Show Notes
In this episode of “Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice,” Patricia and Nicole discuss the importance of novelty and trying new experiences to enhance quality of life. They share personal anecdotes about exploring new foods, stores, and activities while acknowledging the privilege and accessibility that can impact one’s ability to do so. The episode concludes with the hosts reflecting on their recent joys, including reconnecting with old friends and the satisfaction of sending out thoughtful mail.
Also, correction: Patricia mentions we are coming up on the one-year anniversary of her mother’s passing. It has actually been two years.
Mentioned on the show (includes affiliate links):
- Bookshop Affiliate Storefront (links below are affiliate)
- Become a patron! Patreon.com/eedapod
- Subscribe to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice Newsletter
- Corporate DEI Policy Tracker http://bit.ly/corpdei
- Triple Sec: A Novel by TJ Alexander
- EEDA Pod Episode: “[Verb] Like There’s Nobody Watching” (site | Apple | Spotify)
Find the full show notes and official transcript on our website: eedapod.com
Become a patron! Patreon.com/eedapod
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Sound editing by Jen Zink
Transcript
Music: [00:00:00] [Intro Music]
Patricia: Hey there, fruit snacks! Welcome to Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice, the podcast for folks who would rather curl into the fetal position than lean in. I’m your host, Patricia Elzie-Tuttle.
Nicole: And I really want you to get vaccinated for measles if you never have! I’m Nicole Elzie-Tuttle. We’re recording this show on March 15th, 2025.
Patricia: Speaking of measles vaccine, since that happened for me when I was very, like, before my memory really caught in, my doctor was able to run a panel for me to see if I still had immunity, so.
Nicole: Oh, yeah, if you have a doctor that’ll
do that and check, especially if you live in one of the twenty-two states
Patricia: mmm
Nicole: that currently [00:01:00] are being affected by the new outbreak of measles.
Patricia: Yeah, ask your doctor if you have one.
Nicole: Ask your doctor if you have one and if you should get a new measles vaccine.
Patricia: So, March 15th, it is five years since the first lockdown.
Nicole: Really kind of marking the start of the COVID pandemic that we are still experiencing.
Patricia: Still experiencing, people are still dying from COVID.
We were just talking, those first couple of years were just a blur.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Just a blur.
And it really actually takes, like, my photos to, like, give me memories of that time. I’m like, oh, we did that, oh, we, oh, that happened. Such a weird time.
Nicole: Yeah.
Both: Such a weird time.
Patricia: Also, this show is publishing on March 19th, and March 20th is Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, Autumn Equinox in the Southern Hemisphere.
Nicole: Oh, so the [00:02:00] calendar’s finally catching up with, like, the seasons?
Patricia: Stop.
The season, it’s been pouring and it’s been so frigid cold here.
Nicole: Yeah, it’s the start of spring.
Patricia: Oh my gosh.
Nicole: Spring showers.
Patricia: Spring showers.
I posted our favorite nursery here in the East Bay, it’s over in Berkeley. During the like spring and summer months, they have a local kind of hot dog sausage place like set up a grill.
And so you could go to the nursery and get, like, sausage and also plants.
Nicole: It’s like, not just like, sausage, like, you could get like,
Patricia: Like lemon garlic chicken sausage, like,
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Apple sausage, like, you could get some nice, like, I don’t know, spring and summer flavored sausage?
Patricia: But I’m like, oh yes, that’s spring when I could get a sausage at the nursery.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: This is also the last episode [00:03:00] before my birthday. My birthday is April Fool’s Day. You can leave me a gift like a review, which would be amazing, and share our podcast far and wide. We’re doing something great for my birthday, which we will share after we do it for safety reasons. But yeah, I’ve always been one of those people.
I’m like, you know what, we get one day to just celebrate ourselves and I will celebrate my birthday until the end of time, so. And also it’s April Fool’s Day, which honestly I kind of love that that’s my birthday.
Nicole: It is very on brand. Like, very on brand.
Patricia: Every time I tell someone that’s my birthday, they’re like, ah, yeah, that makes sense.
It’s either going to be April 1st or Halloween, so.
Nicole: Halloween’s not your mid unbirthday.
Patricia: No, October 1st would be my
Nicole: mid unbirthday.
Patricia: My half birthday.
Nicole: Oh, speaking of gifts that you could give us, we have a [00:04:00] Patreon. And we would love it if you sign up for it. It is at patreon.com/eedapod.
Patricia: Yeah, and then also on our website we have a link to our bookshop affiliate site where you can shop all the books we have mentioned in this show and also books I’ve mentioned in the Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter, and we get a little kickback if you shop through our link.
Nicole: It’s a great place to buy gifts for other people.
For other people, yeah, because they’re usually books we’ve read already, so.
Music: [Transition Music]
Patricia: So. I was talking with a colleague about boycotting companies that have dumped their DEI programs. Like us, she got a Costco card. Costco is one of the companies that has doubled down on their dedication to DEI, so we are big [00:05:00] Costco fans now. In past issues of the Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter, I’ve shared a tracker for which companies have confirmed their commitment to DEI, and which companies have shuttered their DEI programs.
I will link it in the show notes so that you have easy access to it, so that you can easily have something to reference.
Nicole: The thing is, we’re only two people, and Costco often sells things in quantities or volume that is way more than needed for two people.
Patricia: Or that we could store, that we have space for.
Nicole: Oh my gosh, like paper towels come in like a hundred rolls. I don’t have a small warehouse for paper towels. So what we’ve done is we’ve offered to our friends to split the cost of these items and also split the items, and that way we all get to share the discounts.
Patricia: Yeah! My colleague and I were agreeing that the [00:06:00] experience of looking for new sources of Items and doing things in a new way is actually fun for us.
I realize it’s not the same for everyone, but stick with me here. It’s definitely easier if you refer to the tracker that I’m going to share in the show notes. But for me, it’s like, it’s using a different area of my brain. It feels like solving a puzzle.
Nicole: Yeah. I kind of stumbled into this the other day when I was looking for some new saline spray. We use NeilMed’s piercing spray to help clean out our nose piercings. And for the last, like, year or so, we’ve been buying it on Amazon. And we’re trying to move away from that. So I thought to myself, hey, does this company have a website with a storefront on it that I could buy this product directly from them?
And it turns out they do. NeilMed has their own website store. And what we learned is that it’s the exact same price there as it is on Amazon. [00:07:00] If you spend over $30, then you get free shipping, and it still came to us in like, two days.
Patricia: It was still super fast!
Nicole: Yeah! So, like, it was the same price, and that means the company gets to keep all their profit on that.
And we didn’t give any money to Jeff Bezos.
Patricia: There you go.
All this to get to the thesis of today’s show. Doing new things improves our quality of life, and it may do the same for you. We’re going to share a range of ways to fit novelty into your everyday.
Nicole: I was really hoping that at this point in the show, I could take a little time and dazzle you all with science by talking about novelty and neurons and dopamine.
But, I spent over an hour, like, digging into the literature and reading academic articles and all I’m left with is like a handful of non-academic articles that don’t cite their sources and a really profound [00:08:00] sense that I do not know enough about neuroscience to be sure that I would be providing you all with accurate information.
So instead, we’re going to talk about our own personal experience and share how that has helped us. We want to talk about trying new things and how that can fill your cup.
Patricia: And before we get into that, I want to use this moment to say it’s really important to us that we can cite sources if we said something like trying new things is healthy for you.
Like we want to be able to cite our sources on that if there are any. And so that’s why Nicole took all that time to do something. And that’s how we’ve kind of changed our thesis and made it more personal. You know, a lot of those articles you were saying that you found, not the academic journal articles, but just like the blog posts and stuff.
As you said, they didn’t cite their sources, and so they’re just kind of saying things
Nicole: yeah
Patricia: without actually being [00:09:00] grounded in research. And so much self help out there is like that. They just say the wildest things without telling you where they’re getting this information, and this is something that I feel really sets us apart.
Nicole: This is why we’re making it very clear that today’s episode comes from a place of personal experience in the hopes that that resonates with some of you.
Patricia: I first want to recognize that even mundane forms of novelty can often be only available with certain amounts of privilege, right? Once I decided I wanted to do something a little fancy with our walking route around the neighborhood and, like, go around a different block, and that was only possible because we could afford the extra time it would take, that we had access to a walkable area with variations, and that the terrain was safe and manageable and accessible to us on this different route.
Nicole: That being said, in doing this [00:10:00] we were rewarded on that walk by finding something that neither of us had seen before. A giant dandelion.
Patricia: It was like two feet tall.
Nicole: Yeah, literally, there is a whole different species of dandelions, or family of dandelions, I don’t know, called giant dandelions. They’re huge.
We did not know they even existed, and by taking this different route, now we do, and it was very exciting.
Patricia: It was pretty cool.
Nicole: To us.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Um, similarly though, going somewhere new for dinner is dependent on budget and time and transportation and accessibility. And even if you want to try making something new for dinner, that’s dependent on money to buy different groceries and additional spell slots to try and find the recipe and then spend the time to make it.
Patricia: And then being able to eat something else if what you made didn’t turn out. I think a lot of advice gets thrown out there, like, try new foods, like, [00:11:00] like it’s all easy. And so I’d just like us to say that we recognize that your mileage may vary with any of the advice we give.
Nicole: Is that why the advice is dubious?
Patricia: Maybe.
Nicole: Huh.
A common misconception about novelty or finding something new to try is that it needs to be new to everyone. Universally. Which is a really hard thing to do, unless you are one of those scientists that takes those submarines down into the deep parts of the ocean. When we’re talking about trying something new, what we mean is try something new to you. Watching a movie. that is decades old, can definitely fall into this if you’ve never seen it before.
We tried Haitian food with a friend recently. Now, clearly, Haitian food is not a brand new thing to the world. But it was our first [00:12:00] time trying it, and so it was new to us.
Patricia: And it was delicious.
Nicole: Yeah, we had griot?
Patricia: Maybe. Yeah, they were little fried pieces of pork.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Yeah, I don’t know. I really liked it.
One of the ways we enjoy slipping some novelty in our lives is going to new locations of a store we were planning on going to anyway. We’ve explored new to us garden centers, new to us Costco locations. The Costco we went to a couple weeks ago sold caviar, which is not my thing at all, but I don’t recall seeing that at our usual Costco.
Nicole: Again, your mileage may vary on this one, and we recognize that this is one of the many privileges afforded to us by living in a major metropolitan area. The idea of doing this might also be incredibly anxiety inducing for some people, and sometimes it is for us. We’ll definitely go to a new Costco, [00:13:00] but going to a new Safeway for groceries? Absolutely not!
Patricia: Oh, no. No, no, no, no. My OCD has dictated what our primary grocery store is. The Safeway we go to feels right, and the other ones feel wrong. And no, I cannot explain.
Nicole: I can. We’re there for a very specific person, purpose, not a person. That’d be weird.
Patricia: That’d be weird.
Nicole: And we know how to navigate that store and exactly what it is we want to purchase that is sold at that particular store.
Costcos on the other hand, we’re often not there for like, very specific, like, everything we need to eat for the next week. It’s often one or two things, maybe we’re looking to see if they carry a specific item, or maybe, you know, we need some laundry detergent and, I don’t know, 300 boxes of tissue or something.
It’s a lot lower stakes. And when we’re talking about, [00:14:00] like, novelty that’ll still have an impact, we’re really looking for these, like, lower stakes things.
Patricia: This could also mean that if you are a reader, like us, trying a new genre, and yes, I know many of us have our comfort genres, like romance or sci fi, you could even try, you know, new tropes within those things.
I’m definitely not advocating stopping reading what you love. It could just feel good to slip into something new once in a while and maybe expand that circle of things you enjoy.
Nicole: Yeah, I’m actually trying a new, like, a book with a new romance trope that I’ve not read before. It’s a poly romance, and I’ve never read a poly romance book before.
Patricia: Yeah, it’s, uh, Triple Sec by TJ Alexander.
Nicole: Mm hmm.
And part of it is, I trust this author. I like TJ Alexander’s other books, and so I’m giving it a go. And it’s kind of fun because I [00:15:00] know overall where it’s going, but I don’t know how we’re getting there because there’s extra people in the mix. I don’t know what’s gonna happen.
Patricia: I kind of love that. That sounds hilarious.
Nicole: Yeah.
People also have their comfort shows, and this applies to that too. Now what we’re starting to brush up against here is using novelty to help you move out of your comfort zone and into a kind of growth zone. And if that’s something you want to hear more about, we recommend going back and listening to our episode from March 20th, 2024 called [Verb] Like There’s Nobody Watching.
Patricia: Literally our episode from one year ago.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Sometimes, something I don’t do enough, and that I want to do more of, is listen to new music. Last year, a friend did a year of new albums, 52 albums in 52 weeks, and I found that really inspirational.
Oh, and going back to new food, it doesn’t have to [00:16:00] be a whole meal. We get a lot of mileage out of trying new snacks or new tea, or new fruit.
Nicole: We should really, one, do like new music every week. We’ve got so much new music just sitting on our shelf in the form of records.
Patricia: We do.
Nicole: But also, along the lines of like trying new snacks or tea or new fruits, we’ve also gotten a lot out of, like, trying new seasonings.
Patricia: New season… like, new seasoning mixes,
Both: yeah.
Nicole: And just using them on something simple, like scrambled eggs.
Patricia: Yeah, and it’s ended up finding, like, my new favorite things.
Nicole: Yeah.
This next one, however, is either exciting or terrifying for new listeners. And this is hanging out with new people.
Patricia: Like, emotionally, spiritually, I want to be really stubborn and say, like, we have enough friends.
But, in all honesty, we’ve [00:17:00] actually made some great new friends in the past year, and I’ve been enjoying hanging out with them. Our more established friends are also great, of course, and we actually introduced your friend to the rest of our friend group, and usually that’s something I feel really nervous about, but it was so good.
Nicole: Yeah, everyone had a great time, and there was this really fantastic knowledge exchange of things that we definitely can’t talk about on this show, but there were a lot of laughs.
Patricia: Yeah, that was I learned so much that day.
Again, your mileage may vary with any of this. Trying new things is just something that we try to fit in occasionally, and it helps break up the monotony and improves our moods.
Nicole: You know, I just thought of something, and it’s silly, but just like going and walking around a different park.
Patricia: Literally, yeah.
Nicole: We’ve done that multiple times.
Patricia: Absolutely.
Nicole: And it’s [00:18:00] been really enjoyable.
Patricia: mm hmm
Music: [Transition Music]
Nicole: So we talked a lot about trying new things and how we find joy in this and everything. What, what’s the key takeaway you want people to bring home from this?
Patricia: I really want people to, it can be intimidating, and I really want people to take away that new experiences and trying new things doesn’t always have to be expensive or complicated.
How about you?
Nicole: Yeah, I’m, I’m just gonna follow right on your heels with this one. You can introduce novelty in small ways. Like, taking a slightly different route, or a different version of a side dish. It can be that simple, and it just, I don’t know, I enjoy it.
Aside from introducing new things in your life, Patricia, what has been filling your cup [00:19:00] lately?
Patricia: We had one of my longtime friends come over. This year, I think marks 28 years of knowing each other, we’ve known each other since we were teenagers. And there is something very special about still being friends with someone you’ve known since you were, I think I was 18, she was 16. And, you know, she knew my mom, we’re coming up on one year of my mom passing away, and she was there for us.
And, but also, like, I know her mom, and I’m friends with her sister, and, you know, over the years, we’ve just, like, grown together, you know, I went and visited her when she was studying abroad in Italy, and I’m the one who convinced her to even take Italian in the first place, and. I don’t know. It’s just very special.
It’s just very special. You know, it’s, when you’ve known someone for that long, it’s almost past the point of friends and that is, that is family. She’s [00:20:00] family. So I don’t know. I’m still riding very high off of that because I just love her so much.
Nicole, what is filling your cup?
Nicole: I finally sent mail, and not just like a postcard, which, nothing wrong with sending postcards, but I sent letters on nice stationery, and I included pictures that I’d taken, and used one of my nice fountain pens with one of my favorite inks, and just, I did a whole thing of mail, like, several of them, and it felt really good.
And then for like several days after, I’ve been kind of obsessed with wanting to send more mail. And that’s what I think about in the evening.
Patricia: And you also included some of your pressed flowers.
Nicole: Oh, I did. Yeah. I knew there was something else I, I included on that, but it’s Saturday morning and I’m still kind of sleepy.
Yeah, I, I have my pressed flowers that from last year’s flowers that we grew. So I, I also [00:21:00] incorporated those into the mail as well. It felt really good. It’s, it’s like a combination of like, reaching out and communicating, but also being kind of slightly crafty.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Yeah.
It’s just been really nice.
Patricia: Well, that’s our show for today.
We’d like to thank our awesome audio editor, Jen Zink. You can find her at loopdilou.com. We’ll leave a link to that in our show notes.
Nicole: You can find the full show notes and transcript at eedapod.com. That’s E E D A P O D dot com. There, you can also find a link to our Patreon, our bookshop link, and a link to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter.
You can also find us on Instagram and BlueSky at eedapod and email us at eedapod@gmail.com.
Patricia: We are nothing if not consistent.
Nicole: We would also appreciate it so much if you would subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts that allow ratings. Also, [00:22:00] just like, I don’t know, share us and rate us on social media.
Share a post that’s like, I love this podcast. It’s great. You all should listen to it. That also helps other people find us.
Patricia: We would also appreciate anyone who can subscribe to us on Patreon. Support is going to help us keep this show going, especially without ads. You can find us at patreon.com/eedapod.
In the meantime. We hope you find ways to be kind to yourself, drink some water, and read a book. We’ll be talking to you soon.
Nicole: When you were teenagers, was that the 1900s when phones were still plugged into the wall via cords?
Patricia: You’re terrible.
Nicole: I mean, I was a teenager then too, so.
Patricia: The Song of the Summer was Pretty Fly for a White Guy when we met.
Nicole: Oh, that was by The Offspring.
Patricia: The Offspring.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: yeah
Nicole: That was interestingly not their first hit.
Patricia: No, it wasn’t. And also Kevin Smith movies were a big [00:23:00] thing, like Snoochie Boochies.
Nicole: Oh, yeah. Kevin Smith movies.
Patricia: Yep.
Nicole: Like Mallrats and Chasing Amy.
Patricia: Clerks.
Nicole: Clerks. Clerks was the first one. Yeah. And then Dogma, which like for years you could not get a copy of anywhere.
Patricia: Jay and Silent Bob.
Nicole: Jay and Silent Bob. Yeah.
Who featured prominently in many of these movies.
Patricia: Yep.
Nicole: Wow. Hi, everyone. We’re old.
Both: [Laughing]
Nicole: Welcome back to the 1900s. Uh, nostalgia hour.
Patricia: Bleh.
Nicole: [Laughing]