Hey, Prime Members! Are you tired of ads interfering with your favorite podcasts? Good news! With Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad-free top podcasts included with your Prime Membership. To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free. Or, go to amazon.com slash ad-free-podcasts That's amazon.com slash ad-free-podcasts to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads.
Hey everyone, just before we get started with today's episode, I wanted to let you know that my co-host of Hot & Bothered Vanessa Zoltan and I are doing a live show. Isn't that right Vanessa? Yes Hannah, we are going to Seattle, Washington. We are going to do a live show where I hope that we see Hot & Bothered listeners, but also many, many material girl listeners.
I hope so too! For those who don't know Hot & Bothered is our show where we watch romance movies and analyze them. And for this live episode, we are going to be analyzing Notting Hill, which is 25 years old this year. It can rent a car. So if you want to hear us talk about Hugh Grant's floppy hair, how many smiles Julia Roberts has?
And everything else in between getting just those two things. Then you should join us on Sunday, September 8th at the Ballard Homestead. You can buy tickets at notstoryworks.com and we'd love to see you there. We really would. We really would. Oh I'm having a Hello and welcome to another episode of Material Concerns. I'm Hannah McGregor. And I'm going to try really hard not to touch the headphones.
You did it so much already. I know. I know. You immediately started doing a lot of hands-on-face choreography. But those hands still are so hard. I know. I know. So hard. You get those nasty little grabbers under control. I know I got to get my nasty little grabbers under control. You know what? I learned recently, but I learned the current theory behind why our fingers wrinkle when we spend a lot of time in water. Oh, what is that?
So what we can tell biologically is that something happens, your nerves react to the fact that they're in water and the blood leaves. The blood moves away from your fingertips. That's what the nerves sort of trigger your body to do. And it's the loss of blood in your fingertips that makes them wrinkly.
So scientists did some tests and found that when your fingers are all pruned up, you're better at grabbing things in the water. And so they're theorizing that it could be like an evolutionary thing because humans have lived on the shore of water so much. And it like increases your dexterity. Your dexterity when you're gathering things from the water. You're wet nasty little grabbers. You're wet nasty little grabbers. It makes them nastier.
Not crying. I'm scientifically speaking. That's incredible. I love a fun fact. Me too. That's so fun. Good times. So Marcel, whose name we haven't said yet. Hi. Hi. How are you? We haven't seen each other in like a month. I know. I know. It's incredible. It time moves so quickly and yet so slowly at the same time.
Yeah, I'm in Hamilton, Ontario right now hanging out with the in-laws. This is the final leg of the Cosmine Chalfraysers go east 2024 trip. And Trevor, which was Montreal depicted to Hamilton. That's right. Montreal depicted into Hamilton with a stop in Toronto on the way to see a blue J's game. Oh, that's where you saw a baseball game I should have known. It's the only place for baseball happens in this country. The only place.
And yeah, I am very tired, very, very tired. I bet you have so many children taking children on a vacation is thankless work. It's not a vacation. It's a trip. It's a trip. It's a trip. I can't remember who said this to me. It's a trip. It is not a vacation. There's one exception and that's Disneyland. Yes, with co-instead. That's when I take my one when I take one child. Sorry. Coco. He'll never know. He'll never know. Yes.
He'll just get older and it won't be so much management eventually. It'll be fine. Yes. How about you, Hannah? You have also been vacationing. I have also been taking a journey eastward. When did you fly to Montreal on the second August second? I was already in Nova Scotia by then. We didn't literally pass each other on the highway, but we were separated by maybe four days.
I started out in Kempville. I spent like three or four days with my family and then my friends, Aaron and Bart, who are the friends that I went to Bali with last year. We're also in Ontario visiting family. We drove down through Kempville and they picked me up and we drove to Quebec City and spent a night there and had dinner at a very nice vegan restaurant in Quebec City. Then we moved onward to their cottage in Northern Nova Scotia.
Then we went to Sappy Fest, which is a music and arts festival in Sackville, New Brunswick. Then we spent another week at the cottage and then we went into Halifax for a few days. I flew home from Halifax this very morning. My goodness. My goodness. If I seem sleepy, it's because I'm sleepy. Yes. Yes. Well, you know, I saw Bri Webb today. Bri Webb was supposed to perform at Sappy Fest and couldn't because he was sick.
I know. When I saw him today, I was like, hey, you were just at Sappy Fest and he was like, I was. I was so sick. I had to cancel my performance. Because he, much like us, did too much. Yeah. He did. Sometimes you do too much. And then your body is like, hey, you know, who's been doing too much? Us, I do. No, you're not going to lay down by choice. I know. No, no, no, no, we can't. I'm going to push it down.
You can't get up. It's cool. It's fine because we're aging. Yeah. And then Bri said, yeah, getting old. Yeah. That's it. That's the stuff. While I was in Kempville, my primary activity was locating and emptying out and cleaning my childhood dollhouse. So I have a very, like a pretty sizable childhood dollhouse that my mom and I put a lot of work into. Like, hand-laid hardwood flooring and Wayne Scotting. But it's like, it's so hilariously half finished that it's like a metaphor for my childhood.
Like, this siding that better only goes that way for walls. And the attic is like fully unfinished. Nothing's been done to the attic. And we brought it down and it, because it's been in storage for like 25 years. So many generations of myself lived in this thing. It was like packed full of like insulation, like pink insulation and mouse shit. And my dad was like, that's weird. We don't have that kind of insulation in this house.
It's cool. And then, and then we also unpacked the box. I'm sorry. I need to, I need hold on. You're telling me that some Beatrix Potter fucking mice like, ferreted some pink insulation from neighboring homes. It seems to be into the dots. Like, they were like, this is where we want to live. However. But the aesthetics all around the aesthetics here. No, no. We shall, we shall forage for pink insulation in the neighboring town. And really, really important. I don't know where they got it.
And then, in the box beside it was all of the furniture and the dolls from the original dollhouse. And the furniture, some of it's in okay condition. Some of it has been eaten by the mice. Yeah, Hong Kong munk of beat this shit out of some of that furniture when she found it that it wasn't real. And the children, the two child dolls are largely intact. But the mother's face has been scoured off.
Anyway, so I told my dad, we cleaned all of it. And I told him pack this up and send it to me because this is my new personality restoring this haunted ass dollhouse. Get ready, everybody. I'm entering my miniatures phase. Oh, I'm so jealous. I want to be in a miniatures phase. Nothing convinces me more that I would go hard into a miniatures phase than the excitement I get when I'm like online shopping for bullshit.
And I get like these little ads for miniature things. And I'm like, those little little orange pylons. I can get these little orange pylons. What will you do with them, Marcel? What will you do with them? I don't know. I can make a little scene. I can make a, I can make a minute earrings. I would put them on my finger and pretend I was a giant. I would always have more and more like a ghost with these fancy incentives. Oh my goodness.
I love this for you. Yeah. Can I send you shit for your dollhouse? Like when I see things that I want to get from me? Yeah. Send me any miniatures. This dollhouse is not going to be cohesive or historically accurate. So send me anything you want. Great. Incredible. We're going to go wild in there. I can't wait. I can't wait. Speaking of going wild. Uh-huh. Should we answer some questions? Yeah, let's answer a few of these questions that we got. Okay, great. I have an important question.
Okay, I'm ready for it. Why is your entire team so damn hot? Yeah. Sometimes people say that to me about my friends. They'll be like, why are all of your friends so hot? I'm like, I think maybe you should think your friends are hot. Like I think that might be part of what hotness is. It's just like thinking that somebody's like really cool and interesting and like has a good personality and like when you really like somebody, they seem hot to you. Yeah. Is this redactive?
What I'm taking from what you're saying is you should absolutely spend your time. You should build relationships with people who you love being around. Yes. And the more you love being around those people, the more beautiful and charming and charismatic and engaging, they will be. And those are the things that make a person hot. Yes. I think. I couldn't agree more.
And so when I look at the team, it's like the team's hot because we all enjoy each other so much and take so much pleasure in each other's company. And we're also very, very gay as a collective and that's extremely hot. Like really important shouldn't be underestimated. Never underestimate the blandness of heterosexuality.
It's just a really it's an uphill battle for the Straits. I think not saying none of them succeed at it. I'm just saying they've got a harder fight ahead of them in terms of looking hot and being cool. They don't have a lot going for them these days and they deserve our pity but not our time. Hey, one or two of my best friends are straight people. I know Trevor claims that he's heterosexual. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.
You know my stance on people saying that they're heterosexual. I think it's homophobic. Admit your gay you coward. So I do just I know that they're a numerous cis hats out there who are charming and beautiful and fun and great. I just think that they would have more fun if they were gay. Yeah, I listen to a couple of Michael Hobbs projects and you know he does like debunking podcasts.
And he'll talk sometimes about like the right wing stereotype of like queers attempting to exert social pressure to make other people be queer. And the concept of social contagion operating through like impart through queer people being mean to straight people. And so like the idea is that like teens become queer or trans because it will make their lives easier. Yes. Because they're being bullied into it. That's right. Yeah, which is you know like all really be Essex or when we do it.
When I bully you into being gay or trans it's liberating. Yes, they're really liberating. Listen, I say it all the time. I am trying my darnedest to indoctrinate people. It's hard work. I try every day. Every day. Every day. Out here my silly little hat. Just try to convince people. I honestly especially when it comes to teaching I have like so firmly stopped trying and just assume. I just take for granted that everybody is already queer. And then when I get my little sheet.
I have all the students names and then I have a space for them to put the name they want me to call them. And then their pronouns. Yeah, like the vast majority. It's like 95% she's and he's. And then there will be like one she they. One day them. And I was like, oh, wow, wow, wow. It's all really outnumbered. It's Alberta still so straight. Yeah, that's why they need to be indoctrinated. Okay, speaking of indoctrination activities. Here's a question.
Do you find it hard to watch stuff sometimes if you're already analyzing it? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm thinking that all of us who have our critical brains going all the time. We probably all have like corners, like peripheral blind spots where we don't notice things and we just watch. But what what what goes into the process of learning? What what goes into the peripheral vision area depends on the person.
And so there will be there will be like, you know, silly pop culture nonsense that I watch. And I'm like, that was delightful. And then somebody's like, are you serious? That was like a that was a horror show. Are you joking? And then other people will be like, I saw this thing and I loved it. How could you possibly love that you month? How dare you? So yeah, so sometimes I watch things and I'm like, well, that was lovely. I enjoyed that quite a bit.
And then other times I'm like, oh no. There only five minutes into this three season television show. And it's already so bad. How am I going to watch it? Yeah, that's my take. Yeah, Hannah. I watch so little content these days. So I kind of think for me personally, it's more interesting to answer this question about other media. Because other non watching based media question was about watching, I think.
But I'm going to expand it because reading and podcast listening are the sites where I experience the most internalized pressure to diversify my consumption and or a worry sometimes that what I am reading or listening to isn't like the stuff I should be reading or listening to or stuff that would better me or stuff. You know, like so there is a way that this sort of there's a larger frame of analysis at work right from the beginning there, which is like, what is the role of my free time?
What are I to be spending it doing? What are the politics of the kinds of books that you choose to read and of the platforms that you read them on? Because so much of my scholarship these days is about like publishing and platform and circulation and how much diversification depends on shifting patterns of consumption. I'm very aware of that stuff and thinking about that stuff a lot in a way that certainly doesn't simplify or render easier.
But like experience of how I engage with stuff but like I think that's useful.
Like I find it useful to question what I'm consuming and why and I want the things I am engaging with to feel like they are prompting something interesting in my life, which is to say like a shared fandom with another friend so that listening to this podcast enables conversation or reading this kind of book is very easy and compelling and keeps me off my phone or off social media in the evenings and that's really good for my brain to like have.
So like it doesn't prevent me from experiencing the pleasure of different forms of consumption that are not necessarily always about like improving myself. But I think in general I find that critical frame like a useful corrective to the default of like what I will just sort of put on or pick up. Which tends to for example be predominantly work created by white people right like of the algorithm.
Hi folks it's coach here you may have noticed that our material concerns episode ended up it abruptly we had some technical issues for that reason part two of material concerns that's only available on
the future on is going to be coming out in the next couple of days so stay tuned for that. I'm really just here pop it into say sorry for the error and if you want some bonus content right now as always you can go to patreon.com slash which please for lots of perks like in the zeitgeist where we talked to our guests about times that they were very zeitgeistie or coaches corner which is when I get to talk to Marcel and Hannah about what I want to talk about.
We have bluepers we have making worlds which is an immigrant is a video podcast that comes out monthly there is just so much to enjoy so once again head over to patreon.com slash which please. And so sorry for the technical issue that's our bad love yeah.