Trevor Noah, Mike McMahan, kitchen dance parties, and a memory expert

Plus my Walter Koenig interview!

I’m writing a book, which means this so-called weekly newsletter is not coming out every week, but I’ll do what I can. I’m behind on my listening, too.

Alan Alda with Frank Felberbaum: all about memory

This was a fun one! Frank Felbergaum is an expert who trains other people (primarily professional groups) using his own unique memory system. He talks about how to improve your memory and told this great story about an experiment with lemons. I’m going to get the details wrong, but he got a group of people together and gave each one a lemon.

No, not that lemon. A lemon! This kind.

He gave each person 3 minutes (I think) to get to know their lemon, to memorize its features. Then he collected all the lemons back and put them in a box. He mixed them up, then gathered everyone around the box and told them not to touch, but to look—and in their minds, pick out their lemon, the one they’d memorized. When he finally told them to reach in and get theirs, every single person reached for theirs and only theirs.

Isn’t that crazy?

There’s more, so go listen.

Trevor Noah on Armchair Expert

Trevor Noah is a rarity in this world, isn’t he? Intelligent but open to new ideas, worldly without being jaded, thoughtful as hell, soft-spoken but with strong, clear words. He and Dax were an interesting combo. I feel like Dax is all energy and go-go-go while Trevor is calm and straight on through, but they still met every step of the way to dig in to whatever they were talking about.

I really liked Trevor’s story about the elevator, along with pretty much everything else he said. I laughed out loud a bunch and have also found myself discussing some of what I heard with my husband a lot. (I just leave out that I heard it on another one of my celebrity podcasts. Ha!)

I am behind on this podcast, but finally finished this one on Thanksgiving morning. And after the festivities were over last night, I treated myself to the Parenthood Thanksgiving episode where everyone comes together, fights, and reconciles at the end with a big dance party.

We didn’t have a family dance party at ours, but after everyone left and it was time to face the dishes (since my husband had cooked all the food except for my famous pumpkin cheesecake), I had my own dance party.

(I actually put on more of a music variety instead of just my 147th “Subspace Rhapsody” listen, but this was the general idea.)

Mike McMahan on writer’s block

Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan (also famous for Rick & Morty and Solar Opposites) was on The Delta Flyers a few weeks ago for an in-depth interview, and had some great advice for writers. He talked about how you can walk into a room to get something and then forget what you were looking for, and said it’s because you’ve switched locations. He said to do the same thing when you have writer’s block: Change the scene. He also mentioned the primal nature of water: Take a shower or go for a swim! Water gives you a restart.

He was full of wit and wisdom! (The best stuff is in the Patreon version, btw.)

My Walter Koenig interview is up on our podcast

What a joy this was. I interviewed Chekov! He said “Kepten” and talked about being on set and made jokes and told stories and made me so, so happy the nice folks at The 7th Rule set it up. Even better, they are going to be recapping episodes of the original Star Trek with him, so you KNOW I’ll be talking about them here.

In the meantime, here’s me and Walter on All Access Star Trek.

These newsletters will be sporadic until I get my book done. Sorry about that.