Baby it’s GREAT outside: 12 more tips for embracing winter
(Watercolor by Berly McCoy)
It’s Outside/In’s annual winter “Surthrival” show, in which a panel of podcast and radio journalists serve up their personal tips for staying warm, cozy, and active all winter long. From ice-fishing to spicy novels, we’ve got suggestions that’ll get you outside when the adventurous spirit takes hold, and others for days when it’s too darn cold out.
This year, we’re joined by Berly McCoy, producer of NPR’s Shortwave podcast, Olivia Richardson, reporter for New Hampshire Public Radio, and Nick Capodice, co-host of Civics 101.
You can read our full list of suggestions on our website. We’d also love to hear from you! Send your suggestions, ideally as a voice recording, to outsidein@nhpr.org, or call our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER. We might even play them on the podcast or share your tips in our (free) newsletter.
Featuring Francis Tarasiewicz, Weather Observer at Mount Washington Observatory.
SUPPORT
Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of
Follow Outside/In on Instagram or X, or join our private discussion group on Facebook
Tips for getting outside
Berly McCoy catches a rainbow trout. (Credit: Mark Fuller)
Baby pine cone pic (Credit: Olivia Richardson)
Take an ice fishing class — I took this ice fishing class and got hooked. We have landlocked salmon in my area and I can fill my freezer with them and feed my family. —Berly McCoy
(Berly took a class with “Becoming an Outdoors-Woman,” a program that started at the University of Wisconsin that’s now offered in 35 states and 6 Canadian provinces.)Throwing rocks on frozen bodies of water — Never underestimate the magic of testing the strength of ice by finding the largest rocks and logs that you can, and throwing them into bodies of water to see what’s frozen and what’s not. —Nick Capodice
Microphotography — Essentially just take pictures in the winter, but get the really small details of, say, a tiny pinecone. It's really engaging because you're just finding the fun in nature again. —Olivia Richardson
(Also consider getting a lens attachment for your smartphone.)Hot springs — When it gets cold, find some geothermal hot springs. The water bubbles up from fissures within the Earth's surface, and it mixes with cold creek or river water to create oftentimes close to bathtub perfect temperatures. There's also hot tubs if you don’t have any springs around you, but I am a strong believer of hot water in cold weather. —Nate Hegyi
On-screen recommendations
Steve1989MREInfo — Steve1989 is a Youtuber who tastes and reviews military rations. He went viral a couple years ago tasting really old rations, including a hardtack cracker from the Civil War that was more than 150 years old. —Nate Hegyi
Return of the Obra Dinn — You’re an insurance investigator in this game who's been hired by the British East India Company to go to a ship that’s been abandoned. It's washed ashore with everybody dead on board and completely empty. And your job is to piece together how people died and who murdered them. What I love about this is you’re just a guy with a book. There’s no fighting, no action, it's just a puzzle. —Nick Capodice
Stray — You’re a cute cat with a backpack in this game, and then something happens, like the floor beneath you kind of drops and you are thrust into this city as you try to get back home to your cat friends. (Trailer) —Olivia Richardson
They Cloned Tyrone — It’s just the perfect combination of genres, a sci-fi comedy mystery all in one. Basically it's about this drug dealer named Fontaine who starts noticing really odd things happening in his community, and it leads him to uncover this big conspiracy in his neighborhood. —Berly McCoy
Cozy off-screen ideas
Outside/In Senior Producer Taylor Quimby plays as the cats in a game of Root. (Credit: Nick Capodice)
Dark Olympus — This is a romance novel series by Katee Robert. It’s basically the Greek mythology of Hades and Persephone, but reimagined in a sexy way. If you're into the kink world it might not be spicy enough for you, but if you're just getting into romance novels it might be really on the edge. —Olivia Richardson
Watercolor painting — I took a watercolor painting class with friends at a distillery. You all paint the same thing and have whiskey, and there was an instructor who gave us this very easy step-by-step for painting a mountain scene. I liked it so much I hung it up, it wasn't terrible. —Berly McCoy
Root — When I play a board game with you I'm communicating with you in a way that I wouldn't in a bar or at work. My trouble with some games is you're playing sitting next to me and what we do doesn't really have any relationship to each other — We're not arguing. We're not negotiating. We're not interacting. Root is a game about ruthless negotiation and investigation, like, why are you doing that? Why are you moving that there? —Nick Capodice
Make pizza — I have a very great pizza crust recipe from the New York Times — it's flour, yeast, water, and a little bit of olive oil. It's super easy to make, and then you just go to town. Do you want a tomato base? Do you want an olive oil base? And then you just start experimenting with flavors. I had jalapeno, goat cheese, garlic, and honey on an olive oil base. That was delicious. I've also done venison sausage, gouda, and cherry. That was also very good. —Nate Hegyi
A pesto, broccoli, goat cheese, garlic, and mozzarella pizza cooked by Outside/In host Nate Hegyi. (Credit: Nate Hegyi)
CREDITS
Host: Nate Hegyi
Produced and mixed by Felix Poon
Edited by Taylor Quimby
Our team also includes Justine Paradis.
Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer.
Music for this episode by Fasion, Jules Gaia, Thea Tyler, Real Heroes, Mike Franklyn, Josef Bel Habib, Jharee, Jay Varton, DJ Denz The Rooster, Frigga, Ballpoint, Dusty Decks, and Arthur Benson.
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.
If you’ve got a question for the Outside/Inbox hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.
Audio Transcript
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Nick Capodice: Every year. I like to ask people their least favorite, uh, Christmas song, but, um. Oh, that's a great question. What's yours? It's called it's I don't know what it's called. It's so horrible. It's it goes happy holidays. Happy holidays. Olivia, do you have a least favorite Christmas song?
Olivia Richardson: Feeling happy a wonderful Christmas time.
Nate Hegyi: Mine was going to be grandma got ran over by a reindeer.
Nick Capodice: No thank You.
Berly McCoy: I love that song. Yeah, I don't know why, I don't know why.
Nate Hegyi: This is outside in show. Where curiosity and the natural world collide. I'm Nate Hegy here today with an all star panel that I'll introduce in a couple of minutes. But first, as we're dropping this episode on the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, I have a question for all of you. How do you feel about wind chill?
Nick Capodice: For me, it's like when I was living in Chicago or when I was living in New York, like in the winter, you open up the door a tiny bit and it's like, and you close it again, and you just don't want to go out there.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah, so nothing takes cold temperatures and makes them even more unpleasant like windchill. So we called up a guy who has experienced the chilliest windchill there is.
Francis Tarasiewicz: And so that blinding white thing in the background is the sun. And it actually just came out after about seven and a half days, which is awesome. So current wind chill right now is about 14 below.
Nate Hegyi: So this is Francis Tarasiewicz. He's a meteorologist who works at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire. It's this big concrete observatory that's more than 6000ft above sea level. And despite being kind of modest compared to my own Rocky Mountains, this spot is renowned for super high winds.
Nate Hegyi: Can you explain the science of of wind chill? Like, why does wind make everything feel colder?
Francis Tarasiewicz: Yeah. So basically, um, wind, what it does, especially with exposed skin, is it whisks away whatever heat you have that your body's creating. And so the lower that temperature, the more rapidly that energy, that heat energy is taken away from your skin and your body, which is why it's so dangerous.
Nate Hegyi: All right, so this past winter, Mount Washington set an all time record for the coldest wind chill ever recorded in the United States. Y'all want to take a guess?
Olivia Richardson: I think it was, like, negative, like 50.
Berly McCoy: I'll say -65. Okay.
Nate Hegyi: 50, 65. Nick?
Nick Capodice: I’ll say -61.
Nate Hegyi: All right. Francis.
Francis Tarasiewicz: So I was out in the, uh, 108 below wind chill that we recorded back in February, 108.
Olivia Richardson: Oh my goodness.
Nate Hegyi: Below. Wow, that's so cold that any exposed skin would get frostbite within 30s. But even then, you know, somebody at the observatory had to go outside and check the readings.
Francis Tarasiewicz: Um, and we actually had our intern at the time help us record that record low temperature to sort of verify it.
Nick Capodice: They got the intern to do it, huh?
Berly McCoy: It's always the intern
Olivia Richardson: cruelty.
Nick Capodice: I hope it was a paid intern. For the love of Mike.
Berly McCoy: It better be.
[MUX IN]
<<NUTGRAF>>
Nate Hegyi: OK, so I have now verified that intern WAS paid, and is now a full-time staff member at the Observatory. But the point is, if an intern can put on enough layers to safely brave 108 below, maybe the rest of us can suit up and still get outside on those cold months ahead.
This is our fourth annual Winter Survival Show, where we have assembled a panel of wizened winter wizards to offer tips and suggestions on how to go outside and just love the cold. And what to do on days where it's better to just stay inside. Stay tuned.
<<FIRST HALF>>
Nate Hegyi: So I want to start with introductions in the studio. We've got Berly McCoy, producer for the fantastic NPR science podcast shortwave. Berly, you're also based in Montana, right?
Berly McCoy: Yes, northwest Montana, just outside of Glacier National Park. So I love winter. So I hope my tips apply to other people because I will be out there. It's my favorite time of year. The colder the better.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah. So we've also got Olivia Richardson, reporter extraordinaire for New Hampshire Public Radio. And Olivia, you grew up in Iowa, right? What were the winters like there?
Olivia Richardson: I mean, there's it's flat, so there's really nothing to stop the wind. So it's just sort of you walk outside, it blows right through you. You just keep going.
Nate Hegyi: And then of course, we've got Nick Capodice veteran guest of Outside In and co-host of Civics 101, a show about how democracy works in the US. Nick, why do you think New Englanders are so competitive about bad weather?
Nick Capodice: I think anywhere that gets cold a lot, they have this this sort of school of hard knocks uphill both ways mentality. Absolutely. I need a little help from all of you guys, Berly in particular because I, I'm not a colder, the better kind of guy. I'm an Ebenezer Scrooge who sits in his chair in his little hot water bucket below my feet. So I'm very I'm very I'm I have some tips, but I'm looking forward to to getting some new ones today.
Berly McCoy: I don't know if you're going to like mine though.
Nate Hegyi: All right, Berly, let's let's have you kick it off. What is your tip for getting outside even when it's cold and dark out?
Berly McCoy: So mine is ice fishing. Like, if you really hate the cold, this might be kind of tough, but hear me out. Uh, so about five years ago, a friend of mine came to me and said, there's a this class for women. It's called Beaut in Montana Becoming an Outdoor woman. B.o.w. And it was for getting started in ice fishing. And I love a class to learn anything. Um, I'm not a figure it out yourself kind of person because. Yeah, uh, it's just so inefficient. So we took this ice fishing class and I got hooked.
Berly McCoy: Literally.
Berly McCoy: You can go out on any frozen lake after people in the season have already started going out. So you can, like, see people out there, you know, it's already safe and you don't even need anything to drill through the ice because you can go out and find holes that people have already drilled, or you can make friends or you can buy a cheap, uh, they're called augers, which you drill through the ice. A hand auger is pretty cheap. It will give you a workout which will make you warmer so you're not as cold. Definitely have the right gear on. Uh, footwear is super important. Bring a pad to stand on. But we have landlocked salmon in my area, and so I can fill my freezer. I can I can feed my family. Really? On my hobby. Wow. And this is why I go, like, my husband is a fly fishing outfitter, and he always says, you know, it's a good day of fishing is always a good day, even if you don't catch anything. I'm like, no, that's wrong. It's incorrect. I go out there to catch,
Um, so I have a lot of toys now. I have a fancy electric auger. I've got a hut and a heater and, um, electronics. So you can, like, see where the fish are under the ice. Oh, wow. And if the ice is thick enough, you can even have a fire on the ice. So. And I was never really into that, into fishing that much before this. So it really, like I said, got me hooked. And so try it. Give it a try.
Nick Capodice: Yeah. So I just want to jump in here and say I used to ice fish all the time. I used to, uh, go out every year as a tradition and go ice fishing. And I have lots of ice fishing stories, but there's one I just desperately want to share with you all. Do you remember the phenomenon known as icing? No. Involving Smirnoff Ice?
Olivia Richardson: No. Oh, no.
Nick Capodice: Uh, Smirnoff Ice, which was universally agreed upon as the worst alcoholic beverage known to humankind. If anybody ever just showed you a Smirnoff Ice in any public area, you had to take, you had to take a knee and drink the whole thing. Oh, God. Unless you yourself had a Smirnoff Ice, you could do an ice block. And then that the person who offered the first one had to drink both of them.
Berly McCoy: Oh, God.
Nick Capodice: And one year, one year I was out ice fishing and they were like, Nick, the tip up, it was up, it's up. And I sprinted out there and I was like, oh, it's it's biting. It's it's giving me a lot of guff. You know, I thought I had a big old pike on the line, and I pulled it out and it was a gigantic Smirnoff Ice that my friend had died. Prank?
Olivia Richardson: No.
Nick Capodice: You run over excitedly and pull out your bounty. And it's a it's an ice. It was an ice whale. Was a big grow Smirnoff ice.
Berly McCoy: Tell me somebody has it on camera.
Nick Capodice: No, no, it's it's a it's a story best lived in the mind. Burly. It's a.
Berly McCoy: Fishing story.
Nick Capodice: It’s a fish tale.
Berly McCoy: The Smirnoff Ice gets bigger every time you tell it every year.
Nick Capodice: Yeah, but I got I got iced on the ice, but, um, that's a great recommendation. Ice fishing is the best.
Nate Hegyi: How about you, Nick? What do you got for a winter recommendation?
Nick Capodice: Yeah, so I thought about this because, you know, I'm a bit of a grump about the winter. Um. And I have kids, right? So it's like, how do I get them outside? And I'm also often broke. So what do you do to get outside when you're broke? Uh, never underestimate. Never underestimate the magic of testing the strength of ice around the world and the the joy of going out and finding the largest rocks and logs that you can, and throwing them into certain areas and certain bodies of water to see what is frozen and what is not. It sounds so silly. I know, compared to other like outdoor activities, it sounds so banal. No, but it's truly magical. Like it's the most fun thing you can do out there is, you know, just hurling missiles into semi frozen water.
Nate Hegyi: And the sound. Right, like there's that beautiful like.
Nick Capodice: Choo choo choo choo choo choo.
Nate Hegyi: That’s the one. That's the sound.
Nick Capodice: Yeah, yeah. Well, we used to when we went ice fishing, we would do sort of similar stuff where we would try to slide cans of beer as far as possible without them falling over on the frozen lake so you could get it, you know, 200ft if you had just the right surface tension. Ice is really fun. Ice is beautiful when it melts. When it freezes, it's just joyous. It is.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IepJ-gUAWHI]
[mux]
Nate Hegyi: Um, Olivia, what's what's your tip for? For something fun to do outdoors in the winter.
Olivia Richardson: Okay, so mine's all about trying to withstand the fact that you are outside. Yes. Um, so I'd say micro photography, which is essentially just taking pictures in the winter, but you're getting, like, really small details of, like, maybe a tiny pinecone. Nice. I guess the idea is that you're just for. At least for me, it's just getting really distracted by the fact that, like, my toes are cold, my hands are cold. But, like, it's really engaging because you're just, I don't know, finding the fun in nature again.
Nick Capodice: Huh.
Nate Hegyi: What are like, some of the coolest things to take photos of in the winter?
Olivia Richardson: So before the snow hits, I kind of like doing moss and stuff just because it's like glistening. You get the patterns on it. Um, so I'm always looking at like maybe plants that are like covered in frost or like kale or like cabbage because they're still kind of out and about. Mhm. Um, but then also like tiny little pine cones, like there's these baby pine cones that are so cute, I don't know, I feel like little fairies could, like, live inside of them. I don't know, that's my thought process.
Nate Hegyi: Do you have to have a special camera for that?
Olivia Richardson: I've been using my, like, cell phone. Yeah.
Nate Hegyi: You've got to share some of these photographs with us so we can put it in our newsletter.
Olivia Richardson: I will show you one pine cone pic.
Berly McCoy: A baby pine cone pic.
Olivia Richardson: Baby pine cone pic. Yes, yes. Sometimes you also find like frozen bees and stuff, which is kind of sad actually, I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry,
Nate Hegyi: No, that's part of it. This is a show about the outdoors.
Berly McCoy: It's nature. Yes.
Nate Hegyi: Bees freeze to death. That's what happens every every winter. And they kind of do look cool.
Nick Capodice: They're not just sleeping.
Nate Hegyi: No.
Nick Capodice: I was told the bee was sleeping.
Nate Hegyi: Sorry, Nick. I hate to break it to you. Okay, so onto my tip. When it gets cold, I think that you should find some hot water, specifically geothermal hot springs. Are you all familiar with those? Yeah, in Bali you have to be familiar with hot springs. So out west, uh, we essentially have these hot swimming holes. And so the water bubbles up from fissures within the Earth's surface, and then it mixes with, like, cold creek water or river water to create oftentimes like bathtub perfect temperatures. I mean, okay, if I'm being honest with you, sometimes it's a little too cold or a little too hot, but if you find the right one, it's perfect.
Nick Capodice: So my mom lives in New Zealand, which is sort of the land of the hot springs, and like Rotorua, where there's like bubbling mud and thermal springs. I always enjoyed sort of the fragrance of it, you know, it was a real pungent affair of the is it sulfur or what is the what's it can be sulfur.
Nate Hegyi: It can be a little stinky.
Berly McCoy: Nobody knows if you know you fart.
Nate Hegyi: That's true too.
Nate Hegyi: Just be people farting in the, uh, the hot springs. Olivia, have you ever been in one?
Olivia Richardson: Uh, I think once, a long time ago in Canada, like, way up north. Saw the northern lights that time, though.
Nate Hegyi: Really?
Olivia Richardson: Yeah, it was really beautiful.
Nate Hegyi: They're pretty magical. And there's also hot tubs. But I am a strong believer of hot water and cold weather. All right.
Nate Hegyi: We'll be back with more tools for your winter survival toolkit. But first, what are your tips for getting outside in the winter? You can send a voice memo to our email outside in at nhpr.org, and we might even use it on the podcast. That email again is outside in at nhpr.org.
<<MIDROLL – SECOND HALF>>
Nate Hegyi: Welcome back to Outside In. I'm Nate hegy. Here with me are my winter survival panelists. We've got Berly McCoy, producer of NPR's shortwave podcast.
Berly McCoy: Hey
Nate Hegyi: Olivia Richardson, New Hampshire Public Radio news reporter.
Olivia Richardson: Hey.
Nate Hegyi: And last but not least, Nick Capodice, co-host of the Civics 101 podcast.
Nick Capodice: It's the Most Wonderful Time.
Nick Capodice: Come on, everyone.
Nick Capodice: Of the year.
Berly McCoy: Why do you sound like the Grinch?
Nick Capodice: Because I am a Grinch. Berly. You know, the voice of the, uh. The voice of this guy who sings.
Nick Capodice: You're a mean one is the same guy who was Tony the Tiger.
Nick Capodice: They're great.
Berly McCoy: And was that guy you.
Nick Capodice: I wish.
Nate Hegyi: So let's talk about being indoors first. The on screen recommendations like TV shows and movies. I’m happy to kick us off with my recommendation.
So ever since I was a little kid, I have had this weird thing where I love watching people get like super enthusiastic about very particular off beat topics. So it is one of the big reasons why I love YouTube, like there are metal detector guys and reenactors who love 17th century food. And then there's my favorite, this guy named Steve, 1989.
[https://youtu.be/mvnc_2Nun7Q?si=GMCbGTfsryUHAK_m&t=925]
This is Steve1989 I hope you like the video
And so he is a YouTuber who tastes and reviews military rations. So like the food that people eat when they go to war. So he does have like more than 2 million followers, and it probably because he went viral a couple of years ago tasting really, really old rations, including a hardtack cracker from the Civil War that was like, literally more than 150 years old. Oh. Oh.
Steve1989: Mm. I'm kind of tastes like tastes exactly the way it smells. It tastes like mothballs and, um, old library books. Hmm. That's not very good.
Berly McCoy: Why does he do this?
Nate Hegyi: I so I think there are a lot of people that thinks he's just doing it for the gross out, But, like, I think what separates Steve, 1989, what makes people continue watching him? it's his enthusiasm. So like, the man has an incredible knowledge of military rations, how we've made them over the years, the caloric densities, the evolution of instant coffees that they use. And he gets so excited when he finds and shares a new ration and he has this, like, soothing Bob Ross voice. For me, it is the perfect combination. Like, there is this one video. He's opening up a perfectly preserved World War two ration when he finds something surprising.
Steve1989: Whoa! What? No way. Sorry, I'm freaking out. It has cigarets in there. Dude.
Steve1989: Yes. This must be a March 1943 data production. I've read about this. That's a little three pack. Manufactured by the makers of Edgeworth. America's finest pipe tobacco made in the USA…[fade under]
Nick Capodice: I got to tell you, Nate, I love videos where this guy takes, uh, ruined old rusty tools and then very slowly restores them to beautiful, gleaming, shiny metal new
Olivia Richardson: Is this the one they have? Like, a weird, like, sound vibration restoration type thing?
Nick Capodice: Yeah, yeah. So it's just like, I love it. He takes this, this janky old things from the 18 or 19 hundreds and and they look glorious at the end. Yes, yes. You're like 27 minutes past.
Nate Hegyi: That's that's the wildest thing. You're like, what happened?
[mux]
Nate Hegyi: All right, moving on. Nick, what do you got?
Nick Capodice: So what I have to share with you all is my favorite video game, I think ever made. It was tough because I'm a huge video game nerd, and I wonder if any of you have played it before. Um, for folks who love history and who love mystery, it's a wonderful game called The Return of the Obra Dinn. The year is 1803, and in the game The Return of the Obra Dinn, a dark winter time masterpiece. You are an insurance investigator. An insurance investigator who's been hired by the British East India Company to go to a ship that has been abandoned. It's washed ashore with everybody dead on board and completely empty. Oh, and your job is to go through this ship. And it's a beautiful black and white retro style graphic design. A And you have, uh, you have a ship's log, and you have other various primary resource clues. But other than that, you have to piece through sound that you hear when everybody dies, how people died, who murdered them. And by the end of this long saga, you've pieced together this massive supernatural tale of how everybody died on board the ship.
Nate Hegyi: Wow, that sounds so involved.
Nick Capodice: And what I love about this, too, is you were just a guy with a book No fighting, no fighting, no action. No, it's it's just a puzzle. Well, here, let me just play the, uh, trailer for you real quick.
Obra Dinn Narrator: These trade ships, these ten men, not much keeping them above water. The planks are wooden. The grace of God. The only surprise about the Obra Dinn. It's come back…empty!
Nate Hegyi: Okay, so, uh, Olivia, how about you?
Olivia Richardson: Okay, so I also have a game to recommend. I just started playing this game with a friend at her house. It's a game called stray. It came out last year. Um, but essentially, you are a stray cat, and you are in this, I guess, a very futuristic city. I think humanity is gone or dead and robots are everywhere. They just kind of outlived humans. Essentially. The robots are really cool. They have like, their own, like, personalities. Yeah. Um, and they are very shocked that you, a cat, have, like, showed up. So you were like this really adorable cat. You have other cat friends. You guys take naps in the sun together. You, like live and cohabitate. And I guess something happens, like the floor beneath you kind of like drops, essentially. And you are thrust into this city. Mhm. Um, and so you're trying to your cat trying to get home to your friends essentially, Yeah. Um, I'm not quite sure. I'm so sorry for anyone who's, like, dedicated to this game, and they love it. Um, but you're you're again. Again. I can't keep saying it enough. You're a cute cat with a backpack at some point.
Nate Hegyi: Love a cute cat. Let’s play a clip from the trailer.
Nate Hegyi: There's the cat with the backpack. No. The graphics on this, by the way, just look really, really advanced. Like it looks like a real city.
Berly McCoy: Yeah, I was going to say this is really realistic.
Nate Hegyi: Looks like Blade Runner, but with cats. Yes.
Olivia Richardson: and you get to, like, claw like claw at, like, the carpet. You get to knock things over. Like all the things you ever wanted to do as a cat. You get to live it.
[MUX]
Nate Hegyi: All right, Berly, what do you. What do you got?
Berly McCoy: Okay, so I'm not a big screen person, and we've kind of in recent years found certain streaming services. So I found this movie on my brother's Netflix. It's called They Cloned Tyrone. Yes. And it is just the perfect combination of genres for me. It's a sci fi comedy mystery. Like, how do you how do you get better than that? All all in one. And they do it so, so well. And I think, um, so I've been telling everybody I know to watch it and I think that it so it came out in Netflix during the Barb Lindheimer era. So I think a lot of people missed it because of that. But, um, go watch it now. I mean, don't turn off the show, but then after the show, go and watch it. And I had to really think about how to describe this movie without giving anything away. And so the reason it's hard to describe is because at the very beginning, something big happens. And I don't want to, like, tell people what that is. But basically it's about this drug dealer named Fontaine who starts noticing really odd things happening in his community, and it leads him to uncovering this big, uh, this big conspiracy going on in his neighborhood. And so, um, Fontaine is played by John Boyega, who is also in, like, the Woman King and a lot of other things, uh, Star Wars. And so the scene that I have is, um, this scene is when Fontaine is going back to try and find a secret lab he had found, and it's not there anymore. And the people he's with didn't see it the first time.
John Boyega: I don't think you understand me. There was an elevator underground in a lab, And this white man with an afro.
Man: Hey man, um. I think you might need some water. You know, sometimes when I'm stressed out, man, I drink me a bottle of water. I be good. With the doctor say we 80 to 83% water man. How do you think all the cells in your body are supposed to undergo osmosis?
Nate Hegyi: Yeah.
Berly McCoy: Like the humor that they put throughout the movie is just it's beautifully done. It's perfect. It's really clever movie. Um, but it also makes you think because it has the these underlying themes of, like, structural racism and questions about free will. And so there's this whole span of genres and I absolutely loved it. It was like my favorite movie of the year. And I've seen both Barbie and Oppenheimer.
Nate Hegyi: I went totally under my radar normally like pride myself on like knowing movies that come out. I didn't even I've never even heard of this movie before.
Olivia Richardson: hands down, it's a fantastic movie. Just I think there's so many just like, different things that, like, we like the black community is like, concerned about and they do it so well. And to have like the comedy and just to touch upon it and then just the satisfaction of saying like, oh, this was I don't know, I don't want to give it away either. But like, just like there's so many things that like happen as it plays out. It's like, I yeah. I did not recognize that John Boyega was him at first. I was completely confused by it
Berly McCoy: There’s even a video of him, um, talking to his character like he dresses up as his character, and then he's himself, and they're talking to each other, and you completely forget that they're the same human playing different roles because he just he's just amazing.
Nick Capodice: I am watching this tonight.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah, I know.
Nick Capodice: I know what.
Nate Hegyi: I'm doing tonight. Thank you. It's on Netflix?
Berly McCoy: Yes.
[mux]
Nate Hegyi: Alrighty, screen time is over. Let's hear your screen. Free indoor recommendations for surviving the winter. Uh, who wants to go first? Olivia, have you gone first yet?
Olivia Richardson: I haven't.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah, you go first. You go.
Olivia Richardson: Olivia. Uh, so if you want to, you know, keep it really spicy and you just, you know, feeling super cold at night. You can always read the Dark Olympus series by Katie Robert. The spicy romance, very, very spicy romance novel books. Um, and they basically are Greek mythology, um, like Hades and Persephone kind of just reimagining it as a sexy way. I don't know how to describe it other than it's if you're into the kink world, it might not be spicy enough for you, but if you're just getting into romance novels, it might be really, um, on the edge for you.
Berly McCoy: So what are the characters like?
Olivia Richardson: So Hades is kind of reimagined as a guy who's not evil, um, per se. Persephone is crossing like the river of Styx. Um, and so she's kind of escaping to Hades, and they fall in love. And they're also trying to at first have very kinky scenes together to sort of show Zeus like, hahaha, I don't like you. Yeah. And then they the romance builds.
Berly McCoy: I love Reimaginings. Um, I'm a big once upon a time fan.
Olivia Richardson: Yes.
Berly McCoy: And I like when the villain you thought was the villain isn't.
Olivia Richardson: Yes, yes.
Berly McCoy: So that sounds right up my alley. What's it called again?
Olivia Richardson: Dark Olympus series.
Nick Capodice: I'm actually excited to read this because the Greek myths are so full of sort of of, you know, bad sexual encounters. Yes. Um, that it's nice to have it sort of re-envisioned with maybe, uh, you know, a little more agency, you know. Yeah. And, uh, it's such a good story.
Olivia Richardson: It's spicy. It's very spicy. I just want to give that warning.
[MUX]
Nate Hegyi: Let's see. Berly, you want to go next?
Berly McCoy: Yeah. So my recommendation for off screen cozy time is to watercolor paint. And I'd never done it before. Very, very, very new to it. Uh, so my friend loves to watercolor. And I saw a class around our house was at a distillery. It was one of those, you know, you all paint the same thing and have whiskey or whatever. Um, there was an instructor who gave us this very easy step by step to paint a mountain scene, and I liked it so much I hung it up like it wasn't terrible. Nice. And, um, I, I have it, if you guys want.
Nate Hegyi: To see it, I want to see it. Can you post.
Nick Capodice: It? I hope you can post it on the show website because I'm pretty proud of it. I'm pretty proud of it.
Nate Hegyi: Oh that's.
Nick Capodice: Lovely.
Nate Hegyi: That's actually really so beautiful.
Nate Hegyi: Yeah, the sky is amazing. So it's like a it's kind of like these white mountains with like a beautiful lake scene in the front and then like, red into blue sky. The sky is just like striking. That's really gorgeous.
Olivia Richardson: I love the Mountains.
Berly McCoy: Yeah, I think I'm going to get into it a little bit more. And if you don't want to get into the hassle of even water coloring, just color. I've also done that. Adult coloring books are hilarious.
[mux]
Nate Hegyi: All righty. Nick, what do you got?
Nick Capodice: Oh, boy. Uh, okay. Well, look, I have a crippling addiction to board games I think I own. I'm at the point. I'm trying to sell a bunch. I have over, like, 100, 150 board games. Wow. Wow. Um, acquired over the last 20 years. Um, so picking one to recommend to listeners, it was really hard. Uh, the game I'm recommending today is called root. Have any of you heard of the game? Root?
Nate Hegyi: No. Um.
Nick Capodice: Maybe it's by a designer named Cole Worley. And the premise is you are one of four animal factions in a woodland who are all striving against each other to sort of be the dominant animal of the woodland. So when you play, somebody will be usually the cats, uh, somebody will be the birds, somebody will be the, uh, vagabond, and somebody will be the Woodland Alliance.
Nate Hegyi: The vagabond.
Nick Capodice: The vagabond is a is a magical character. The vagabond is a raccoon. Um, okay. If you're playing as the vagabond, you have just one little piece and you're just one little raccoon just walking around by himself in the woods, brewing, brewing dandelion tea, shooting people with a crossbow. Love it. Uh, helping some people, then deciding to hate them again later. You know, building alliances or ending alliances. Um, what I love about root is that, uh, it's the nerdy terms for it. And the board gaming world is called asymmetric. And I hate nerdy board game words, but I'm going to just tell you that one asymmetric means depending on who you're playing, the rules are completely different. So, uh, Olivia, if you're playing the cats, what you do every turn bears almost no relationship to what Nate is doing. Who is playing the birds. You have completely different objectives, completely different goals. Everything works completely differently depending on who you're being. Um, the cats are trying to conquer this snowy woodland by cutting down trees and sawmills and industry and rallying troops like a real sort of like kind of, you know, cats. Yeah. The birds. Meanwhile, if you play in the birds, you're just negotiating a government. The birds are very unruly in terms of how they structure their government. So it's all about, uh, it's all about them trying not to shame themselves and trying to have certain people have certain rules about what jobs they do in their, you know, governmental assignment. And all these come together when you play. And, uh, I think in a previous winter survival episode, somebody suggested the game wingspan. Um.
Berly McCoy: That's what it reminded me of.
Nick Capodice: I love that people like wingspan, and it is a game I shall never play. It just isn't my kind of game. Because for me, what I like about games is I always think of them as ways for us to talk in a new language. Right? I when I play a game with you, I'm I'm communicating with you in a way that I wouldn't in a bar or, you know, in work or something like that. Right. And I my trouble with wingspan, it's like I'm playing wingspan and you're playing wingspan sitting next to me. And what we do doesn't really have any relationship to each other. Right. We're not arguing. We're not negotiating. We're not interacting. Rude is a game about ruthless negotiation and just sort of investigation. Why are you doing that? Why are you moving that there?
What I love also about this game, the designer, Cole Worley, is one of the first people to sort of explore the over present theme of colonialism in board games. Um, this notion of, hey, let's go to an island and settle there, you know, which is like 80% of games before 1995. he is always investigating who is there before you came along and how is what you were doing affecting an economy or a system or a government? and even with woodland animals, um, it's there's a lot of depth to his games, even though it's just a bunch of fun voles and mice squabbling it out in a in a snowy woodland. But, um, there's a wonderful story there, and I encourage you all to come to my house sometime and Concord and play it.
Nate Hegyi: That is fun. I'm not a board game person, but.
Nick Capodice: Oh, there's a whole world to explore. Come with me and you'll see a world of pure gamification between.
Nate Hegyi: You, Nick. And then, uh, our supervising editor, Taylor Quimby. Like, you guys are so into board games.
Nick Capodice: Oh, I have a I have a tip for anybody who's a board gamer. Uh, any game that you like probably has a list on Spotify or whatever music streaming system. You look so just like I think it is crucial to have music appropriate to the game no matter what it is.
Nate Hegyi: Okay, so I'm gonna wrap things up with my off screen recommendation. So since moving out here, we don't have access to a grocery store pretty close. So we've had to, like, really get back to basics about cooking. Um, and so I have been really getting into making, like, off the wall artisan pizzas. Um, so I have a very great pizza crust recipe. It's very easy. It's like flour, yeast, water, a little bit of olive oil that I got on the New York Times cooking app. Um, I'm going to share that in our show notes as well, because it's super easy to make. And then you just go to town like you start. Do you want red base? Do you want tomato base, do you want olive oil base. And then you just start experimenting with flavors. I had a, uh, jalapeno goat cheese, garlic and honey on an olive oil base. That was delicious. Uh, I've done venison sausage, Gouda and cherry. Also very good. I have also done leeks, goat cheese, honey and blueberries. That one did not work. That was bad. I also did it on a whole wheat crust, which.
Nick Capodice: There's your problem right there.
Nate Hegyi: The recipe. Yeah, it was not good. I was like, I need to do something healthy. I'm going to do like a whole wheat crust and you just gotta, you gotta go, you gotta go. White flour. Sorry. So that is that is my jam lately is like every Friday making pizzas.
Nick Capodice: You got a pizza, stone?
Nate Hegyi: I did have a stone. And it exploded in our, uh, in our oven once, so.
Nick Capodice: Wow.
You got a peel? You got a pizza peel?
Nate Hegyi: What's a pizza peel?
Nick Capodice: That's like the big thing that you jam into the oven to take out the pizza.
Nate Hegyi: I’m not that fancy, Nick.
Nick Capodice: Well just get yourself a peel man. I know what to get you for Christmas now.
[MUX]
Nick Capodice: Well, I can say for one, I'm actually sort of now looking forward to winter in a way that I wasn't previously.
Olivia Richardson: Same.
Berly McCoy: Well, I love winter, and this winter is a very special one because we will have a brand new kiddo.
Nate Hegyi: Congrats!
Berly McCoy: I'm going to have to figure out how to ice fish with a tiny human.
Nate Hegyi: That's going to be like.
Nate Hegyi: A fun challenge, though. You know.
Olivia Richardson: As long as it's not like a -0 eight 108. Was it a wind chill? Yeah, exactly.
Olivia Richardson: You’ll be Fine.
Berly McCoy: That might be my limit. -107 I can do, but -108. Oh, my.
Nate Hegyi: All right, that's the show. Big thank you to all of our the folks on our panel. If you want to hear more from them, be sure to check out their work. We'll put links in our show notes to Shortwave, Civics 101, and all of Olivia's stories on Knpr, and we'll put all of the survival tips that we talked about on our website at Outside-in radio. Org and of course, if you have thoughts about the tips we've shared here, or if you've got your own, let us know. You can email us at outside-in at nhpr.org. You can also hit us up on Instagram and X, we're at Outside-in radio. We've also got a Facebook group that you can join outside in.
<<CREDITS>>
This episode was produced and mixed by Felix Poon. It was edited by Taylor Quimby. I'm your host, Nate Hegyi. Our team also includes Justine Paradise.
Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer.
Music in this episode came from Fasion, Jules Gaia, Thea Tyler, Real Heroes, Mike Franklyn, Josef Bel Habib, Jharee, Jay Varton, DJ Denz The Rooster, Frigga, Ballpoint, Dusty Decks, and Arthur Benson.
Outside in is a production of NHPR.
Everyone: Thanks. Thanks. Bye. Thanks, everyone.
Nick Capodice: Happy holidays, happy holidays! The reason I hate it is because the hickory dock. Don't forget to hang up your sock. Come on. And he rhymes toys with girls and boys. I mean, come on, work a little harder.