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A podcast from the Digital Futures Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University about play and pop culture. Professors Haeny Yoon and Nathan Holbert talk with educators, parents and kids about how they play in their work and their lives, and why play and pop culture matter.
The views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the speaker to whom they are attributed. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the faculty, administration, staff or Trustees either of Teachers College or of Columbia University.
Nathan Holbert:
All right, we are back. Pop and Play season six starting right now. Are you so excited, Haeny?
Haeny Yoon:
I'm so excited.
Nathan Holbert:
That's right. This is Pop and Play. We're coming back for our sixth season talking about play, pop culture, and education, and I'm your host Nathan Holbert. And with me, as always, is our Swift-Kelce marriage correspondent, Haeny Yoon.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh my gosh, I love that. I love that. Is that my new job? Because I really want it.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
So we're going to try things a little bit different this season of Pop and Play. Rather than save all the goodies up until the spring, we're going to be recording and releasing episodes at a more regular pace throughout the year. So more of us.
Nathan Holbert:
More all through the year.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes, as the crowd demands. So every two weeks, you should have a new Pop and Play episode in your feed.
Nathan Holbert:
That's right. We are also going to be playing a little bit with our format. So instead of us saving up all these juicy episodes, as Haeny said, and releasing them as these big kind of beefy episodes, we're going to explore some episodes where we do something big with a guest, but we're also going to be doing these smaller episodes, like the pop-off that we're going to talk about today.
And this season we're doing a new thing called Play Dates. Listen, we love to talk about play. We love to talk about community. We like to talk about the ways in which pop culture brings people together. And to be honest, we need a little bit more of that, I think, in the world. And so every few episodes, we're going to release one of these play dates where we, Haeny and I engage in some play experience with a guest, and then we talk about it here on the episode. And we're going to let you know in advance what this play topic, what this play experience is going to be, so that then you can play along with us and be part of that conversation. I'm excited to try this out.
Haeny Yoon:
And as you've said all summer, we play, you play. Stop trying to back away from that name you started with.
Nathan Holbert:
No, that's somebody else's name. We can't steal their name.
Haeny Yoon:
Okay, fine. All right. TM, trademark. Okay, so get ready. Our first play date will be listening to the new Taylor Swift album.
Nathan Holbert:
Oh my God.
Haeny Yoon:
Life of a Showgirl drops October 3rd, and I know you are all very, very pumped. Nathan is.
Nathan Holbert:
I've got my pre-orders in, all of them.
Haeny Yoon:
Do you really? Oh my God. Can you give them to me? Because I don't. So Nathan and I will be having our own listening party with the president of the Pop or Not fan club [inaudible 00:02:36], and we invite you to also listen to the album in whatever way you prefer and send us your thoughts.
Nathan Holbert:
For me, I listen to Taylor Swift albums usually alone in a dark bathtub with 13 candles flickering.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh my God. Did you use 13 because you know the lore?
Nathan Holbert:
I might've looked it up.
Haeny Yoon:
And then you could join us for our first play date episode, which will release November 11th.
Nathan Holbert:
I'm really excited about that. This is going to be a lot of fun, trying these play experiences out together. So join us for our first episode November 11th. Listen to the Taylor Swift album so you can join in that conversation.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, great. I mean, who's not going to listen to it? Okay.
Nathan Holbert:
I probably wouldn't have had we not been doing this, not because I'm a hater, just because it is not a thing that fits into my day-to-day usually, but I'm excited to do it with you.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, I think you'll like it too.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
I mean, we're going to find out.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, I predict that you will like it.
Nathan Holbert:
But before that, I have something I want to pop off about.
Haeny Yoon:
Okay.
Nathan Holbert:
So pop-offs are these sort of short episodes that we like to do, where we have conversations about things that are happening maybe in the public consciousness, or at least just things that are relevant for the seasons or the time of year. And in particular, since we're coming out of summer break, I thought it would be fun for us, Haeny, to talk a little bit about our summer break experiences, both in the past, but also now. And so I want to call this What's Poppin, Summer Edition?
Haeny Yoon:
Sounds good. Sounds like we ripped that off from somewhere, but.
Nathan Holbert:
Probably did. That one I didn't rip off. It was the other one that you said earlier that I did. So let's start here. Let's start with our pasts, how we remember what we did when we were younger for summer breaks. What were your summer breaks like when you were younger?
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, I feel like people have heard me talk about this or I might've talked about it somewhere else. The two things that I remember is one, the pool, because it's maybe five minutes from my house. It's the community, it's like the park district pool.
Nathan Holbert:
The public pool.
Haeny Yoon:
The public pool.
Nathan Holbert:
Public pool. Public pools rule.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes. And in our yearbooks at the end of the school year, we would all sign, "See you at the pool." So I remember getting a patch that was maybe a very small square and I would have to sew it onto my bathing suit, and I don't know how to do that. So my dad would do it for me.
Nathan Holbert:
What's the patch for?
Haeny Yoon:
To get in. It was a summer-
Nathan Holbert:
Like your pass.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
It was, oh wow.
Haeny Yoon:
You have to sew it into your swimming suit.
Nathan Holbert:
Wow, that's serious.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, it was very serious. So that's what I did, which was actually really, really fun. The other thing that I looked forward to were our road trips, because we had a camper RV for two years maybe, and we would go to KOA Campgrounds.
Nathan Holbert:
Koa?
Haeny Yoon:
I don't think it's Koa, I think it's KOA. Stop trying to make up stuff. I think it's KOA, but I don't know. I'm going to have to now go back and look it up. But we would go there. And to me at the time, it wasn't that fun because I'm like, oh, I want to stay at a hotel, I want a pool, all that stuff. But we did that. And now that I think back on it, nostalgia is always this weird trip.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
We would always go. I look back on it and I'm like, oh, that's really cool. And my mom would look back on it. All I remember her doing is complaining the whole summer about these camping trips that my dad would plan for us. But she would also look back on it now and be like, "Oh, so great."
Nathan Holbert:
It's so wonderful.
Haeny Yoon:
"Your brother should go and get a camper."
Nathan Holbert:
She wants it for you. She wants that pain for you.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. It's like misremembering.
Nathan Holbert:
Right, right. Yeah, those both totally resonate with me, especially the pool. Man, public pools are so great. Listen, no shade to people that have their own pool or if you have a country club pool, very cool.
Haeny Yoon:
Maybe a little shade.
Nathan Holbert:
Very cool for you.
Haeny Yoon:
We're happy for you.
Nathan Holbert:
Tiny bit of shade. But the public pool was great. You know what's funny is as you were talking about the sewn-in patch, it made me think about how when you go to the public pool you have this weird, I feel like I had this weird experience where you're running into a building barely clothed and showering in a building, in a public building, and running out.
Haeny Yoon:
And trying to get in there as soon as you can.
Nathan Holbert:
Only there, only in that kind of an experience. And I distinctly remember Fun Dip.
Haeny Yoon:
I feel like the other point you bring up is concessions. We loved the concession stand at the pool.
Nathan Holbert:
Because you always had to have that time in the middle where it's like everybody's got to get out for a little while and rest, I guess.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, it's adult swim.
Nathan Holbert:
Adult swim. That's when you raided the candy concessions and loaded up. That was always fun.
Haeny Yoon:
That was a good time.
Nathan Holbert:
I love a good public pool. Road trips, definitely family road trips. For us, it was always going to visit family, like extended family somewhere. And we did stay in hotels because we're very fancy. Those Motel Sixes all along the highways, the American interstate. I love a Motel Six.
Haeny Yoon:
Is this an advertisement for KOA and Motel Six?
Nathan Holbert:
This is [inaudible 00:07:35]. We'll leave the light on for you.
Haeny Yoon:
Oh my God. But what about now? Do you feel like summer is the same for you now or is it different, or do you purposely try to make space for that, for play?
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, so now the nice thing about summers as an adult is that there's a combination of, oh, thank God I now have a little more time to do all this stuff that I didn't have time to do during the year. And then also, it's summer break. I can get away with this and not feel as guilty about things.
So for example, all the writing projects that you didn't get to or all the data analysis, or maybe sometimes it's like I want to make something and so I'll spend two, three weeks making something in the lab or programming something. That's always really fun to do it. It feels different. It feels like it's still kind of important and meaningful, but it's not stuff that I make time for. And then, man, I can definitely, not when my kids and wife is around, but when they're not around, I can kill a day just playing video games and not feel guilty at all. And it's great.
Haeny Yoon:
That's great. I feel like making time for things is very underrated in the summer because I think a lot of times as an adult you kind of associate summer or break time with going somewhere, and it doesn't actually have to be going somewhere because as you get older you're like, ah, it feels good to just not go anywhere-
Nathan Holbert:
Just lay here.
Haeny Yoon:
... and do the thing that nobody needs to bother me about and I don't have to feel guilt about it.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, you can get through, I mean, I know this is also your fall, spring, and winter as well, but I can watch a whole season in the summer of a TV show, which I just never-
Haeny Yoon:
That's a Tuesday for me.
Nathan Holbert:
That's a Tuesday. I can't pull that off during the year. Just it doesn't mentally, I don't feel like I can get myself to do that, but I-
Haeny Yoon:
I feel like I'm getting shamed a little bit.
Nathan Holbert:
No, no, no, no. Because I'll be playing video games instead, but in the summer I can do both.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, that's very true. I feel like this summer I didn't actually go anywhere really, but I always tell people that I did a lot of Midwesting this summer because I'm from the Midwest and so is my husband. So we're basically, right now I did the trifecta of Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois. That was my summer break, but it was actually kind of fun because I do feel like there's a bit of nostalgia tinges in there because I have a niece and a nephew and they're younger. And so one of them is, my claim to fame this summer is that one of my trips was to Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Shout out to Sheboygan.
Nathan Holbert:
Shout out all our Sheboygan [inaudible 00:10:17].
Haeny Yoon:
If you're listening.
Nathan Holbert:
We're huge in Sheboygan.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. If you're listening, hit us up. So we went, they had a water park in whatever the resort that we were staying at. Well, I say resort with a grain of salt, but the resort had a water park and on the website it was like, "The biggest water park in the area."
Nathan Holbert:
In the area.
Haeny Yoon:
And you realize-
Nathan Holbert:
I love that.
Haeny Yoon:
... there is a reason why they said it like that, which is awesome. It kind of reminds me of Elf when-
Nathan Holbert:
The best cup of coffee.
Haeny Yoon:
Best cup of coffee, you have to go congratulate them. It's like that.
Nathan Holbert:
This is the biggest water park between here and the parking lot.
Haeny Yoon:
Exactly. And so it was not big, but it did the job. And so one of the rides was this surf rider thing. I don't know if you see it-
Nathan Holbert:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
All this water kind of splashing up and you're supposed to-
Nathan Holbert:
Not the wave pool, but just the surf wave thing.
Haeny Yoon:
Yes. And you're supposed to jump on it and then it's supposed to-
Nathan Holbert:
Got it.
Haeny Yoon:
It's supposed to mimic wild surfing, I guess.
Nathan Holbert:
Okay.
Haeny Yoon:
So I feel like two things happened. One is that I learned that if only 13 to 15 year old boys are waiting in line for something, that is not for me because I'm going to get hurt. So don't do that. And then secondly, don't try to impress nine year olds and five year olds. So I feel like I was trying to be cool and be like, "I'm going to go on this surf rider," because my niece wanted to do it.
Nathan Holbert:
I just want, quick pause. I'm always trying to impress-
Haeny Yoon:
Anyone. Anyone [inaudible 00:11:56].
Nathan Holbert:
So I'm not resonating.
Haeny Yoon:
Okay. Yes. So I got on it, and if you know, you have this board and basically you have to jump to the middle of the raging waters. That was mistake number one is like, oh man, that-
Nathan Holbert:
The leap.
Haeny Yoon:
Again, not great. So I did that and basically my sister-in-law took a video of me doing this.
Nathan Holbert:
Oh, okay.
Haeny Yoon:
And the first thing was fine. The second time it pushed me so hard that I fell off the board and then my whole body went down to the bottom of it and I smashed into the wall. I jammed my finger. To this day, that still kind of hurts. But she put it on TikTok, which was hilarious. And I'm viral now. I've got 30,000 views.
Nathan Holbert:
30,000. Wow.
Haeny Yoon:
As of August. So who knows? Right now I could just be a star in the making.
Nathan Holbert:
Have you been noticed on the streets yet?
Haeny Yoon:
No, not yet.
Nathan Holbert:
Oh, you're a surf lady.
Haeny Yoon:
You're a surf lady. Anyway, that's my, yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
That's amazing.
Haeny Yoon:
I've always dreamed of being a social media star. This is it.
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, I love that. I love that. The family trips, the going and visiting the Midwest. When I was a kid, it was visiting the South. Because my dad was from Texas, and so we'd go and literally be in a desert and I would chase horny toads through the desert and I thought it was the best time.
Haeny Yoon:
Because it's so different, right?
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, it was great. That nostalgia is good. One of the reasons I thought it'd be fun for us to pop off on this though, is because we were invited to have a conversation with the sort of DC outreach press organization about play and how parents should think about play in the summer with their kids. What should parents be doing? How should parents be feeling about their kids' play during the summer? And our reaction, I think both was immediately like, oh, it's fine. Just chill, relax.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. Because you think about how much you look forward to as an adult to quote-unquote the summer or whatever your equivalent of summer is, because you don't have to do anything. There is no pressure to do that. And I think there's so many times where we pressure our kids to have to do something and be productive all the time, that in the summer we also are like, what can we pressure them to do now?
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah, you feel like you have to fill every moment of the summer with some quote-unquote productive or educational or meaningful experience for the kid. And it's like, yeah, that's fine to do some of that stuff. We just discussed a lot of really meaningful and fun experiences that we had.
But a lot of those things happen just kind of naturally. You were going to be at the pool, whether or not your parents strictly regimented every minute of every day when you were a kid. It's okay. It's okay to chill. It's okay to let kids chill. It's okay to let them also have a break and take some time off. They've been working hard too, all year long. And so it's nice to give them a bit of a break.
Haeny Yoon:
And we don't trust them sometimes enough to figure it out.
Nathan Holbert:
That's right. And how are they going to know that they're going to need sleep if they don't stay up till two in the morning on a Wednesday?
Haeny Yoon:
Sounds like personal experience.
Nathan Holbert:
I don't know what you're talking about. I do think, though, on the flip side of that, one thing that is useful, though, as a parent is recognizing that you've had experiences or you have some knowledge that maybe your kids don't have and that you can encourage them. So you don't have to schedule every moment of every day for the summer for your kids, but you should maybe think about ways in which you can encourage them to try some new things out, read a new book, go to a new place that they haven't been before, visit a new place, pick up a hobby. I am always trying to convince my kids like, "Hey, why don't we do some programming this summer?" Or [inaudible 00:15:47] to build something.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah. I feel like the gift of time is really for experimentation and exploration, right?
Nathan Holbert:
Yeah.
Haeny Yoon:
And so if we could create the conditions for that to happen, I think that's to me a very productive summer.
Nathan Holbert:
Absolutely. And spend time together. I think I would, the last piece here is make some time for family time. Make some time for yourself. Let the kids make some time for themselves. But also try to think about ways that you can explore and engage together. Sometimes you're going to be rolling your eyes as a kid when your parents make you get down to the KOAs, the HOAs, what are they called?
Haeny Yoon:
KOA.
Nathan Holbert:
KOAs. The campgrounds. But it's good, it's good experiences and it's good memories and so try to make some time for that as well. I think we've popped off.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah.
Nathan Holbert:
I feel like we did a What's Poppin, Summer Edition and we've covered the territory. This is just the beginning of a whole season of things ahead of us here. Really excited about the possibilities and about listening to some Taylor Swift soon.
Haeny Yoon:
Yeah, very soon. Get excited.
Nathan Holbert:
So if you've enjoyed the show, if you've had a chance to listen to our previous seasons, please stick with us this season. Leave us a comment. Rate the show on wherever you get it. Spotify, Apple, I don't know where else, YouTube. And share the episode with your friends and let us know if you do. We'd love to hear about how you're using the episodes and how they can be useful to you.
Also, we'd encourage you to follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky. We have a little bit of a presence in both of those places and we like to post clips and other things on those social media sites. And on Blue Sky, we've also curated a feed of past Pop and Play guests and we'd encourage you to check those out and see what other people are up to as well.
Haeny Yoon:
Don't forget to check out my viral TikTok.
Nathan Holbert:
Surf lady. All right.
Haeny Yoon:
Bye.
Nathan Holbert:
Bye.