A Very Self Indulgent Suggestion

On the Monday, March 3 2025 edition of The Armstrong & Getty One More Thing Podcast...

• Jack discovers one of the most self indulgent (and perhaps most wonderful) items available for purchase...

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, if you ever win the lottery and want to
be self indulgent, I got an idea for you.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
It's one more thing. I'm strong and getty. One more thing.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
I'll start here. Joel have to help me. How do
you pronounce an A with the two dots over it?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
I said, German, that's Swedish.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
I thing, yeah, umlot, Well that's the well, that's that's
the symbol. Yeah, I was wondering how you pronounce the anyway.
The brand is h A S T E N S.
With the thing, I'll call it Houstin's probably close anyway.
So I mentioned last week this thing New York Times

(00:43):
has called Wirecutter and they recommend products and I've kind
of gotten sucked into it and I purchased a bunch
of things from their recommendations.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
I really like it.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Their their their ethics are they don't take any sponsorship,
they don't take any money, they don't get to keep
the products, and uh, they review all these different things
and tons of things. Like I bought a frying pan
the other day. They said the best non sticks frying
pan you can get. And one of the reasons it's
so popular is it's not like you might expect out
of the New York Times. They're always the most expensive

(01:13):
thing out there. It's very regularly you can get this
at Target for twenty bucks or or if you want
to really splurge, this one's two hundred dollars. But it's
only this much better or whatever. It just it has
and I've been very happy with a bunch of things
I've purchased from it.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
And well, and that's so hard to find now. Yeah, yeah,
soal honest, you know, ratings and reviews and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, well, lost of them are crap.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
And they'll have like, you know, the best white T
shirt for men, and they'll have ten different options, different
price points, and why they're good and you know how
they hold up and wash in the prime. Well whatever,
you get the point this. I need a good beefy tea.
I remember, do they still have the Hanes beefe tea?
Because so many places.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
You go the T shirts are like double washed for softness, right,
and they're superform fitting. I don't want superform fitting. It's
all right, It's like im a age twenty.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Mark Kotzi says, I look worse with this shirt on
than I if I didn't have a shirt on. Yeah anyway,
So this is why this one stands out so much,
the headline being I wish this fifty six thousand dollars
mattress weren't so incredible from this reviewer. As a Wirecutter's

(02:29):
resident sleep expert, I've tested nearly one hundred mattresses, including
a dozen of those in my own home. I've slept
on everything from a forrrible bed in a box. I
got my son one of those. It's pretty cool to
ten thousand dollars mattresses made from materials developed for massa. Well,
I've found decent, even wonderful options across the spectrum. None
of them have compared to the Hostins two thousand te
It also costs fifty five, seven hundred and eighty dollars.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
I'm getting one of these right away.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
Hostin's would lend her to the mattress to slip deep
on for several weeks, along with the box spring and headboard.
With If you get the box spring, headboard and the mattress,
that brings you to seventy five thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
Well, if you you gotta, you gotta get the package
because they fit together.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
I mean it's a unit, it's a team.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Austin's derived from the Swedish word for horse. Of course
you knew. That was found in eighteen fifty two as
a saddle making business that shifted to luxury bed making
in the twentieth century. All of its mattresses are hand
crafted from the same materials horse hair, wool, flax, cotton,
and steel coils.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
The company.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Whoa one of the big selling points. One of the selling
points of this mattress. It will last spells like a horse. Yeah,
what are the selling points of the mattresses? It will
last the lifetime. So if you're a rich person who
buys expensive mattresses and you started at age five and
lived to be two hundred, you might break even but
on having one mattress your whole life. But horsehair is

(04:03):
the star of the show in every Houstin's mattress. I
promise this is interesting. The horse made and tail strands
are heated, heat treated, braided, and then steamed to create
a permanent curl, an expensive process which, according to Hostin's,
is the main reason this bed is so different. The
curls are dense enough to create a loose, springy structure

(04:25):
that feels airy yet supportive. The fibers are hollow. This
helps the mattress feel breatheable by wiking away moisture and
excess heat.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
Okay, I just can't get past a mental picture of
a bunch of shaved horses running around stud Wish.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
And they had their hair back. Hastins usually requires potential
buyers to try mattresses and purchase before purchasing one. Of course,
you wouldn't want to buy it online a sixty thousand
dollars mattress, so I embarked on a sleep spa experience
at the company's flagship store in New York. There are
thirteen mattresses in the line, ranging from fourteen thousand to

(05:00):
six hundred thousand dollars, and I was able to try
each mattress at my own pace in a dimmed room,
swallowed in a down comforter with two pillows from my head,
one for my knees, ambient music playing. There is a
person lying in the bed across them, guiding me to
scan my body to assess the feeling into my hip
and back. If a mattress filled un supported them all away,

(05:21):
Hey a bed somalia to help you choose the right one,
That's exactly right.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
M uh.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Shopping at Hostin's felt like a meditation session in a cool,
quiet studio, relaxed.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Blah blah, blah blah.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
After forty five minutes, I landed on the two thousand
tees soft. Here's the part that I really liked, that
I thought was quite amazing. I know from years of
mattress testing the comfort is subjective, and no single mattress
work for everyone. That being said, sleeping on the two
thousand t tea feels like nothing I've ever felt before.
When I settle in, the mattress conforms just enough to
my whole body to sink into it, while what feels

(05:53):
like a thousand little hands support me from below.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, don't tut me there, like a bunch of a
little oop bloopas.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
The closest comparison I can think of is floating in
a sensory deprivation chamber. When I lay on the Hostins,
I feel weightless, like I'm bobbing on a pool of
water calibrated to my exact body temperature. I can barely
tell whether a mattress ends and my body begins, regardless.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
Of what position I'm in. That sounds freaking cool.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Yeah, I mean because I I had the same look
on my face that you've had up until this point. Like, okay,
get to explain in how great this. But if it
feels like you're not laying on anything, like you're just
actually just floating in body temperature air with no pressure
on any point in your body, that's pretty appealing feeling.

(06:46):
I've never had it, but wow. Unlike the slow sink
of memory foam or the cushion of a padded pillow top,
the horse air and a Hastin's mattress has a natural springingness,
yet it's just as soft and far more breathable. I'm
a hot sleeper on ever, once woke up sweaty below
the horse hair two three and forty individual springs offer
a sensation that is as delightful to experience as it

(07:08):
is difficult to describe. But imagine being suspended in a
tide of soft shifting air. Imagine being suspended on a
tide of soft shifting air, cradled yet free. I gotta
admit I'd like to try this once. I would never.
I would never, even if I could afford it. Buy
one of these. Maybe, if I could afford it, I would.

(07:29):
I mean, well, it actually makes that point at the
end of the article.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
Well, I just before we move on, just to clarify,
you are saying horse hair and not horse hair, right,
this is not the harvested hair of sex workers.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Right, people exchange if people exchange money for sex.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
Yeah, exactly. Just you know, I got that Oscar winning
movie on my mind.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
No, the common beast of burden as seen in western movies.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
Ah, the horse, Yes, I'm surelier there's one.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
Now, hey, come here, I got an idea for your hair.
Hold Still, after a couple of weeks on the mattress,
I could feel them. This this part is amazing, Okay,
all right. After a couple of weeks on the mattress,
I can feel the materials start to compress together, creating lumps.
After I got up in the morning, you'd think, Man,
two weeks into my fifty six thousand dollars bed, I'm

(08:20):
starting to feel lumps. I'd think, all right, somebody's gonna
get a beating. Right, But that's normal. Assures Hostins because
the mattress requires regular complimentary massaging. Yes, every mattress sold
by Hastins comes with a recalibration program in which Houston's
employees visit your home to loosen up the materials and

(08:41):
redistribute them to prevent the mattress from settling into a
U shaped valley. Each Hastin's owner is entitled to the
service for a decade or more with the mattress.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
All right, this sounds like a pain in the ass. Yeah,
wait a minute, and.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
I want some dude coming over and massaging my mattress
on a regular basis.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
That's where Hey, Joe, can you play golf tomorrow? No,
I'm due to have my mattress massage.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
You're what. No, it's made with a horse hair. It's
very complicated.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
You're gonna get a massage on your mattress. No, the
mattress itself is getting a massage.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
What the point they make about spending the money, though,
is I have a pretty expensive piano. This person says
that I play.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Sometimes.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
Many of us stretch our budgets for a fancier car,
marble countertops, or whatever. We spend a third of our
time on earth asleep. Our mattresses are among the most intimate,
constant companions of our lives. One of your most prized
possessions was your bed instead of your car or something
else that you care about. The having to have somebody

(09:50):
come to my home multiple times a year in massage.
My bed does sound like painting the ass the other
description of you can't even tell you're laying on anything.
It's just like you're floating that untouched.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
It sounds amazing.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
It does sound absolutely amazing, and I wonder what to
be like to sleep like that.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
I'd like to try it once.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
Until it starts getting lumpy and needs a massage. That's
so weird to me. I have so much trouble sleeping.
I could see if I if I slept on one
of those and it's as great as they describe, I
might decide, you know what, I'm gonna drive a twenty
year old Toyota Corolla for the rest of my life
and uh, I don't know, donate plasma every Saturday and
figure out a way to get one of these beds.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
I just hope they carve out a little bit of
that sixty thousand dollars to buy a nice wig for
the now hairless horror.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Who's not gonna get in because not that many people
won't have sex with a bald woman exactly.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Well, I guess that's it.