LAUREN: That honestly sounds like a winter wonderland. And also when you first said embracing winter, I thought maybe it was a book and you quickly clarified that it’s not a piece of media but, Megan, I think if you ever read a novel, you need to name it Embracing Winter.
MEGAN: Noted.
LAUREN: Maryn, what’s your recommendation?
MARYN: This is going to sound so cottage-core, but I’m really getting into sharpening all my knives.
MIKE: Yes, yes, yes.
LAUREN: That’s a good one.
MARYN: We’re all home and we’re all cooking all the time. And I accidentally like almost sliced myself a few times and all the advice is if your knives are really sharp, then you were in much better shape and you will not be so much in danger. So, I bought a set of Japanese water stones, which are like knife-sharpening stones that you actually have to soak in water before you use them, and then you put them in a cradle, and there’s like three of them, so they’re like sharp and then like super sharp, and then like extremely sharp, nuclearly sharp. And so I spend loads of time just like grinding my knives back and forth on these. And so, now I have like a set of razors in my kitchen and then very safe, and it’s also very time-consuming and it takes a lot of attention. So, I can’t think about like bad things in coronavirus when I’m sharpening my knives.
MIKE: So, it’s like a good meditation then.
MARYN: It is totally, yeah. It’s like a, yeah, danger meditation. It’s cool.
LAUREN: And is there a specific water stones kit you’d recommend?
MARYN: So, yeah, and I don’t actually know how to say their name out loud, but they’re these people that make pans and knives and things, and it’s either Misen or Misen, but it’s M-I-S-E-N and they’re even in pretty colors. They’re like Martha Stewart colors. It’s really kind of great.
LAUREN: That sounds awesome. That also sounds right up Mike’s alley. Honestly, I see his face, like his eyes are lighting up on the Zoom right now.
MARYN: Yeah, he’s looking kind of fascinated, yeah.
LAUREN: Yeah. Mike, what’s your recommendation?
MIKE: I mean, I do all the cooking in the house, so I obsess over sharpening my knives. So, I stand for that. I stand your knife-sharpening rack. I’m going to recommend a TV show. It’s called Freaks and Geeks. You might’ve heard of it, but you probably haven’t seen it recently because this is a show that aired on Fox, geez, 1999, 2000, like over 20 years ago and has since then only really ever existed on DVD because there is so much music in the show that in the streaming era, it has been very expensive and, therefore, mostly impossible to get it streaming. They would have to redo all of the music clearances for the show. So, it’s a cult favorite. It is now available streaming on Hulu. So, if you have Hulu, you can watch it, finally. Like, people who like the show have been waiting a decade for this to happen.
And if you have not seen it, I highly recommend checking it out. It is a comedy-drama about a group of outcasts in high school in the 1980s. It is very good. It’s very well-written. It’s very heartfelt. It also just feels very real. No matter when you went to high school or where you went to high school, it really resonates. The cast is amazing. Some of the people who were in the show are James Franco, Seth Rogen, Linda Cardellini, Jason Segel, Martin Starr, Busy Philipps, Samm Levine. You will also see a lot of guest stars who you may recognize from other places. It’s really just a treasure, and a time capsule, and one of my favorite shows, and I’m excited that I now get to rewatch it and tell everybody that they can watch it.