How A Watercolor Animated Short Portrays Pet Loss

A chained-up dog. A kid who stops and says “no,” then frees him. A glowing gold thread that refuses to break even after death. We talk through Run Totti Run, a Cambodian-set animated short with a watercolor sketch look that feels like a Monet painting in motion, and we don’t dodge what it’s really about: pet loss, grief, and the stubborn ways love keeps showing up after someone is gone.

We retrace the story beats, from Tomo and Totti learning each other’s rhythms in the rice fields to the arrival of a dark, faceless specter that splits into many forms and takes Toddy away. From there we get personal about why stories that hurt can still help, and why a simple visual device like that bejeweled gold line can carry an entire theme without a single speech.

Then we switch gears into the craft and the tech. We explore how director Shad Bradbury built this tribute with a globally distributed team, how collaboration tools like Artella make that scale possible, and why a real-time stylized pipeline using the Flare graphics engine matters for indie animation. To close, we give you our orange honey Old Fashioned twist and debate Luxardo vs maraschino cherries.

If it resonated, subscribe, share it with a friend who loves animation, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Cold Open And Honey Tease

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Ooh yeah, we're back. And I know you were all waiting with bated breath for my recipe this this go-round, but I have it. Not giving it to you right away because I know there are some of you who listen. What up, Sniffle Diffle?

SPEAKER_01 0:42

I know, sorry. Excuse me.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Some of you who are that's the only reason you turn it, the you tune in is for a honey recipe. Honey recipe. That's probably like three people.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

You're like, we have to listen to all this before we get to the whole point. You can just speed through on your things.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

That's what fast forward is for. You know, that's a you know digital audio, the idea of fast forward. That's something that people from our generation, that's the term that we use, or rewind.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Yeah, I was just gonna I was just gonna say rewind. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Was this your pick? You picked both of this and Snow Bear, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Kinda, sort of, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

You found this. Did you I went to take a shower and you found this or something, did you?

SPEAKER_01 1:29

I think you're right. So we watched Snow Bear, and then when that was done.

Choosing Run Toddy Run

SPEAKER_02 1:35

You found it. We came out of the. We should point out that both Snowboarder and this one, not so much our next one. Not so much, but these two are kind of they're a little bit of a downer. So we're going to try to find a couple more films that are a little more positive or uplifting. We don't want to we don't want the t you can't keep the tenor of the show down for too long. But the name of this is run.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Toddy run. One more time. Run, toddy, run. Is it Toddy or Toddy? It's Toddy. Okay then. So like hot toddy. That's why I was pausing because I had to remember how to say it right.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Right. This was is I was I don't want to say thrown by, but the style of this. First of all, it's not an American movie. I thought it was Pakistani. You say it's Cambodian.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Well, the setting of the movie is Cambodia. Is Cambodia. And before you talk about the animation, because I know that's like the highlight. Um, I just want to say that it's a movie about a dog and a boy, and the bond between the dog and the boy, and the dog, the boy sort of quote, enlists the dog to help him pick rice in the room. He frees him.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

He frees him. He's chained up.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Oh, that's right. That's right. Yeah, he he goes past and he sees this chained up dog.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Right. And I think that's kind of funny how just you suspend this. I you would assume this dog both either you would assume it belongs to somebody. Yeah, you would assume it's tied up.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Someone in the house. I kept waiting for that actually. I do remember when we watched that a lot of people. Nobody came out. He just like went in and helped this dog escape.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Which is kind of a neat thing, just on a personal level, when you see somebody sees an animal that's abused walk up and going about his day, and he just stops and says, I'm not going to I will not allow this to persist. I'm going to be involved. I I that it's kind of a throwaway thing. They didn't make a point of it in the movie, but I'm like, this is that's definitely how you that's the anchor that makes you care about the boy.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Mm-hmm. Yep. So now you can jump into animation. So I just didn't want them to be like, oh, that was the title of the movie, and now animation. We don't know what's going on. No, no, yeah.

Watercolor Style And Death Image

SPEAKER_02 4:32

The movie is really, in essence, about the bond between a boy and his dog in life and in death. The style was an animated watercolor. And we'll get to it in a few minutes. I did not realize this until about 20 minutes ago. The the undertaking. This was only what 10, 15 minutes? I don't yeah, I remember the runtime. It's also a very sh it's uh it's also a short, but the technical production of this is amazing. It it really is. And when you see it's mostly trying to remember the color, the the colors were dark, a lot of sienna's blacks, golds. And there was some blue and green. Right, but it was it was almost like sketchwatercolor. You know, like the the specter of death that appears that looks kind of like a like a death takes the form of that almost like a samurai with that hat. Yes. But he kind of has like a bushy has a bushy, like almost it almost looks like a dress.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Yes. Very well described, yeah. So and also at 17 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

And for anybody listening, I don't know what they're doing to your street outside. I think they're digging, but they're using dynamite or something. If there's any bangs, that's not us. That's the city of Ann Arbor trying to do best. Widen the sewer system for an influx of more students who don't want to go to Ohio State.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

I'm rolling my eyes, you can't see it, but I am. It's obnoxious.

Tribute Film And Festival Wins

SPEAKER_02 6:26

So I'll give you, because as you probably know by now, we do a notebook LM construction and an AI podcast that we listen to to kind of organize our thoughts on the movie. So Run Toady Run was directed by veteran animator Shad Bradbury as a tribute to his own dog. A film which explores a profound emotional connection and grief between the boy and his pet, and it's set in Cambodia, earned considerable acclaim and the audience prize, which is a big deal at the Bouchon, is that how you say it? Bouchion? Bouchion International Animation Festival.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Sounds right.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Technical overviews highlight how the project utilized Flare, which is a real-time stylized graphics engine. I don't know if this was the first time Flare was used on a project, but what makes it particularly interesting is that it was Flare was run through nodes. So if I understand it correctly, I would assume it was an engine that required a number of logons. Okay. Because the workforce that worked on it was widely was worldwide distributed. He had like 300 people work on it, who I think were mostly volunteers. I don't know how you organize that.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Yeah, I wondered about that too, actually. If they were volunteers, they must have been. Maybe not everybody.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

I'm interested to know how you would do that if you can't financially compensate people, say, hey, I'm building this thing, it's gonna require time, I can't pay you. So when they sit when the AI spit out the word volunteer, I'm like, really? I'd be curious to know what the financing of it, how that was structured. But in short, Bradbury was a veteran of the animation studio system, so he understood workflow.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Specifically from Pixar and Sony.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Right. And that made him as much, it from what I'm from what we're reading, as much of a producer as it is a director, because he can assign tasks and site project responsibilities to all these people. And I assume if Flair, from the way they describe it, we'll try to describe it, being run through nodes, it would have they I would assume it was like a grand license, or he would have given license to all these different volunteers, or if he had it, he just shared one, he shared a node for everybody to port into it. And what was interesting was I'll read a little bit more about it here, professional biographies and festival archives further details Bradbury's extensive industry background and the musical contribu uh contributions of composer George Bjorvik. Additionally, social media discussions reflect the film's emotional impact with viewers regarding its poignant tool for processing the loss of a pet. So you want to start with I do have a question here that AI generated will give us an answer answer for and how Flare Software enabled real-time stylized 3D animation. I'm going to enjoy reading that and describing it because it's kind of our way to port what we heard on the AI breakdown of how the film was made, how we can port it to our listeners. Okay. But do you want to talk about the actual movie first? Why don't we do that?

A Worldwide Team Built It

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Um, okay. I'll also add while we're um like kind of moving from topic, um oh, I tried to look for some more information about the 300 volunteers and I couldn't really find very much except that they were worldwide and it took five years to make this movie. And I think you just asked this question, but the it says the col the platform for connection. The collaboration was facilitated through a platform card called Artella, which allowed Bradbury to connect with artists and animators all over the world.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

I would assume that would like that was like some kind of a project management software.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Yeah, what you were saying with like assignment for everybody or something.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

I I would and again, we have not seen this. It may function only as a portal for everyone to interact and work with in the same way, but when we dive into this question about how traditionally this movie would have been made, it would have been impossible because of the bottlenecking of uh composition and rendering. They happen at different stages, and if you make a change at the very end, you have to go back to the very beginning, and each process takes several days, and then they have each other. Yeah. You may have to be shipping completed art files from the compositor to the renderer, and when you're building these files, they take time, it takes a massive amount of energy, and flare uh allowed to this all to happen together, I would say. Yeah, in it layered all the files and gave everyone access to the files so they could, and I'll explain this better in a minute as we read through the AI notes on it, but it'll it removed, in short, it removed the bottleneck of going from one process first to the next to the next, and then revising having to go all the way back to the beginning. Why don't we talk about the story first?

SPEAKER_01 12:42

You wanna um I don't know how much I can talk about the story, but um share Oh I see what okay.

SPEAKER_02 12:49

If you if you look at the questi first questions about the yeah, go ahead. If you look at the first question, I'll let you go through this. Um the AI kicks up sh what what inspired him to create the film.

Tomo And Toddy Story Recap

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Oh, okay, so we're looking. Sorry, people, sorry everybody. Okay, so Shade Bra Shade Bradbury created the animated short film Run Toddy Toddy Run Toddy Run as a tribute to his beloved dog Toddy. The film was inspired by several key themes regarding the relationship between humans and animals, unconditional love, mutual respect, and the experience of grief. Again, we won't be so down and sad all the time.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

But um see where it says the story?

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Yep, that's what I'm literally reading. Um There's a young boy, his name is Tomo. He's a Cambodian rice farmer, and hit this dog, Toddy. Toddy? Toddy. Um, it's the spelling that throws me off. Um there I oh they are? Okay. Um in the text it says they're joined by a gossamer glowing line of bejeweled gold.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

It actually looks like a leash, but it's not really a leash, but it is a it's a very fancy explanation. It's it's their connection.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Yep. Um, and he oh again is a rice farmer, and I believe he's going to work one day and he sees out of the on the side, um, like out of the corn he sees um a dog chained up in someone's I'm gonna say residence, and um he goes to free that dog.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

And the dog totally just becomes his companion going forward.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Just yeah, they're like inseparable, and he's helps him farm rice and helps him farm rice, and and Tomo has to teach him how to do all that, but he let from what I remember, he's a who's a very good listener and very understanding, and Tomo could tell him anything or ask him to do anything. I mean, not even always related to his job of rice farming, which is you know how he makes his money.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

So visual representation, the bond between the character and the dog is visually represented by, and again, I want to point out that when you're seeing this, the style of this is a watercolor sketch.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

It's so it's very pretty. It's visually represented by a gossamer glowing line of bejeweled gold. So it's really just like a sketched gold line, and they put iridescent little flecks of gold uh intermittently throughout it, so you can see it's and I think they drew it as a sketch so it didn't look like a hard line. It didn't look like a hard leash, it looked more of an ethereal like an ethereal connection. It was more of a kind of a magical connection. And this becomes more obvious uh later in the movie. I don't know quite how to make this transition because I know I'm not sure either. It's a short, it's not that long. Animation features a watercolor style that reviewers have compared to Monet painting, a Monet painting sprung to life. So Tomo and Toe are going about their day, and they see what looks like a specter.

SPEAKER_04 16:47

Mm-hmm. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

With with this this this black blob thing, yeah. Off in the sky somewhere, and it gets closer. And what you're meant to understand is that this is this the spectre of death. It is approaching, and uh Tomo attempts to fight it off. I believe there was a scene where he used a bow staff to whack at this point.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Whack at this thing.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

And the the the specter is like he has that kind of samurai umbrella type helmet.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Yeah, there's a shape to him.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

Yeah, and he almost like a bushy dr like a robe dress kind of thing about him, and he has like just kind of white eyes, but he's faceless.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

And there's nothing like graphic about this, but he s they he separates into all these different the same character, but into multiple apparitions, if you will, and they surround Tomo and the dog.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Yeah, yeah, you go from like one to like twenty.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

And it's nothing, you know, violent or anything, but they're they appear in all these different and you learn that they appear in all these different forms, so they can in effect separate tomo from his dog. Mm-hmm and then they fly away with the dog, and you are to understand that the dog has passed.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Yeah, and I have to say, I did not understand that.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

I was not what you have me for. I know thank goodness.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

I didn't though, I really didn't. I think you had to explain it to me.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

It's uh black, it's faceless, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

No, after you said it, I was like, I should have picked up on that.

SPEAKER_02 18:44

It makes total sense, but but I'm trying to recall again, because this was about four weeks ago. Tomo is distraught, but you see this this leash, this ethereal line between him and the dog persists. But he doesn't experience the dog back in his life. But you recall how the he's in the next world. I'm struggling though on the the second half of the movie.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

I don't remember the second half of the movie really either.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

Um he doesn't replace the dog.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

No, he doesn't.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

Um Yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Not well prepared, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

See if there is like how the the conclusion of the Yeah, see if you see if you can look it up in one of the sources because I I believe what happens is he is just he has to. I know he goes back to work and he's not doing a great job at work because he's remembering this dog, and he's not he can't go as fast as he would like. But the ultimate theme is that this ethereal leash between him and this dog still pre- and the dog is still playing, but he can't actively help Tomo anymore. Right. And I think what you're meant to understand is that there is a there is a connection between those you love in death as well as in life.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Yeah, after they've gone.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Right. And not to sound pessimistic or down or anything, but they're some people believe that with with total fervor, and others just they see a complete absence. It's very difficult for some people to see the connection once the person is gone, once they're not here, that that a connection still exists. What are you looking at?

SPEAKER_01 21:24

The movie to see if I can um recall what happened. Recall what happened, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

I'll tell you what, while you're looking at that, I'm gonna jump right into the construction of it, because I found that to be just totally fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

Actually, wait a minute. What's the meaning of the glowing gold line? Come on. I go ahead. No, this is pulling it up. If you you have your task.

The Golden Line And Grief

SPEAKER_01 21:56

It's not an answer to your c to the question you're asking. That's not okay. But I think um the movie ends so the the black death death comes to get Toddy. And um Tomo, of course, is very sad and upset, and he tried to to save him and to you know, so that he didn't die. Anyway, like you said, they they fly away with him and um the dog and um tomo is um upset and he's having a hard time like moving on in life and um I think it was a like a golden dragon comes.

SPEAKER_03 22:46

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

And I think if I'm correct, again, um we watched this like a month ago, um, and I think the golden dragon sort of comforts Tomo, and you know, I mean that doesn't say it outright, but like it's gonna be okay, and like we know you love I know you loved your dog, but he's gonna be okay without you, and you're going to be okay without him. And that's kind of how the movie ends. Like it's not there wasn't a lot of um. I mean, it just it didn't there wasn't like a whole lot of end plot line. Like it didn't change.

Flare Workflow Explained Simply

SPEAKER_02 23:27

It looks like it was just that kind of the glowing gold line in Run Toadie Run as a visual represent representation of the close and unyielding connection between young rice farmer Tomo and his dog Toady. Described as a gossamer glowing line of bejeweled gold, it symbolized a bond that goes far beyond the typical relationship of master and pet. Unwavering tie illustrates the film's core message regarding unconditional love. Yeah. Here we go. Wait a minute. Um go ahead. Ah, this is what I wanted to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Do you don't go for it? You can how did the Flare software enable real-time stylized 3D animation? Flare is a node-based real-time graphics engine. I would love to watch this thing work. Or people work with it.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

It would be really cool to see.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

Designed to stylize 3D computer graphics by allowing artists to modify the appearance of their renders instantly within the 3D application itself. Software enables this real-time workflow through several key technical and artistic features. Node-based architecture. Flare uses non-destructive workflow where artists connect various building blocks or nodes to define a visual style. Importing data. Images enter through the engine through read nodes from a disk drive or import nodes, which pull images directly from a GPU's shared memory from other applications like Autodesk or Maya. So I would think that he probably created like a framework for what all the characters would look like in Autodesk.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 25:37

And then you imported them through through Flare shared nodes. These nodes use the GLSL shading language to perform complex image processing operations and real-time output. Once stylized images are either saved to a drive or sent back to another application via GPU shared memory, which eliminates the need to save intermediate images and allows for immediate visualization of stylistic changes. Under object space art direction, unlike this is the part that I was interested in. Unlike traditional workflows where stylization happens at a separate compositing stage after rendering, flare integrates directly with object space information, 3D information, custom AOVs and G buffers. The engine, and a lot of this is going to sound like technical gobbledygook, but if you just pick up on the key points of how workflow happens, instead of having to do one thing and then move to the next, and then then to the next and then to the next, and then have it be assessed at the end, or somebody says it doesn't supposed to look like this, you have to start all over. Yeah. This and save time. Right, this leapfrogs all of that. Custom AOVs and G buffers. The engine can request specific arbitrary object variables, images, from the 3D application on demand. So it can pick out one particular object in a frame of film, and if it's not lit correctly, or if the shading is wrong, or if the dimensional characteristics need to be modified, just that image from a frame of film, they can do that without taking the whole scene back to the be the beginning. Which, if you are not a visual effects person, you're like, What why would they go all the way back to the beginning? Because that's how traditionally you had to do it. Uh let's see. Interactive tool artists can art direct the style by painting parameters directly into the 3D objects using procedural 3D noises or custom volumes. This data is rendered into the AOVs in real time and used to modify the final. That's so cool. So you could like, it's almost like you're you pick any scene that you want and you paint and adjust that scene on the fly by picking out what layer you want to deal with.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Wow. Artist-friendly control. While technical technically inclined users can write custom GLSL or comp compute shaders, flare provides a tool set for non-technical artists, like global parameters. Shaders provide sliders, and this is the other thing that they talked about that made sense. So you can shaders provide sliders and controls that allow artists to adjust the intensity of effects. Like, you know, like a slide bar. It's like I want to I want to bring up more like on your phone. Such as each thickness or color blue edge thickness or color bleeding without touching any code. That's cool. Cross-application integration flare is designed to work across applications, meaning an artist can run the scene in Maya while a flare node in Nuke imports the processes in data in real time. This is pretty neat. This real-time capability is a significant shift from to traditional offline workflows, which often require repetitive re-rendering and re-importing when a stylistic change is needed. Shad Bradbury utilized Flair during the production of his award-winning film, Run Toadie Run. Okay. What did you find?

SPEAKER_01 29:41

Um It's just another cool feature of um Notebook LM that we use to do our research for the movies that we watch. Um I don't know if you've checked it out, but um Is this under studio? Yep. It's called Slide Deck. And I didn't know what that meant.

SPEAKER_02 30:04

Is that still in beta?

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Yeah, what does that mean?

SPEAKER_02 30:07

It means it's being tested. I mean, uh like the like you can use it, but it's not like an embedded feature.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

Yeah, the infographics are still being tested too.

SPEAKER_02 30:19

I use infographics for my LinkedIn updates.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Uh oh yeah, that's right, you said. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:25

Yeah, so like whenever I I'm working on, like I mentioned last time, I'm working on doing speeches on independent business startups. And one thing I do with my LinkedIn profile is once a week I find a story or a concept regarding, let's say, because the plan was initially to speak to colleges uh for young kids who are looking for a way to make money outside of going to work for a company or or going the traditional route. So I'll find someone who has started a unique business and find as much info as I can about them, and then build a notebook LM uh infographic that will visually will give a visual representation of that business, how it works, how it was started, how the workflow is transmitted, and where the revenue comes from. And they do this in a single picture uh infographic, which and I in I don't think we can we would really need to do it for the podcast, but in that um in the infographics uh button there are selections, like I can pick different styles, I can do the output, what it spits out to me. I can make it in claymation. Okay, I can make it in, you know, the style I did of the clown with the with the bee and the bear. I can make it look like that. I can make it look like all these different uh artistic renderings. So just that tool set gives me all these different options for what I want to output. I think that I have not used the slide deck. Okay. Have you can you see it on there? What like what's it giving you?

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Yeah, it's really cool. It's like pretty things. Um, but it's like this is under studio? Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

Yeah, I can't see it.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Um I'll try to show it to you.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

Hang on, folks, I want to take a look at this.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Oh no, I'm just gonna turn around to show you. Okay. Can you can't move behind the wires? Yeah. And like Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:58

Oh, for sure. Yeah, that's good.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

It's so cool. And it's like all the information, it's all the information that we've got that's storyboarding, but for after a completed film.

SPEAKER_02 33:10

It's like storyboarding premises about a film once the film is complete.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

Hmm. I was trying to think about how to sum it up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

It's like, do you know you know how storyboards work?

SPEAKER_01 33:21

I think so, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

Okay, so like after a script is done and they're conceptualizing a film, yeah. You're telling the stories, you want to give the scenes the primary scenes, so you're gonna create a picture just of that moment or something, right? Like the overarching crux of one particular scene. So if four characters are in it, they're all in there, they're all having a conversation around a table, that's a frame of that, that's the frame, that's the storyboard for that scene. And then the next scene has its own board. This is like the movie's already done.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 33:58

And the storyboards are components of the finished film, but with details about theme and build-outs and how the film was constructed. So it's it's like a storyboard, but after the film's done. Okay. And all the the universe around what went into the whole thing. I wish I could do that.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

It's just really it's it's like it's just so cool.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

I mean it's such a fun tool.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

It is. This is we've been using Notebook LM what for like at least a year. I don't know how long.

SPEAKER_02 34:40

About, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

And um kind of almost every time it's we sign into um, thank you, make a new notebook. There's there are new features.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

I think what I like about it the most is I remember making notes on anything in college and high school by hand. In a notebook, yeah. And this bun this gives you analysis, it breaks down multiple sources for you. It just tell again, I love that word, it telegraphs and expedites compression of information and puts it in more digestible formats. Like, I like a lot of people am a visual learner, so pictures do it for me. But like when I read, I can okay, for example, reading how flare works, I don't use all the tools that go into working with flare. So I'm conceptualizing while I'm reading it how it might work, how it probably, how I understand it to work. But if we put a few technical manuals into Notebook, Notebook could give us an infographic or a what is that thing called? A uh slide deck, a slide deck to show us exactly a piece by piece how it would work. And you it would give you a visual representation of that as opposed to text. Yeah. And what I think I what I love most about Notebook is that it allows for learning with people who don't across different, they have different modes of learning. Not everybody learns well by reading. Right. Sometimes if you like I can learn by reading, but I might have to read something with a complex story or breakdown to it. I might have to read it multiple times. Like the only reason I'm okay at math is because I force fed myself math throughout uh college. And I know it wasn't your thing, but we could probably use notebook to teach you calculus. Wow. We could probably take it, it would probably take a little bit of doing, but it can give us visual representations, it can give us videos, it can give us podcasts, it can give us audio and things to support one what what are they pounding into the ground out there?

Why Sad Stories Can Heal

SPEAKER_01 37:21

I don't know. But it is right outside my apartment.

SPEAKER_02 37:24

That's what's so cool about a lot of people poo poo-poo tech, but when tech is applied with ingenuity, it it's and this movie is such a great example of that because this guy just he suffered a loss and he had this idea to cathartically make something to process his grief, much like Snowbear. And he utilized his understanding of workflow and a new piece of technology to organize all these people to help him in different places. Which traditionally, if he had this idea and he was part of the studio system in the 80s, no way, no fucking way was that possible. There wasn't the the way to interact with people, there wasn't compression ability, there wasn't cross-platform tools or the internet, there was none of those things. And what the what the podcast that we listened to made a great point of.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

No.

SPEAKER_02 38:31

Made a great point of was that now these tools are really accessible to anybody. Yeah. And anybody who wants you can have a transcendent experience because everybody experiences loss. If you have an artistic bone in your body, creating art is a wonderful way to help you get through it. Like the guy from Snow Bear, he eventually met somebody else. Yeah. But I think Snow Bear, the the project itself was pro was his bridge to get to that.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

He was able, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:12

Yeah. Go ahead. He was able to.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

I was just gonna say thank you, sorry. Um exactly what you said. He was able to heal and not heal um like work through his grief more, making snow bear, and then like able to meet someone else. Like it's not, you know, erasing or forgetting his wife from before, but he could just like I don't like to say it like this, but like deal with it in a better way, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 39:50

Or like more catharsis is such a strong word. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:54

It's it was very cathartic for him to do this. And it is it's yeah, it's amazing. I mean it's not yeah, anyway.

SPEAKER_02 40:03

I think that's before I forget, so I wouldn't recommend this movie to this is another thing they talked about is how about how there was somebody on our was it a Reddit stack that I think had a dog that they were very close to and the dog died, and one of her friends knew about this movie and was on the fence. Should I send this to her? Would it be helpful? And like I mentioned in our previous episode, The Secret of Nym, like why do we have this attraction to stories that cause us pain? And I'm gonna give it up to AI because they kind of hit the nail on the head. They did these stories, these sad stories that deal with themes that everybody deal with, they are cathartic and that they allow us to experience that pain in a safe manner. Like we can see it, we can see it happening, and uh we can remove ourselves from it because we're not in it, we're we're experiencing it, but we're not it's a facsimile of the pain that either we've gone through or that is laying down the road for us. But these pieces of me media like Secret and Nim or like This or Snow Bear, they are a for lack of a better word, they are a tool to help us come to grips with the pain and loss and all the unpleasantness that that comes through life. And what I really like about movies and film is that they are something that we have created through what we're experiencing inside, and we are we put it in visual form for other people to share and hopefully in a healthy way process what we all have to deal with.

SPEAKER_00 42:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 42:22

You want my recipe now?

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Sounds good, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

Okay, so since we just talked about depressing things, I'll tell you how to get drunk. Wow. Yeah, that's right. I did that. That's coming from someone who's the son of an alcoholic. And uh anyone who's under the age of like 35 is like, drinking is bad. Well, for the most part, yeah, but you gotta know how to do it in moderation. And I'm going to that this recipe is for an old-fashioned. And as always, Critique Opolis is brought to you by heyhoney.biz. For this particular recipe, I'm going to enlist the use of my orange honey. That's not orange blossom. We're not in Florida. This is orange flavored honey.

SPEAKER_01 43:10

Delicious.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

Orange pairs well with bourbon. Now, this is a recipe I pulled up. Holy cow, what are they? Are they I know, I know. Are they hammering the coffin for Dracula out there or what?

SPEAKER_01 43:29

With those big machines, it might be.

SPEAKER_02 43:31

It's like they're trying to encase him in steel and they're burying him in your front yard.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

Haven't you seen what's going on? I mean, the machines that are making that noise, they're big drills.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

It's is it a drill or it's like a giant pile driver?

SPEAKER_01 43:43

It might be a pile driver. I think it wasn't the drill down further.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

Oh, there was a drill.

SPEAKER_01 43:47

Yeah, but it's so much going on everywhere. I can't really keep track.

SPEAKER_02 43:51

We gotta get Violet to go out there and be like, can you guys please be quiet? You're making too much noise.

SPEAKER_01 43:58

We see trying to work.

SPEAKER_02 44:01

Alright, so to Google gave this to me, and this this is as good as any. But it does not include honey in the recipe. I'm just ad living to this. Oh. But you can, it's very simple. To make a classic old fashioned, stir two ounces of bourbon or rye, 0.5 ounce simple syrup. Or a sugar cube. Simple simple syrup sometimes can be hard for people to access. Two to three dashes of angostora. Good Lord! Angostora bitters in a mixed glass with ice. Strain into rocks, into a rocks glass over a large cube. If you can get an ice cube uh tray that is either like a large square. A large square or the ones that we have, which are the bigger cube, a large cube. Large cube or the large sphere, like sphere, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

Cool, cool ice.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

It's just it it cools the it's a more uniform cooling of the cocktail because if you put it's it's the temperature is kind of broken up if you use smaller pieces of ice.

SPEAKER_00 45:18

Oh, I see, okay.

SPEAKER_02 45:19

I I believe that was the reasoning behind it. Now you don't have to, but if you want, I like to give these recipes with the uh the the motive of having the best experience. Then garnish with an orange twist exposing the oils over the surface. Here's the thing. I'm going to I'm gonna say, yeah, you can either use the simple syrup or the sugar cube within the cocktail. You can use the orange on the on the side of the cocktail, but what gives it a nice little pizzazz if you half moon it with orange honey, that being you tilt the glass and on the downward half of the glass going into the cocktail, you pour orange honey just around the rim so it'll seep down into the cocktail. So since honey is a sugar and that's going to mix with the drink, you're not going to mix it in the drink, you're going to put it on the rim and let it kind of what's the word I want? Run down the edge, run down the edge of the inside of the glass. Maybe if you backed off a little bit on how much simple syrup or sugar you include, because otherwise it's going to get very sweet.

SPEAKER_01 46:39

Super sweet, yeah.

Luxardo Cherries And Closing

SPEAKER_02 46:43

Classic old-fashioned recipes, two-ounce spirit of bourbon or rye whiskey. Louisa and I like something between 80 and 90. Not that we're big drinkers, but we'll have an aperitif of about what, an ounce and a half or two ounces of maybe once or twice a week right before bedtime. But if you get over 90, this is not that we're experts here, but this is one thing I learned is I have my buddy Ryan loves whiskey and rum, and he's got a huge bar full of ever basically every rye whiskey scotch ever uh distilled. And he told me if it's over 90 on the way down, it's gonna burn. And like if it's over 95, you're gonna like I got indigestion. It woke me up at night, it burned. But between 80 and 90, it's very, very smooth. So two ounces bourbon or rye whiskey, one and a half ounce simple syrup, or one tablespoon sugar, or excuse me, one teaspoon sugar, one teaspoon water. Bitters, two to three dashes of Angostora bitters, and an orange peel as the garnish, or op and optionally a Luxodoro cherry. Which I don't know what the difference is between that and the what's the other one? Maraschino cherry. See if you can look that up. What's the difference between a Luxodoro L-U-X-A-R-D-O cherry and a maraschino? So here's the prep steps.

SPEAKER_00 48:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 48:31

In a mixing glass, combine the bitters, sweetener, and the whiskey. Dissolve andor muddle using, if you're using a sugar cube, muddle it with the bitters and a little water until dissolved. Add ice and stir. Add the ice to the mixing glass and stir well for 20 to 30 seconds until the cocktail is well chilled and properly diluted. Strain. Strain into a rocks glass over a large ice cube or sphere and then garnish with the orange peel. And again, you can take the orange peel out and use orange honey half moon in the on the downward edge of the glass going into the glass. Don't let it run off the edge, otherwise it's a sticky mess. I'll give you expert tips on another day. Use large clear ice cubes to prevent the drink from becoming watered down too quickly. That's what it is. Don't listen to me earlier when I said it's a uniform cool. Okay. What did you find?

SPEAKER_01 49:32

What is so special about Luxadaro cherries? Luxodaro cherries are re Rioned, renowned, renowned. For their intense, complex flavor and superior texture, setting them apart from artificial maraschino cherries.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

I like the artificial ones. I love the flowy bologna.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

These are the real ones. Oh, these are the snob ones. These are the fancy ones, yeah. I really like maraschino cherries too.

SPEAKER_02 49:58

Okay, look, we we got another movie to get to. We gotta bounce here. We'll pick this up on the next one.

SPEAKER_01 50:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 50:06

Okay, unless what? What would it do?

SPEAKER_01 50:09

No, there's nothing else.

SPEAKER_02 50:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 50:10

Just sounds delicious.

SPEAKER_02 50:12

Well, we'll go hunting for those next time we're out looking for yogurt.

SPEAKER_01 50:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 50:17

Alright. And we're back next week with The Drink sounds delicious, not the cherries. Yeah, but it does. Okay. But we're coming back next week with what?

SPEAKER_01 50:33

Oh, Project Hail Mary. Oh my god, of course, yes.

SPEAKER_02 50:36

Meanwhile, don't get me started with this guy.

SPEAKER_01 50:44

Everybody has a Ryan. Everybody has a Chris.

SPEAKER_02 50:49

I thought you were gonna say a Mitch McConnell. I'm like, ugh. Do they? I don't know why I thought that.

SPEAKER_01 50:56

No, I'm not sure either. I'm really not sure.

SPEAKER_02 50:58

Alright, hugs and kisses. We'll see you next week.

SPEAKER_01 51:01

Bye. Thanks for listening.