Peter Fenzel and Matthew Wrather discuss the weather.
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I was getting major skipping around the 29 and 39 minute marks, going on for a few minutes apiece. It seemed like 10 second chunks would go missing at random and the audio would just skip ahead.
Can confirm, total gibberish from 29 seconds.
Yup, I even downloaded it it cos I thought it was a problem with my internet connection or feedly itself or something.
You’re right — I hate to say it, but unbeknownst to me at the time our recording setup failed at several points, resulting in the skips.
I’ve checked the source files and they’re present there, too. So there’s not much I can do. I’m going to see if I can trim around the skips, but that’ll result in even more being cut out.
Sorry, everyone. I’m going to invest some money in upgrading our live recording setup.
I’ve updated the episode with an explanation at the beginning. Thanks everyone who pointed this out to us.
I honestly assumed that the skipping was deliberate and that whatever artistic statement is was meant to make had just flown over my head
This is what we get for doing both an “In Medias Res” episode and a “Time Loop” episode.
Well what better episode for degradation and entropy than the podcast about mortality. Kinda hit me in the old blood pumper. :( RIP sorry for your loss Fenzel.
Well greetings from the bleeding edge of the US, the closest I’ve ever been to snow was when I lived in Kansas. The whole snow affair is foreign to me.
Re: Movie Kisses in Rain …
One of my favorites is this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7eJuWbeVEk
Not just for the rain but the whole intimacy of how she folds his mask down. Mrow.
Man, I would really love to know how you got from Tom Hanks swearing on the Today Show to people taking pictures of their cars covered in snow.
Alas, it is lost forever. Like teardrops in the rain.
Let me see if I can trace it a bit.
– Talking about Tom Hanks was in reference to Cloud Atlas, which was a reference to the Wachowskis and their general lack of popular success since The Matrix.
– This emerged from the sad fact of Jupiter Ascending, and the attendant idea that movies people know won’t be successful are released in February, because weather matters, and February is a time that people think of as lousy. But then bad movies being released in February makes February worse and takes away from a possible refuge from terrible weather that people happily take advantage of in the summer. And it’s all part of things getting better or worse together in large systems.
– This related to people who take screenshots of weather reports and post them to Instagram, and how this is also a lousy thing to do that is informed by the lousy whether outside and what’s the point of it (we debated that)?
– Importantly, I also mentioned people who are in warm places who used to live in cold places taking screenshots of the weather where they currently are and posting it to social media to taunt their old friends and family during snowstorms.
– This moved on to people sharing pictures from their lives on social media as a form of popular culture that made various sorts of sophisticated statements through their context.
– This in turn related to what happens when you look at facebook pictures from people’s summer vacations. If you post a picture from summer vacation while you’re still on vacation, that means one thing. If you post a picture from summer vacation after you get home from summer vacation, that means something else. If you post or look at a summer vacation picture when it’s winter outside, that means still something else entirely.
– This was related to the idea that the weather that is happening when you create art, when you release art, and when you interact with or interpret art matters — that art exists in time and has no inherent permanence.
– This then related to people taking pictures of their cars covered in snow — if you take the picture and post it before you shovel out your car, it means one thing. If you take the picture and post it after you already shoveled your car, it means another thing.
– This led to the scenario where you go outside, take a picture of your car covered in snow, and then go back inside, curl up in a fetal position, and cry. Wrather, living in California, saw this as an absurd thing that doesn’t happen. I, living in Boston, have heard more than one firsthand account of this happening in the past week.
– This was all tied to and connected by the idea that the weather that is happening when you create art, when you release art, and when you interact with or interpret art matters — that art exists in time and has no inherent permanence.
– And then that idea and just the general tone and impression of crying about having to shovel out your car for the fourth time in two weeks planted the seed that grew into the segment of the podcast about weather in culture as a way of expressing feelings about mortality.
I don’t think it happened in this order, and I’m not sure what exactly has been recut since I haven’t re-listened to the episode, but that was the general progress of the thinking in an editorialized, orderly sort of way.
As a Brit, an Overthinker and someone with a meteorologist girlfriend, the discussion of weather here is really interesting. Matt had a really good point about cultural expectations and preparations affecting so much – here in the UK a level of rain is expected but it takes very little snow to trigger both chaos and joy.
When the ep started skipping, I felt what I’ve always heard meditation is supposed to be like. I’ve done yoga for a little bit and tried meditating and just could not do it, just as I can’t get upside down while supporting the weight of my whole body on my head and elbows. But the way I’ve heard it described was that you watch your thoughts as they pass by, but don’t grab onto to them, just observe them and let them go. That’s exactly what listening to the messed up bits of the ep felt like. Like I was watching an art film and experiencing it was more important than trying hard to follow the action or make sense of anything. The only moment when I went “oh poop, I wish I knew what they said now!” was when Matt said “Speaking of Helen Hunt”, probably cause I was a huge Mad About You fan growing up. Anyway, thanks for the weirdly relaxing experience, guys!
Thanks for another great discussion, even when it’s just “Talking about the weather.” It was appropriate that I listened while shoveling the latest snowfall. Here on Long Island we dream of a White Christmas, as long as it melts away on the 26th, which often happens with winter storms. Not this winter, though. We have been spared a lot of the snow that has made its way to New England, though.
Another type of “weather” that came to mind is the disastrous “Thread” described in the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. I don’t think anyone felt good about those storms.