absolutely mainstream. So we just wanted to talk you through who he is, why it's gone mainstream now. Is it dangerous? What happens next? And what is this weird new world where celebrities come from completely different places?

[Marina Hyde]

Also, is he already over?

[Richard Osman]

Is he already over?

[Marina Hyde]

Looks maxing is the key. I mean like all things that call themselves life philosophies nowadays, they don't actually and they're not worthy of the tag philosophy. But essentially what his view is and what the view of the kind of looks, by the way, allying yourself to a hashtag is very, very clever. Because if, if he will, your content will always be surface, which is part of the reason why he's become big. It's essentially the philosophy or his particular take on it. As the philosophy is women no longer depend on men for money or lots of things that they used to depend them or even status. Consequently, there is a smaller pool of men who will ever sort of have meaningful relations with women. And the only thing that really makes sense, here's the leap is extreme physical optimization. In this kind of crap Zack world that you have to live in and that you'll hear some words that come from the sort of pickup artist community, some words from the sort of incel community. Unless you're born a sort of like Brad Pitt, a complete chad, like a sort of platonic ideal of a kind of great looking guy. Then you must work to make yourself good looking enough for women to be

[Richard Osman]

interested in you, as it were. Max your looks, you must max your looks. What I call looks.

[Marina Hyde]

Maxing. Yeah, well, everything is maxing that and there's all sorts of there as I say, there is this whole arcane vocabulary, like everything, it has to have a label put on it nowadays very, very quickly. And so it seems like it, in my view, it seems like it's much less evanescent than it actually is. So there are whole separate you know there's.

[Richard Osman]

Can I describe to people at home what what Braden Peters looks like? This is how I would describe him. He's 6 foot 2, he weighs 180 pounds. He has a 31 inch waist. His biochromial width and that is basically the span of the clavicle. Who knew that was important? It is, is 19.5 inches which is pretty much perfect if you want to be classically handsome. He has a mid face ratio which is derived by dividing the distance from the pupil to the mouth by the distance between the pupils of 1.07. Don't need to tell you. That's good. And his chin to filtrum ratio, your philtrum is the bit above your lip. Can you, can you guess? His chin to filtrum ratio surprised me. 2.6. So that's a handsome dude.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah. There's an enormous amount of bullshit maths kind of eugenics adjacent nonsense.

[Richard Osman]

Oh it's eugenics adjacent to this for sure.

[Marina Hyde]

So luxmaxing is this form of self optimization. But often in his hands in really quite extreme forms. He says he kind of constantly creates minor micro fractures by hammering his cheekbones so that they become more pronounced. There's this whole peptides injection culture and people are buy this black market off market peptides and trying to kind of optimize themselves that way that obviously there's masses and masses of working out but there's a huge, the huge fake maths of it. All these as you said, the measuring of all the face and the this and that and the idea that there are all these perfect ratios. It's almost like I've been. I mean the whole point is I suppose people saying I've been shut out of these things. There must be a mathematical answer to it. There must be the mass of me not getting laid. Yeah. Algorithmically. Can you get me laid please? Because this is all it really is. And there. But this is actually, you know as, as I said before, women have. This is. This is making money off the male gaze. Men making money off the male gaze. Women have made money off the female gays for a long time or they haven't made money, but they've been used to make money. People saying, you know, if you just. Here you're ill, let me sell you the cure.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah. And it's the. Listen, I. We probably don't need to say this, but in case there's anyone listening who needs to hear will not make you happy. This is not the route to happiness in any way whatsoever. If you think it's funny that is great. Watch it. If, if it makes you feel bad about yourself, absolute guarantee. This is not the way to make you happy. The way to make you happy is to, you know, be interested in the world, be interested in human beings, women

[Marina Hyde]

about it, because they've been doing about it for literally thousands of years and they're still doing it. So saying it won't make you happy is meaningless. Unfortunately, that's sadly not the, that's not the way we can deal with this because women have been doing it for thousands of years. Well, they're not still buying into their own unhappiness.

[Richard Osman]

Let me speak to women as well. Women I think they know.

[Marina Hyde]

And of course he has a sort of online university, like lots of people in the sort of manosphere where you can learn all these things. He's sort of evolved to the status of, to the sort of, you know, self care status of a kind of 18th century Japanese geisha. This is really, this is a grim way to live. I don't even know if I'm allowed to say this.

[Richard Osman]

Okay, go on.

[Marina Hyde]

I know you love to hear, uh oh, he honestly reminds me of one of those incredibly homophobic Republican senators of yesteryear who were eventually always picked up for soliciting in a men's bathroom.

[Richard Osman]

Oh, I mean, yeah.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah. Really. I mean, I hope he ends up living a more happy and evolved life.

[Richard Osman]

The online right is so deeply homoerotic. It's like extra. But to the extent they must know.

[Marina Hyde]

Do they not notice?

[Richard Osman]

They must do. They must do. They must. It's the single most homoerotic.

[Marina Hyde]

But I don't think they've noticed.

[Richard Osman]

Even more so than ice hockey.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah. And they don't even know when someone like Nick Fuentes, who is going to be, you know, who is a kind of awful, horrific, sort of really far right edgelord. One of these guys, when they're talking all the time about sort of hating women and the way they hate women, it sort of feels like guys, you should just get together. Why not be with a perfect person, a man, and not with women who you clearly despise. But anyway, to get back onto it, this whole, the whole sort of physical self optimization thing. He believes or does he believe that you can sort of ascend in the terminology of their thing? Yeah, it's like a sort of physical form of rapture where you eventually, if you work really hard on smashing your cheeks with hammers and stuff, you can eventually get more slays. This is the slang for, for having sex with women, conquering women.

[Richard Osman]

Do you Know what? The only slay I'm interested in is Santa's. Well, you know what I mean.

[Marina Hyde]

I agree he's misspelled it completely, of course. And as I say that he does, there's extreme medical stuff. The Peptides thing is odd. He says he's been on steroids since he's 14, which you can believe all of this though, because these are people who've grown up in a Silk Road era and you could get anything you liked online. You clearly can now, because the whole Peptides thing, which he's a really big pusher of, is a huge kind of unregulated or off books or illegal thing that has been flooding into. People can get hold of this stuff and he pushes the idea of taking it.

[Richard Osman]

Well, he started. He started, I think, yeah, like 14, 15, where he was buying testosterone on the Internet because he said, well, why? It's like a cheat code to whatever it is he needs to be, which by the way, is not what anybody needs to be. But maybe. Listen, he's filling a hole, like that's what he needed. And his parents found it and they said, no, you can't do this. And then so he started getting it, you know, without them knowing. And so that's where he began this journey. And as you say that it sort of has its origins in 4chan and you know, the incel community and, and all of those things. And so firstly, you know, he's, he's trying to make himself look as handsome as possible in, in a very, very mainstream white version of what attractive might be. And then he starts being a sort of advocate for it. And as you say, live streaming, you know, streams for eight hours a day, but, you know, he's making a hundred thousand dollars a week.

[Marina Hyde]

He's been in the gym for eight hours a day as well, because you can't. Anyway, there are elements of tragedy in it.

[Richard Osman]

Elements?

[Marina Hyde]

Well, I mean, a lot of elements, yeah. But equally, when you're sort of unpleasant, it's slightly, you know, you. But it's a sort of Darwinian struggle to get laid. He says things like he puts boxes around his house so that when one of his slaves comes home with him, he can sometimes stand on the box just at opportune moments so he looks taller. I mean, you have to laugh at this. But then there are sort of elements of comedy, which I quite enjoy. He says he's completely uninterested in politics. Okay, we'll see. That quote that I was at the top of this item when I was saying I was Looking for, quote, what was the thing he said about Vance? He said that in a sort of 2028 face off in the US presidential election, a notional one between California Governor Gavin Newsom and J.D. vance. He would obviously go for Newsom because he said Newsom was a 6 foot 3 mogger. We're going to get to mogging. And Vance was subhuman, obese and has a recessed side profile.

[Richard Osman]

He said, they said, you know what,

[Marina Hyde]

he hasn't said anything about Trump, but he should because there's a lot to say there. There's so much to say that.

[Richard Osman]

But they.

[Marina Hyde]

Did they say something about it? You pussy. So mogging, we must talk about mogging just means you've bested someone physically in a sort of side to side contest. So.

[Richard Osman]

And by the way, you mean by being more handsome than.

[Marina Hyde]

By being more handsome or being more ripped than. Or being whatever it is. Okay.

[Richard Osman]

So he will on his live stream stand next to somebody who is unaware that he's standing next to them to make that person look unattractive and him look attractive. That's the idea of mogging.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah, yeah. Or just unintentional moments.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah. And Leslie, who would have thought the word mog could have got worse than it's been a few years ago?

[Marina Hyde]

I know, I know. Jacob, the good one anyhow. But also I suppose one of the reasons why we're talking about him today, because apart from you've seen him in lots of places, but is he also already over because something happened when you

[Richard Osman]

say, by the way, you see him in lots of places. I think this is the thing for lots of people who listen to this thing is if you are very online, he is everywhere. If you're not particularly online, he is nowhere at all.

[Marina Hyde]

No, that's. I don't think that's right. I think he has been mainstreamed in the last fortnight.

[Richard Osman]

Exactly. I had not heard about him until this week because he has become so massive and he's on every single everyone else's live stream. And you know, the thing with these influences is they multiply themselves by going on each other's streams and going on each other's feeds.

[Marina Hyde]

It's a huge amount of how you get bigger and bigger and bigger collaborating.

[Richard Osman]

And his stick, which is what it is, is an interesting one and it's writable about and he absolutely commits to the bit. You know, he's not, he's not going to go. Yeah, I think maybe it's be interesting if you know about masculinity and maybe we should be more handsome. He absolutely 100 commit. So he is the perfect shape and form of a phenomena is the perfect shape and form of someone where everyone at the same time goes, oh, what's this new thing? And who's this new weird guy doing it? So that's. He's got massive and as you say, the big newspapers. What Legacy media has started writing and talking about him in the last two weeks, which I assume means it's already over, but you will.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah. Okay. We can talk about the online moment that suggests that something, because always it's such a sort of tightrope. If you're so extreme and you're so judgmental, you run such a risk of if one small embarrassing thing happens to you. Now, he was doing a livestream at Arizona State University, and he was obviously doing what he always does, which is go to the gym and talk to all the frat boys anyway. And there was a frat house leader who happened to be standing next to him. And the frat house leader just had a better frame. The physical look than him. So everyone's like, oh, my God, like, all the extremely online people. I can't believe I remember where I was when, you know, clavicular got frame mogged.

[Richard Osman]

Got what? Mogged.

[Marina Hyde]

Frame mogged. Frame. The physical shape. This guy was standing next to him in a sort of vest.

[Richard Osman]

It was frame mogged.

[Marina Hyde]

You know what?

[Richard Osman]

You look at me like I'm an idiot for not understanding the expression frame mogged.

[Marina Hyde]

I hope you've got me prepared.

[Richard Osman]

It was like I was your grandfather. I was going, sorry, frame mog. Yeah, frame mogged.

[Marina Hyde]

He was frame mogged. Something that nobody said. Like, honestly, you know, two weeks ago. But among the extremely online community, this moment already has attained the status of, like, historical event. This is like, try and imagine an ironic Pearl harbor, okay. Where everyone is just doing jokes and it's a meme and it's like a complete. But of course, then it's A lot

[Richard Osman]

of popular culture is an ironic Pearl Harbor.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah.

[Richard Osman]

These days.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah.

[Richard Osman]

That you forget about really quickly, but then becomes incredibly. Then has incredibly unironic consequences.

[Marina Hyde]

Yes. Sadly, the irony eventually melts away, so. Because I suppose one of the things that people are saying is who is funding him? We have seen and we've talked about this on the podcast before, the way that lots of kind of extremely hard. Right. Women, pundits and commentators use the suddenly started stopping, talking about kind of deliberately obvious kind of Route 1 politics stuff, and started talking about things like Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni because it pipelines people into those kind of wife stuff,

[Richard Osman]

stuff that is going, oh, this isn't politics. There's no politics here.

[Marina Hyde]

I, I agree. And so now when you see him hooking up online with sort of Nick Fuentes, one of the things we have to sort of accept, which is so odd, is that that sort of Charlie Kirk version of young conservatism is now really mainstream.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah.

[Marina Hyde]

And there is a whole separate class of kind of, we're living in a kind of edge Lord ascendancy where these people that used to be kind of part of that have now gone really quite far out on limbs. So they're people like Candace Owens, who was, you know, one of those kind of, I don't know, Trump outriders. She's black, she's young, she's beautiful, she did a whole lot white lives matter thing, those sort of things. She now is suggesting that Erica Kirk is involved in her husband's death. So all of these people who used to be kind of mainstream young conservatives, which by the way, obviously that Overton window had shifted pretty right anyway, are now in this kind of unconstructable space beyond them all. And there are people like Nick Fuentes, there are people like Candace Owens. It's not clear whether he Clavicula, who was, by the way, still only 19, can get sort of sucked into that ecosystem system and, and be used as a way of kind of pipeline lining young men to something much more extreme. Much more extreme than a form of kind of mutually agreed upon. Quite hard. Right? I don't know. I. I'm an avatar for our horrible times.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah. It's a question of where you go next. If, if you get your fame in that way. Because, you know, the way we traditionally understand fame is you're an actor. You do a few small jobs and then you book bigger jobs and then, you know, you go to Hollywood and that's how you become super famous. You're a stand up. That's what a. Yeah, you stand up, you do open slots, then you, you know, start doing club shows and then someone puts you on a TV show and then suddenly you're a team captain on something and then you're an artist, you've got your own show. That's the thing you do.

[Marina Hyde]

But you come from the creative industries and creative artistry. That's sort of what's all you're in sport.

[Richard Osman]

He cannot continue with this shtick and keep making money out of it for too much longer because it has a shelf life. You can see it has a shelf Life, whereas simply being a personality doesn't. But to do that, he has to go into other areas, other lifestyle areas. And as you say at the moment in that the sphere he's straying into. The way to do that is via a sort of far right politics. So you see why people are drawn.

[Marina Hyde]

She's a ratchet with all of these things. Much as Candace Owens, you know, she starts off one thing, then she's got this whole thing where you have to

[Richard Osman]

keep going further and further.

[Marina Hyde]

And she's a man and they're suing her over it. Where would you go? Possibly next you're gonna say that Charlie Kirk's widow is involved in his shooting.

[Richard Osman]

It's an addiction to numbers.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah.

[Richard Osman]

And so there is only one way to go, and that's further and further and further. But, you know, all political movements kill themselves by doing this. That's the point. On left or on right, you know, having to go further and further and further to prove yourself more pure than everyone else.

[Marina Hyde]

Political figures might even kill themselves. That's part of what's so awful about his thing is that, I mean, he is still only 19 and I, you know. No, it doesn't excuse any of this stuff because he says terrible things. But one thing that I do think sets him apart is that he's like, oh, I live in a horror story. My life. This is awful. Like, I'm a sort of avatar for our nihilist times. I am a kind of tragic figure. I don't want to be like this. Which is different to something that, you know, like, as I said, I've. I think in our. I think it must have been in our bonus episodes about the books, when I mentioned we were talking about the Game, the Neil Strauss book. But he. Andrew Tate. The funniest thing in the world is him saying, you know, I haven't read a book. I'm amazing. I've got like a car that cost £1 billion. I mean, he's. He's such a baby. It's beyond. But he does he. His thing is, I am constantly, instantly winning. I am everything maxing all the time, and I'm loving it. Whereas this is like really quite tragic. You know, I'm. I'm. My life is a horror story. I shouldn't have to do this. I shouldn't have to inject myself. I shouldn't have to have made myself infertile. I. I mean, it's. It's either you become involved in conspiracy culture.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah.

[Marina Hyde]

Or you're like some rock star who dies by 27, sorry to say, because you've abused your body in such a, a sort of difficult way. Let's talk a bit about the reason that you've seen suddenly so many profiles. And I've, I mean, I'm not going to count all the places I've seen. I've seen a big thing in gq, the New York Times, the Guardian did something. We live in a really turbocharged trend cycle anyway. So things that there are only sort of three examples of are immediately like, okay, this must be the key to generation Alpha or whatever it is. I do think that legacy media now, when I see things like that, and I know we're doing a thing on it now on the podcast, but we are. I am trying to talk about it in a slightly broader sense that the legacy media now is so terrified of missing things that might be big. There's a sense that, and what that says to me is there's a sense that there is a world happening out there that they're not in anymore and that they certainly, without any question, and they've known this for a long time, no longer control, no longer serve as any form of gatekeeper to. And they do this kind of cargo cult thing where they think, think we must have a profile of this person because lots of people are talking about him. Because if not, then who would we be if we didn't mention this?

[Richard Osman]

You make your money in that culture by super serving a particular fandom and by having a group of people who can become obsessional with you. And that's why you live stream for eight hours a day. You are absolutely, you're always on, you're making money all the time from a small group of people. There is a world in which you then get profiled in, you know, the New York Times and, and spoken about in other places where you can ascend, to use Braden Peter's own words, you can ascend in monetary ways that you continue serving your community, but you, you continue super serving the, your, your fandom, but that you can also then access that sweet, sweet sponsorship money. And you know, I never read, I literally never read a single thing when I'm thinking about this podcast about anyone, any influencer, any actor who doesn't have a deal with Gucci, for example. They all do. They're all brand ambassadors. But to do that, you have to, you do have to sort of slightly be written about in other places. So he's just ascending. That's all he's doing. We're helping him ascend.

[Marina Hyde]

But is he actually already Descending because of the ironist moment. You know, if you live by a form of dark irony, you can die by it really quickly.

[Richard Osman]

Well, you know, like Rhona Martin, right? Yes, the curler.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah.

[Richard Osman]

I mean, she was massive. When the women won the curling gold, and it was like everyone went like, rona Martin crazy. Rona Martin, right. Still curls. Right. She's got a lovely family. You know, she's got a job. She enjoys herself. She has a life that she can go back to. She can enjoy that brief moment of fame. If you're Braden Peters, you have to somehow keep that going. And that's the. That's the tragedy there. If you don't have any actual skill, you're in trouble. If you do have a skill, you'll be funny. Look at someone like Rylan. So Rylan, I always think, is a very early kind of pro, almost an analog example of this sort of thing, that he appears on X Factor. It's not the first show he'd appeared on, and you go, oh, I know who this is. Oh, my God. This is someone who's desperate for attention. But Rylan had a skill, which is people.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah, he's talented.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah. People really liked him, and he was really good at presenting, and so he managed to. To get a foothold in something else and. And. And find himself an actual, real job. And that may well be what Clavicular does. Clavicular. It might turn out in, you know, meetings with various people, has a. Has an interesting worldview or is interested in animals and, you know, can do travel documentaries. Maybe he can. You know, so he. You can. This. This entry to the market is the first thing you do. Two things. Either three things. Either you have a skill, you can become part of our culture, you can disappear, or you cannot have a skill. You think, oh, okay, I'm gonna get myself into the manosphere or into the political sphere and try and monetize that. Those are your three options. It'll be interesting to see where Clavicular goes. After the break, we're going to talk about why a Pokemon card is worth over $16 million and why Anthony Scaramucci's son bought it.

[Abercrombie & Fitch Announcer]

Take the scenic route at Abercrombie's new spring collection, designed for weekend getaways full of layers like sweaters, dresses, and matching sets that take you from happy hour straight to a weekend upstate. The piece on everyone's radar is their new reversible trench coat. It's navy on one side and a coastal plaid on the other.

[Marina Hyde]

The.

[Abercrombie & Fitch Announcer]

The perfect spring staple. Get your Closet ready for spring plans. Shop Abercrombie in the app online and in stores.

[Marina Hyde]

Welcome back, everybody. A Pokemon card has been sold for over $16 million. Pokemon, obviously, are trading cards based on the. The whole sort of Pokemon world. Pikachu Illustrator is the specific nature of this card. It was made for some sort of promotion or in 1998, it was made

[Richard Osman]

for an illustration competition. Funnily enough, there was, like a drawing competition, and the prize was one of these. I think it's 41 cards, which were designed by Atsuko Nishida, who was the guy who designed Pikachu in the first place. So probably the rarest of all these Pokemon trading cards.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah, it was owned by. There's obviously a celebrity element to all of this. It was owned by Logan Paul. This is like me talking about the Richard Burton Elizabeth Taylor diamond that the other week that Margot Robbie wore on the promotional red carpet. Logan Paul wore this round his neck to WrestleMania in 2022 in a bejeweled

[Richard Osman]

case on a diamond necklace.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah, okay. As discussed, that Burton diamond, that massive Burton sort of heart diamond, went for 8.8 million about 15 years ago. Now, I would imagine it would fetch about the same as Pikachu. It was bought by one of Antonis Garamucci, our goal hanger colleague's sons, AJ they're trying to create some sort of global treasure hunt. They say they want to buy the Declaration of Independence.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah. Good luck.

[Marina Hyde]

Pick up a copy of it. Talk to me about this auction house that they. I mean, this is the thing. Collectibles. It was facilitated, this wasn't this, by this guy called Ken Golden. He's got that Netflix show called King of Collectibles, and he's got a show about. I've only seen it once, but it's about. It's kind of interesting. It's about memorabilia. Yeah.

[Richard Osman]

You know, it's about this world of memorabilia. And trading cards are a huge part of that. Comics, of course, are a huge part of that. And these things can go up into their millions. And, you know, it might seem absurd, but, you know, we paid for old masters. You know, you can pay insane amounts of money for paintings, anything that has rarity and anything that people want. And Ken Goldin worked out very early on, as various other people did. The generation who grew up with Pokemon, the generation who grew up with trading cards, had reached the ages of 35, 40, 45, and had a huge amount of money. Nostalgia for their childhood was a huge deal. And so suddenly, this market went absolutely stratospheric. Pokemon cards and Magic the Gathering cards, which is another trading game, are the perfect things for auction houses because you know exactly how many there are of each one. There are a small amount of some of them. You know, in the same way when you used to collect Panini football stickers and if you got a glossy badge, you'd be so excited. Also the verification industry, so there's a, called psa, which is the Professional Sports authenticators whose job is to authenticate cards but also give them a score out of 10 as to the, the quality of them. And this one, the reason this is 16 million, I mean one of the reasons it's 16 million is it's the first one of these Pikachu illustrator cards ever to come on the market with a score of 10, which PSA would call Gem mint. So it's gem mint, it's not dog

[Marina Hyde]

eared in the parlance of anyone normal.

[Richard Osman]

Exactly. That. The second most expensive Pokemon card. So this is 16 and a half million, which is a little bit toppy. But the world of auctions can be strange sometimes. But previously the record for a Pokemon card was just over 5 million. And that was exactly the same Pokemon card. That's the one that, that's when Logan Paul bought this, he bought it for 5 million. He's made 11 million profit. As you say that he, he knows how to make something more valuable, but

[Marina Hyde]

he doesn't make my culture more valuable. He knows how to devalue it completely

[Richard Osman]

but carry on in the same way as kind of, you know, people buy rare whiskey and people buy gold and all these things. I think this feels like a perfectly acceptable thing to have in our culture. I think it's quite a nice if, if you're gonna have an asset class and we've got lots of these asset classes, you know, sculpture, painting, all of that sort of stuff. I quite like that. It's this thing, you know, my son loves Pokemon and He's in his 20s, but you know, it's such an important part of his childhood and it's an incredibly important part of other people's. I quite like that this is the thing that we're, we. Because this is not. People are not buying this to put on the wall. They're buying it. It's an investment, it's something that you want to own, you invest in it. And I quite like that. This is an investment class, you know, like these incredible illustrators doing these crazy things.

[Marina Hyde]

Okay, fine, they're buying shares in this and not like Union Carbide or something.

[Richard Osman]

Exactly.

[Marina Hyde]

It's a low bar. We are also living through a time where. Which by the way, went nuts and all of this stuff went nuts in the pandemic.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marina Hyde]

Remember, it went nuts at a time where people were driven nuts by what they were forced to do. I. E. Stay inside. Think about NFTs. You basically convinced a load of people to pay for JPEGs. Okay, I'm really sorry to NFTs that funny. Okay, they were funny. But a lot of people put their money. Yeah, but people put their money in.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah, but not many people.

[Marina Hyde]

All these supposedly high value clients.

[Richard Osman]

Are you saying that you did.

[Marina Hyde]

You lost 7.8 million for my, you know, Van Gogh.

[Richard Osman]

But I wonder, by the way. Listen, we can ask him, I guess. I wonder if Scaramucci bought an NFT one.

[Marina Hyde]

One of the things we slightly think about is that again, to speak of the nihilism of the culture, it's all. It's all what anyone will pay for it. That's what markets are. There is a sort of element, you know, but they also sort of. It's a generation that also rent everything or effectively they stream that, you know, they don't own physical copies of lots of things. Although. So as we've seen, there is a sort of trend back towards that. I'm sure Anthony Scaramucci Sr. Would say that his boys have, how to put this, not been starved of physical ownership of material things. So perhaps they are not. But they certainly understand maybe something the culture. So talking about the other things they want to buy, they want to buy a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

[Richard Osman]

So this is it. So A.J. scaramucci's bought this, said this is just the start of me owning the island.

[Marina Hyde]

Something called a global treasure hunt. And then they want to buy. They also want to buy a T. Rex fossil. Now this is something quite interesting. Can we do a sidebar on dinos buying dinos? As I think I mentioned on this podcast before, Nicolas Cage once outbid Leonardo DiCaprio for a T. Rex skull. But that was like 20 years ago. Nicolas Cage, as you know, have some interesting spending habits, all of which were unsustainable at the time. But anyway, he had to give that. He had to give that one back to Mongolia.

[Richard Osman]

To give it back to Mongolia.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah, because it was. How do you know it was stolen? Well, I mean, I.

[Richard Osman]

You can fray anything, but who'd you send it to?

[Marina Hyde]

The Mongolian government? They've got a whole. They've got a retrieval sort of thing. Because Mongolia is not a place you can take a dinosaur skeleton from, by

[Richard Osman]

the way, I wish you told me that last week.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah.

[Richard Osman]

Wow.

[Marina Hyde]

The US is one of the only places in the world where if you dig one up, it's yours. People are now trying to go back and. And find where they all are, because often they're even unassembled and they're in some tiny private local museums vault to go back and buy them. Because there is a growing demand on the markets at the art market, or essentially for what they call natural objects, which are primarily. Primarily dinosaur bones, but also things like meteorites and stuff like that. Now Sotheby's are selling more and more of them. A few months ago they sold a saratoris. It was 150 million years old, they think. I think they estimated it for $4 million. It went for $30 million. The year before, a stegosaurus had gone for $44 million. They have something that is kind of popularly known as Geek Week, where they're selling things like an original Apple One computer. Again, as I say, kind of meat rights, dinosaur bones.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah. I've talked before about Julian's auctions in la. Julian with it with an E, which was. We talked about it when they were selling all the props from fr. Yeah. If you look on their thing this week, they've loads of astronaut stuff, loads of civil rights stuff. Living history.

[Marina Hyde]

Yes. That people want to physically own a piece of. It's interesting as well that there is a strong criminal element to this, because there was a really interesting few weeks, I think, at the very end of last, sort of. The first case was on December 29th and the last one was halfway through January, just in Nottinghamshire. There were like four major criminal cases that involved Pokemon cards because they're a really liquid asset. They're very small and portable and really easy to fake. Yeah, it's. It's. It's sort of interesting that it's become.

[Richard Osman]

You have to be very, very careful with collectibles. It's. You know, I was looking up. So I was thinking, what have I got? So I was looking at Panini football stickers and. And literally the most expensive at auction. Pani football sticker was. Someone had had a completed World Cup 1970. Stick around, you're signed by Pele, which went for 10,000 pound.

[Marina Hyde]

Wow.

[Richard Osman]

So we're not up to the 16th

[Marina Hyde]

how much effort went into that. I can't even. I can't imagine how much effort went into that.

[Richard Osman]

But this is a lot of money. $16 million for sure. Ken Goldin, who is the guy who owns the auction house of course is making a big cut off. That is how auction people make their money. AJ Scaramucci, there'll be something in this for him and obviously he hopes that it goes up and he can drive that market. Logan Paul of course is a huge amount of money in that for him. Absolutely sure that it's all above board and everyone felt it was worth 16 million. That's what got paid and all of that. But certainly if you look back at the world of old market of old master paintings, the stories of how the biggest prices ever are reached are so murky.

[Marina Hyde]

Yes. And this was very performative, I thought. I found it quite interesting when I was reading an article about Ken Golden's hq. His headquarters is in New Jersey in an industrial park next to a hospice. America, you can be so on the nose. I can't really but it's. Yes, I agree with this. This was an event in all sorts of different ways and I'm sure we'll. It'll be interesting to read more about it as time goes on.

[Richard Osman]

The one I was reading up about, you know, props for movies and things like that and there's all sorts of records. I think the Rebie slippers from wizard of oz went for 22 million. One of which Spielberg bought to give to a museum, one of which was stolen from the Judy Garland Museum and that's the one that went for 22 million. It's fascinating what does become enormously profitable like the. The fedora and the bullwhip from Indiana Jones of course goes for a lot of money. Peter Jackson owns the only working Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which he paid like 400000 pound for and takes around on charity events.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah.

[Richard Osman]

Castaway. It's not a huge movie.

[Marina Hyde]

Movie. No.

[Richard Osman]

Right.

[Marina Hyde]

The Tom Hanks one.

[Richard Osman]

The Tom Hanks one. Wilson the volleyball. The actual volleyball from that, which is this sort of filthy deflated volleyball went for $230,000. This World of Pokemon cards, I quite like it as a thing because I like collecting things and I like trading things. It speaks to me something like Pokemon. I sort of think Pokemon. Someone invented it and someone created it and someone really nurtured it and someone gave such joy to generations and generations of kids. I quite like it. If that becomes one of our big asset classes of the. Of. Of this century. If whiskey can.

[Marina Hyde]

It's no more stupid than a load of Andy Warhols.

[Richard Osman]

I will be honest exactly that it is exactly the same amount of stupid. And as human beings liked by the same people.

[Marina Hyde]

Recommendations. Richard.

[Richard Osman]

A couple of things if you haven't watched yet, how to get to Heaven From Belfast, Lisa McGee's series on Netflix, her sort of follow up to Derry Girls. It's just brilliant. It's eight episodes. It's is bonkers. The casting is unbelievable. We get different actors playing different generations of these characters. And the casting is amazing. The writing is amazing. Really funny, really sharp, just full of life. Beautifully directed. It's a real treat, that. And also finally, Harriet Tice from Traitors. Her new book Witch Trial is out. I'll say this, it's really, really, really great. And for anyone in the crime writing community, she is the absolute real deal.

[Marina Hyde]

We will be back on Thursday, as always, with a Q and A. There's a lot of Andrew relationships, a

[Richard Osman]

lot of Prince Andrew questions. I know.

[Marina Hyde]

So we'll be dealing with a lot of media and Andrew questions.

[Richard Osman]

Not Prince Andrew, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah. And then in something very close to My own heart, our bonus episode for members on Friday. It's 40 years since a certain movie, Top Gun, came out.

[Richard Osman]

I must see it. I, I, I'm joking.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah, I know. You better be. Anyway, that's for our members. If you want to join for ad free listening and discord and early access to events, etc. Etc. It is. The rest is entertainment dot com. Otherwise, we will see you all on Thursday. Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts.