Speaker 1: Hello. My name is Jason Concepsium and I'm Rosie Night.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to X ray Vision, the podcast where we
Speaker 1: dive deep to your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.
Speaker 1: Of course, we're coming to you from My Heart Podcasts,
Speaker 1: where every week we bring you three piping hot episodes
Speaker 1: Tuesday Thursday, with an extra episode every Wednesday.
Speaker 2: In today's episode, we're assuaging any anxieties you may have
Speaker 2: this week with some cozy content, sharing our recommendations for
Speaker 2: the coziest movies, TV shows, books, video games, and comics
Speaker 2: with our super producers Aboo and Aaron.
Speaker 3: Thanks. Thanks for having us on the show. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 4: Very excited for everything that we have going on this evening,
Speaker 4: and I can't wait to really dig into this with
Speaker 4: both of you.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 1: We're going to be talking about our favorite cozy content,
Speaker 1: the type of stuff that we love digging into on
Speaker 1: a cold winter's day and things are just a little
Speaker 1: chaotic outside and we want to feel wrapped in the
Speaker 1: warm embrace of something, be it a fine knitted quilt
Speaker 1: or a good book. Let's start with movies, folks, what
Speaker 1: kind of movies do you love? To watch on a
Speaker 1: day when you want to feel cozy.
Speaker 2: Rosie Well, I am a lover of all things cozy,
Speaker 2: as listeners know, and I am going to start because
Speaker 2: it is the season. It's November. Might be a bit
Speaker 2: early for some, but the Hallmark original Christmas programming has
Speaker 2: become and I am going to recommend that you watch
Speaker 2: any kind of Christmas Hallmark bootleg Hallmark though of course,
Speaker 2: we respect the Hallmark brand here, and those movies will
Speaker 2: help you turn your brain off and turn your Christmas
Speaker 2: spirit on.
Speaker 1: Is that cinnamon?
Speaker 2: I smell?
Speaker 1: You?
Speaker 2: Ready to have a peppermint latte mocha?
Speaker 3: Are we meant to keep that up this whole episode?
Speaker 1: My first movie, I want to mention when I want
Speaker 1: to just smooth out the lobes, just smooth them out.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I love to smooth the lobe Just.
Speaker 1: Just rub them, rub them down, get them all shiny
Speaker 1: and smooth, like a like a piece of Plato, delicious
Speaker 1: piece of Plato. Folks. It's not mind blowing or original
Speaker 1: Star Wars episode four. You know how it goes. It's
Speaker 1: called a new Hope. You've you know it, you've seen it,
Speaker 1: you've watched it. You're thinking I've seen it so many times.
Speaker 1: Just put it on for five minutes and try to
Speaker 1: turn it off. Just try it exactly. You won't. You won't,
Speaker 1: you won't be able to, you won't do it, because
Speaker 1: next thing you know, those crazy Droids are getting waylaid
Speaker 1: by the Jahwas and then Dobe one is showing up
Speaker 1: and saving Luke, and then Luke is on the Millennium
Speaker 1: Falcon and all that stuff is happening, and next thing
Speaker 1: you know, we're doing the bombing run on the Death
Speaker 1: Star and all is right with the universe except for
Speaker 1: the back that Chewbocket didn't get a medal Star Wars
Speaker 1: Episode four. Great, But what about you? Your a movie
Speaker 1: that feels like coziness?
Speaker 3: For me, It's the Digimon movie. And I guess this
Speaker 3: recommendation extends to basically anything Momrojosta has ever directed. Summerwards
Speaker 3: where I most recently bell all extremely beautiful films that
Speaker 3: I don't know just make me feel like a kid.
Speaker 3: My sister and I rewatch the Digimon movie together every year,
Speaker 3: and we've watched it ever since we were kids, and
Speaker 3: it just transports me back to that headspace. It's such
Speaker 3: a good time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love someone Wars. That's a great, great pick.
Speaker 2: What a director, Aaron, how about you?
Speaker 4: I'm gonna kind of mirror a Boo with a children's
Speaker 4: movie and mine's my neighbor Totoro, great one. She turned
Speaker 4: it on a couple of weeks ago, and I just
Speaker 4: heard the theme song and I was like, Okay, I
Speaker 4: know what I'm doing. Like I'm coming out of you know,
Speaker 4: the other room, and I'm going to sit down and
Speaker 4: watch this. It's such a beautiful movie. There are so
Speaker 4: many moments that make you smile on it, and so
Speaker 4: many things where I was just like, there's no way
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna sit on the couch and watch the
Speaker 4: whole movie right now.
Speaker 2: I love that one. Yeah, that's a really special one. Jason,
Speaker 2: what's your second pick?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Our runners up? My first runner up is a
Speaker 1: movie that came out in nineteen eighty two. It's a nonlinear,
Speaker 1: very unconventional movie, kind of the pioneer of the video edit,
Speaker 1: the YouTube edit, the social media edit, cinema edit genre.
Speaker 1: It is ko Yanis Katzi by Godfrey Reggio. It's a
Speaker 1: hypnotic movie. It's absolutely incredible. Shot in was it thirty five?
Speaker 1: I don't know what film socket is, but it's just
Speaker 1: like incredibly high def for the time, shot in often
Speaker 1: slow mo video speeds, so you get these incredible moments
Speaker 1: of like on the sure nature moving in slow motion, monks.
Speaker 2: And then civilization being built really built lost.
Speaker 1: An incredible score by Philip Glass that you will recognize
Speaker 1: when you put this movie on, and you know you
Speaker 1: don't have to think about it. You can glance away
Speaker 1: from it and glance back and be like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: what's happening now? Fantastic movie currently streaming free as well
Speaker 1: on two be Pluto and Roku channel, so you can
Speaker 1: just pop it on, pop it on and listen to
Speaker 1: Be's gonna give you the ads. But if you like
Speaker 1: what you see, pick up the pick.
Speaker 2: Up the Blu ray, Yeah, pick up the collection, give
Speaker 2: it a try. Yeah. My next one, I'm gonna go
Speaker 2: this is a more Both of these are more contemporary
Speaker 2: rosy selections. I'd never seen a Hallmark movie until I
Speaker 2: moved to America. I had deeply deprived myself throughout my
Speaker 2: life due to internalized misogyny of watching any kind of
Speaker 2: like rom coms and thinking I could enjoy them. So
Speaker 2: my next one is a movie I've already watched twice
Speaker 2: this month that I'm sure I will continue to watch
Speaker 2: that I love, which is Practical Magic Class. I had
Speaker 2: never watched this movie until a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock. There's murdering of abused husbands, there's
Speaker 2: bringing them back to life, there's romance, there's magic, there's witches,
Speaker 2: there's female empowerment. There's a cute like East Coast style town.
Speaker 2: There's one of the banger needle drops of all time
Speaker 2: with this kiss and the way it drops in that movie.
Speaker 2: I remember seeing a tweet once where someone was like,
Speaker 2: when this kiss drops in Practical Magic, I could kick
Speaker 2: my way through a wall. And I always think, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: really abuse, that doesn't sound cozy, but believe it's actually
Speaker 2: a very delightful, delightful movie. So that's that's my runner.
Speaker 1: Up, Aboo, your runner up pick.
Speaker 3: So this one's a bit cliche and a bit basic
Speaker 3: for this crowd, I think, But I have to say
Speaker 3: Lord of the Rings, any of them, theatrical cut, extended cut,
Speaker 3: run into it, midway, just running on TV. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: sit down and watch the rest.
Speaker 2: We have multiple Discord users right now who are rewatching
Speaker 2: all of the Lord of the Rings, So I think
Speaker 2: it's time is coming.
Speaker 1: Christmas time is Lord of the Rings time for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, couldn't agree more.
Speaker 2: Aaron, finish us off. What's your favorite? What's your last
Speaker 2: runner up?
Speaker 4: Yeah? My other one would be the nineteen eighty five
Speaker 4: classic Clue Yes, insanely quotable and flames the side of
Speaker 4: my face. I love that movie so much. I was
Speaker 4: introduced to it in college and must have rewatched it
Speaker 4: like every other month in college.
Speaker 2: So that's that's definitely like the definition of like a
Speaker 2: cozy movie too. It's like a murder mystery. It's a comedy.
Speaker 2: It has to like the murder, you know.
Speaker 1: Really, it's like it's like.
Speaker 2: That's not so many murder, you know, it's not like
Speaker 2: a violent murder.
Speaker 1: What about it.
Speaker 2: It's like the it's the classic like English style like
Speaker 2: murder mystery where it's just like a palla drama of
Speaker 2: a bunch of people being funny and fantastic costumes, which
Speaker 2: is smiling.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, let's move on to television shows. What are
Speaker 1: the TV shows that we check back in on or
Speaker 1: watch that are currently on that put us in a
Speaker 1: cozy comfortable headspace. Rosie, let's start with you.
Speaker 2: I could not answer this without shouting out murder. She wrote,
Speaker 2: the Angela Lansbury classic. I literally watched this show every day.
Speaker 2: If there was like a Nielsen in my house, they
Speaker 2: would be like, why is this woman watching so much
Speaker 2: Murdery wrote, there is a twenty four hour Murder. She
Speaker 2: wrote Channel on Pluto TV, and I just anytime, like
Speaker 2: going to bed, I put that stuff on. Not sure
Speaker 2: what to watch while I'm writing something, I put that
Speaker 2: show on. I think I have like a very specific
Speaker 2: singular memory of like being off school ill and it
Speaker 2: being on TV in the middle of the day and
Speaker 2: I like, ate a grilled cheese or something and watched it,
Speaker 2: and for some reason it just invokes this like deeply
Speaker 2: nostalgic feeling. But I love it. I love Jessica Fletcher's
Speaker 2: banging outfits. I love how it's like, obviously it's about
Speaker 2: a mystery, so it fits into like a general coropaganda,
Speaker 2: but also like, I also like that it's also one
Speaker 2: of those shows where there's an old lady who's always
Speaker 2: cleverer than the police, which is like a very funny
Speaker 2: thing to see. And also Angela Andsbrey's amazing and it
Speaker 2: is so watchable, and there are so many episodes. It's
Speaker 2: just just so many good yeah, never ending, yeah, never
Speaker 2: ending amount. So yeah, that's definitely mind. Jason howber Well.
Speaker 1: I just want to shout out the theme song to
Speaker 1: which I have to do. It's wonderful, like baroque piano thing.
Speaker 1: I any classic sitcom, like literally any sitcom of the eighties,
Speaker 1: nineties and even the seventies. I've watched so much TV,
Speaker 1: but like, just to quickly listen through some Cheers. You
Speaker 1: can drop into any season of Cheers, any episode of Cheers,
Speaker 1: and just be like, great. I think it's probably the
Speaker 1: greatest pilot sitcom pilot ever. The spinoffs can't go wrong. Fraser,
Speaker 1: you can drop into any episode of Fraser watch anytime
Speaker 1: I'm on the road, and I just love watching like
Speaker 1: local cable TV when I'm on the road, and it
Speaker 1: seems like every time, no matter where I am, Golden
Speaker 1: Girls is off and Golden Girls is fantastic. Yeah, I go, like,
Speaker 1: I love the last couple of seasons. There were personality
Speaker 1: conflicts on the Golden Girls that I think you could
Speaker 1: argue maybe started to show through in the way that
Speaker 1: they crafted episode like there were a lot of like
Speaker 1: flashback episodes where the girls are like sitting around a
Speaker 1: table and be like, hey, remember when this thing happened,
Speaker 1: and then they show like something from season three whatever.
Speaker 1: The early seasons of Golden Girls are amazing. Uh, the
Speaker 1: Jefferson's that's probably my favorite. Incredible felt Seinfeld again, drop
Speaker 1: into any episode except maybe the first season, which is
Speaker 1: they had like four episodes and then they got picked
Speaker 1: up and then did the rest of the season, so
Speaker 1: it's like a little weird. But from season two to
Speaker 1: the end, awesome, incredible, can't go wrong. Family matters, can't
Speaker 1: go like just two to seven. Who's the Boss? It's
Speaker 1: classic sitcoms and you can get him in a variety
Speaker 1: of different formats. Many of them are on to be
Speaker 1: go watch a classic sitcom because the formula was iconic
Speaker 1: for a reason.
Speaker 2: I would also say, if you are somebody who struggles
Speaker 2: with the immense choice that streaming offers, you spend thirty
Speaker 2: five dollars of your heart earned money and buy an
Speaker 2: amplified antenna. Because every single night on broadcast television in America,
Speaker 2: especially by me in the California area, there are cheers reruns,
Speaker 2: Fraser reruns, Taxi reruns, Jefferson rerans, Golden Girls reruns, There's
Speaker 2: Ever and I have had such an unbelievable education in
Speaker 2: classic American sitcoms, Who's the Boss reruns and really strange
Speaker 2: ones like oh what is her name? Oh, she's like
Speaker 2: a robot and when she touches her fingers together like
Speaker 2: stops times Small miracles.
Speaker 1: Small miracle. Yeah, I think it only ran for like
Speaker 1: one season.
Speaker 2: It's a really weird one. But yeah, that's a great
Speaker 2: way to do it if you're not sure, and then
Speaker 2: you could That was how I started my Cheers rerun.
Speaker 2: From the beginning was like I watched Cheers on TV
Speaker 2: and was like, oh, this is one of the best
Speaker 2: TV shows I've ever watched. Like, I've got to watch
Speaker 2: every episode of this.
Speaker 1: You can just go down the era. Anything that was
Speaker 1: a hit in a particular decade that you're interested in
Speaker 1: is going to be interesting to watch. Designing Women just
Speaker 1: watch it. Oh yeah, it just it's all great. So
Speaker 1: that's it classic sitcoms, right you are Boo.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to stick to the sitcom theme. I'm
Speaker 3: going to move away from classic, maybe a bit more contemporary,
Speaker 3: but I love Community. I still remember sitting down well.
Speaker 3: Fact is high high rewatchable factor. Some incredible like the
Speaker 3: D and D episodes I rewatched regularly, Halloween Paul episodes
Speaker 3: of Halloween episodes. There are some iconic episodes with like
Speaker 3: quite frankly the craziest, like guest stars showing up throughout
Speaker 3: this show. For some reason, I love the main cast
Speaker 3: of characters. Abed was one of the first times I
Speaker 3: felt like I saw myself on American television. I remember
Speaker 3: in two thousand and nine sitting down live and watching
Speaker 3: the first episode and from there, you know, my mom
Speaker 3: knew it was a Thursday night tradition and no one
Speaker 3: was to bother me Thursday nights at eight pm. I
Speaker 3: think it was. Although it did move around eventually, I
Speaker 3: even like when the show, I mean, the show was
Speaker 3: always rocky and never knew if it was going to
Speaker 3: get renewed. But even when it ended up on that
Speaker 3: very short lived Yawhoo weird online streaming service thing, I
Speaker 3: signed up for Yaohoo, just don't watch Community that final
Speaker 3: season of Community because I wanted to see how this
Speaker 3: show that had defined like a decade of my life ended,
Speaker 3: And I still rewatch it all the time.
Speaker 1: I have a community take higher highs than the Office,
Speaker 1: higher peaks, I agree, but the Office is obviously much
Speaker 1: more consistent I think throughout, particularly throughout it's the middle
Speaker 1: of its seasons. But higher highs, I think high. I
Speaker 1: think community is higher peaks.
Speaker 2: I think I've never seen I'd never seen another show,
Speaker 2: and I still don't really know if I have seen it.
Speaker 2: I remember being so blown away when I first watched
Speaker 2: it by how it enmeshed like genre storytelling. So like
Speaker 2: you mentioned like the Paintball episode that's the Western episode,
Speaker 2: or the Pillow four episode, or the post apocalyptic episode,
Speaker 2: and even like the prescients of the social media episode
Speaker 2: where they basically do like Logan's run, but it's like
Speaker 2: depending on how many likes you give people like they
Speaker 2: rise up in society and then we've seen that actually
Speaker 2: and up come to pass in certain spaces. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: Miamis and also like an unbelievable cost but yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean I still I still rewatch the Christmas Special. I
Speaker 2: love any kind of stop motion, you know, I love
Speaker 2: OVI it so and I love any Yeah, I revisit
Speaker 2: those genre focused kind of episodes where they would find
Speaker 2: a way to tell a weird joummer story in the
Speaker 2: space of this community college. I think it's very inventive.
Speaker 2: I think, Jason, that's a good caol. Definitely high at
Speaker 2: highs in the office. But I am since I moved
Speaker 2: to America, I am a perennial office rewatcher because it's
Speaker 2: always on TV here yea, and it is very watchable.
Speaker 1: Season two to season four is like it's like the
Speaker 1: twenty seven Yankees or something. It's just like every episode
Speaker 1: it's just like, oh my god, legendary episode. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: legendary episode.
Speaker 4: Anyway, Aaron, I'm going to go with another comedy, Arrested Development,
Speaker 4: which is one that I feel like you can go
Speaker 4: in One of the things I love about it, you
Speaker 4: can go in wanting to be completely smooth brained about it,
Speaker 4: and as you're watching it, you're like, oh, yeah, look
Speaker 4: at them. You know, they're hinting at him losing his arm,
Speaker 4: Oh loose seal, Oh great, Oh look at this. They're
Speaker 4: like putting all this foreshadowing, And I feel like, by
Speaker 4: the end of an episode, I'm not smooth brain anymore,
Speaker 4: Like I'm I'm looking for all the hints and I
Speaker 4: love it. And I just nothing to me is as
Speaker 4: funny as all of them doing the chicken, like trying
Speaker 4: to figure out how they each do a different chicken invitation.
Speaker 4: So Arrested Development is like up there and I'm currently
Speaker 4: rewatching it too, which is probably why it's front of
Speaker 4: mine for me. But yeah, that's those first three seasons, aren't.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think about Carl Weathers in Arrested Development a
Speaker 2: lot when he's like, hey, and you just you got
Speaker 2: a stew going just start boiling. And when Carl Weathers
Speaker 2: passed away, everyone was like, you know, remembering that and
Speaker 2: they were talking about and they were like, yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean we have to give him full credit. Like he said,
Speaker 2: if I'm going to come on the show, I don't
Speaker 2: want to just be like, oh, it's that guy from
Speaker 2: Star Wars. He was like, what if we do a
Speaker 2: bit where just like I'm really really like I'm really
Speaker 2: cheap and I and I was like incredible, Like this
Speaker 2: was Carl Weather's one of his greatest additions to pop culture. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also may Whitman, whenever she's like I always think about
Speaker 2: eating the egg and the mayonnaise. You know, she's got
Speaker 2: a little egg mayonnaise going there. You know, little egg
Speaker 2: going there. Yeah, there's some some really fun moments in there. Jason,
Speaker 2: what's your what's your second TV selection?
Speaker 1: My runner up? And I'll just say that I believe
Speaker 1: that anything on a screen is basically television. Same train
Speaker 1: YouTube's Yes, I love I love a train YouTube. Rail
Speaker 1: Cowgirl is a good one with TV with So what
Speaker 1: is You may be asking what is it? What is it?
Speaker 1: What's the train YouTube genre? It's very simple. You take
Speaker 1: it four K ten EIGHTP camera, thirty fps, sixty fps camera.
Speaker 1: You put it on the front of a train or
Speaker 1: out the window of a train. You let the train
Speaker 1: go up through the Fjords of Norway, you know, down
Speaker 1: the French countryside, across any England, anywhere, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: where the train is going, No, Switzerland. It's great and
Speaker 1: you just put it on when you have to do
Speaker 1: something right and you're doing chores whatever, and you just
Speaker 1: glance at it. You're traveling through through this landscape that
Speaker 1: you're not going to travel through, and it's wonderful. There's
Speaker 1: a there's a I also kind of like the guy
Speaker 1: puts a person puts a camera on their head and
Speaker 1: just walks through Tokyo genre yes, yes, yeah, some of
Speaker 1: those streams, Yes, those are also great and a kind
Speaker 1: of a version of this, but check out the check
Speaker 1: out the trains.
Speaker 2: The trains A yeah, that's I feel like.
Speaker 3: Those really blew up in the pandemic when people were
Speaker 3: like he did, I'm craving, I can't go out, I'm
Speaker 3: craving something soccer at night and yeah, yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great quote. I'm actually you've actually inspired me.
Speaker 2: My original runner up was going to be Midsummer Murders.
Speaker 2: Do you want to give it a shout out? Another
Speaker 2: British murder mystery show great, like nothing that there's no
Speaker 2: higher body count than Midsummer It's crazy, it's worst, worst
Speaker 2: than Camp Crystal Lake, like never go there, but it's
Speaker 2: super relaxing to watch. But I'm going to switch out
Speaker 2: because you inspired me. I love a train YouTube. Another
Speaker 2: thing that I love, which is available on broadcast TV
Speaker 2: but you can also watch at online, is the Japanese
Speaker 2: news channel NHK. They have a mixture of Japanese international
Speaker 2: news that they show kind of every half an hour
Speaker 2: or every hour, but they also have a lot of
Speaker 2: original programming, including one of my favorite TV shows that's
Speaker 2: incredibly relaxing to watch called Trails to Oishi, which is
Speaker 2: like Trails to Deliciousness, and every episode is just a
Speaker 2: presenter learning the history of a very specific food, so
Speaker 2: it could be like ginger, or it could be benito,
Speaker 2: like the fish, and they will go through and they'll
Speaker 2: visit a market and they'll show somebody cooking the food
Speaker 2: really deliciously in different ways and that there's like hundreds
Speaker 2: of episodes of it on the NHK website that you
Speaker 2: can watch or the NHK app and it is so relaxing,
Speaker 2: and the voiceovers are incredibly relaxing, and you get to
Speaker 2: see all different beautiful places in Japan, and you get
Speaker 2: to see people eating like very delicious, nicely prepared food.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly relaxing. Every time I'm flicking through TV and
Speaker 2: I see that it's on, I'm like, I have a
Speaker 2: warm glow that fulfills me. So it gives me the
Speaker 2: similar vibe to the train youtubes, which I have watched
Speaker 2: many of. So that's definitely mine a boom.
Speaker 4: I'm glad you brought that up right, yeah, because it
Speaker 4: would be weird if we talked all four of us
Speaker 4: and none of us had any kind of food or
Speaker 4: cooking thing. I think that's a big thing for so
Speaker 4: many times.
Speaker 2: Definitely, that's a really good point. Actually, yeah, good cooking
Speaker 2: shows are so relaxing. What about yours? You picked on
Speaker 2: that seems unconventional, but I agree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, this is maybe a bit of a curve well,
Speaker 3: but I put Full Middle Alchemist's Brotherhood down as the
Speaker 3: other TV show that I love to revisit and feels
Speaker 3: comforting to me. I mean, I am not typically the
Speaker 3: type of person that will rewatch or reread or reconsume something,
Speaker 3: and so when I rarely do, it's things that really
Speaker 3: resonated with me, even if they made me incredibly sad,
Speaker 3: even if they were tragic, even if they were emotional,
Speaker 3: like much of Full Mental Alchemist is, it still feels
Speaker 3: good to go back to those feelings with the characters
Speaker 3: that I know and love and ultimately know the end
Speaker 3: and know that things will turn out fine. Is also
Speaker 3: enjoyable to go through that journey again with these characters
Speaker 3: that I love so much. So yeah, maybe a curveball pick,
Speaker 3: but Full Mental Heart I love.
Speaker 2: That fantasy really beautifully animated. It is like a story
Speaker 2: at the center about love, So I do totally agree
Speaker 2: with you. I love that show. I didn't get into
Speaker 2: it until Brotherhood, but yeah, it's it's it's a really
Speaker 2: great show, Aaron.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the themes of like love, family connection
Speaker 3: it's also good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's really good. Aaron.
Speaker 4: Well about you, speaking of love and family connections. My
Speaker 4: runner up would be Bob s Burger's an incredible I
Speaker 4: love Probably that's.
Speaker 2: A rewatched show. That's a that's a that's an iconic
Speaker 2: contemporary show that people love to rewatch.
Speaker 4: And another show that has like unlimited episodes it feels
Speaker 4: like and every single episode very fun, musical creation in there,
Speaker 4: a great guest star. And yeah, and you can turn
Speaker 4: in any of them.
Speaker 1: Shouts to Jimmy Pesto Senior Jay Johnson, currently on his
Speaker 1: way prison for his role in the January sixth insurrection
Speaker 1: against the US Capital. Not I'll go on the record,
Speaker 1: not long enough. Listen, Jason, I'm not a fan of
Speaker 1: the I'm not a fan of our system, the cars
Speaker 1: oral system. But like, let's jack it up three or
Speaker 1: something on that sense.
Speaker 4: Maybe he's listening and he's he's getting some recommendations for
Speaker 4: what to consume.
Speaker 2: Well, he spends the rest of his life. There.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, there's a year's worth of in here.
Speaker 1: Jack that up, and let's jack one up for our sponsors.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: Let's go to books. What are some of the books
Speaker 1: that we crack open whenever we need to just take
Speaker 1: a chill, Rosie.
Speaker 2: I'm going to start with one that I have not
Speaker 2: recommended before, which is when I was in London, there's
Speaker 2: a really beautiful book that shopped there called The London
Speaker 2: Review of Books Bookshop, and I picked up a book
Speaker 2: based solely just on its cover, which was called Welcome
Speaker 2: to the hyunam Dong Bookshop, which is by Huang Bo Rium,
Speaker 2: and it is a book about a woman in Korea
Speaker 2: who leaves her life, leaves her husband, leaves the expected
Speaker 2: way that she's supposed to be living, and starts a
Speaker 2: coffee shop. And it is just about the slow day
Speaker 2: to day life of her running the bookshop and hiring
Speaker 2: the guy who's going to make the coffee and buying
Speaker 2: the beans. And it's so relaxing and fantastic that I'm
Speaker 2: still reading it like a year later. Like I love
Speaker 2: this book. I always pick it up. It has such
Speaker 2: a gorgeous cover as well, the hardcover, and it's kind
Speaker 2: of this story just about doing something for yourself and
Speaker 2: unintentionally that becoming kind of a beacon for other people
Speaker 2: who aren't sure what they're supposed to be doing. But
Speaker 2: it's also just such a lovely book to read, like
Speaker 2: it's probably one of my favorite books ever. I can
Speaker 2: say after a year, but it's it's so good, and
Speaker 2: I just always pick it up if I'm feeling a
Speaker 2: little bit rough or tired, or i just want to
Speaker 2: like ground myself a bit in like, oh, things are okay,
Speaker 2: you can just do something nice, you can just chill
Speaker 2: out and just do Sometimes it's just important to just
Speaker 2: do something like take your time to make a cup
Speaker 2: of tea and just like enjoy it. It's very much
Speaker 2: that space. And Yeah, I love that book. It's it's
Speaker 2: a really magical book, Jason, what about you.
Speaker 1: I love short story collections by almost anyone, John Cheever,
Speaker 1: Dorothy Parker, who I'll mention later in a little bit
Speaker 1: more detail. There's something about that genre that I love.
Speaker 1: And one of the more recent ones that I've picked
Speaker 1: up is Hiromi Kawakami's People from My neighborhood, and it's
Speaker 1: how would I describe it? It's little and yetes of
Speaker 1: scenes from around this neighborhood, and they somehow managed to
Speaker 1: capture like the wonder of you know, when you were
Speaker 1: a kid and you'd like be outside with your friends
Speaker 1: or whatever, and you'd see something like a grasshopper or
Speaker 1: like a line of laundry that looked strange, something that
Speaker 1: looked interesting, and then you go back and you try
Speaker 1: to tell an adult about it. That that magicalness of
Speaker 1: just a regular scene that you would see around where
Speaker 1: you live, but the magic of seeing it for almost
Speaker 1: the first time and trying to explain it to somebody.
Speaker 1: All these stories are like that. They're just like wonderful,
Speaker 1: Like a little kid who's like laying on the grass
Speaker 1: with like a piece of laundry over room, and the
Speaker 1: weird things that this little kid says. That's like one
Speaker 1: of the stories. It's just they're just wonderful and they're
Speaker 1: super short, really really short. That's what I love about
Speaker 1: a short story, is there the feeling of accomplishment is
Speaker 1: like five to eight pages away. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be like, oh my god, I'm diving into this five
Speaker 1: hundred page three hundred and fifty page seven hundred page epic.
Speaker 1: You read five pages and you'll be done if you want.
Speaker 1: People from My Neighborhood by Hiromi Kawakami, What about You, Rosie.
Speaker 2: For me, I would say another one is definitely a
Speaker 2: book that I have talked about before, but I think
Speaker 2: it is really up the alleys of the people who
Speaker 2: listen to this, and it is Legends and Lattes by
Speaker 2: Travis Baldry. He also did a follow up recently that's
Speaker 2: a prequel called Bookshops and Bone Dust, and it's basically
Speaker 2: the lowest steaks kind of campaign fantasy that you could imagine.
Speaker 2: The first one is about an orc who retires who
Speaker 2: starts a coffee shop. It's so fantastic and amazing, and
Speaker 2: it's a romance and you feel just as immersed in
Speaker 2: the world as if it were a deep, hard fantasy.
Speaker 2: But there is really not anything conflict or high stakes
Speaker 2: or particularly you know, depressing or scary. There are moments
Speaker 2: the stakes feel high because you're invested in them, but
Speaker 2: there are not anything. There's not anything violent or terrifying
Speaker 2: in most of the books and Bookshops and Bone Dust.
Speaker 2: If anything, it might even be Better, which is a
Speaker 2: prequel about the Orc and this kind of time that
Speaker 2: she spent at a little seaside town. And those are
Speaker 2: just so delightful, super easy to read. They have unbelievable
Speaker 2: cover art, and I just think they're some of the
Speaker 2: loveliest books that I've read. So I've gone through both
Speaker 2: of those a few times in the last couple of years. Aboo,
Speaker 2: how about you, what are your picks?
Speaker 3: Well, before I say my first pick, I'd just have
Speaker 3: to say unequivocally, fuck jk Rowling and her disgusting views.
Speaker 3: I did have to put Harry Potter on this list.
Speaker 3: Fuck jk Rowling absolutely, but really really, Harry Potter holds
Speaker 3: a special place in my heart, and it's hard to
Speaker 3: dislodge that. A lot of my childhood memories are anchored
Speaker 3: around when I read certain Harry Potter books and when
Speaker 3: I could go to the library and pick up the
Speaker 3: next one, when my hold was finally in when I
Speaker 3: got the Pizza Hut book at thing for reading the
Speaker 3: fourth Harry Potter book. You know, like a lot of
Speaker 3: my childhood memories are really locked into these stories. And
Speaker 3: then of course later on, a lot of my memories
Speaker 3: are wrapped up in the films and the actors, and
Speaker 3: so it is a comforting place for me to go
Speaker 3: back to and revisit. I have the all the audiobooks,
Speaker 3: which are such a treat to listen to, and I
Speaker 3: you know, sometimes I'll just like pick a random chapter
Speaker 3: from the fourth book from the Dry Wizard Tournament and
Speaker 3: just listen to it, just to just to go back
Speaker 3: to that place. And so, yeah, Harry Potter is definitely
Speaker 3: a comforting place for me to go back to when
Speaker 3: it comes to books.
Speaker 1: And there's lots of ways to steal books today, the
Speaker 1: invention of e books. Just saying if you haven't, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that you should do that, but I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: you disagree with the views of J. Q. Rallings as
Speaker 1: you should as a right thinking person, and you haven't
Speaker 1: read Harry Potter, and you want to know what all
Speaker 1: the fuss is about. There's there's ways, I don't know,
Speaker 1: just there's ways to steal books, and I don't I'm
Speaker 1: not saying do that, but I'm just saying there are ways.
Speaker 2: Hypothectic, yeah, hyperthactly.
Speaker 1: Aaron Walker.
Speaker 4: I have two books that kind of count the similar
Speaker 4: point in my life in college when I would I
Speaker 4: discovered the Inner Library alone, and I was just getting
Speaker 4: constant deliveries from other libraries across the US delivered to
Speaker 4: my college library where I would read graphic novels. And
Speaker 4: one that I discovered in college for the first time
Speaker 4: was Blankets, which I think is just one of the
Speaker 4: most heartwarming books for anyone who ever loved emo music
Speaker 4: like that book is for you. And the other one
Speaker 4: that I actually found sitting in the library that they
Speaker 4: owned there was called Vampire Loves by Joan Safar, and
Speaker 4: it is a beautiful book. We've had a lot of
Speaker 4: discussions about vampires on the show already. I am not
Speaker 4: a spooky loving person. This is not a spooky book,
Speaker 4: but a very very cute book. So both of them
Speaker 4: to me are just like perfect, like warm books to read,
Speaker 4: like romantic, warm, graphic novels that I really love.
Speaker 2: What's your runner up and then we'll send it back
Speaker 2: to ABU.
Speaker 4: So my runner up would be the Red Wall series.
Speaker 4: In particular for me, Martin the Warriors is I think
Speaker 4: the first one I ever read, and therefore probably the
Speaker 4: one I reread the most, and it came back to
Speaker 4: me because this year Magic The Gathering had a set
Speaker 4: that was very It was not a Red Wall set,
Speaker 4: but it was small woodland animals, very reminiscent of Red Wall.
Speaker 4: It wound up not being as good as I would
Speaker 4: have hoped, but the Red Wall vibes were so strong
Speaker 4: it made me. It made me miss and long for
Speaker 4: that period of time when I was reading Red Wall books.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a copy of Red Wall, the first one,
Speaker 2: right next to my bed, and it's one of my
Speaker 2: like go to if I can't sleep. It's like time
Speaker 2: to read about some delicious feasts that these animals are making,
Speaker 2: Like I love a delectable feast about what are your
Speaker 2: last runner runners up for books?
Speaker 3: So I'm going to shout out two things here. I
Speaker 3: definitely want to call out the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov.
Speaker 3: I think it's iconic sci fi, and in particular the
Speaker 3: first three or I think such a great story. The
Speaker 3: latter three, in my opinion, are a bit skippable. He
Speaker 3: was kind of forced to write those by his publisher.
Speaker 3: But the first three I think are iconic in the
Speaker 3: scisfy space for a reason. The world that Asimov creates
Speaker 3: in his early twenties, by the way he wrote the
Speaker 3: first one at like twenty one twenty two, which makes
Speaker 3: me feel terrible about myself. But I just love going
Speaker 3: back to those stories.
Speaker 1: And so they're kind of poorly written, but like they're good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Those wise, it's not like you're like, holy shit, this
Speaker 1: guy's share so yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, yes, it's very it's like very accessible, yes,
Speaker 3: very accessible, very simple to consume and broken up to
Speaker 3: your point Jason about short stories, the first book in
Speaker 3: particular is like broken up into like a bunch of
Speaker 3: short stories because it was released series lives to begin with,
Speaker 3: and so it's really easy to just like pick it
Speaker 3: up and read one of them real quick. So I
Speaker 3: love the Foundation series.
Speaker 4: I think we read it together kind of for like
Speaker 4: a book club.
Speaker 3: Yes, I read Aaron read it for our book Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I couldn't.
Speaker 4: I couldn't finish it.
Speaker 2: Yeah you know, d you gave it a try that
Speaker 2: Yeah I tried.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The time skips were a little confusing for at
Speaker 3: the book club. I think people were not prepared. I
Speaker 3: didn't prepare everyone enough. And the other quick thing I
Speaker 3: want to shout out again, this goes back to my childhood.
Speaker 3: I would go to the library. I would randomly pick
Speaker 3: whatever Dragonball manga was on the shelf that week. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I basically read dragon Ball like entirely out of order.
Speaker 2: That's the way we all did the comics when we
Speaker 2: were young man and there was no online like we
Speaker 2: were just picking up whatever was available.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So you know, Akira Toriyama rest in peace. He
Speaker 3: his work definitely holds a special place in my heart,
Speaker 3: and I love revisiting the manga. Dragonball Dima, the final
Speaker 3: piece of work that Toriama ever created in the dragon
Speaker 3: Ball world, is actually streaming now, and I've been loving
Speaker 3: watching that because it's it's a throwback to old school
Speaker 3: dragon Ball.
Speaker 2: I do think that for the epic scope of dragon
Speaker 2: Ball and the kind of perception that it has as
Speaker 2: this kind of like super action packed especially in the
Speaker 2: like later an animated versions, the original dragon Ball manga
Speaker 2: actually are so cozy looking, like the character designs are
Speaker 2: super cute, like they're always just in like a funny call,
Speaker 2: going somewhere trying to find a dragon Ball. Yeah, great, pick,
Speaker 2: I love that, right.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's a that's a great point, Rosie. Like Dragonball,
Speaker 3: A lot of people think dragon Ball is like muscle men,
Speaker 3: punching each other, and that's why people watch it. But
Speaker 3: it's actually very cute and very silly and very funny,
Speaker 3: and like none of it makes sense really. You know,
Speaker 3: if you think too hard about it, you're you're doing
Speaker 3: the wrong thing. It's not it's not a show that's
Speaker 3: meant to be thought hard about. You're just supposed to enjoy,
Speaker 3: enjoy the world that Toriama created. That's what I love
Speaker 3: about the original Dragon Ball.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my runner up pick. Let me just quickly shout
Speaker 1: out more short stories. Raymond Carver, Kevin Barry. Listen. I
Speaker 1: think I think he gets a bad rap now, but
Speaker 1: Hemingway short story is a really good look.
Speaker 2: He can be a you know, we can know more
Speaker 2: about him as a man and still say, hey, maybe
Speaker 2: read we maybe shake these.
Speaker 1: Out the listen, the r and the artist. We could
Speaker 1: uh you know, Dan Harman, and we could go We've
Speaker 1: already mentioned a bunch of things where we were. We
Speaker 1: could go down the road. Not just JK. Renata Adler
Speaker 1: is another person whose short stories I love. George Saunders
Speaker 1: another person who's short stories I love, Civil War, Land
Speaker 1: and Bad Decline check it out. But I'll just say
Speaker 1: I love Wit when I love witty writers, which is
Speaker 1: why I love Dorothy Parker. Check out her short stories,
Speaker 1: some of them written one hundred years ago as good
Speaker 1: as anything written today. But I wanted to particularly shout
Speaker 1: out because Quincy Jones, legendary, legendary composer. Quincy Jones has
Speaker 1: recently passed, and so people are sharing this like iconic
Speaker 1: Vulture interview that he gave a few years back, where
Speaker 1: it's just like every line is a fucking banger after
Speaker 1: a bang, after a banger. He's like, oh, leah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Marlon Brando, he would he'd fuck any he fucked everybody
Speaker 1: that was around. He'd fuck a mailbox. Hey, do you
Speaker 1: like Brazilian music? One of the craziest like transitions in
Speaker 1: an interview ever, he talks about the jfk assassination anyway,
Speaker 1: in that genre of witty people, witty famous people dishing,
Speaker 1: which I just love a great dish. If you liked
Speaker 1: that Quincy Jones interview, check out My Lunches with Orson
Speaker 1: by Henry Jaglam, which is a collection of transcriptions of
Speaker 1: audiotapes that Henry Jaglam made of his boozy Lunches with
Speaker 1: Orson Wells, in which Orson Wells just held court about
Speaker 1: everything and like bitched about everybody, from the Nazis, many
Speaker 1: of whom he met, like famous Nazis, to like legendary
Speaker 1: directors of the day. Here he is on the famous
Speaker 1: director von Sternberg who made uh what many people consider
Speaker 1: it to be a great movie Blue Angel. Orson Wells quote,
Speaker 1: it's a piece of schlock painted on velvet like you
Speaker 1: buy in Honolulu.
Speaker 2: Wow so much.
Speaker 1: It's great and it's filled with nuggets like that.
Speaker 2: My lunch is with Orson His takedown of his jewel.
Speaker 2: Takedown of Charlie Chaplin and Woody Allen is one of
Speaker 2: my all time favorites. He's He's truly a man who
Speaker 2: would have excelled in the age of an online drag.
Speaker 2: He always had a quippie wait you wait, I mean
Speaker 2: you inspired me, actually, Jason, I was. I want to
Speaker 2: shout out what my last pick was going to be
Speaker 2: before the coffee gets called by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. And that's
Speaker 2: still a fantastic book. It's a it's a cozy time
Speaker 2: travel book set in a cafe. As you can tell,
Speaker 2: there's a cafe theme. But I have a copy of
Speaker 2: Groucho Marx Letters collection that was published by Penguin. You
Speaker 2: can still find it, and I returned to it so
Speaker 2: much because those are some of the funniest, weirdest. There's
Speaker 2: a letter in there, I think about a lot where
Speaker 2: Warner Brothers were cease and desisting the Marx Brothers about
Speaker 2: a night in Casablanca because they said it was too
Speaker 2: much like Casablanca. So Groucho wrote them a letter cease
Speaker 2: and desisting them because they were called Warner Bros. And
Speaker 2: the Marx Bros Had existed before and like so much
Speaker 2: good stuff like that. So yeah, that's that's another if
Speaker 2: you're a fan of those kind of wild celebrity kind
Speaker 2: of insights, those those Groucho Marx letters collections are really fantastic.
Speaker 1: Next up video games cozy video games. It's a genre
Speaker 1: that has exploded certainly since the pandemic. Rosie your cozy
Speaker 1: video game, Top cozy video game? Pick.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm going to go for a classic because I
Speaker 2: know you're going to pick one of my go tos,
Speaker 2: so I'm going to go for Animal Crossing. I think
Speaker 2: it was the game. Obviously, New Horizons was the game
Speaker 2: that got a lot of people through the pandemic. I've
Speaker 2: loved Animal Crossing since it was on the three DS.
Speaker 2: It is a cozy life sim where you play as
Speaker 2: a cute human in a town of animals, and depending
Speaker 2: on the game, you are either an inhabitant, a mayor
Speaker 2: in New Horizons, you were helping essentially, not sounding too
Speaker 2: cozy here, but it is a fair critique colonize like
Speaker 2: a random island, so you know, ignore that part. But yeah,
Speaker 2: you work alongside Tinookie Tom Nook, who is essentially like
Speaker 2: a really hardcore landlord, and you build a awful house
Speaker 2: and you hang out with your neighbors. And it was
Speaker 2: the game that got my sister and my mom into
Speaker 2: video games. It was a huge thing. We had birthday
Speaker 2: parties for people on our islands during the pandemic. It
Speaker 2: was amazing to see people enjoy it. And the New
Speaker 2: Horizons on the Switch, which is the most recent, Animal
Speaker 2: Crossing is still one of my most revisited games. It's
Speaker 2: always fun to just pop back in and check on
Speaker 2: your island or see what your island's doing, especially since
Speaker 2: they added a patch that stopped your islanders from being
Speaker 2: so passive aggressive because they used to you would you
Speaker 2: would go back to your island and they would be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I thought you were ignoring.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of cockroaches in your house, like they
Speaker 1: would be really and I am with one of.
Speaker 2: The last updates they did, they made it so it
Speaker 2: was a bit more like, hey man, nice to see you,
Speaker 2: because like it became such an online thing. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that's mine, Jason. How about how about your topic.
Speaker 1: Love animal crossing listen Stardo Valley can't go wrong, Starduo
Speaker 1: Valley wrong, Stardoo Valleys ever made, truly one of the
Speaker 1: best ever made. I think I think you could say
Speaker 1: it's in the top three, and it's not three, like
Speaker 1: I think, I think you can truly say that about
Speaker 1: Stardo Valley and the newest patch, Patch one point six
Speaker 1: point nine is being pushed out as we are recording this,
Speaker 1: and it has lots of balance and quality of life
Speaker 1: changes that I think people are going to appreciate. I
Speaker 1: am playing it again because gosh, I just love to
Speaker 1: play it. I love to make wine, I love to
Speaker 1: explore the dungeons, I love to explore the mines, and
Speaker 1: I love to do romance. That's the part, you know.
Speaker 1: I have mostly just been farming and creating products. And
Speaker 1: it's only now that I'm really starting to engage with
Speaker 1: the townsfolk in a meaningful way.
Speaker 2: Oh that's the part of the game. You're going to
Speaker 2: love that whole.
Speaker 1: Another part of the game is so rich and deep,
Speaker 1: and it's it meets you exactly at the level of
Speaker 1: dedication that you want to have with a video game.
Speaker 1: And I will just say I went through a dark
Speaker 1: period thinking about capitalism over the last couple of years
Speaker 1: where I just I realized that even in our most
Speaker 1: imaginary spaces where you can just imagine any world that
Speaker 1: you want place it, like in a video game like
Speaker 1: Stardey Valley or Animal Crossing, we are still incapable of
Speaker 1: thinking about a world in which you do not create
Speaker 1: products to sell at a market for profit. That's all
Speaker 1: we've run out of. I just feel like it's I
Speaker 1: hate capitalism. The bad parts of it are truly terrible,
Speaker 1: Like it's the vast machinery of its wheels. It's crushing
Speaker 1: people under them, under within its gears every day, all
Speaker 1: the time. At the same time, I can't I actually
Speaker 1: can't imagine another system. I can't figure it out, and
Speaker 1: neither can we. I think we're at a we're at
Speaker 1: an end point where we can't figure out another way
Speaker 1: to do things other than even in a cute sea way,
Speaker 1: even in the most cute, wonderful way in which you
Speaker 1: don't kill the animals, you still make mayonnaise out of
Speaker 1: the eggs, and you still make you still make cheese
Speaker 1: out of their their beautiful milk, and you sell it.
Speaker 1: That's it. But all that said, Stardoo Valley is amazing,
Speaker 1: and if you have not played it, you can play
Speaker 1: it on any platform, and it is again one of
Speaker 1: the what's it's such a dollar.
Speaker 2: And you will get you thousands of hours of joy.
Speaker 1: For me, the amount of content that it gives you
Speaker 1: for fifteen dollars is a joke, and it is truly.
Speaker 1: It's like we've been playing it for ten years now.
Speaker 1: It is truly. Sincerely. Forget Halo, forget Black Ops, forget
Speaker 1: every other game. I love those games. It is one of,
Speaker 1: if not the greatest video game of all time, simply
Speaker 1: on the value proposition of the amount of things that
Speaker 1: it gives you for the money it charges you. It
Speaker 1: is an incredible video game.
Speaker 2: I also, I want to say that.
Speaker 3: We argue that it revitalized the cozy game genre. Oh
Speaker 3: definitely cozy games out now mimics Stardi Valley and Started
Speaker 3: Valley is like, I think we're gonna say the same thing.
Speaker 2: Rules of Harvest Moon mixed with animal crossing like different things,
Speaker 2: but complay it into or should I say, like streamlined
Speaker 2: into such an appealing space to live in. I don't
Speaker 2: want also say I think the reach of Stardew Valley
Speaker 2: can be shown in the We had a group we
Speaker 2: have an x ray vision group chat obviously, and Jason.
Speaker 4: Was like, Jason was like, guys, yeah, we get this
Speaker 4: weekend from Jason. It just says I have an emergency situation.
Speaker 4: I wanted to make everyone aware of the trees in
Speaker 4: my greenhouse are not growing? What am I doing growing?
Speaker 1: They're they're growing now?
Speaker 2: Yeah to me, Like the fact literally every single common Aboo,
Speaker 2: Aaron and I we all had thoughts and we were
Speaker 2: all like, Okay, here's what you might be doing wrong.
Speaker 2: Like that was such a huge reach of different video
Speaker 2: gaming tendencies, different video gaming you know, commitments, Triple A gamers,
Speaker 2: platform gamers like myself, like switch gamers, Xbox gamers, all
Speaker 2: of us immediately had deep insightful opinions about what Jason
Speaker 2: could do, and I think that really shows the reach
Speaker 2: of this game, which I do agree. I don't think
Speaker 2: it's hyperbolic to say, especially as the game is, or
Speaker 2: was up until very recently, entirely made by one person.
Speaker 2: I think I think maybe he has a few helpers.
Speaker 2: Now I'm not one hundred percent sure, but still like
Speaker 2: unbelievable and including the music, including that music, which is
Speaker 2: absolutely another reason that you will get so much joy
Speaker 2: and wonder out of that game.
Speaker 3: Uh, Aaron, When we hand out candy on Halloween, we
Speaker 3: turn on the Fall music for starting valid put it
Speaker 3: on at speaker and the kids come by and yeah,
Speaker 3: like it's the music. It's like there's so many layers
Speaker 3: to it. I mean, to Jason's point, the game will
Speaker 3: meet you wherever you want. Like if you're a junkie
Speaker 3: like me, there is lower in.
Speaker 1: This there's really really serious story.
Speaker 2: Here in our house, we are constantly in conversation because
Speaker 2: Nick has I know, maybe like a hundred hours of
Speaker 2: starduw locked or something. It's like an unbelieva He's he's
Speaker 2: at the point where he's like a billionaire in Star Dew.
Speaker 2: He has, he has the return stick, he he never
Speaker 2: needs anything, but we are always having He is of
Speaker 2: the belief, which is a large part of stardew Law
Speaker 2: is like that the wizard's daughter is one of the inhabitants.
Speaker 2: I will say who because it's like it's depending on
Speaker 2: the kind of route you take. But like, there is
Speaker 2: so much deep law in the game.
Speaker 1: It's insane. It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make a game.
Speaker 1: Is that good?
Speaker 2: But I think as well, I think that speaks to
Speaker 2: the power of creating like a game that builds a community,
Speaker 2: because then, like anything we talk about this a lot,
Speaker 2: whether it's the Marvel fam Wikias or Dungeons and Dragons homebrew,
Speaker 2: like fan fans have long been in charge of expanding
Speaker 2: and chronicling law, and I think that is what happens
Speaker 2: when you make something that's like truly magical, like Starduo Vally.
Speaker 3: I also want to shout out there's a board game
Speaker 3: version of Starduo Valley that's very.
Speaker 2: Fun to play.
Speaker 3: I immediately bought it when they announced it. And there's
Speaker 3: also now a cookbook which I have been trying to
Speaker 3: get my out.
Speaker 2: I I have the Stardu Valley they also made us.
Speaker 2: They make a starduw Valley Game Guide that they re
Speaker 2: up every three years. It's so beautiful. It's official, you
Speaker 2: can go in, you can make notes on the characters.
Speaker 2: It's really beautiful. And they release all the soundtracks on
Speaker 2: vinyl now, so we do have those. If anyone wants
Speaker 2: to official starduw Valley podcast. If you're listening to this,
Speaker 2: obviously we are the people to do it, because this
Speaker 2: could have just been a Starduo Valley episode. Aaron and Aboo,
Speaker 2: what are your other as Starduo Valley lovers? What are
Speaker 2: your are the cozy video games that you go to?
Speaker 4: I'll do actually my runner up first, because it bounces
Speaker 4: off Stardu really well. If you just listened to us
Speaker 4: and you hadn't played Stardoo and you were like, oh
Speaker 4: my god, a thousand hours that sounds like way too much.
Speaker 4: I have a suggestion for you. It's called a Short Hike.
Speaker 4: It's on Nintendo Switch. I think it's like seven bucks.
Speaker 4: It is a it's a quote unquote open world if
Speaker 4: the open world were like one square mile. It is
Speaker 4: a beautifully rendered game where you play this little bird
Speaker 4: penguin character and you can soar and float and you
Speaker 4: go around the island and you help people do things,
Speaker 4: and there are all these cute little characters, and it
Speaker 4: is it feels like a little Pixar Open World Zelda
Speaker 4: game kind of. And you can finish it in one sitting.
Speaker 4: It's amazing.
Speaker 2: Aboo, how about you.
Speaker 3: I'm going to just share all of mine at once
Speaker 3: very quickly. Mass Effect is a trilogy that I revisit constantly.
Speaker 3: I replay them all the time. There's there's a remaster
Speaker 3: legendary edition out now. That's the best way to play
Speaker 3: the game. Four K sixty. They upgraded some of the
Speaker 3: old school mechanics that are that used to be clunky.
Speaker 3: It's more modern gameplay. It's amazing. I love the universe,
Speaker 3: I love the characters. I've read all the comics, so
Speaker 3: I've consumed every Mass Effect thing out there. It's my
Speaker 3: all time favorite series. I play it and replay it
Speaker 3: all the time. And if you're somebody who like me,
Speaker 3: loves an RPGG game with an incredible cast of characters
Speaker 3: with an amazing story. If you love sci fi, you
Speaker 3: have to check out Mass Effect. And the other one
Speaker 3: I quickly want to shout out is this mobile game
Speaker 3: that I got really addicted to during the pandemic many motorways,
Speaker 3: and it has a sort of a sister game called
Speaker 3: Mini Metro where you have to It's very cute and simplistic,
Speaker 3: but quickly becomes complex because you have to create a
Speaker 3: metro system for an increasingly for a population that continues
Speaker 3: to grow and grow and grow and grow, or you
Speaker 3: have to create like a road system for an increasing
Speaker 3: number of cars on the road, and that sounds stressful,
Speaker 3: but the graphics are very pastel and simplistic. The controls
Speaker 3: are very simple. You just like drag and drop different roads,
Speaker 3: and then you get features like highways to help you
Speaker 3: manage roads, and stop lights to manage like intersection areas,
Speaker 3: and something about it is like really satisfying to my
Speaker 3: brain to just like watch all the little cars drive
Speaker 3: around on these perfectly manicured roads I've created where everything
Speaker 3: is operating so efficiently and beautifully. And then it gets
Speaker 3: stressful because then it just keeps increasing the population and
Speaker 3: things get wildly out of control, and suddenly you realize,
Speaker 3: like why cities like New York don't work. And it's
Speaker 3: beautiful and fun and it's like a perfect on your
Speaker 3: commute to work on the bus sort of play on
Speaker 3: your phone game.
Speaker 2: I will add my last edition is another mobile game,
Speaker 2: which which came out twenty twenty three as part of
Speaker 2: Apple Arcade. I believe it's going to be released as
Speaker 2: an actual like anyone can play mobile game this year.
Speaker 2: It's called Japanese Rural Life Adventure and it's basically Stardu
Speaker 2: Valley eight bit style, but you move into to a
Speaker 2: Japanese rural town. There's no romance, and you just become
Speaker 2: a part of the community and you fix things and
Speaker 2: you help people out and you collect things and it is.
Speaker 2: It like consumed my life for like four months when
Speaker 2: I first started playing it. It's so appealing. The music
Speaker 2: is fantastic, the visuals are beautiful. Yeah, ten out of
Speaker 2: ten just love that game.
Speaker 1: My final really quick runner up for is just cheating.
Speaker 1: Cheating at any video game. It's a lot easier. It's
Speaker 1: easy on PC obviously, where there's a million different mods
Speaker 1: for any type of game. The SIMS is probably the
Speaker 1: first game where I really got where I just really
Speaker 1: said fuck working, I want all the money so I
Speaker 1: can just buy stuff and make my house amazing. But
Speaker 1: Fallout and Skyrim both have thriving mod communities on console,
Speaker 1: whether it's Xbox and PlayStation that allow you to do
Speaker 1: like God and just like run through the game, rank
Speaker 1: up your guy immediately, never get killed, have all the
Speaker 1: money you want, buy all the stuff of your house.
Speaker 1: It's a great way to go through a game sometimes
Speaker 1: to just turn on a game for two hours, max
Speaker 1: out your stats, and just go on a buying spree,
Speaker 1: a designing spree, a killing spree, whatever, without any kind
Speaker 1: of fear that anything bad is going to happen to
Speaker 1: your character. They're gonna get murked at all whatever. I
Speaker 1: love going through Fallout like this. I love building huge
Speaker 1: bases and Fallout with just like God mode money. I
Speaker 1: love going through Skyrim with just like incredible dual wielding
Speaker 1: magical powers and just turning people into piles of ash
Speaker 1: or turning them into like berserk, turning guards berserk so
Speaker 1: that they just go out and start attacking people. It's fun.
Speaker 1: It's fun, and it's low stakes, and it's a great
Speaker 1: way to play, to replay a game that you've played
Speaker 1: a million times. Cheat. Go ahead and do it.
Speaker 2: That's your permission, guys, to just cheat's.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about it. And then finally, yes, talk about games.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about alcoholbies.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about hobbies that get us through. Rosie. What's
Speaker 1: a good hobby that you go to when you just
Speaker 1: want to relax?
Speaker 2: You know, someone else, stop because I've got construction next
Speaker 2: to my house, Jason, what's your favorite hobby?
Speaker 1: Taking photographs? Listen. You don't need it. You don't need
Speaker 1: a expensive camera to take nice photographs and to make
Speaker 1: them look good. You can do them. You can take
Speaker 1: photographs with your phone. You can frame them up. The
Speaker 1: latest iPhones and the most recent iPhones have different kinds
Speaker 1: of exposure controls that you use to make your photos
Speaker 1: look great. Everybody, listen. Everybody posts photos to Facebook, to Instagram,
Speaker 1: to whatever. What about making yours look nice? It's fun
Speaker 1: to do and it's easy. You can also, if you
Speaker 1: actually wanted to get into cameras, there's a million, billion
Speaker 1: zillion cameras that you can get for cheap on eBay,
Speaker 1: including like early digital cameras. I got my first digital
Speaker 1: camera that I actually liked was like a Cannon Power
Speaker 1: Shot G nine, which came out I think in like
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine. I got it for like fifty
Speaker 1: nine bucks. It took wonderful photographs. And I enjoyed using it,
Speaker 1: and it's a great way for a person like me,
Speaker 1: where like sometimes you have social awkwardness and it's weird
Speaker 1: to take out your phone and be scrolling your phone.
Speaker 1: You know you're that person, right Sometimes, like in a gathering,
Speaker 1: when it's like, oh, the conversation kind of dies and
Speaker 1: the person I know walked away, I'll just scroll my
Speaker 1: phone for a little bit. Why not take photos of
Speaker 1: a fun event when friends gathered and you can have
Speaker 1: those memories. It's a great way to stay present but
Speaker 1: also be distant and constably distant and engage when you
Speaker 1: want to engage when you have that little bit of
Speaker 1: social awkwardness, take photographs, Rosie. Oh, and I'll say secondarily,
Speaker 1: since we're doing these fast, now, make music do you
Speaker 1: have on your phone? There's you don't have to like
Speaker 1: spend a lot of money, but there's a there's many
Speaker 1: fruit loops. There's a free version for you so you
Speaker 1: can do on your phone or on your tablet. That
Speaker 1: is a fun way to just make music and do
Speaker 1: it very very easily, And it's a great way to
Speaker 1: just like chew up hours hours and hours and hours
Speaker 1: of time. Make a little ditty turn it into your ringtone.
Speaker 1: It's fun. Yeah, Rosie, what about.
Speaker 2: You, I've loved I just want to say, I've loved
Speaker 2: seeing your kind of exploration of photography. It's been like
Speaker 2: a total joy to see that. So it's also nice
Speaker 2: when you when you take photos for your friends to
Speaker 2: see them.
Speaker 3: You know, that's been so especially the Donna photos, more
Speaker 3: of those, of course.
Speaker 2: We always Donna's a legend. Yeah. So for me, I
Speaker 2: I've always thought I'm not really a crafty person. I've
Speaker 2: always I like to like, I just don't feel like
Speaker 2: I have like the vision or the hand coordinate hand
Speaker 2: eye coordination. But in the last year I've gotten really
Speaker 2: really into crocheting. It was actually totally doable and the
Speaker 2: big secret for me. I had lots of fantastic friends
Speaker 2: who are enter crocheting and knitting. But my sweet friend James,
Speaker 2: who we had on the podcast, he took me to
Speaker 2: a shop called the Knitting Tree, and I was taught
Speaker 2: by a fantastic woman called Brenda, who is a costume designer,
Speaker 2: how to single crochet. And that changed my life because
Speaker 2: she explained it to me in a way I understood.
Speaker 2: It was a free gathering. There's lots of local, great
Speaker 2: groups like this, and since then I have crocheted many
Speaker 2: jumpers sweaters as you may call them if you're American.
Speaker 2: I crochet gifts, I crochet gloves, I croche weird wall hangings.
Speaker 2: I am doing much crocheting for Christmas. It keeps your
Speaker 2: hands busy, keeps your mind busy. You've got to be
Speaker 2: counting those rows. So it's been an absolute boon for
Speaker 2: my mental health. Another thing that I recently discovered is
Speaker 2: there was a fantastic artist called Shingyon Kore who is
Speaker 2: a comics artist, but who also makes these things called
Speaker 2: Keepsake games. And it's basically a game that when you
Speaker 2: finish playing it, you are left with something to keep,
Speaker 2: and it can be a map that you have stitched
Speaker 2: your character's adventure on, or it can be a journal
Speaker 2: that is full of letters that you've written between different characters.
Speaker 2: And they regularly kickstart their games and crowd fund them,
Speaker 2: and that is some of the most fulfilling kind of
Speaker 2: chewing up hours and then having something that you can
Speaker 2: kind of look back on and go, oh, this is like,
Speaker 2: I'm so glad I spent my time doing that. So
Speaker 2: those have been the big two. For me recently, crafting
Speaker 2: has been a great outlet, so I would definitely recommend
Speaker 2: exploring your version of it.
Speaker 1: Aboo.
Speaker 3: So the first one I have down is running, and
Speaker 3: I realized this is an episode about cozy things, and
Speaker 3: I've said a lot of not cozy things so far
Speaker 3: on the episode, but for the people who are like running,
Speaker 3: oh my god, that's the least coziest thing I can
Speaker 3: think of. I was in the same boat like my
Speaker 3: entire life, and it wasn't until this year that I
Speaker 3: took it a bit more seriously, mostly because of an
Speaker 3: existential crisis around turning thirty and realizing everyone in my
Speaker 3: family died of heart disease and I don't want to
Speaker 3: go the same way. But it turned into a thing
Speaker 3: that is actually really joyful, Like the thing that does
Speaker 3: it for me on a run is audiobooks. Like music
Speaker 3: is too high key and makes me run too hard
Speaker 3: and tire myself out too fast.
Speaker 4: Well, as we've established on extra episodes, that's because you're
Speaker 4: listening to imagine dragons when you Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe it's the wrong kind of music. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: can't believe you've ben out me like this. Aaron put
Speaker 3: it on the side. Yeah, true, I said it publicly.
Speaker 3: I do listen to Imagine Dragons and other bad music
Speaker 3: on runs, but I mostly listen to audiobooks on runs.
Speaker 3: It's a great way to not only do my other
Speaker 3: favorite hobby, reading, but also it just lets me just
Speaker 3: chill on a run and run around slowly and be
Speaker 3: healthier about it. And it's been great. I've been doing
Speaker 3: it for the past year and I went from like
Speaker 3: not being able to even hobble through a single mile
Speaker 3: to comfortably being able to run a ten k now
Speaker 3: and hopefully you know, in the next couple of months,
Speaker 3: i'll be I'll be participate in my first race. And
Speaker 3: maybe someday I thought, like, it's a it's really become
Speaker 3: a thing that I didn't think I would like and
Speaker 3: now I've come to love. So give it a chance,
Speaker 3: and maybe, like, don't do music. I know there are
Speaker 3: people raw dogging running. I don't think I can do that,
Speaker 3: just like my thoughts, but audiobooks might be a way
Speaker 3: to help you maintain a steady pace. The other thing,
Speaker 3: I don't know if this is a hobby or just
Speaker 3: a lifestyle choice that I've made for myself, But on
Speaker 3: particularly bad days, I will watch bad reality TV and
Speaker 3: order fast food like Taco Bell. Aaron dogs me about
Speaker 3: eating Taco Bell all the time, But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know that that's the thing that will always
Speaker 3: make me feel cozy after a particularly stressful or bad day.
Speaker 3: Throw on something that's totally mindless married at first sight,
Speaker 3: they're like hour to half a long episodes and you
Speaker 3: really only have to pay attention to like ten minutes
Speaker 3: of them, like use twenty percent of your brain to
Speaker 3: pay attention to it. So those are my two things.
Speaker 3: What about you erin?
Speaker 4: This is something that started for me during Pandemic. I
Speaker 4: started playing Dungeons and Dragons with some friends, and we
Speaker 4: had our very first in person game, you know, two
Speaker 4: years into pandemic or so, and we had been playing online,
Speaker 4: and so this was our first chance to buy minis.
Speaker 4: And my friend was like, I'm bringing a bunch of paint,
Speaker 4: bring your minis, I'll bring some others and we're gonna
Speaker 4: paint our characters. And I can't tell you how much
Speaker 4: fun I had, like with all these friends from college,
Speaker 4: waking up in the morning, sitting out on the porch
Speaker 4: watching the sunrise with a cup of coffee and we'd
Speaker 4: be painting miniatures and it wound up being something that
Speaker 4: I have bought more miniatures without even having physical games
Speaker 4: of D and D to play. It's a really fun
Speaker 4: thing to just sit, listen to some music, have something
Speaker 4: to drink, whether it be coffee or tea or you know,
Speaker 4: a tequila or whatever, and just paint because it's a
Speaker 4: hand eye coordination thing. But it's also not me looking
Speaker 4: at a screen, which feels very rare these days so
Speaker 4: many times, like we talked about TV, movie, video games,
Speaker 4: et cetera. This is it's just this beautiful, little quiet
Speaker 4: moment that I can just live in with. You know, whatever,
Speaker 4: silly little dwarf, I'm going to give him blue pants,
Speaker 4: and you know, there's so many different characters that you
Speaker 4: can play around with, and eventually I'll use them in
Speaker 4: some actual physical D and D game, But until then,
Speaker 4: that's I don't need anything for it. It's just this fun,
Speaker 4: little semi creative, semi artistic, semi mind turning off activity
Speaker 4: that I really love.
Speaker 2: We've really cozied. I think that's something here for everyone.
Speaker 1: I believe, Yeah, I think there is something here for everyone. Hopefully, folks,
Speaker 1: you got some enjoyment out of that listing of cozy content.
Speaker 1: Next week on Extra Vision, we're diving into the season
Speaker 1: finale of The Penguin, which is definitely not.
Speaker 2: Get this one. I'm ready to replay off to that episode, guys.
Speaker 1: Tuesday, we're exploring the first chapter of Arcane season two.
Speaker 1: That's the first three episodes, and Thursday we're talking about
Speaker 1: the future of the DC Cinematic Universe. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode. Thanks x ray Vision is hosted by Jason
Speaker 1: Kenseepsion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Joelle Smith and Aaron Kaufman. Our
Speaker 1: supervising producer is a Boo Zafar. Our producers are Carmen
Speaker 1: Laurent and Mia Taylor. Our theme song is by Brian Basquez.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Soul Rubin and Chris Laude, Kenny Goodman
Speaker 2: and Heidi a Disco Moderata