Best Pop Culture and Play Moments of 2025

Nathan Holbert:
Welcome to Pop and Play, the podcast all about play in its many silly, serious, and powerful forms. As always, I'm Nathan Holbert. And with me is Haeny Baby New Year Yoon.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
Happy New Year, Haeny.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, thank you. Happy New Year.

Nathan Holbert:
Thank you. I guess if you're Baby New Year, that makes me Old Father Time.

Haeny Yoon:
Old Father Time? Okay. Yes. Wise. Wise and sage. Okay. This year, we decided...

Nathan Holbert:
This year?

Haeny Yoon:
What do you mean this year? No, we decided that we would have a best of episode again.

Nathan Holbert:
Oh, boy.

Haeny Yoon:
Yes.

Nathan Holbert:
This is probably going to come out late January and people are going to be so sick of best of episodes.

Haeny Yoon:
Or will they be?

Nathan Holbert:
Or will they?

Haeny Yoon:
Or will they have the renewed energy for best of stuff and be like, "This is exactly what I needed."

Nathan Holbert:
Ours is just best of first two weeks of January.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, exactly. But it's not going to be a best of episode because I think we realized at some point that people do not want to hear our haphazard thoughts about our favorite chocolates, our favorite desserts, the top five cheesy holiday rom-coms, even though I could probably spew one off of the top of my head.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. You say they're not interested but I'm skeptical.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I don't know. I'm interested so that means everyone else is.

Nathan Holbert:
Right.

Haeny Yoon:
Rather than give you a list of our years best haphazardly, we challenged ourselves a little bit. And we decided that since you spent half a season with us ranting and raving about all kinds of different topics from schools to play to Sad Batman costumes, today's episode we revisit some of these topics of these pop offs by introducing our best of list with topics that we are actually experienced with, play, learning, culture, and pedagogy.

Nathan Holbert:
Listen, I'm also experienced with Sad Batman so I don't know why that didn't count.

Haeny Yoon:
You went all in with that costume.

Nathan Holbert:
Thank you.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
I was actually looking back at the past year of our podcast. You're right, we have covered a lot of different topics so it is nice for us to have a chance to go back. And we're not doing the best-of-our podcast but we're revisiting some of the ideas and thinking about where did those emerge, how are we thinking about those, what different resources, readings, movies, TV shows have inspired our thinking on those. And so that's our goal here in this episode, right?

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. And we're hoping that we'll end this episode with a list of resources for you to think about and look at.

Nathan Holbert:
That's right. You're going to leave here with a new shopping list of things to buy and read and play.

Haeny Yoon:
That's what we need, over-consumption.

Nathan Holbert:
And the entire list is things that we've made that... No, I'm just kidding. And then we introduce you to our merch store.

Haeny Yoon:
Join our Patreon.

Nathan Holbert:
Okay. Let's kick this off with something that's very much in your wheelhouse and that is schools and classrooms.

Haeny Yoon:
Yes.

Nathan Holbert:
When you think back on your year, what is one of the most interesting, pleasurable, fascinating, exciting things that you've seen at a school or in a classroom this past year?

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I feel like this year, the best thing that I actually did for myself was to visit more classrooms. And that was partly because the world was making me depressed, I was thinking about all the ways that we can make any kind of contribution to what's happening in the space outside and I felt like schools were the place that gave me new life. And listening to kids just say funny, serious, silly, frivolous... Get it? Things about their experience, and then teachers also facilitating that actually gave me a lot of hope, I suppose.
I want to give a shout-out to John McCann, who during the pandemic really helped revitalize the outdoor space and the outdoor garden in his public school. And I got to witness kindergartners going outside and spending their whole day learning and playing and being in that space in the outdoor environment. I felt like I really learned a lot about what the possibilities and potential could be in having a mindset or pedagogy and freedom that comes from being outside and what that can mean for the inside.

Nathan Holbert:
Wow. That sounds awesome.

Haeny Yoon:
It was pretty awesome.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, gardens are such wonderful spaces to just mess around in and just be and accept the dirtiness, accept the weird life that's forming in those places.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. And it's almost like every day there's an unexpectedness to it where you're like, "I might see a snail crawling over in the mud today." Which I actually did see. Or, "I might see a new thing being built by a group of children over here." Or, "I might listen in a conversation by the wheelbarrow about farts." Which I also did, these are all true stories. It was such a great space and it just reminded me that it's so hard to pinpoint what is the best thing, the top thing I've seen in 2025 in classrooms because I think it reminded me that so many interesting and awesome things are happening in there.

Nathan Holbert:
I look forward to your journal article, Farts by the Wheelbarrow, coming out 2026.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, my God, I have an article coming out about farts, be on the lookout.

Nathan Holbert:
I can't wait.

Haeny Yoon:
All right. Let's move on to your favorite topic, autocracy. I'm just kidding.

Nathan Holbert:
God.

Haeny Yoon:
I'm just kidding. Anyway. My question to you is that we continue to live in a world where something new seems to be bothering us in the horizon and continuing to manifest in very traumatic ways for us and to us. And so in the midst of that, instead of a commentary on the world which is going to turn into the most depressing podcast on the face of the earth, what is one of the best articles, think pieces, media production, something that gave you hope in 2025?

Nathan Holbert:
Hope has been so hard to come by and I feel like oftentimes it feels like a forced exercise that I have to engage in just because I really am a kind of a person that needs to see hope and stuff, otherwise I just can't function. I think I'm going to give a shout-out to the TV show Andor, Season 2 specifically. This is-

Haeny Yoon:
Unexpected response.

Nathan Holbert:
Star Wars on this show? Look...

Haeny Yoon:
Tell us what Andor is.

Nathan Holbert:
Andor was a show on Disney+, there's two seasons of it. And it's basically the story of this character who is in the Star Wars universe and he is living in the time where the Empire is becoming the Empire, the one that we know from the Mark Hamill Star Wars movies. And the first season was really about him just being an everyday guy starting to experience what fascism was like around him and how that drew him into wanting to fight it.

Haeny Yoon:
To be part of the rebellion?

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, exactly. And it was a little dark but it was really, really good. Second season is much more about how do we go from here into the A New Hope Star Wars movie? And you get this sense, it's also very dark in places, but you have this sense that, "Oh, fascism has within it the seeds of its own destruction." The arrogance...

Haeny Yoon:
Oh.

Nathan Holbert:
Exactly. The arrogance, the stupidity, the illogical ways of seeing the world are the ways in which they also crumble. And so it's definitely worth a watch, it definitely gave me hope. And I think there's lots of other amazing writing that people have done on this topic but that was my piece of media that like, "Okay. Okay, we can do this."

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. When you see things like that, they might be the victim of their own demise.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Hopefully, it takes fewer laser guns.

Haeny Yoon:
And not two seasons.

Nathan Holbert:
Right. Right.

Haeny Yoon:
I'm just kidding.

Nathan Holbert:
All right. We also had an episode around Halloween where we were talking about costumes, we were talking about creative production. I'm wondering if we think about stuff you've seen or things you've been a part of this year that were creative and exciting, what's on the top of your list?

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. This is not exactly one thing but I did have a moment. A couple of days ago was the Critics Choice Award, K-Pop Demon Hunters really reeled it in.

Nathan Holbert:
Nice.

Haeny Yoon:
They won a lot of different things and...

Nathan Holbert:
I got to watch that show at some point [inaudible 00:09:01]

Haeny Yoon:
I know. You should because it made me really proud of Koreans.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, rightfully so.

Haeny Yoon:
And I feel like I actually am here for all the Halloween pandemonium this year around K-Pop Demon Hunters. I loved all the Rumi costumes. I loved all the different renditions and iterations of the characters in K-Pop Demon Hunters. I really just liked it. And I felt like the more things I saw around it, whether it was the most prolific and creative thing that people have seen, or whether it's just I bought this costume on Amazon or something for $9.99, I was here for all of that because I felt like all of that brings this visibility and light and attention to it. And so I like it, I'm proud of Koreans.

Nathan Holbert:
That sounds great.

Haeny Yoon:
I'm ready for you guys.

Nathan Holbert:
I'm looking forward to seeing Comic-Con and places like that where they get a chance to really shine.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, I think that's going to be cool. Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
That's awesome.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, my God. That's part of the song, shining.

Nathan Holbert:
Shine?

Haeny Yoon:
I'm not going to sing it because it's way too high.

Nathan Holbert:
Maybe I have seen it.

Haeny Yoon:
You know, Nathan and I really try to sing a lot on this but I can't sing that because it's so high. It's impossible. How about you?

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, I'm not going to do it.

Haeny Yoon:
What creative thing did you see related to making since that's your area of expertise?

Nathan Holbert:
Oh, it's my jam. Yeah. Actually, I thought about this for a while because there's a few things that I could put forward here. And I'm going to choose something a little smaller, and that is that one of my students invited us to, in my lab, explore this thing called flower pound dying.

Haeny Yoon:
What?

Nathan Holbert:
Flower pound, as in...

Haeny Yoon:
Dying?

Nathan Holbert:
...hammer smashing and dye as in like colors in your clothes, right? Like, "Damn, flower power."

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, okay. And then flour like flour with yeast flour or like flower?

Nathan Holbert:
No, flower as like plants.

Haeny Yoon:
Okay. Okay.

Nathan Holbert:
What it is you treat the fabric that you're going to dye, there's a little bit of a process for that. But then you're literally just taking petals from flowers and you smash them with a hammer and it leaves...

Haeny Yoon:
Imprint?

Nathan Holbert:
It imprints the dye behind. And then also because of the pre-treatment that you do, you can wash it and it stays. And you get these really, really vivid, beautiful colors. But you also because of the process being so handmade, you can really design patterns and structures and things with it. Very cool, also just a very fun and cathartic process.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
My old lab, I was in there one week and we were all just smashing...

Haeny Yoon:
Pounding flowers.

Nathan Holbert:
...with hammers. Yeah, pounding flowers. We all had earplugs in and then somebody walked up like, "What is happening here?"

Haeny Yoon:
That is really cool. Do you have it displayed somewhere?

Nathan Holbert:
We do. We have them displayed in the lab. Come on over to the Snow Day Learning Lab anytime and see.

Haeny Yoon:
That is very cool. That does remind me of an episode of Meghan Markle's new show on Netflix that I ended up watching. Actually, this applies, okay?

Nathan Holbert:
Oh, please. Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Because no matter how you feel about Meghan Markle...

Nathan Holbert:
I don't have strong opinions.

Haeny Yoon:
Yes. I actually appreciate her show because she's not an expert really at anything but she tries everything. It seems like she's willing to dabble and it comes off very weird but I do appreciate the attention to just trying.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. No, I love that.

Haeny Yoon:
And she did one of those things where it was like flower imprinting.

Nathan Holbert:
I can see her using a big sledge on that show.

Haeny Yoon:
No she's a little too proper for that.

Nathan Holbert:
That show is a little too tidy for me [inaudible 00:12:36]

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
Nice. Yeah. Well, anytime you want to hammer some flowers, let me know.

Haeny Yoon:
I do. That sounds like a delightful project. Okay. Now that we're deep into winter...

Nathan Holbert:
Oh, we're deep in winter.

Haeny Yoon:
...maybe let's start winter and then let's go to summer.

Nathan Holbert:
Okay. Sure.

Haeny Yoon:
One of our episodes that we did, we talked about summer and breaks and the pressure that sometimes parents feel in engaging their children in the summer with as many activities as possible. And we thought about what does it mean to take a step back, calm down, chill and play, right? Before we go to summer, let's think about winter since we are in the thick of it right now. What's the best winter activity to do with kids or without kids of 2025 for you?

Nathan Holbert:
Well, I'm going to answer without kids.

Haeny Yoon:
Okay.

Nathan Holbert:
I love hanging out with my kids and going sledding and snowball fighting and stuff. But I really like to snowboard. I don't do it very often. I do it sometimes only once a year, maybe twice a year, but I really enjoy doing it. I'm not good at it and I don't get to do it enough but it is a lot of fun. Let me tell you a very brief story about... This is I think two years ago now but I was... Just to give you a sense of how good I am at snowboarding, I've been snowboarding all day, I was with one of our colleagues, not too far upstate. And I was like, "Man, this is just great. It's wonderful. I've had fun. I'm a little tired but one more time down the hill, we'll call it a day and it'll just be a total success. It's my last time snowboarding this year."

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, famous last words.

Nathan Holbert:
Right about when that escaped my mouth, I caught an edge and smashed down, rolled four times, and I cracked a rib.

Haeny Yoon:
That happened this year?

Nathan Holbert:
That was two years ago.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh. Oh, my God.

Nathan Holbert:
But it was just like, "Oh, of course."

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, my God. But this year you did not quit and you decided to do it again?

Nathan Holbert:
No, I did it last year again a few times and I've got a trip planned soon as well. But that's my favorite thing. Even though I'm just getting old enough to where injuries last, it's still a lot of fun.

Haeny Yoon:
That's good. Do you remember on one of the episodes you said something about surfing? Did you say you wanted to learn how to surf or...

Nathan Holbert:
I would love to learn how to surf, yeah. I tried briefly but...

Haeny Yoon:
I feel like there's some parallels between surfing and snowboarding.

Nathan Holbert:
You'll have to tell me when you're surfing next week.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. No. No, thank you.

Nathan Holbert:
How about you? What's your favorite... I know you don't like to ski that much, right?

Haeny Yoon:
No. Okay. Me and winter sports do not get along, especially the skiing, snowboarding, any kind of snow hill thing. The last time I skied, I think I mentioned this already, is I ran into my friend and then I ran into a sign. But this is all before I started, that was not cool. Okay. I put in my notes that building a snowman is a thing but there is actually a very specific thing. Yesterday I was running... Or no, maybe a few days ago, and I was running back towards our apartment. And you know how in one of the benches, there's a snowman...

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, every year.

Haeny Yoon:
...family every year?

Nathan Holbert:
Everytime there's a snowfall, somebody builds a snowman. I was going to ask, is that you that makes this?

Haeny Yoon:
No, but we really need to know who that is. Or actually, the mystery is also quite nice. And I don't know when they do it...

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, I've never seen them making it.

Haeny Yoon:
...because I've never seen them making it. But every year I look forward to the idea that when the first snowfall comes, there's going to be this snowman family that is going to be sitting on one of the benches as I walk back home. And it reminded me of the last episode or a couple of weeks ago we talked about traditions and the things that...

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
The things that we cultivate, whether it's small or large. And it just made me think about the beauty that there could be and just these small little traditions that we make for ourselves.

Nathan Holbert:
That's good. That's good. When was the last time you made a snowman?

Haeny Yoon:
It's been a minute.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, it's been a minute for me too. Sometimes the kids will make one but... Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Because you know my summer activity was to touch grass and be outside.

Nathan Holbert:
That's your summer activity?

Haeny Yoon:
I don't actually like to touch snow because I don't like to be cold.

Nathan Holbert:
I would prefer to touch snow than grass.

Haeny Yoon:
Snow than grass? And why is that?

Nathan Holbert:
Grass is fine but I think I'm a little allergic to it and so it's a little itchy.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, I think I'm allergic to grass too. But you know, it's also a metaphor if you didn't know.

Nathan Holbert:
Touch snow.

Haeny Yoon:
Yes. The touch grass was a metaphor, the touch snow was literal. I didn't know why you couldn't make that jump.

Nathan Holbert:
I'm very slow today.

Haeny Yoon:
I'm just kidding.

Nathan Holbert:
Wait, your favorite summer activity is touch grass and be outside?

Haeny Yoon:
It's just being outside. Yep.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
How about you?

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, I like that as well. I think when I think of the summer, I often have conferences in the summer. And so in my brain, part of the thing that's connected... Now that I'm an adult that's connected to summer is being in a city somewhere elsewhere, and my favorite thing to do when I'm in a city I haven't been to is just to wander. I like to choose a location or whatever but then after that, just walk around and see where I can go. And so that's one of my favorite things to do is just get lost in a new place.

Haeny Yoon:
I think that's great. I feel like wandering is so underrated. There's a book, On Looking by Alexandra Horowitz, and it's about walking and she walks... Each chapter she walks with a different person that has a different lens for seeing like an architect or a young child or someone who's really into typography or something like that. And she talks about and notices how people will look differently depending on their point of view, and then it also creates a different way of looking for you too. Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
Way to elevate our go outside.

Haeny Yoon:
I often think about that when I'm... Because I feel like lately I've been thinking about walking without a purpose because you're so purposeful when you walk and maybe there's a different kind of walking and wandering that can happen.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, that's key. Being able to just find... Let purpose emerge in your wanderings.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
Okay. Let's bring it to a topic that you and I supposedly know a lot about, which is play. And you're a big reader, you just out of nowhere quoted a book and invited us to think about wandering and how important that is. As the resident book reader, what's the best book you read about play?

Haeny Yoon:
I actually cheated a little bit and I did an oldie-book-goodie. 1984, Vivian Paley wrote this book called...

Nathan Holbert:
You weren't even born in 1984.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, exactly.

Nathan Holbert:
Neither was I.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, exactly. Wally's Stories was written by Vivian Paley, and she basically spent a whole year just collecting play stories in a kindergarten classroom. And it was around Wally and just his inclusion into the classroom but then also just made me... The reason why I revisited it again this year and why I bring it back in 2025 is that a class I taught in the fall, I decided that instead of looking for all of these new things on play, which is what I usually do, I was like, "What is an oldie but goodie that I have to revisit and look at again?" And I looked at Wally's Stories again and I was like, "You know what? This is amazing. More people need to read this and more people need to do stuff like this." Because I feel like it reminded me that it's not about theorizing play or seeing something really smart about play, it's also just reveling and understanding and being willing to just join in on what children are playing, and amplifying their stories enough so that it gets into a book.

Nathan Holbert:
That is really, really delightful. I like how you put that as well, to feel the revel and get into it.

Haeny Yoon:
Yes, exactly.

Nathan Holbert:
I haven't read that. I'm going to have to check that out.

Haeny Yoon:
Yes, you should.

Nathan Holbert:
I want to make the transition from what you just suggested from Wally's Stories to the book that I chose because I have a quote from the inside cover that feels like it's exactly like what you said. Maybe we're on the same page here. This is a book called The Rules We Break by Eric Zimmerman, and it's a book about... It's about rules, it's about game design, it's about play, but it's really philosophical, it's also extremely playful. When you first open up the cover, it says, "Play with this book." And these giant block letters. And on the back cover, inside cover, it says, "Easy as shit."

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, I love that. Okay.

Nathan Holbert:
Which I find really fun.

Haeny Yoon:
Yes, I love profanity in books so I know.

Nathan Holbert:
I know, me too. Why is that so pleasurable?

Haeny Yoon:
Exactly.

Nathan Holbert:
But the quote that I want to mention, and this is actually a quote from another book, Bernie De Koven's The Infinite Playground, but it goes like this, it's like a little short poem here, "It's a choice, this being in play. And to make this choice, you need to be aware that such a gift is available to you and yours all the time. To play, you don't need toys or costumes or joke books. You don't even need games, although they can help. But you do have to be open, vulnerable. You do have to let go."

Haeny Yoon:
Oh.

Nathan Holbert:
Right? Chills.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, totally.

Nathan Holbert:
It feels like that's exactly the spirit you...

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, totally. Because I feel like what you see in Wally's Stories is this openness and vulnerability and willingness of young children to just be able to say things to one another, to contradict each other, to ask questions of each other. And it takes a lot to put yourself out there.

Nathan Holbert:
A necessary condition though for play.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, I really like that.

Nathan Holbert:
That was Eric Zimmerman's The Rules We Break and also Vivian Paley's Wally's Stories. Those you can add to your shopping list.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, exactly.

Nathan Holbert:
Those in our merch store.

Haeny Yoon:
And a snowman and some grass. Oh, my God.

Nathan Holbert:
It's like when you go into those juice stores and they'd have just a little plot of grass there and throw in your cup.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
Wait, what are you doing here? All right.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh gosh. Okay. Let's move on to AI.

Nathan Holbert:
Let's go to AI.

Haeny Yoon:
Because I feel like this year we've been talking a lot about AI, not just on the podcast but just everywhere in response to...

Nathan Holbert:
It's everywhere.

Haeny Yoon:
It's everywhere, right? And so I feel like it's really important to think about how we should be working through some of the tensions and dilemmas that have to do with AI. And so I go back to our episode that we had, and you were obviously more the expert, I was more the... I asked a lot of questions thing. But...

Nathan Holbert:
That was an early one this year I think.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. And so what do you think... What have you come across recently in 2025 that has been the best resource for thinking through issues around AI?

Nathan Holbert:
I had a bit of a tough time with this one because I have... I ended up fully ensconcing myself in readings around AI this year, I taught a course on ethics and educational technology. And because my students were really interested in AI, we basically made that whole semester about AI. And we tried to treat it really thoughtfully, we spent a lot of time going deep into... There's this really fascinating YouTube video, maybe I can put it in the show notes, it's a four-hour video but it explains the actual architecture and the algorithm design.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, wow. Okay.

Nathan Holbert:
Very interesting. But then we also read a ton of... There's all these different news stories, these just horrifying tragedies that have been tied up in and oftentimes caused by AI. And there's also all this research around the way big data capitalism has captured our society and our governments and how the AI ideology is all wrapped up in all of this. It's been very dark, you heard me complain a lot about how just depressing this was. But one thing I'll maybe from all of that that I'll pull out, and I know it's going to be a little bit related to your answer as well, is Karen Hao has this really great book called Empire of AI and she is on a podcast episode with... Oh, I'm going to have to find the name of the podcast in a moment.

Haeny Yoon:
I forgot the name of the guy too.

Nathan Holbert:
But it's called AI Companies Believe They're Making God with Karen Hao. And it's with Adam Conover. Sorry, it's Factually with Adam Conover, that's the podcast. AI Companies Believe They're Making God. And it's just super fascinating because what she does is she goes into the depth of... If you're not familiar with this, there is this religious aspect to a lot of what's happening in AI design and then that creates this fascinating logical tension that many of these engineers and corporate owners have found themselves in, where they believe they're building God but now they also don't know what to do with it. It's a bit mind-boggling. And it also makes this case of, as her book does, that the best way to understand AI companies is not to look at companies but to look at empire building. Fascinating listen and very connected to her book as well.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. On a separate, not related to your recommendation of that podcast, I think we simultaneously recommended that episode to each other which I...

Nathan Holbert:
I think we did, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
...think was so hilarious. Because I also listened to that and was like, "Oh my God." As someone who is not as deeply entrenched in it and having to talk about it all the time, I felt like it really highlighted a lot of issues that I should be thinking about too that I haven't considered. I feel like it works for someone who has thought about it a lot and works for someone who is new to understanding it. But I read 30 pages of her book, I would like to normalize reading 30 pages, the first 30 pages. Okay. To be fair, her book is like Bible-sized.

Nathan Holbert:
It's a chunky book. It's a chunky book.

Haeny Yoon:
Okay. But it is the first 30 pages, excellent, five stars. But I feel like...

Nathan Holbert:
31? Eh.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Who knows what happens after page 30 but I can tell you what happens in the first 30 pages. And she just basically talks about the imperialist mentality and colonizing aspect of knowledge, of ideas, of people that it takes to really manufacture and put AI into focus. And so I think the reminder that she gives us in the first 30 pages is that we don't want to use AI as a replacement to solve things that we also need to be thinking about other things related to that, whether it's social cohesion or whether it's global cooperation or to think about things like healthcare or climate that is not fixable with AI, that maybe a scaled down version of AI models could help facilitate that but it really takes a lot of human intelligence and capital and motivation to do that.

Nathan Holbert:
And I hate to do this because it's so annoying but I have to take one brief moment, this word AI that we've come up with...

Haeny Yoon:
I knew you were going to do this.

Nathan Holbert:
I'm sorry, I have to. It's a marketing term. It's become the term we use to replace all sorts of other technologies and algorithms and designs and things. And because of that, it's lost so much meaning. And it does also then push out the places where there are these interesting algorithms and technologies that we have built, machine learning, that do have contributions to make in these human systems that we've talked about. And so I think it's such an important point to be made is that there are things to be solved, there are also going to be some problems that I don't know that we can solve. But this notion that this "AI" is just the magic bullet for everything is absurd.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Right.

Nathan Holbert:
And that book does a great job of highlighting that.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I feel like we should have a book club, everybody should read 30 pages, and then we should jigsaw the whole book. And then we could all be like, "We read it."

Nathan Holbert:
I love it.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Okay. Now lastly, because this is a podcast, let's talk about our favorite podcast episode of 2025 that you want to highlight.

Nathan Holbert:
Wait, that's not what I thought we were going to talk about. This isn't the favorite podcast episode.

Haeny Yoon:
No, favorite podcast episode out there and not ours.

Nathan Holbert:
No, I know. But...

Haeny Yoon:
The best episode or podcast episode that reframed culture for you, sorry. Yes. They reframed an idea, a cultural idea for you.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Okay. I see because I got a lot of other video game podcasts.

Haeny Yoon:
Oh, yes. Which I think you wanted to mention, which I think you already did.

Nathan Holbert:
No, I'll go first. This was in my mind the best podcast episode that reframed culture, and so I was trying to think about what things have I listened to that really made me think differently about culture? And there is an episode from the podcast called Search Engine, and the episode title was America versus China. And the basic premise was growing up in the US, we often hear about China as being this other... And it's often spoken of in these oppositional terms. And, "Oh God, their community, their culture, you don't want that here in America." You're inundated with it from being very young.
And so in this episode, they spoke to a person who has lived extensively in multiple places, both in China and then also in the US, and just tried to have a plain conversation about differences. And it was really fascinating. I'm not going to try to cover the whole episode but it really... For me, there were multiple times where I thought, "Oh my God, I want that." And there are other times where like, "Oh, God, I don't want that." And it really allowed me to be a little more critical and thoughtful, not about my own culture, I'm already quite critical and thoughtful about that, but a little more critical and thoughtful about my awareness of the culture that is in China.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, nuances, the idea.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. It was great. It was worth a listen.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Mine is also related to a book but NPR's Code Switch, Youngmi Mayer, she's a Korean-American comedian. She wrote a book called I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying. And it's basically sort of semi... It's autobiographical but it also talks about the intersection of Asian-American identity and comedy and all of that. And she talks about how she grew up in Korea with her grandparents and her mother, and her grandparents had a very tumultuous relationship, it was post-Korean War, they grew up in a lot of poverty and her grandfather committed suicide.

Nathan Holbert:
Oh geez.

Haeny Yoon:
And her grandmother, she said, "Despite all the harsh realities that she had to face, that she liked to tell jokes and she was always funny." And she talks about how her Korean family would tell jokes and laugh at the most inappropriate times like at funerals or places where you shouldn't be laughing. They just didn't know what to do except to laugh and that laughing to her was survival. And so I really recommend the podcast, Code Switch. I also recommend the book. But Code Switch, because you get to listen to her read parts of it, to talk about it, to sit with somebody else and just retell and rehash that story which I think is always very delightful.
And I think one thing that I really got out of it is that this idea of young people laughing is always like this... We look at it with suspicion, we often think of it as nefarious. I often think when I was a teacher and kids would start laughing, I'm like, "What are you laughing at?"

Nathan Holbert:
Is it me?

Haeny Yoon:
You would get very suspicious of it and you want to tamp it down or suppress it or dismiss it in some way. And she talks about how laughter for them was a way to get through awkward, tense moments, or because they didn't know what else to do except to laugh or else they would just cry. And so it was this idea that she calls it like a soft rebellion, like laughter can be a soft rebellion against the things that are surrounding and circulating around you. I highly recommend it.

Nathan Holbert:
I love that.

Haeny Yoon:
Very good book, yes.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. Figuring out ways to deal with all the horrors that we... Just as you experience in humanity, I think it's so important.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. All right.

Nathan Holbert:
Let's look forward.

Haeny Yoon:
Yes.

Nathan Holbert:
Don't you think?

Haeny Yoon:
Yes.

Nathan Holbert:
We've left 2025 and good riddance.

Haeny Yoon:
Yes.

Nathan Holbert:
We've entered 2026 and oh, God.

Haeny Yoon:
It started off bad.

Nathan Holbert:
Oh God, what is this?

Haeny Yoon:
Yes.

Nathan Holbert:
But as you think forward, as you think about your year, as you think about your academic life and your work, as well as your life outside of work, what are you looking forward to? What are you hoping to create for that life?

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I'm going to do a long quote.

Nathan Holbert:
Let's do it.

Haeny Yoon:
Okay. I'm really into cookbook memoirs. I think I've already mentioned this before but the cookbook memoir that I got this year was Samin Nosrat's book. I think it's called Good... The word good, isn't it?

Nathan Holbert:
I have seen this one on the shelves.

Haeny Yoon:
Okay.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
I have her other book.

Haeny Yoon:
Salt, Fat, Acid?

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. And it's been a while since she published that one and took her a while to come to this. And at the beginning, towards the beginning of the book, maybe a few pages in, she has this essay called The Value of Time. And she basically... This is what she says in it, "From a young age, I was told time is money. I learned to prioritize output, convenience, efficiency, and profit overall else so I built my life around work. I measured my self-worth and happiness by how much I could produce." Which, oh my God, can we not relate to that?
And then she writes that after the pandemic, she began to ask herself, "What is a good life? I now consider a good life to be where I feel deeply about community and the natural world. It's one where beauty and pleasure are paramount and I do meaningful work that creates joy and connection. A good life is one where time and its fast companion, attention, are the most precious gifts I can give or receive. Really, I just want my time and my attention to be towards these things, to build community, to build joy, to build connection, and to think about what really gives me meaning and make those a priority."

Nathan Holbert:
I love that. That seems like the right idea.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
It shouldn't be a problem, right? It should be pretty easy.

Haeny Yoon:
No problem. Easy. Ease-peasy. But you know if you say it on a podcast, it's true.

Nathan Holbert:
It has to be true. Yeah. And next time somebody asks you to do something that isn't worth your time, you can be like, "I need you to listen to this three minutes."

Haeny Yoon:
I'm sorry. Is this part of a good life?

Nathan Holbert:
I've already said it into the world. It's on mic.

Haeny Yoon:
Is this paramount to my pleasure and joy?

Nathan Holbert:
Oh man.

Haeny Yoon:
How about you?

Nathan Holbert:
I don't know. I don't have a beautiful quote. I don't have a thoughtful, poignant idea to leave with everybody. I think I would say I'm fully onboard with what you just said. I think I would also say as my kids are getting older and I'm starting to see that they might not live in my house too much longer, that I want to keep spending more time with them and making sure that the things that we do, that we don't get too caught up in just the nonsense of the day or the kind of, "We got to do homework. We got to get ready for this. We get ready for that." Just to actually try to enjoy that time together while we can.

Haeny Yoon:
Each other's company?

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
Yeah. And also just to, like you said, make the things that I'm doing with work meaningful things and things that I'm excited about and things that I think are useful in this particular world that we find ourselves in. Yeah, that's my goal.

Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. It sounds like a great plan. It sounds like we're going to crush it.

Nathan Holbert:
We're going to crush it. So far, so good.

Haeny Yoon:
2026, we're going to crush you.

Nathan Holbert:
Listen, if we can make it through 2026 at this rate, I will feel like we did something really powerful.

Haeny Yoon:
Very good. Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:
Well, Haeny, here's to crushing 2026.

Haeny Yoon:
Yes.

Nathan Holbert:
And thank you Pop and Play listeners for checking in with us every few weeks, we really appreciate you being here and we really enjoy doing this with you.

Haeny Yoon:
Thank you.

Nathan Holbert:
All right. Bye.

Haeny Yoon:
Bye.