Friday Flames | 5.10.24

An annual synopsis of what we figured out about these weekly synopses.

A couple weeks ago, fate’s fickle fingers put the 25th anniversary of our wedding on a Wednesday, when we publish our podcasts. And now our second first anniversary, marking one year of podcasting together, has fallen on a Friday, when the Friday Flames go up.

We’ve been talking a lot about what we’ve learned over the past year, and hopefully some of that will come across in Episode 45 next week. Until then, here are just a few of the quotes that our guests have offered up, as part of whatever fiftystuff they happen to be dealing with. We owe a great debt to all 36 of them.

• Episode 6: “When people say, ‘Oh, I moved my mom into a retirement community,’ that one tiny little statement is like describing the universe in one word. I could spend the rest of my life talking about it.” —

  Asha Dornfest

• Episode 9: “One of my main therapists, who specializes in full body trauma and brain injuries, said, ‘This is the hardest time for most people.’ Because I look fine. I sound mostly fine. People think I am fine, and I'm not fine.” — Jodie Ousley

• Episode 13: “One of the very first rules of communicating with people with dementia is Do Not Quiz Them. It's a way to produce shame.” — Emily Gavin

• Episode 14: How Canadians view American healthcare: “It’s like living in a crappy house and looking out your window at your neighbor's, which is on fire, and going, ‘Yeah, we can still tidy up.’” — Stewart

  Brittlestar
  Reynolds

• Episode 21: “When we consider what our lives will be like when our parents are no longer here, we start considering how close we are to them. How much do we want to know? Because archaeology is about filling in the dots; the more challenging the task, the fewer dots there are.” — Elizabeth Mosier

• Episode 22: “First, you have to be a girl boss, then you have to be a badass. Then you have to be an inspirational, fabulous 50s person. I don't have to be a boss or badass or fabulous. Can’t I just live?” — Elisa Camahort Page

• Episode 31: “I googled ‘perks of being 55,’ and after I checked off CPAP and hip replacement, I got to discounts. Apparently I don't qualify for cheaper coffee at Perkins or Denny's, but I get a discount on Southwest and American.” — Bill Braine

• Episode 37: “Change just needs a reframing, a new marketing message that helps us understand that the way to deal with change is by viewing it as possibility instead of something that's being foisted upon us.” — Laurie Smithwick

• Episode 20: “I thought I was going to need a couple years to get myself back in the groove, if I had ever had a groove. It took Magda to communicate to me that I might be someone who's worth getting to know.” — Mike Zarin

Embers in the News

Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle this week:

• Still so addicted to stuff Because one in five Americans rents a storage unit, self storage has become a $45 billion business with ridiculously big margins.

• Just like middle-aged people! Beluga whales communicate by warping their blobs of forehead fat into at least five distinct, jiggly shapes.

• You can hear me now A new therapy for a type of genetic hearing loss successfully restored the hearing in two young children.

• The desire that launched 1,000 sitcoms Realtor.com says that when U.S. adults make plans to relocate, nearly half want to live near their mothers.

---

This week on the podcast

If you’re caring for anyone suffering from a chronic illness, especially if that anyone is yourself, you’ll be inspired by how Heather Petit handles her symptoms and the many obstacles impeding their treatment.

---

Currently reading

Magda finished the harrowing but important Woman, Life, Freedom by Marjane Satrapi et al, a graphic novel about the protests stemming from the murder of Mahsa Amini in Iran. Now she's reading Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant by Curtis Chin, about growing up in his family's famous Chung's Cantonese Cuisine restaurant in Detroit's Chinatown. In this charming and sweet memoir, Chin figures out his identity as one of six kids, a gay man in Reagan's America, and an Asian-American in a city that's famously Black and white.

Doug is marveling at the prescience of Future Shock, defined as “a sickness which comes from too much change in too short a time.” He thinks reading two books in one week is a little show-offy.

Currently watching

Doug has been delighted this week by the chaos of Everybody’s in LA, a live telecast of comedy, music, and random, weird shit patched together by John Mulaney. The overall product is much better seen than described, and we should celebrate its uniqueness in a desperately risk-averse media culture.

Magda and Mike discovered that they've hit the point at which Project Runway All Stars were being filmed and aired alternately with the regular Project Runway seasons, so she looked up all the broadcast dates and made a chart, which they're now following to watch. They've finished PR10 and are about to start PRAS2.

Currently cooking

Magda loves palak paneer and always admired its smooth and creamy sauce, having not experienced a lot of cooked spinach that wasn't grainy and watery. So she took a leap of faith and made this recipe herself, and it was fantastic! She's putting it in the regular rotation.

Doug doesn’t really see the need for biscotti, because they punish your teeth—until you dunk them, and they turn to mush. But he made these (with some added dried cranberries he wanted to finish off), just because he’d never done it before, and he feels they turned out good enough to bring to a brunch or a bake sale.

Next on the podcast

It’s our first year! And we’ve learned a lot. So we’re going to spend some time remembering our favorite moments and eating ice cream cake.

Thanks for reading, and long live Cookie Puss.

Magda and Doug