Hop in the DeLorean! 43:34

Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jan Arden podcast. As always, I'm here with Caitlin Green from her Toronto bedroom and Adam Karsh from his Toronto basement. Both of these individuals have made it very clear that they don't really care if they go back to work, or maybe I'm getting that wrong with you, Caitlin.

you'd be, well, not working from home is ideal, but maybe two days a week, right? Yeah. Like working from home definitely has its benefits because of my early hours. So it gets me probably an extra half an hour of sleep, which is fantastic. But I really miss the vibe of being in the studio all together with everyone on the show. And I do really miss being

right in the heart of things downtown in the like Bell Media kind of campus at 299 Queen West. Like it's just such a cool building and a really cool environment if you love media. And yeah, so that part of it I miss, but I still really appreciate the ability to work easily and do my job from home and feel safe and cozy in my place. It's, I feel very lucky, but sometimes I get bored.

Sometimes I realize I haven't left my house in like two, three days and I've realized I need to go outside more. But yeah, I kind of miss it, but I'd like to keep some flexibility for sure. I am still completely baffled at the passage of time and how I, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this, how so many of us have measured time during this pandemic and

It doesn't feel real. I don't know how else to express that sentiment.

the days like it's 5 30 you know in the evening and I'm just like oh my gosh I'm I'm gonna have a bite to eat and I'm gonna go into my bedtime routine and watch something and read and so it's it's funny time really does waffle and change according to our perception of it so physics you

and astrophysics and all these kinds of things kind of get put on the table because you're like, what is time? What does it mean? Totally.

Yeah, we all start having like these stoner shower thoughts because at first I felt like the weeks were going so slowly. And next week I have some time off. I have some vacation booked to go to a cottage. And because it was always at the end of summer, I knew that this time off this week meant, oh, summer's essentially over. And I cannot believe how quickly it's arrived. I mean, as much as time has passed slow in a weird way, the summer just was gone in a snap.

Adam, are your kids going back to school? As of now, they are going back to school. I know that they've implemented a lot of policies and procedures, and I know they're going to do their best to keep everyone safe, but I'm not going to lie. I am nervous. I'm nervous. You know what? I think you should make them sleep in a tent in the yard until it gets cold. Okay. They probably like that, actually. Okay.

Time is, I've already started, I'm not a huge worrier, but I've already started worrying about Christmas. And because Christmas is, I mean, other than Thanksgiving, it is the big gathering time.

point in our lives. And Christmas is 120 some odd days away, in case you were wondering. And I worry about the malls. I worry about people gathering for drinks and snacks and cheer and Secret Santa and families gathering, you know, 20, 30 deep at a time having, I don't know what that looks like, because it feels like we are kind of in that second wave of

going forward a little bit. That's what it feels like to me. Although here in Alberta, we're doing pretty good. Edmonton's not doing great. Not doing great, but yeah, you're right. The rest of it's so different everywhere. Like, I mean, you go a couple hundred miles or kilometers outside of one area and it's a whole new ball game. Yeah. Have you guys been watching sports? Yes. Yeah.

It seems so weird. I happened to come across a Raptors game a few days ago and what they've done with the stands, having little faces in the stands of people looking at them and they're piping in crowd noises. Yeah, I saw that. It's really cool. I love it. Is it cool? It's cool how they do it. Yeah, that's what I mean.

I mean, I like that they're doing it at all because I think if they weren't doing something, it would sound so strange. And during the... It would be the announcer and tennis shoes squeaking. Squeaking. Basketball sneakers. I was watching the Leafs game. It was...

an injury that happened on the ice. It was one of our defensemen, Jake Muzzin, and he, it took six minutes to get him off the ice. And so at that point, obviously the, there's no noise happening about the game. There's none of this piped in crowd noise and it was so silent and it just made the injury seem so much more like tense and awful. And I just realized like you need that, you need that arena noise. And so I'm so happy it's there for the Raptors, especially because I've gone to several Raptors games and,

at Scotiabank Arena. I actually went to one of their playoffs games and the vibe and the energy from Raptors fans is like nothing you can possibly imagine. And so they would really miss it as a team if there was nothing. They feed off that for sure. Yeah, and hockey as well. The stands, they just had huge, I guess, tarpaulins pulled over the seats to make it look less

daunting, haunting. What am I going for here? But it is, I guess a lot of people are happy about it. But here's my question to you guys. How are they making money? Like some of these, well, all these players are on contract. So are they, obviously it's hundreds of millions of dollars lost in revenue with the lack of body. So can someone tell me how they're making this work? Well, I only-

I know for the example that I was most frequently referencing was for baseball. And part of it was that they were renegotiating their contracts for the players to come back to play based on the reduced season that they would be playing. And there were some like points of contention between the players union and the owners. I don't know that the same level of friction happened for the NHL or the NBA because they both seem to come to an agreement sooner. And I don't know, it would stand to reason that they would be

paying the players potentially a bit less this season because they're not playing as many games in some cases. So I don't know. I'm not sure exactly how that would have worked for them. They're all probably, save for like the really junior, like lower level players on the team. I mean, like LeBron's probably not too worried about what's happening to his salary this year. So he might be willing to take a cut. These organizations have so much money anyways. So, but yeah, they're still losing. So they would definitely be losing so much revenue for sure.

I'm not really a sporty person. I follow it like near the end of their seasons. Like I was absolutely watching the Raptors. That was history, you know, in the making for a little Canadian team. You know, we have one NBA team and, you know, you guys won, which was so great.

But I don't watch a lot of sports, although I played a lot of sports as a kid. Anyway, I'm not going to leave us there. I've had big plans. I went to bed thinking about this last night of things I wanted to ask you guys. And it's so great to have this opportunity to ask people these questions because I don't have dinner parties on a regular basis anymore. No, yeah. What is something about yourself that you hope will never change? Adam? I think I'm funny.

You are funny. I want to be funny forever. I think I'm, I think I have a good sense of humor. Interesting choice. Is that all right? Is that all right to say? No, funny is super sexy as far as I'm concerned. Oh, thank you. I appreciate comedy. So me too. Caitlin.

I'm fairly adventurous. So I hope that I don't lose my adventurous side. I love to travel. I love to kind of like immerse myself in a new culture, certainly new food, new experiences, meet new people. Like I really hope I don't lose my energy and ability to do that over time because it's something I really enjoy. Like I live to plan trips and vacations and nights out with friends. So I still want to make sure I do that. I never want to feel bored.

I hate that's probably my least favorite feeling in life. And I work really hard not to feel bored. So I always want to be saying yes to like new things. You guys are both busy people. You guys have kept really busy during all of this. This is a little kind of from left field growing up reading. I was a huge reader growing up and I'm always curious to know. I mean, the three of us are basically three different little generations because we're

You're in your 30s, Caitlin. Adam, you're in your 40s, correct? Yep, yep. And I'm in my 20s. So, thank you. What children's book that you can remember reading as a YA, as a young adult reader, that really influenced you and got you interested in reading? Because I feel like both you guys would have been readers.

I'm not the biggest reader. I was way more of a reader as a kid. But what did you read as a kid? Is there anything that comes to mind? While you're thinking about it, I'll ask Caitlin. I have to say I was a big reader and I did. I loved reading. I love novels. I love all that stuff. I got into science fiction a little bit when I was young. Like I loved 1984. I love dystopian anything. But really the formative stuff that I think like helped me as a kid was Calvin and Hobbes.

I know it's just a little, you know, comic, but I really saw a lot of myself in Calvin. He was very sarcastic and he had a certain outlook on life. And I just shared- Just so people know, Calvin was the human, Hobbes was the cat. Yeah, Hobbes was the cat. And I would say that like in life, like it feels like I'm a little bit of Calvin and my husband is a little bit of Hobbes because he's kind of like a

a more upbeat kind of, I don't want to say likable, but probably if anyone knows the two of us, he's like the popular one. So yeah, I really liked it. I just was something I lived under a stack of Calvin and Hobbes books. I didn't leave. I didn't leave for a trip, like a family vacation without at least three. I love that. Adam, can you think of a book that you've read?

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I probably read that many times. I mean, what an epic childhood dream. I was sunk. I mean, along those lines, Pippi Longstocking was so huge for me. Like the original, I believe, I want to say Swedish. Were they a Swedish origin or Danish? I'm sure people can correct us.

But I was so entranced by her polka-dotted horse going into the candy store. The fact that she had no parenting, which was quite tragic because I think her dad was a sailor. They never made men. I think her mother was dead. So the premise was actually so tragic that this little girl was left to her own devices. But they somehow managed to make it very joyous. You're listening to the Jan Arden Podcast.

We're talking about a lot of different things today. Don't go away. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the Jan Arden podcast. I'm here with Caitlin and Adam. We were talking about things that we read growing up as kids. My parents were huge readers. My dad read a pocketbook every day. I'm not exaggerating.

He read Zane Gray Westerns. You guys probably wouldn't remember those, but any kind of pocketbook. And then he read all these espionage spy novels. My parents literally had probably when they passed away, I had 25,000 books to get rid of. Wow. And that was a fraction of what they had. And of course, as they got older,

they had to initial the books to make sure they knew who had read it because mom said, I couldn't remember a book I read two weeks ago. And that was before she had Alzheimer's. If you, I love books about time travel. So this is where this next question is kind of coming from. I talk about this with my friends all the time. If you could go back to a little piece of time, be a fly on the wall, what period in history would it be? You could pick anything.

And please don't say the dinosaurs because I think I'll have to punch somebody because I don't know why anyone would want to go back and stand in amongst the dinosaurs unless you're eight. Well, I'm not going to say dinosaurs. Yeah. Okay, I apologize. Were you going to say dinosaurs? No, no, I wasn't. I think I would say late 1800s. Late 1800s. I'd go with you.

Like Toronto in the late 1800s. You've come along. Toronto, like any city, just like Industrial Revolution, modern enough. 1880, 1890. Yeah. Yeah. You guys are crazy. Why? Where would you go, Caitlin? Okay, I have to be honest with you. I don't even want to go back a day. I don't want to go back. I don't.

I don't want to go back in time ever. You go back in time, things just get worse. So for me, I'm not, I mean, say for this year, fine. 2020 is an exception. Maybe I'll go back like a year. But yeah. So the good old days don't exist for you.

No, I'm like, I don't like, again, this is a different perspective. And I don't mean this from like a hateful perspective, but I was like, as a woman, do I really want to go back 50 years? Hell no. I do not want to go back and see 50 years. Unless I need to be reminded of like how far we've come. I was talking more about just like an interest in history, or if you have an archeological bone in your body of, you know, things that might be, I'm fascinated. I've been reading,

about Cleopatra for the last two months. I'm still on my 1,000-page book about Cleopatra. But I think I would want to go back to Egypt 3,500 years ago and see how they were building pyramids. I'd love to see the Nile. I would love to see the decadence in this book that I'm reading called Memoirs of Cleopatra, which is historic fiction, they call it. So it's based on

immaculate research that this woman has done. And the book is from the 90s, so I'm already going back in time reading this book because it's 25 years old. But it is so fascinating, the work she put into what they ate, their customs, how brutal they were. You're right, Caitlin. The games that they had. People were terrible to each other. It involves so much death and people fighting each other and

I do think the one place that I visited, I was lucky enough to visit not that long ago, but I think it was two years ago now, I went and hiked through Machu Picchu in Peru. And I would like to go back to what I mean, here's how little I retained from my tours. But whatever time was that the- I think it was six or 700 years ago. Yeah, okay. So whatever time it was that everyone there was building Machu Picchu,

The fact that anyone built this, like the fact that people did this in that location, that they got materials there, that they built a full city, that they could tell time, they built sun clocks into reflection pools, like their irrigation systems. I mean, I would love to see that because I saw it now and thought to myself, you would be hard pressed to build stuff here now with modern technology and making money. So back then, yeah, I would love to see that.

I have this little fantasy of like going back in time, maybe 50 years, 60 years and like taking technology from today and like going to someone living in the forties and be like, what do you think this is? As I'm holding up my iPhone to you guys to see it and just show them what it is and, and blow their minds with like, you don't have this yet, but one day,

you're going to be freaked out. You'd be burnt at the stake. Aside from that, they'd, witch, blasphemer. Totally. Heresy. Yeah, heresy. And we would see you wrapped in burlap and just literally thrown on a pyre. I know. It'd just be cool to show people, this is coming out one day. It must have been so difficult to...

Like I often think about my ancestry and I think about the line of human beings that I am part of. Maybe I'm the only person that does this, but I really find it so fascinating. I would love to be on one of those shows. Like, who do you think you are?

where a team of people comes in, they go, Jan Arden, this is your great, great, great, great grandfather. And, you know, this is, you know, I would love that. So if there's anyone out there that does genealogy, you know, let me know. I just found out two years ago, I might have mentioned this to you guys on an old podcast, but I always thought I was Welsh.

and English and I did that DNA thing and I'm sorry, that's the dog. And I'm Irish and Scandinavian. Oh, wow. But I don't think that's, I'm doing it again. Midi is a pain in the butt is what midi is.

um but yeah i i just i'm fascinated with how many people it took to get us here you guys like how many people it took to get us here there's a squirrel on my deck of course at least it's not a bear yeah thankfully would midi still bark at a bear like she probably has no clue about her size she went ballistic

And then she understood, like I kind of reeled it back. For anyone that doesn't know this, I had a bear at my property about three weeks ago. And he actually came up on my deck and...

It was really delightful at first, and then it wasn't very delightful. It was just like, okay, this is a little bit weird. But initially the dog went crazy, and then she did nothing. She just looked at it like, woo. Anyhow, but getting back to just ancestry and stuff like that and going back in time. Anyway, today we're just asking questions. Today is Asking Questions Day. You're listening to the Jan Arden Podcast. Come on back.

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We're well into August, which I cannot believe. Time is certainly zooming by, which brings me to another question that I want to ask you guys. What was one of the very best times in your life so far? Caitlin's question.

clasping her hands. I feel like you know exactly what it is. Yeah, I think it was the year leading up to me getting married. Aww. Yeah, I really liked being engaged. It was like super fun and it was also just a fun point in time. I think I was, yeah, I was 30 and

And it was just a great year. There were lots of birthdays, lots of traveling, lots of seeing my friends. And I was really excited about, about our wedding. We got married in Italy. So we turned it into like a big, huge vacation for everybody who came. And we were just, we, I just had a ball. That whole year was a blast. It was like a lot of parties and a lot of fun. How did he ask you to marry him?

Oh, so my husband's from Nova Scotia and he grew up not far from a really beautiful part of Nova Scotia called Chester. And so whenever we go back to visit his family, we always make a point of going on a little day trip to Chester. We go to a restaurant there called the Rope Loft. We have lobster right on the ocean. And yeah, it's really spectacular.

And so after we were done, all these fancy rich Chester people have these oceanfront properties that include private docks that go right out onto the ocean. And we always joke and say like, oh, if we're, you know, millionaires will retire here one day. So we're leaving the rope off for lunch. And my husband Kyle said to me, let's go down and take some photos at the end of one of these docks. And I'm like a rules, I'm like a nerd. So I was like, no, we can't, it's private property. And I kind of put up a stink.

And he was like, you would want someone going on your dock. And he's like, no one's going to care. So he insisted that we go. So we walked to the end of the dock and I'm so nervous that anyone's going to like ask us to like get off their property or something. And I was walking to the end and I'm kind of like, okay, let's take the photo and go. And I turned around and he had, he was, he was proposing. So did you have, did you have any idea?

None. I was completely clueless. I thought we probably had a couple more years. We've been together for a while at that point already. We were living together, but I thought it wasn't urgent, like in my mind. And I wasn't actually all that sold necessarily on marriage in general, not in the sense that I was a critic of it. I just wasn't like, I didn't grow up in my life planning my wedding. I didn't, I didn't care that much about it.

One of those little girls at six years old was like, that was your goal in life. No. My mom said to me one day, she goes, Jan, I hope you have bigger plans than just getting married. And I was 14, 15, somewhere in there. And she said it in a way, I mean, I'm making her sound like the crazy old lady in the trees, but I think she just said, just, you know, do think of something different.

more than that. That shouldn't be your goal, which made me feel better because I think a lot of young women feel pressured sometimes from their mom. When am I going to get a grandchild? Now, when are we going to settle down? You know, that whole idea of settling down. Maybe, I don't know if men are ever saddled with that, Adam, that

you know, did your parents say, "You need to settle down, son." No, I don't think so. There was never any pressure. I mean, I think I always knew all along I wanted to get married and have a family, so there was... that was on me. There was never any pressure. I love that. What was one of your best moments so far in your life? I mean, I want to say when my children were born, because... I love that. We struggled. I mean, I won't get into it now, but we struggled for a really long time, and we thought that it wasn't going to happen. So when my children were born,

That was pretty special. Pretty special. It's mind-boggling that you can make people. I know. I think about that. I've been at one birth of a human being. This was years ago. And it was a young woman that I worked with, and her boyfriend was there as well. But I ended up driving her to the hospital because she'd gone into labor and I was there. But

even from a distance, you know, as her friend looking at this experience, I was crying. It was a very silent cry because of course you don't want to upset anybody, but it was, you know, it happened so fast, but I could not believe how everyone was doing their job and, and how my friend's body was just doing her job and,

And her boyfriend was there and he was just, I think he'd had other children before. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he'd had other children before, but it was still just mind boggling. I'll never forget it. There have been times where I've maybe been a little bit high and thought to myself, I

Hey, like it's looking around at people and gone like every, like, this is such a stoner thought, but where you're like every person walking around, like comes from a mom and all these moms collectively decided I'm going to go through pregnancy for 10 months and then I'm going to give birth and I'm going to do all of these things. And everyone just collectively has decided to do it since the dawn of time.

And it's quite a bit of work. And I'm personally, I have a little bit of a, I have a small phobia of birth. And so I'm always very, very impressed, of course, endlessly by parents, but especially by moms. I don't know how much of a decision it was, Caitlin. I'm going to say that 90% of early births of children are

was not a decision that women made. When you think of the voyagers, the French fur trappers that came up the St. Lawrence, you know, and literally had a mail order brides, you know, these people from Eastern Europe, Europe that show up, met these guys at the camps, got in their fricking canoes,

and went and then helped them build sod houses or log cabins, and literally were pregnant with the city. I think about that we have been inconvenienced by a superbug that's zipping around the planet, but really it has not required an enormous amount of fortitude.

stay away from people and wear a mask. When I think about women like that, Caitlin, my mind is boggled. We return to the topic we were discussing earlier in the show where we're like, this is why I don't ever want to go back in time. I would

I want you to be a mail order bride. I'm like, if I could go back in time as a, as like a, one of the like men, like an aristocratic man, sure. Count me in. But you know, as a gal, I don't know about that, but yeah, it's impressive to me. It's super impressive. Even now when it's obviously much safer and very different circumstances for women who have kids, I see, I mean, all of my close girlfriends pretty well have children and I just, they're incredible.

And dads now too, you know, I'm not trying to discount men. My male friends are excellent, very involved dads. Like you were saying, Adam, like you're so invested in your kids too. I think that that sort of like cliche gender role of the dad goes to work, the mom stays home has changed so much. Yeah. It's changed so, so much. Oh, I, I look at Adam all the time and I'm like, I wish he was my dad, you know, but, but that I, I mean, that it was such, such a affection, Adam, you, um,

So many men that I know as well, Caitlin, just are such active that they're participating. And nevermind that they're vulnerable. They, they are tender with their children. There's they're very demonstrative. I mean, I see a lot more hugging and stuff like that. My father, he,

was the antithesis of any of that. And I've talked about that before. He was a very scary individual. I have a lot of forgiveness for him now, and I'm certainly not complaining about it because it had so much to do with who I am, so much to do with who I am. And you cannot, you can't sideline those kinds of things and say, oh, I wish things that would have been different. I don't wish that anymore. I know they were the way they were for a reason.

But yeah, having kids and moms and going through, I mean, it really hurts. From what I've heard, it really freaking hurts to have a child. That is why I'm afraid of it because I've been hearing the stories. And I think maybe back in the day, women had so many kids and they were so busy. They were just like, oh, I've already got five. Like, I'm not going to talk about my birth plan. It wasn't a thing. You know, my grandmother's had 10 kids and eight kids respectively.

So they had a lot of kids and it wasn't a big deal. That is very different now. You know, people are all about like, what's your birth plan? Tell that to the Duggars. The Duggars. Where did they end up? Now their kids are all having kids. I swear to God, they're going to have a small city somewhere. Duggarsville. I, well, we're getting the, Adam's twisting his arms around. You're listening to the Jan Arden podcast. We're going to be right back.

You're probably so invested in this conversation that you've pulled your car over to a convenience store and you're sitting in your car just listening to us talk about these important things. Childbirth. Yes, my grandmother had

Well, sorry, my great-grandmother had 17 kids. Oh, my gosh. My mom's grandmother. I know. 17 kids. That's so much of your life pregnant. It's wild. And my grandma, when I said to her, why did your mom have so many kids? Well, Grant, our father was always on top of her.

And she just didn't have a chance. And it was terrible. That's awful. It was awful. She died at 47 years old from massive hemorrhaging. Probably. Oh, my gosh. That's awful. It is. It is awful. She was pregnant her whole adult life. But my grandmother did say an interesting thing. My mom's mom, she said, well, they needed workers on the farm.

So when you think about, that's not a piece of time I'd want to go back in either, Caitlin. I have to agree with you. Sort of turn of the century, 1900s, farming anywhere, clearing the fields and all that stuff. Anyway, here's a question for you. We were talking about the role of fathers and I found it very interesting on the break.

Caitlin sort of had a take on men getting a bad rap. And I want you to talk about that because I thought it was really important of where you think, you know, they got kind of... I'd like to defend men for a second if we could.

Fathers. Understandably, it was incredibly hard work and often thankless work for women. And so that's like that in that context, like I just want to make sure we're putting it in that context as well before I say anything. But I do think that back then,

in the day, and I certainly think of my grandfather's generations, you know, the men weren't really allowed to express their feelings in the same way. It wasn't societally as accepted. And I think that that oftentimes meant that they were suffering a lot silently because they weren't able to talk about their emotions or their vulnerabilities or their experiences.

They weren't raised that way. They weren't raised that way. It wasn't the way things were done. And so I do think that the gender roles were incredibly damaging for women, but also for men, because they weren't able to really be themselves or talk about their life. And if they had tough experiences in their lives, which a lot of them did, a lot of them fought in the war. I mean, I think of my grandfather going off to World War II and spending years away from your family and fighting alongside a group

of other men and maybe thinking you're going to die every day and killing other people. And then you come home to your family structure and it probably makes it difficult to relate to that, that social structure when you return. And then to think of all their sons that grow up with them in the house as the leading father example, you can see how it takes time for things to change. Like you can certainly appreciate why it takes time for things to adjust and why progress, it happens, it does happen, but it can feel slow a bit. Was your dad tender with you?

Yeah, definitely. Like vulnerable and tender? Or do you have memories of your grandfather being tender with him?

Yeah, I don't remember. I don't know about their dynamic like my my my dad and his grandfather My mom's father was the veteran who served in the army. My dad's father was was a very kind-hearted person He was an intellectual he was the first of his family to get a scholarship to go to school and he worked in government and he was a very impressive person like intellectually and he was really he was super Catholic and

And he was all about like kind of living in service of other people. So that was really his deal. So by his nature, he was kind of a gentler, more emotional, kind of more like he's more comfortable talking about his feelings. I think for sure my dad would have benefited from that. And he's, we're very close and he's, he's, he's a very soft hearted person. Well, I think for so many generations, sort of the bottom line was survival. It was just feeding and clothing and putting a roof over your family's head and

And I don't know if we always consider the difficulties of that

And how it hardens people. Maybe that was part of my dad's thing. I'm not sure. Was your dad a tender guy, Adam? Oh, yeah. He was. My dad's a nice guy. My grandfathers were nice guys. I'm lucky I come from a loving family. And I can't go back further than my grandparents. I didn't know my great-grandparents. But nice, nice, nice people. Well, you and I need to rally very hard to be part of

This is your life, Adam. Yeah. Would you be interested in something like that for people to go through your lineage and tell you more about where everyone was from? Okay. We got to get on that. If there's somebody out there that could sponsor our show and tell us who we are. Yeah. We'd really appreciate that. Okay. Interesting. Random question. As we are going into this fourth and final section of our show, what makes a person beautiful to you? Oh,

What makes a person beautiful to you? There's a few things. Kindness, honest to God. We've learned that these last few months. I think that has risen to the top of everybody's list is being kind. Being thoughtful, being selfless, all those qualities. I mean, it doesn't hurt to be hot, but you know, if you're hot and not any of those things, you're not beautiful. Yeah.

Agreed. Is that fair to say? Absolutely agreed. Yeah, that is 100% fair to say. Okay. Caitlin? I mean, on the deeper end of the pool, I would say I like someone who has my same sense of humor. I like to have fun and I want someone who I can laugh with and who doesn't take life too seriously. I like that quality in a person. I'm never happier than when I'm just having a huge laugh over very little.

and to be able to laugh through tough times is super important to me. So I like a cheerful personality for sure. And on the shallow end of the spectrum, I'm a sucker for a square jawline. A square jawline on anyone. Men can grow facial hair and make a freaking jawline. Look at Drake. They can make a jawline. Women can't do that. It's just four chins. There's my three chins.

And men can go, you know what? I'm going to take your eyes away from that third chin and I'm going to make a line with the hair growing on my head.

Now, some guys get carried away and they might have just the stupid little like thin chin strap and they think they're fooling anyone. It's not. But a good strong beard works for some guys like they become hot with a beard. It's like man makeup. And I've always said this is what happened to Drake. He experienced a transformation. He got a beard and he went from, you know, like a six to a 10.

Adam, maybe you can, you know, do stuff with your beard over the next few months. Maybe you could come into the show next week and have a whole new shape of your face, but a square jawline. I like, I'm quite a sucker. Well, I love good teeth.

And I don't mean straight teeth either. Just a really interesting, great smile with good hygiene. Like brush your teeth that are folded over each other. That's fine. But I also nose, noses, and wrists. Wrists? Yes. I like a good wrist. Okay.

Like describe a good wrist, like a delicate wrist? No, like a good wrist with veins going over it. Oh, good veins. The little muscly things on top. That little bone that's on the left-hand side of your opposing hands, that your little wrist bone thing and just a nice wrist. Yeah.

I just love a wrist. People are so great because I, you know, beauty standards obviously being what they are. Of course, there are some people who are universally good looking, but I hope anyone listening who sometimes has their moments of feeling like they're not super attractive, just know that there are like, you know, endless things like in the, in the twenties of things about you that people would find attractive. All these like specific little details that, that humans really appreciate in each other.

Look at the Renaissance period. When you look at art over many, many centuries, women's bodies in particular, um,

it's amazing how our idea of a beautiful body has changed. I was a super GD model from the 11th century till just up, up until about a hundred years ago, I would have been like, you know, big breasted tummy, hips, round rotund. I would have just been, I would have been locking my doors night after night trying to beat off my suitors. No,

No, but I'm just saying like when you look at things or when you even look at different cultures around the world, what they perceive as beautiful, it's always... And thanks for saying that to people listening too, Caitlin. It's important. Beauty is such a soul level thing. And I sure know that my greatest accomplishments in my life are my friends. And I'll tell you what, my friends are the most...

wild, physical looking group of people. There's no thread that goes through my friendships of how people look. I remember seeing my friend, and I shouldn't even generalize this, but there was an acquaintance of mine in LA that I went to a party at her house and all the people looked like her.

And maybe I'm being really awful, but she wasn't the most genuine person in the world. But that said, all I needed to know, and I didn't last long. I left after about 45 minutes because I thought, this isn't real. There's something really bizarre happening here. Does that make any sense? Well, when you said LA, I thought to myself, well, of course. I know. And I don't want to make that generalization because I have really, really good friends in LA that are not like that at all. This is...

This is someone I went to college with. But the joke is always, you know, like a Toronto 10 is an LA 6. Just because of the sheer number of people who are the best looking person in their town that everyone told, you're so beautiful your whole life, you should be on TV or in movies. And then they go there with that in mind. And so they kind of like seek out the fame. So I think it attracts a lot of, just by its very nature, it's a visual medium. It attracts a lot of good looking people. What do you think...

Just our final minute here. You're the most beautiful place you've ever seen in your life. So we have a few seconds each. Machu Picchu, guaranteed. Machu Picchu. Okay. So people, when we get a chance to go, go. Adam? Breathtaking. Vamp.

Lake Louise. Absolutely stunning. It is unbelievable, especially coming from Toronto where everything's flat and there's no mountains, right? So that did it for me. It's a beautiful part of the world. So mountains are a good theme here. And I'm going to have to throw out Emerald Lake.

which is also very close to Banff. It's a glacier lake and it is the color of turquoise. If you ever get a chance to go, listen, everybody, stay safe out there. Thanks for listening. We were going to do a quandary this week, but I have to tell you, it's all your fault listeners because you're not sending us your quandaries to the Jan Arden podcast, Twitter handle. So next week, yeah, a life dilemma. Certainly we get, you've heard our professionalism. You've heard how smart we are.

and that we can solve any problem. Okay, no, we can't. But we would love to try. So send us your wishes of problem solved. Anyway, thanks for listening. Jan Arden Podcast, Adam, Caitlin, and me, Jan Toomey D. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.