Infinite Loops · Jim O'Shaughnessy

Adam Moskowitz — The Way of the Cheesemonger (EP.291)

November 27, 2025·1 hr 14 min·6 clips
Adam Moskowitz claims a seat at the artisan cheese Illuminati and compares himself to the Starks in a cheese Game of Thrones.
Moskowitz arrives ready to mythologize cheese, but he keeps it funny. He describes artisan cheese as a world with its own table, families, and weird little status games, then keeps circling back to the real feeling underneath. Jim opens with gratitude, and the host treats Adam less like a standard expert than like someone whose enthusiasm has already done its work in the room. The origin story has a crooked charm. Cheesequake, the nickname Mouse, and the family business all make Adam's path sound almost too neat, except he says he once saw that path as failure. That joke about a failed rap career turns into something more personal: vocation, inheritance, and the strange annoyance of realizing the thing you resisted might be the thing that fits. The conversation refuses to stay in one lane. Cheese leads to an online series, art references, and the question of whether a project has enough life for eight episodes or a hundred. Barry becomes the test case. That section helps Adam see how one odd example can keep opening doors, which is very much the Infinite Loops kind of move. Long form is under pressure here. Adam wants careful production, sharp editing, and real visual taste to work online without the usual price tag. The numbers push back. People click shorter pieces more often, so the longer work has to travel through fragments. He seems at peace with that bargain. If the short clips pull someone toward the full thing, or at least break the scroll with a stranger idea, that still counts. The museum story gives the episode its best hinge. Barry talks what Adam calls the greatest museum in the world into letting the team scan great works, then make riffs from them instead of copies. That distinction, copying versus riffing, access versus invention, lets a concrete story do the philosophical lifting. By the end, Adam's magical microphone answer is simple: leaders lead, and lead with love.

As heard by us

A cheese obsession becomes a loose, funny study of craft, lineage, and attention.

Adam Moskowitz and Jim O'Shaughnessy turn artisan cheese into more than a niche interest: it becomes a story about family business, camp nicknames, and a rapper turned cheese insider who sounds entirely at ease in the obsession.

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Why you'd press play

If you like cheese talk that turns into a riff on craft and attention.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →
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