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