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integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale-ups online in person and on the go shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you sign up for your one dollar a month trial at shopify.com slash setup Oh Hello and welcome to another not special, normal episode of Material Concerns. I'm Hannah McGregor. And I'm Marcel Kosman. And we are here to answer your...
Hard-hitting questions about the serious business that we tackle on the podcast. Yeah, Hundo P. Excuse me? I said Hundo P. I don't like it. What is that? Is that a slang? It stands for 100%. I don't like it. You don't like when I say hundo pee? I guess now that I know what it is, it's not quite so alarming, but I thought it was like when you pee after having had to hold it for a really long time.
You have a hundo P. That's a hundo P. Okay. Listen, for people for whom this might be your first episode, great choice. You jumped in in exactly the right place. Here's some context for you. In these episodes, these material concerns episodes, Marcel and I keep it casual, you know, like in an academic way. So like some casual Foucault references, but casual. Casualism, we won't look them up.
Based strictly on immediate knowledge, what we can pull from our mind grapes. Yeah, and kind of vibes. We also take listener questions about our most recent episode. general questions about Witch Police Productions, our lives, whatever else you find people come up with. If you would like to ask us some questions, why don't you send us?
Some questions. We solicit them on Instagram, but you can also ask us on Patreon if you're one of our Patreon supporters. Or you can email us at ohwitchplease at gmail.com. And just put material concern. But I have a material concern, all in capitals, in the subject line. And then we'll know. Yes. Yes. And we appreciate those because although these recordings are times when Hannah and I actually just get to shoot the shit for a little while without coach interrupting us to take it again.
Happy birthday, Coach, by the way. Happy birthday. It's Coach's birthday right now when we're recording, by the way. Is it Coach's birthday today? That's what it says in the calendar. How come we haven't wished Coach a happy birthday? Because I think Coach is the one who's on top of the calendar. I think the rest of us just wait for Coach to tell us what to do. This is shameful. God, we got to take to the slack and say happy birthday to Coach after this. Oh, boy.
Anyway, Marcel, tell me what's new with you. What's new? What's up? Well, I don't want to get ahead of our next recording, but I went to see Wicked with Elliot tonight. And so that was an exciting movie viewing experience for the two of us. What did Elliot think? Did she like it? She did. She did like it. She liked it more than Wonka. Good, good. So her brain's not broken. That's awesome. You know, it was really interesting. So as you know, and as our listeners.
probably know. I teach university students. And so what I'm trying to say here is that I forgot that at a certain point... children have to learn that there's an overt message and that there's a subtextual message in their media consumption. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
And so I was like, what do you think the movie was about? And she was like, well, I think it was about the Wicked Witch of the West's past. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. But like, what do you think the message of the movie is? And she was like.
I mean, they said that it was about the past. It's about... how glinda and alphaba used to know each other yeah they went to they went to school together and i was like i don't know how to teach this lesson i lack the vocabulary this reminds me Of a thing that I realized when I first started, you know, spending a lot more time with kids. Friends' kids. I don't just, like, pick up kids on the street and hang out with them. And I remember asking one of my kid pals about, like...
a book that he had read. I was like, oh, and what happened in the book? And realized in that moment as he began to respond that summary is a learned conceptual skill. It is. It's one of the major things that, like, grade school and high school English teachers are teaching students is how to, like, read a whole thing and then decide what parts are important. and summarize with a focus on those parts. That's also not an innate skill. So when you ask a little kid about a book, they tell you,
100% of what they can remember. Just all of it beginning to end or out of order, depending on how their memory is going. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. God help you. If you had asked me as a child, what happens? Oh boy. It's not a journey. It's a web. My mom took me to see Les Mis when I was a child, and I then loved to... recount the entirety of the plot of Les Mis to adults. Very good. And then she has to cut her hair. And then, and then she dies. And it's so sad. Oh my God.
Hey, Hannah, what's new with you? That lipstick color looks great on you. I love it. Thank you so much. Bite Beauty. I love the texture of their lipsticks. And also they taste a little bit like candy. Have you ever had a Bite Beauty lipstick? No, I haven't. They taste good. All right. You probably shouldn't eat it, but, you know. Just in case you do. I mean, it goes on your mouth. You can't help it. You taste it.
Hey, what's new with me is that I went to Cancun for four days last week. I saw that on your Instagram. That's amazing. Was it just the most spiritually fulfilling? Oh, no. No, no, no. No, I would say there was nothing spiritual about the experience. Have you ever been to an all-inclusive? No. It was my first time, and it was very weird. Say more about that.
Yeah. So you arrive at the airport and then there's a shuttle there to bring you to your resort. And you're checked into the resort by security. And then you're given a bracelet. that indicates that you belong at the resort and you do not leave the resort again. Oh. You do not go outside the resort. Oh. You only stay on the resort. You can go on like planned expeditions. Yeah. But like, otherwise you just, so I started to feel a little squirrely, like pretty quickly.
Because as soon as somebody tells me I'm not allowed to leave somewhere, I'm like, all I want to do is leave. I don't care if it's all you can drink. I gotta get off this island. I described this experience to my friend Amy, who has also been to an all-inclusive once, and she was like, yeah, I just kept trying to swim home.
But I couldn't get in the ocean because we were, we almost had to cancel at the last minute because Mexico looked like it was going to be in the trail of the tropical storm Sarah, which like flooded. Oh, my God. And so we were like, oh, shit. Like, we've got to cancel. Like, but like Air Canada had. OK, so this is here's a PSA. Hey, everybody.
buy cancellation insurance. When you book a trip, buy cancellation insurance because we didn't. And then, you know, we couldn't cancel the trip and get any money back. And so we were like... Well, there might be a hurricane, but on the other hand, there might not. But it was totally fine. It rained a lot on the first day, and then the other days were nice. Like a little bit of rain and some wind, but like nothing.
You know, nothing serious. We wouldn't have gone if it was actually dangerous. But the ocean was very choppy, so I couldn't swim in the ocean. So I stood in the ocean a lot because I love the ocean and then swam in the pool and went around the lazy river. And drank a lot of margaritas and pina coladas, I gotta say. The limitless booze access, fun.
Yeah, they really watered down those drinks. So you can have like a lot of them without getting sick. And that's fun. Yeah, that is fun. I do. I appreciate that. I feel like that's that some people might count that as a negative. But as somebody who enjoys drinking, I like drinking.
I don't like falling down. I want to have a bunch of margaritas slowly through the day. You give me a strong drink. Now I'm too drunk already. And then what do I do? Water? Then I get grumpy and I want to go to sleep. Exactly. The other thing that I found really weird is that, so all inclusives include all your meals, but... It was surprisingly hard to procure food. No, no. But you're trapped. But you're trapped. There's no, like there's no grocery store. There's no, you're trapped. And.
There's no sort of like snack bar anywhere, at least at this resort. There was a cafe that had a selection of pastries that you could just get. But for people like you and me. the vegan and or the gluten-free. Can't eat any of those. And then everywhere else was like sit-down restaurant. So like there was a buffet that you could basically always go to, but you had to like...
wait in line and be seated and then go into the buffet. So if you just wanted like, you just want a little snack, just a little snack, there's nowhere to get just like a little snack. And that also made me feel a little squirrely. I was like, oh, if I come back to one of these, I'll bring a lot of trail mix. I get maybe it's just a me thing.
You know, hearing this, though, really makes you realize how easy it was to screw the people who went to Fire Island, you know? Oh, yeah. Oh, man. You're trapped. There's no food. If they had just turned around one day and said, all you can have is Wonder Bread and cheese slices, we would have had no recourse. Yeah, because you're trapped. Because you're trapped. Yeah. Yeah, it was wild. There were shows every night. There were stage shows. Any washed up famous people?
No, no, no, no. Only ambitious young Mexican dancers. But a lot of theater school major energy happening in the stage shows. The highlight, my personal highlight, was I went to the spa. Went to the spa one day. There was a spa. Spa was extra. Everything fun was extra. That's not all inclusive.
No, no, it's a trap. You can't call it all inclusive and then charge people extra. And they're constantly, they're constantly like stopping you as you're walking somewhere to try to sell you something extra.
I was amazed at how many people were trying to sell me things that was all exclusive. But the spa, okay, get this. The spa had like... pools of different temperatures and like a steam room and a sauna and various things and you know i went for a massage but they let you go early if you wanted and take the waters
And at one point I was like going to go like, you know, sit in the hot tub. And the person helping me, because there's like a person like leading you around everywhere, was like, oh, first, shower. And I was like, yeah, absolutely. And there were four shower stalls. And she sort of pointed me towards the first shower. And I got in and she said, you press the button. And I pressed the button. I got blasted from every side by cold water. Oh, no. Besides.
I was like, oh, but it only lasts for like 30 seconds. And I was like, OK, that was bracing. And then she was like, all right, into the next one. I was like, oh, no, each of the showers is different and you do all. Why? Why? I just want the warm one. I don't know. So then the next shower blasted me with cold water from a different direction. And the third shower was just a bucket.
Of cold water with a chain that you pulled and dumped on your own head. Okay, so at what point, at which shower were you in when you were like, well, I obviously, I'm doing all of these because otherwise it's an incomplete story. Yeah, no, I was like number two as soon as she said there's another shower. It was shower three when I thought, is this a prank? Is this a funny prank that they're playing on tourists? Oh my God.
Anyway, great time. And I've read 600 pages of an 800-page fantasy novel. Oh, is it the sequel? It looks like the sequel to the dragon book that you told me that I should read, Priory of the Orange Tree. Yes. It is the prequel to A Priory of the Orange Tree. Yeah. Set hundreds of years prior to the events of the Priory. And you know what? I think that I like it more.
Yeah. Would you encourage people to read them in chronological order or in publishing order? I think you could do either. But I also think that if you're looking at the two of them and you're like, I don't know. if I can commit to two 800-page books, I would read A Day of Fallen Night. And then if you're like, adore it and want, so I guess I'm saying chronological order, not publication order. I guess that's what I'm saying.
A Day of Fallen, it's so fun and juicy and gay. Oh, well, that sounds really nice. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's really delightful. And man, what a treat. What a treat to just read. Yeah. For several days. Yeah. Yeah. As soon as I got home, I got home last Friday. I put that book down and I haven't picked it up again. I was in the middle of a very exciting scene, but then I got home and I was like, who has time to read? Not you.
Not this guy. I only have time to read lengthy books discussing the theory of filmic paratext for our podcast. Good gravy. Wee! Want to answer some questions? Sure. Absolutely. Why not? Let's start with the question. I feel like there's only one question that is going to take more than one sentence to answer. And is it Marshall's? Yeah. Yeah. So we got to start with Marshalls. We have to start with the question from the guest. Yes. On the pod, Marshall Watson, who asks, hey, hey, hey, you guys.
If cheesecake is the gayest cake, what are the second and third gayest cakes? So I think one of the reasons why cheesecake is so gay is because it's actually not a cake at all. It's cheese in drag? Yeah, it's draggy for sure. Like it's a pie, kind of, more than it's a cake. Pie? Yeah, right? Crust and filling? How would you define a cake? I would define a cake as being a sweet baked dessert made with flour.
To like make a batter, you know? You make a batter out of flour and you bake it and that's a cake. Okay. And that's just not what cheesecake's up to. No, cheesecake is up to shenanigans is what cheesecake is up to. It's up to absolutely shenanigans, which is... Gay. Very gay. You're right. So there's a kind of cake. I don't remember what it's called. Can't look it up against the rules. But it's a kind of cake that's actually like a hundred pancakes.
You ever seen one of these? No. You make a ton of like super. A stack of flapjacks? Super thin. Oh. And I think you do them in a pan. Oh. But then you layer them with, like, cream in between. Oh. And then you, like, pile them all the way up, but then you serve it in slices. Okay. And I feel like it's...
Sort of over the top and fussy. Yeah. It's pretending to be a cake. It's not actually a cake. Okay. And it's got a thousand layers. And these are all gay to me. Yeah. All of those things. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, I'm going to suggest that pineapple upside down cake is then the third gayest cake. Because it's got pineapple on it. I don't know. I'm not good at these kinds of questions. These are like creative conceptual questions that I'm just, this is not my forte. Chocolate? Is it chocolate? No.
It's not. Tiramisu? No, tiramisu is fundamentally heterosexual. Shut up. Ooh, ooh, what about a trifle? Isn't tiramisu a trifle? No, tiramisu is made with lady fingers. But I want to keep all of my fingers. No, you can't have them. They're going into a delicious dessert. But trifles made with usually with stale cake. No, but then you like soak it. You like soak it. It's like bread pudding.
Like there's lots of things that you make with a stale thing because when they're stale, they absorb a lot more fluid. So like that's why you're supposed to make French toast with stale bread. Okay. Because it like absorbs the eggy. Instead of turning into mush. Instead of turning it into mush. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. Bread pudding, make with stale bread. One time, how did it come to be that I had way too many donuts? It must have been like after a party. You didn't get stoned and go to Tim Hortons?
You know, sorry, this is an aside within an aside. But when I was in high school, there was a Tim Hortons at the end of our street. And my best friend of the time and I would go to the Tim Hortons at like 1 a.m. Because that was like between midnight and 1 a.m. was when they had to. discard of everything that they had made that day and start fresh. And if you showed up with a garbage bag. Here you go, kids. Anyway, no, it was like.
It was like I'd had a party or something and like one too many people had brought Cardam's donuts. Okay. And so I had like all of these leftover donuts and they'd gone stale. And I made bread pudding with stale donuts. Was it incredible? Incredible. Anyway, so the third gayest cake is bread pudding made with stale vegan donuts. You're welcome. Marvelous. Marvelous. Okay. Marcel, what's your favorite kind of cake?
That's hard because as a gluten intolerant person, I'm so limited in the range of cakes. I know, but dream big. I love pineapple upside down cake. I frankly haven't had one. You know, okay, I've got an answer for you. I haven't had pineapple upside down cake since I was a kid. And I wasn't a big fan of it at the time because I didn't think I liked pineapple because I was a fool. That is foolish. It's delicious. All these things that I missed out on. But my grandma.
makes this incredible raspberry upside down pudding cake, which is like a cake made of raspberries on the bottom. And then you pour this sauce on top, which I think is... I could be wrong. I think it's just sugar and water. It's just like really, really thick, sweet brown sauce. Yeah. And I think that that's my favorite cake.
Incredible. Yeah, incredible. I love that you described it as made of raspberries at the bottom. Made of raspberries at the bottom. This, once again, why I'm not great at conceptualizing cakes. I would say that I was about to be like, you never, you know, never become a food writer. But then I remembered how good the recipes you write always are. That's because. That's because in my heart, I'm a comedy writer. Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
A good point. Folks, if you're curious about those recipes, that's in our newsletter. We put out a newsletter once a month. You probably know this, but just in case you don't. It's called the Monthly Hoot. It's very fun. It's super fun. And each month the team takes turns doing like each member of the team does a different recommendation. And so it'll be like a recommendation for a thing to read or a thing to watch or a thing to listen to or a thing to make.
or a thing to buy. And frankly, it's a hoot. Monthly. Monthly. All right. So this question is from... Cheronest? Sure. Cheronthrist. Cheronthrist, I think. Who would like to know if we've made an episode about Friends? Hey, Marcel, have we made an episode about Friends? We have not, but it is something that we've talked about. a number of times. I think maybe, correct me if I'm wrong, Hannah, I think...
We were all a little bit reluctant to make an episode about Friends because we weren't sure if the other people on the team liked Friends. And none of us wanted to make an episode about a show that we kind of liked, even though we know it's a little bit problematic because we didn't want to. We didn't want to talk about it being bad. We definitely had a like, like this very hesitant, like you and me and coach sort of all bringing up friends, but everybody's sort of like.
Being like, well, what do you think of friends? What's your, do you, and what about you? I will say, I... Would absolutely make an episode about Friends. I rewatched one episode recently. I was at a hotel. Turned on the TV. At hotels, they have cable. What? He was turned on the TV. In Cancun, I kept turning on the TV. There's a channel always playing Simpsons reruns. Oh, that's... Were you in heaven? No, you weren't. You were in hell because you were trapped, but... No, neither.
Just purgatory. Neither heaven nor hell it was purgatory. That's what an all-inclusive is. Anyway, I watched an episode of Friends, and you know what? I didn't remember at all from Friends. What? Oh, it's not problematic. It's a thing that I just didn't, because I haven't rewatched since it was originally on TV. And I did not realize that... Like, the whole point of Ross's character is that academic...
Oh, no, no. We had this conversation in Chicago, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is also something that was totally over my head. back in the days when I was watching it. Totally missed it and was like, oh, I did not get these jokes at the time because as a child, I... Had never met a professor. Didn't know what that was. Didn't know why that was funny. Now, surrounded by him. Constantly.
And as I said recently at a meeting with all of my deans and all of the other directors in my faculty, and I quote, getting a PhD gives you a bad personality. I'm professional. What a fun meeting. So yeah, we're probably going to make an episode about friends one day. Yeah. Yeah. Probably. What will we talk about? We're going to have to have a like.
a list of, like, no bummers. We're going to have to have a list of bummers. And we can't talk about the bummers. Well, you know, it's a materiality podcast. So that sort of helpfully gets us out of having to talk about the content of Bum.
culture a lot of the time um so we could talk about you know like like celebrity culture you know that famous thing about how they like collectively negotiated their salaries yeah so that even as like some of them got more famous than others they like worked together to negotiate so that people didn't get left behind Heroes. All of them. Speaking of heroes. Okay. So here's the thing. I, so we have one, one final question, uh, related to golden girls from UV.
And I don't know if either of us can answer it because you've never seen Golden Girls and I've never seen Gilmore Girls. But the question is. But maybe with our powers combined. Is Gilmore Girls a play on Golden Girls in some way? Did everyone already know? that and i would answer no i didn't know is it if it is i also didn't know i'm inclined to say no that i think it's just two shows that have girls
Two shows about girls. Two shows about girls and other things have. Other things have. Sorry, my cat's like trying to. Pat herself aggressively on my hand. Oh. And she just stuck her tiny little face really hard between two of my fingers. And it was like kind of perverted. Pancakes. Come on. Anyway, other things also have girls in the title, like this podcast. Yeah. But when I think about it, I'm like, Gilmore and Golden aren't close enough. And...
I don't think, like, if there were more of them living in a house in Gilmore Girls, maybe. But it's just Lorelai and Rory. Yeah. So I don't think so. But I'm so ready to be wrong because I do not have a horse in this race. So listeners, if we're wrong and it's like a well-established fact. Just let us know. Yeah. But like, be nice about it. Please. Yeah. Don't be mean. Don't be mean. Hey, don't be mean to us. You guys. Be mean is for me when I'm at professional meetings. Please don't.
Please don't be mean to us. I mentioned the possibility of somebody being mean and now Marcel's crying. I am. It's true. It didn't even happen. She just thought about it maybe happening. I am a sensitive dove. Sign up for patreon.com. Which please for more of this solid. Gold content. Solid gold content. And most importantly, happy birthday, Coach. Happy birthday, Coach. We love you so much. What if it's not her birthday?
Why would she put it in the calendar if it wasn't her birthday? She's the only person who puts things in the calendar. That would be a wild choice. She just puts it in just to test us, just to see, just to see if we pay attention. Fuck. Acast recommends. Hello, it's Grace Bent here from the Guardian's Comfort Eating Podcast. Come listen to this week's episode. It's the comedian, Diane Morgan.
I think if I lived alone, I'd just eat cornflakes. Yes. I just cannot be arsed. Thinking up another meal. Two pickled onions. Yeah. A whole trifle. Half a bottle of flat Diet Coke. Yeah. And a Marlborough Light. Yeah, I love that. That's comforting you too. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST is the home of podcasting, including such shows as Vlogbooks, The High Performance Podcast, and The One You're Listening To Right Now.