Tag: Television

Buying Canadian

Of course we didn’t like the tariffs, but it was really the 51st state / Governor Trudeau / not a real country / artificial line / not needing anything we have / US is subsidizing us talk that really pissed everyone off. It produced that very rare occurrence: an actually effective consumer boycott. Travel to the US really is down. So are California wine sales. And businesses relying on cross-border shoppers.

It’s a bit sad, as it’s not actually the hotels and restaurants, the vintners, and the duty-free shop owners that we have a beef with.

But what’s a foreigner to do? We don’t have a vote to grant or withhold. We’re not allowed to make political donations. It’s not exactly safe to go over there and protest. And I’m not feeling this is an administration that would be moved by a sternly worded letter.

So, we got our wallets. It’s economic warfare, and many are choosing to direct our meagre funds to products made elsewhere than the United States. Ideally in Canada.

I’m hardly perfect at it, but you do what you can. Since I’m not in this by myself, it’s not only up to me! And it turns out more is accomplished when we come together as a group to work together toward the same goal. Seems there could be some kind of lesson there…

In the meantime, I have discovered some great Canadian products. And I will share! In my favourite categories: food and entertainment.

Foodstuffs and sundry

Black River pure tart cherry juice bottle.

Black River pure tart cherry juice

Cherry juice is very delicious and apparently also a good anti-inflammatory. Black River brand is made with 100% Ontario cherries. It is a little expensive and somewhat caloric. But both problems are solved by serving it diluted with water, which is still delicious, but makes it cheaper and lower cal per serving.

Also worth mentioning (though I discovered it a while ago): Heartwood sour cherry sparkle, another delicious beverage made with Ontario cherries, this one already diluted with sparkling water. 50 calories a can.

Yoggu Coconut Yogurt

I wrote earlier about not yet having found a good non-dairy yogurt, but this is it—as long as you don’t mind a mild taste of coconut. It’s made in British Columbia and has only four ingredient, one of which is gut-friendly probiotics.

Lee Valley Tool jar opener

Some jars are just a nightmare to open, and Jean’s not always around to help. So he bought me this metal gizmo, which hooks and releases the seal. He also got me a rubber gripper thingie (made in England). With that combo, I can open jars with ease.

Jar opener gizmo.
Blue gripper thing for jars.

Good Leaf Greens

The first week of not buying American was tough in the lettuce aisle, because there seemed to be nothing but California lettuce. Over the next few weeks, though, more and more GoodLeaf Greens became available. These are grown in greenhouses in Southern Ontario. The stay-fresh packaging is really fantastic, and this stuff is good!

Arts and entertainment

I have most definitely have not given up all American TV shows and movies and books (and streaming services). But, I have recently consumed some good Canadian media as well…

TV series

Empathie (Emphathy)

This Québec series, available on Crave, is just a stunner. It’s one of my favourite shows right now. (Jean loves it also.)

Suzanne, a former criminologist turned psychiatrist, starts a new job at the Mont-Royal Psychiatric Institute, where she meets Mortimer, an intriguing intervention officer with whom she strikes up a friendship, and fascinating patients.

Right in the first episode, as we segue from Suzanne’s private to professional life, expectations and assumptions are upended. It only gets more fascinating as more of her past is revealed, and learn more and more about her troubled patients and dedicated but flawed coworkers.

Wholly original. You gotta see it.

North of North

The scenery is the main stunner in this CBC Gem / Netflix series, which was filmed in Inuktitut. But it’s also fun watching Siaja try to make more of her life than being a wife and mother. You can’t help but cheer her on. It is a comedy, but there are some heavy moments as well. Nothing you shouldn’t be able to handle.

Small, Achievable Goals

This CBC Gem series might not be for everyone. It’s a comedy in which two women of very different characters and slightly different stages of life are forced to work together to make a podcast. It’s particularly notable for its very open depiction of perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms. It’s funny and very feminist and I wish it had been available when I was first navigating the mysteries of perimenopause.

Book

Fall on Your Knees

Yes, that Fall on Your Knees, the Anne-Marie McDonald novel, set mostly in Cape Breton, first published way back in 1996. I have just finished reading that now.

I had avoided it partly because it’s quite long, but more because I thought it would be super depressing. Turns out, it’s not particularly depressing. Admittedly, a lot of pretty terrible things happen. It takes place in the past (late 19th and early 20th centuries), when things weren’t so great for women (unlike now, haha).

But for the characters, things just are as they are, and they have to cope, without falling into despair (although that happens on occasion). More often, though, they find original and often terribly misguided ways of dealing. It’s so interesting! I just found myself pulled along and wanting to continue reading, so the length wasn’t much of a problem, either.

The novel starts with the meeting of James, the piano tuner, and Materia, the daughter of one of the piano owners. Their ill-advised marriage sets all subsequent events in motion, and the novel continues through the lives of their daughters and grandchildren.

Movie

Drive Back Home

This is a road movie, based on a true story. It takes place in 1970, when things weren’t so great for LBGTQ+ people (unlike now, haha). Following his father’s funeral, a plumber from a small town in New Brunswick has to drive to the big city of Toronto to get his brother out of jail, after he’s been arrested for public indecency. Their mother insists that he bring his brother back home.

Some funny and some rather harrowing moments ensue. The movie stars the wonderful (despite not being Canadian) Alan Cumming and the also very good (and probably Canadian) Charlie Creed-Miles. It’s available to stream on Crave.

Cutting the cord

There was no particular last straw.

Just that I’d been thinking for a while that the number of programs I watched on either “live TV” or recorded on the cable PVR just didn’t make sense for the amount of money I was spending monthly. Especially since most of it was available somewhere else, for less. Sometimes for free.

It was convenient, for sure. Turn on the TV, there it is broadcasting, or sitting in my Recorded Programs list. But $25 for the basic channels, plus $5 for some extra channels, plus $5 for the second cable box, every month… When I’m also paying for various streaming services… That’s quite the premium for convenience.

Scissors cutting through cords (get it?).
Cutting the cord. Get it? Photo by Yan Krukau on Pexels.com

No way to change Rogers services online, though. Got to make the call! My first attempt to make it through the Rogers voice mail labyrinth on a Sunday afternoon ended with a curt

No one is available to assist you now. Call back during regular business hours.

I was wondering how I might manage to carve out a couple hours during the work day for this task when I remembered I had an upcoming day off. What better way to spend it?

Young lady on phone making notes in a book.
Aging while on hold. Photo by Boris Hamer on Pexels.com

On the holiday weekday, I made it through to a human. Now, Rogers had recently increased the cost of extra cable boxes by $7. So above, where I had quoted $5 for the extra box—that was now $12. This had received some bad publicity, so the person I was talking to was pretty much tripping over himself to make that part of the bill better for me…

OK, so I can reduce the cost of that box to $5 a month, so that your bill will be the same as before. Is that good?

Sure, good, but not really enough! I made the point that even before this particular price increase, I was finding the service too expensive for my amount of my usage. I wondered if any other deals were available, such that I could keep my convenience… For less.

The options were just so baffling! It’s all bundles, so there’s no way to change the pricing of the TV package without also affecting the Internet service. Better deals were available if signing up for a two-year contract, but it wasn’t possible to do that with the same thing I had, only with slower Internet and the same TV channels, or with better internet and more TV channels, but then the price advantage wasn’t that great… And…

Paint swatch selection
Choices, choices… Photo by Antoni Shkraba on Pexels.com

I pondered. But finally went with somewhat better Internet package, bundled with $5 a month streaming-only TV service, on just one cable box. No live channels. No PVR. No cable.

Billing settled, next step for the Rogers people was my updating my modem and cable box with the new services.

… Which took about two hours, during which I was mostly on hold, but with the Rogers person regular checking in:

Are you still with me? Thank you for your patience. We’re still getting errors. We’re continuing to work on it.

But eventually it took. As parting advice, I got:

Call us back in a month. We should have new deals for you!

Hmm.

I tried things out that evening, and they seemed OK. The Internet was working. The TV was now just a portal into Netflix, Prime, Apple TV, YouTube, etc. (I should note, I guess, that all of our television sets are relatively old, so none of them have access to these services built in.)

Old television set
Albeit not this old

The next morning, though, our Sonos music system failed to deploy the alarm as expected. It should wake us up to the dulcet tones of CBC morning radio. What we got instead was the default backup, the Sonos chimes. Which was annoying.

When I tried to stop the chimes, I found that Sonos app was unusable, and unable to find any speakers. Now, Sonos has had its own troubles of late, with an extremely poor app update back in May that the company and all of its customers are still feeling the effects of. I was able to stop the chimes on the Windows version of the app on my computer, as that hadn’t really been updated.

That Sonos wasn’t exactly happy that my wifi network had been changed wasn’t overly surprising, and not necessarily generally worrying.

However… While we definitely still had Internet, it seemed to have become extremely fussy about what it would let us connect to. All Google services were happy pappy. But Reddit was inaccessible. We could use Amazon, but not Ebay. I could connect to X/Twitter, but not to Bluesky. (This is bad!)

But if I switched off wifi and used phone data, I could connect to everything.

Rebooting the modem wasn’t helping.

Woman sodering technology.
I hoped it wouldn’t come to this. Photo by ThisIsEngineering on Pexels.com

It was all extremely distracting, but it was also a work day. I started up the work laptop, and soon discovered that my work VPN was another thing that the new network was simply not going to connect to. Jean’s work VPN: No problem!

I messaged people at work that I was having technical difficulties. And I called Rogers support. Weird problem, I said. We can connect to this, but not to that. He ran tests. He asked questions, like:

What is Bluesky?

(Everyone knows what Bluesky is now, right?)

He reported that all looked fine for him. He tried to blame the company VPN, but I resisted the attempt.

The only other thing I can do is send someone out.

He said it as if that was a threat, but it sounded good to me.

I can have someone there within two hours.

And you know what? They did!

And that technician quickly diagnosed that the problem was that our modem was nearly as old as our TVs.

Magic modem
Though not this old

So he replaced it with a new one. And instantly everything worked again. (Even Sonos. Sort of. Mostly! But that would be a whole other blog post to get into.)

And the cable-less life has been OK. Even in the week after that election, when I found that I was mostly in the mood for unchallenging network television, rather than the “prestige TV” that is the hallmark of streaming. I figured out that I could watch the latest episode of Abbott Elementary and Elsbeth on the Global TV website and app. And that from the website, it somehow broadcasts them commercial-free, even after I turn the ad blocker off?

(I’m not going to pretend I understand that, but I’m running with it!)

And that the insanely dumb but somehow still so entertaining Doctor Odyssey is available not only the CTV app / website (commercial-free here too, somehow), but also on Crave, which I’m paying for anyway.

And that Shrinking and (especially!) Acapulco on Apple TV are also equally soothing choices.

And when feeling up to it, I can still watch CTV News, Global News, and CBC News.

Maybe followed by another Doctor Odyssey chasser. Look! A Shania Twain guest spot!

2023, the “No Netflix” year in TV

Although… Has it been a year since I cancelled Netflix? Not really sure.

Been a while, though. Long enough that I’m completely behind on recent seasons of Stranger Things, The Crown, Ginny and Georgia, Sex Education, Derry Girls… And I have yet to see the Glass Onion movie, or the Shania Twain documentary.

The plan at the time was to cancel it for a few months and try out another service, then cancel that one and try another, then maybe back to Netflix, and so on. Only it didn’t quite work at that way. Shortly after cancelling Netflix, I got a several months free offer for Apple TV, which I then kept afterwards (as it was quite cheap at the time). Soon after that, I got a similar free offer for Disney+. That was so many new TV options at once (along with Prime and Crave and even cable), that I did not end up circling back to Netflix.

Hence a completely Netflix-free list of TV shows I particularly enjoyed in 2023.

  1. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Crave)
  2. Drops of God (Apple)
  3. Fleishman Is In Trouble (Disney)
  4. The White Lotus (Crave)
  5. Sort of (CBC)
  6. Schmigadoon / Schmicago (Apple)
  7. Poker Face (City TV)
  8. Shrinking (Apple)
  9. Only Murders in the Building (Disney)
  10. I Have Nothing (Crave)

With honourable mentions Jack Ryan (Prime), Our Flag Means Death (Crave), Platonic (Apple), Extraordinary (Disney), Good Omens (Prime), and Upload (Prime).

Continue reading “2023, the “No Netflix” year in TV” →

Bosch, Poker Face, Fleishman, and more: Tips and recommendations

I’ve gathered up some bits of wisdom of late that I’d like to share.

First up, how to…

…Figure out what streaming service a particular show is on

Netflix, Apple TV, Disney+, Prime, Crave, Tubi, CBC Gem… It’s nuts. So many services! I don’t subscribe to them all, but enough to make it hard to remember what’s where.

JustWatch Watchlist page

It’s even more confusing for Canadians, since US media will tell us a show is on a service we don’t have in this country (Hulu, Peacock, HBO+)—but that doesn’t always mean we can’t get it on a service we do have. Even more confusing, just because it’s on an American version of a service we have (like Netflix or Prime) doesn’t mean it’s also on the Canadian one. Could be on some other service entirely here.

This is why I love the JustWatch app. You select the streaming services you have access to and it serves up what’s on each. You can set up a Watchlist of every TV show or movie you’re currently watching, or plan to watch, and have one-page look of everything you’re currently caring about. You can mark off episodes or movies as you watch them. It will notify you when new episodes or a new season become available. And it has a pretty good recommendation engine if you need more to watch.

Of course, you can also use it to look up some show you’ve heard about, to find out if it is available to you at all, and if so, where.

…Watch Poker Face

Solid as I generally find the JustWatch app to be, one thing it doesn’t quite get is conventional cable. Particularly when it behaves unconventionally.

Continue reading “Bosch, Poker Face, Fleishman, and more: Tips and recommendations” →

Coping with 2021

Feeling that I should blog about something, although it’s difficult with so much going on in the world, and so little going on in my life. I could certainly give my opinion of events, but science says that there’s actually no mental health benefit in ranting about an issue that is frustrating you, but that you have no control over. 

So guess I’ll try writing about the little things in my world that do make me feel better, at least for a while.

Writing about stuff I can’t do right now

Travelling to Europe. Attending concerts in person. Going to the movies, in theatres.

Continue reading “Coping with 2021” →

Good shows

Having finished the latest seasons of Glow and Mindhunter on Netflix, and the six episodes of Chernobyl on HBO (those are all recommended series, by the way, as is the new Stumptown), Jean and I needed a new show to stream. I short-listed four:

  1. Killing Eve
  2. The Expanse
  3. Good Omens
  4. When They See Us

Jean declared interest in all but the last (about the Central Park Five), which he thought he’d find too depressing.

We decided to start with the six-episode Good Omens, from Amazon Prime.

The premise here is that history as told in the Bible is actually true, and all that dinosaur evidence to the contrary is just God’s idea of a joke. Also, the apocalypse is nearing. An angel (Aziraphale) and a demon (Crowley), who have both been on Earth for quite some time, and have grown rather fond of the place, secretly team up to try and thwart it.

Four episodes in, we’re quite enjoying it. It’s quirky and funny. The cast, led by Michael Sheen and David Tennant–but also featuring John Hamm, Michael McKean, and the voice of Frances Macdormand–is terrific. The episodes don’t waste any time in speeding along toward the end of days. As an added bonus, it also happens to feature a great deal of Queen music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJoR4vlIIs
Good Omens trailer

If there’s anything the show reminds of me of, that would be my favourite network show, NBC’s The Good Place.

Currently in season four, with past seasons available on Netflix, The Good Place is a half-hour comedy starring Kristen Bell and Ted Dansen. It begins when Eleanor Shellstrop dies and finds herself in “the good place” (as opposed to “the bad place”). Only, given the wonderfully charitable lives the other inhabits of “the good place” have led, Eleanor fears that she has mistakenly been assigned there. And has to figure out how to avoid being found out and sent to the bad place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfBgT5djaQw
Good Place season 1 trailer

But that’s just the initial setup. This series goes places in its four seasons, with twists you don’t see coming, unexpected alliances, and utterly bold time jumps and compression. The series is really better watched unspoiled, so I don’t want to give much away. But it does share with Good Omens the off-kilter look at religious themes, the representation of the forces of good and evil as largely banal bureaucracies, and a cartoon-like comedy approach to dealing with deep subjects. Like the best of fantasy series (hi, Buffy) both use the fantastical to comment on modern human realities.

Still, you can’t push it too far. Good Omens is a six-part series of one-hour episodes, based on a beloved (albeit not read by me) Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett novel. It’s largely about poking fun at the absurdity of literal religious beliefs. (I think. I mean, I still have two episodes to go.)

(But, one of my favourite parts of Good Omens so far is the look back at the time of Noah’s Ark.

[The following are not exact quotes, but…] “What’s going on, then?” asks Crowley. “God’s feeling tetchy. She’s decided to drown everyone. Big storm,” replies Aziraphale. “What? Everyone? Even the children?” The angel nods, mutely. Then adds, “Well, just the locals. I don’t think she’s mad at the Chinese. Or the Native Americans…”)

Whereas The Good Place is a completely original, four-season (all short seasons) sitcom. It does not take on traditional religion and its beliefs, but really digs into morality and philosophy: can people change? What does it mean to be good? It’s stunning that there is a half-hour American sitcom about that, isn’t it? (And yes, it’s hilarious!)

So, in summary, Good Omens and The Good Place are both good shows that are somewhat similar but also not really, except that both are deserving of your time and attention.

Ignite TV

MobileSyrup ran an article recently called Are you experiencing platform subscription fatigue?. It focused on the mounting cost of the different services: Netflix, Crave, YouTube Premium, Amazon Prime, and so on. “I just wish there was one subscription service for everything”, the writer noted. Which I found a bit funny. Doesn’t that sound like a plea for the big, fat single cable TV bundle that streaming was supposed to save us from?

Nevertheless, I do sympathize. There are so many services now, with more on the way, and they keep raising their prices. The glory days of cutting the cord and getting by with $8 a month for Netflix are long gone.

Apart from the cost of all this, there is just the challenge of remembering what you’re watching (or want to watch) where, then maybe switching from the cable PVR to grabbing the phone to cast from Netflix, the logging in to your Amazon account to see something on Prime. It’s all rather inconvenient!

What I want, I’ve lamented for some time, is a Sonos for TV shows. Sonos is a wireless speaker system that, apart from allowing you control speakers in various rooms in the house, consolidates most anything you want to listen to in one place. Your own digital music library. Spotify. Google Music. YouTube Music. Podcast apps. Audible audiobooks. Apple music. Radio stations. Where applicable, the subscriptions are up to you to set up, but once have, you can search through it all, you create playlists that mix and match among them—you can have all your “sound” stuff organized in one place. (At least when you’re home.)

Sonos menu of sound options

Rogers Ignite is kind of like that for TV. By “Rogers”, I do mean, yes, the big cable company. Ignite TV is their IPTV (TV over the Internet) offering. Initially available only with expensive, premium packages, they now have cheaper tiers on offer, and we switched to it this summer.

Of course you get the cable channels you subscribe to, which in our case isn’t a lot (just the $25 “starter package”). But we were also offered Crave + HBO free for six months, which we of course accepted. At regular price, Crave + HBO from Rogers cost the same as if you subscribed to them directly, but then you can access them from TV same as any other channel, including on-demand. (You should also have access to them through the Crave app with your Rogers login, but there is some bug there preventing that from working—Crave can’t seem to recognize that you really do have a Rogers cable subscription.)

If you have a Netflix subscription, you can access that through your Ignite box as well. Also, YouTube. And apparently coming soon: Amazon Prime.

The Ignite box itself is this tiny little thing, compared with the large, power-hungry PVRs of the past. You get a ton of cloud storage with it, so you can record shows to your heart’s content. And it’s much smarter about recording those: if the same show plays three times in a week, it’s only going to record it once for you.

The Ignite TV box is smaller than a Blu-ray case

The basic Ignite package comes with only one box; you can add others for $5/month each. We have two. All the same information (recordings, viewing history) is available on both. If wanting to move one to a different TV in the house, temporarily or permanently, that’s quite easy to do.

There’s also a lovely, seamless integration with anything available on demand. Previously I almost never looked at Rogers On Demand stuff; it was off in its own universe, on those special, hard-to-navigate channels. I often forgot it was even there. Now you can find and watch that on-demand content as easily as anything you’ve recorded.

To find things, as their ads point out, you can just talk to the remote. Wherever it is—on demand, available to record, online—it will show you and give you watch options. It remembers what you’ve already watched and makes logical assumptions based on that. It’s all pretty slick.

Oh, and you can also watch on your phone, tablet, or PC, through the Ignite TV app—live TV, recordings, and on demand content. In many cases, you can download your recordings for off-line viewing. One thing not available? Chromecast, as I guess that would kind be competition. But since your Chromecast is typically on your TV, and you can already watch all the stuff on your TV, I don’t see that as a huge issue. (Just if wanting to watch on someone else’s Chromecast while away, I guess.)

Ignite TV app

So that does bring much TV content together, saving mental energy, though not money. I have no idea what we do about the ballooning cost. For now, I’ll just try to resist the pending Disney service and YouTube Premium.

Short bits

Trying to write a longer, coherent blog post on one topic was not working, so here’s a series of short takes, instead.

What I’m watching

All of the time I’ve not been spending writing has really opened up time to watch TV. Nothing is at the level of Travelers, but here are the current favorites, per source.

Warning:

Will not include Game of Thrones, because I have yet to see a single episode of that.

Network TV: The Orville

Seth McFarlane’s take on Star Trek. I’ve always liked this show more than I would have expected, and it’s become kind of serious this year, making me like it even more. Hope it gets renewed!

Netflix: Santa Clarita Diet

Back for season 3, and I’m still loving it. You have to admire Joel and Sheila’s ability to make a marriage work despite her being undead and thus having to eat people.

Crave: Orphan Black

I know, finally, right? I always thought I would like this show, but it wasn’t until my free 3-month trial of Crave that I finally put it to the test. Tatiana Manslany is just amazing in playing all these different clones (and clones pretending to be other clones). And the story has so much twisty goodness! We’re nearly done Season 2.

Amazon Prime: Catastrophe

The humour is a bit much for Jean, but I’m going to see it through! After all, it’s only six episodes per season, and I only have two left (episodes, not seasons). A very unsentimental look at marriage, but I think I love it for the sentimental reason that these two really love each other.

Also because they’re really funny.

How is Zoë doing?

Very well, thanks. She’s adapting to life as an only cat, and getting way more attention than she used to seems to suit her. She’ll never be cuddly, exactly, but she does like to be pet, tolerates being picked up, and will even lie down on us, as long as we put a blanket barrier between her and us. (Bit of an odd duck, Zoë.) She’s also been pretty chatty, and occasionally even purry.

She also likes her new cat tree

News, ugh

I’m rather missing the days when, as a Canadian, you could feel kind of smug while reading the news from elsewhere. But now we have Quebec passing blatantly racist laws, unashamed they violate Charter rights; an Ontario government denying help to kids with disabilities; the Trudeau Liberals deciding that Canada should not be so welcoming of refugees after all; and Alberta about to elect a party full of alarming candidates, including the leader.

Reading about Brexit has almost been a relief. Of course, that’s also a story about irresponsible leadership, from so many sides, causing harm—and you have to feel bad for those who voted to Remain. But the degrees and varieties of incompetency have just been so interesting! (Though with yet another extension, the drama might start to wear thin.)

And, if you haven’t already read the comparison of Brexit to building a submarine out of cheese (an oldie but a goodie), do yourself a favor and do that. Here’s the first tweet:

Then you can see the rest of the thread, and the responses, here: Guy Explains Brexit In 12 Hilarious Tweets And It Will Crack You Up.

We will still need a song

I’ve been listening to more George Michael lately, after watching the George Michael: Freedom documentary on Crave. It was so good! Assuming you have some fondness for George Michael, of course. It made me realize that I really needed to check out his oeuvre beyond the Faith album and the “Freedom ’90” song. He made good music long beyond that.

Heard some good live music, too. Like The Beatles One show last night, a good reminder that this band could really put together a tune, and that a shit-ton of them went to number one. We also enjoyed hearing a subset of the KW Symphony perform Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” (subset because that piece doesn’t require a whole orchestra), led by guest violinist Nikki Chooi. It was just riveting. The whole 40 minutes of it.

Also exceeding expectations was Drayton Theatre’s performance of the musical Priscilla: Queen of the Desert. A terrific cast, creative staging, enormously fun song list. And really something to see the usual Drayton crowd of grandparents, kids, parents all totally there for this celebration of gay pride.

A brief but intense relationship with Travelers

In a TV interview, actor Eric McCormack talked about the very enjoyable challenge he faced in balancing his role in Travelers, where he plays a very serious character facing life and death situations, and his role on the comedic Will and Grace. That’s all I remember about that interview, yet somehow it was enough to cause me seek out Travelers on Netflix, where it was described thusly:

A federal agent tracks four people who suddenly seem to possess entirely new personalities, leading to a startling discovery about humanity’s future.

That sounded quite interesting to me (despite Netflix’s estimate that it only 70% matched my past interests), and something that Jean might like, also. Having blown through the six episodes of the British The Bodyguard, we needed a new show.

But hat’s all I knew about it. And that was great! Because holy, moley, was this an addictive show. Full of twists, none of them spoiled by the media, who never seemed to mention this show, or by any friends and acquaintances, as hardly anyone else seemed to watch it.

And which likely explains why, after three seasons, it has been cancelled.

But the three seasons remain available on Netflix, and you just might want to check them out. Jean and I started watching Travelers in mid-December and were done all three seasons before the end of January. For us, that’s some record bingeing speed. We’d sometimes watch two episodes in a row! Nothing else seemed as interesting as long as another Travelers episode was available. (70% interest, my toe.)

I want to avoid revealing too much plot, but can say that it involves time travel, with this particular take: the consciousness of people from the future can be transported into people from the past (our time), called hosts. All hosts selected are about to die. The traveler from the future inhabits their body seconds before that death is to occur, and takes action to prevent it. Then lives on in their body.

They are doing this to try to improve humanity’s fate.

But oh, the complication and ethical dilemmas that ensue! Especially as they have rules about when and how they can and cannot act on their knowledge of future events. But also, only a fragmentary idea of what the overall mission is.

The core cast is a team of five, two women, three men, each with particular skills and individual challenges based on their host’s situation. The acting is very good. The characters are compelling. I miss them already. (Especially Phillip.)

travelers-season-4-1059512
You can watch to find out why there are six people in this photo. And which one of them is Phillip.

And I will mention this: Season 3 has an ending. It’s the sort of ending that they could have built on for a Season 4, had Netflix decided to renew. But not the sort that leaves you all frustrated about a cliffhanger—which would have been the case, for example, had it ended with Season 2 rather than 3.

 

Finding time to listen

I have found a new (to me) podcasting app Pocket Casts and it’s very good. It has solved all my podcasting problems: It gathers all podcasts in one app, whereas before I was bouncing between iTunes, Google, SoundCloud, and a browser. It keeps my spot in each podcast I’ve started, even when switching devices or playing through Sonos or Chromecasting. It can even cut silences out of each episode, making it each one slightly shorter.

Wait, did I say it solved all my podcasting problems? There’s one it’s likely only exacerbated, even with the seconds or minutes saved by cutting out silences: finding time to listen to all the ones I’d like to.

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Some people do this by listening on what they call chipmunk speed, playing it at a faster speed than recorded. I tried that, but I just don’t like the weird sound that results, even at only 1.5x faster.

I can’t attend to a podcast while reading, or having a conversation, or working (because fortunately my job’s not that boring), or writing, or anything else in which I have to attend to my thoughts. My commute is extremely short, which is wonderful in most ways, but means that it’s really not enough time to make much of a dent in a podcast episode.

And I just don’t want to give up my daily habit of listening to music while making dinner. I also don’t think they would be as good as soundtrack to my Monday night cleaning routine as my “high-energy songs” playlists.

“Know what would make my life better? Listening to music less often.”

— No one, ever.

So I found myself seeking out extra chores I can do, for which a podcast would be a useful adequate. Now, anything that can motivate me to do some tidying up is beneficial. But I still prefer cooking to tidying, so I also find that I’m now trying out more dessert recipes. The value of that is debatable.

(On the other hand, you can definitely overdo this podcast thing, as revealed in this article: I Listen to 35 Hours of Podcasts Every Week. Is That … Bad? Answer: yeah, kind of… And towhich I say… 35 hours a week! Jesus. When do you do… anything else?)

There seems to be podcasts about every topic under the sun, and I’m not always sure how I stumbled upon the ones I try to listen to semi-regularly. But here’s a sampling of them and what I like about them.

Psychology

These are nice because, being less attuned to current events, you can more cherry-pick through them and feel less pressure to listen to them soon after their posting date.

Under the Influence

Good old CBC Radio—the original podcaster! This particular series is by Terry O’Reilly and is on the subject of advertising, or “the art of persuasion”. Recent episodes have covered jingles (with a WKRP reference), use of celebrities (early Ellen Degeneres!), brand myths (no, little Mikey from the Life cereal commercial didn’t die of pop rocks + coke. In fact, he’s alive and works in advertising). I’ve always loved this show, but rarely catch it on the radio. Podcasts to the rescue.

Hidden Brain

Hidden Brain is by NPR: the CBC of the US! This is how it describes itself:

Hidden Brain helps curious people understand the world – and themselves. Using science and storytelling, Hidden Brain reveals the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, the biases that shape our choices, and the triggers that direct the course of our relationships.

One three-part series that actually changed my own behavior a little was on the subject of sleep: The “Swiss Army Knife” Of Health. It makes a pretty compelling case that while sleep feels like a waste of time, it’s really important. And that while those who routinely get only 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night might think they’re managing just fine, they actually aren’t. They just no longer notice how tired they are all the time. But they are chronically under-performing, both mentally and physically. To be at your best, you need an “uncompromising 8 hours of sleep.” Every day.

Pop culture

Pop culture stuff is timely, but not that timely, especially since I almost never see movies on opening weekends, read books when they first come out, or watch TV live (love my PVR). So I can go back a few weeks on the pop culture ones without them feeling irrelevant.

Backtalk by Bitch Media

This one, hosted by two young women, looks at all aspects of pop culture—music, TV, movies, podcasts, books, magazines—from a feminist perspective. I’ve gotten some really good recommendations from it, along with some great insights; for example, their episode about the movie Get Out pointed out a whole lot of racial metaphors and symbols that I had missed, and made me admire the movie even more.

The only issue? And I don’t know how to say this without coming across as a disapproving granny, but wow, they sure swear a lot. I know, there’s a lot for American women to be angry about right now, and you gotta speak your truth. I just feel the arguments might be a bit more effective if the colorful language was applied more judiciously.

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The Americans Podcast

Where Backtalk is very broad; The Americans Podcast is super-specific. It’s not about all the people living in the country to the South, but about the FX TV series by that title that tells the story of Russian spies in 1980s who pose as an all-American couple, complete with all-American children. As previously reported, Jean and I love it.

It’s currently in its sixth and final season, and I have just discovered this podcast, which contains interviews with the cast, crew, and creators of the show, and thus is strictly a post-episode listen, as it’s rife with spoilers. This season is setting up to be epic.

Politics

Political stuff, especially American, is just moving with break-neck speed these days. These are the ones I don’t like to wait too long after post date before listening.

Lovett or Leave It

Crooked Media was a response to the election of Trump. Most of its members used to work for President Obama in some capacity. So they’re not unbiased, but the aim is to have “better conversations about politics.” They have a ton of podcasts, and I’ve sampled various ones. But my favorite is Lovett or Leave It.

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Some sincerely cool Crooked Media merch

Lovett or Leave It is taped live Friday nights in front of an audience, who participates in some segments. It’s a humorous, improvised look at the week’s stories in US politics. To add to the many other sources of humorous looks at US politics. What’s different here, I guess, is that it’s a lot of super well-informed people cathartically doing things like playing a clip from Fox news, saying “OK, stop”, and responding to the stupidity. Or turning the ridiculousness into a game. Or spinning a wheel to decide which topic to rant about.

It’s partly informative, it’s partly therapy.

Oppo – Canadaland

This is a relatively new one, and it’s about Canadian politics! I was drawn to it because they seem to be especially covering wonky issues I get somewhat obsessed with, like carbon pricing, why doesn’t the NDP seem more viable in Ontario, and what’s up with Sikh politics.

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It features journalists Justin Ling and Jen Gerson, who are supposed to in “opposition” from left and right positions, but it took me two episodes to realize that was the idea, because neither of them is really that extreme or partisan. Which I think is good (and also kind of Canadian).