Well That's Cool
Claim This Podcastby Ben Fast
Podcast Overview
<p>Well That’s Cool is a new, quick-release podcast launched by Ben Fast. Grown in an age of self-isolation, curiosity still drives us to seek out cool things, interesting people, and fun distractions. The podcast is ideational, growing as it grows, so follow along and don’t forget to share what you find cool!</p>
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
3/26/2020
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Recent Episodes
March 17, 2021
Cycling through the Pandemic with Sidney McGill
Hello fellow isolators! Welcome to a special season-ending bonus episode. It is March 17th today, which makes it one year since a state of public health emergency was declared here in Alberta. That’s right, one year of COVID quarantines, a year with an overarching sense of fear (among other feelings), and a year quite different from those we’ve experienced before. I started this podcast about a week after we all started working from home. It’s a weird feeling of almost not being able to remember what that was like, as well as thinking it was only yesterday. I thought I would start a little project where I talked with cool people about cool things they were doing as a way to practice some podcasting, connect with people outside my apartment, and keep me busy through what was supposed to be a short disruption. Well a year later and I think the show has done just that, so it is a fitting time to wrap things up and take a break for a while. But, before I do, I wanted to have one more conversation with someone who has experienced at least part of this year doing something most of us could hardly imagine doing in a good year, let alone in the middle of a pandemic. In this special bonus episode, I talk with Edmonton’s own cyclocross star, Sidney McGill. Sidney had just come back from a winter riding bikes in Belgium, and I wanted to know more about racing in a pandemic, how her sport changed with COVID precautions, and how exactly a young Canadian takes part in elite world-level events. If you want to learn more about Sidney’s riding life, follow her on Instagram @SidneyMcGill. You can also learn more about her teams and sponsorships with Pedalhead Bicycle Works and Liv Cycling. And that about wraps up Season 1 of the Well That’s Cool podcast. I’ve had a great time taking you with me as we explored stories from the Netherlands, Scotland, and now Belgium, as well as life on the road with Engelbert Humperdink. I also want to thank the five authors who joined me live this fall and winter for the Book Club series, as well as the two who talked with me about writing with autism and making Mennonites funny. It has been a crazy year, and this podcast has been a distraction, a motivator, and just a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed the adventure too, and I’d love to hear what you thought about it. You can reach out to me by email at wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com or on my website, benfast.ca. I’m also on Facebook at wellthatscoolpod or on Twitter at well_thatscool. I don’t have solid plans for a season 2 yet, but feel free to send me a suggestion and I may pop back into your feeds occasionally this spring as the fancy takes me. In the meantime, I’m still making my model airplane kits, trying to read more regularly, and now thanks to Sidney I’m thinking of putting the wheels back on the road and stretching the cycling legs as the temperatures are rising. I may not be getting muddy and tearing up the local park like Sidney does, but I love that feeling of freedom and exploring that comes with pushing on the pedals. We’ve all been cooped up inside for a long time, why don’t you join me for a ride sometime, wherever you are, and get some much needed and very soothing fresh air. That’s my plan for getting out of this pandemic winter! Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts! And as we count down the days of final week of people experiencing first-time pandemic birthdays, stay well, and happy isolation reading!
March 11, 2021
Behind the Bonnet with Andrew Unger
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Well That’s Cool podcast! One of the things about this podcast’s origin was I didn’t really know what it was going to become. I started the show as a way to talk with cool people doing cool things during the pandemic. As the fall and winter of 2020 came around, things naturally evolved into a Zoom book club, a monthly chance for me to talk with authors, poets, and people working in the literary sphere. Let’s face it, those people are cool, and they’re pretty decent at communicating, since it is their day job. I hosted five club meetings and was very happy to have a small but mighty regular virtual audience join me, making the episode recordings both a fun time with friends and a cool way to keep the podcast going. As we’re heading towards one year living with this pandemic, and one year since I started this podcast, and with the temperature rising and people starting to find ways to live a bit more normally again, I’ve started thinking about wrapping up Season 1 and taking a break from the Well That’s Cool idea. We’ve had some great book club meetings, and they were – I hope – a useful and fulfilling activity for both the attendees and you listeners during the dark winter months. To wrap up Season 1, I decided to have one more conversation with an author, this time with someone who spends his time satirizing my very family history. If you listened to some of my earlier episodes you’ll know I spent a few weeks in 2019 traveling to Scotland to find out more about my mom’s side of the family tree. Well, part of my dad’s are Mennonites, coming to Canada most recently from the Ukraine, or what was then the Russian Empire, and going further back through Prussia and the Netherlands. I was also raised attending a Mennonite church and I have many Mennonite friends across Canada and the US, so it’s been an important identifier for me growing up, maybe even more ingrained than my interest in and connection with Scottish history that started a few years ago. For my guest on this episode, Andrew Unger, author of Once Removed and the man behind the website The Daily Bonnet, satirizing Mennonites comes from a deep family and personal connection to the Mennonite experience as well. His writing features more Mennonite references than I can catch, his subjects cover all aspects of Mennonite life through the ages and into today. Using that Mennonite history and culture that shaped his perspective of the world as a lens to look back on Mennonites and look at the outside world provides him with ample material to draw on, and a great opportunity to share a chuckle with Mennonites – and everyone else – along the way. In our conversation, we explore Mennonite history and culture, how to write (and teach) satire, just why his character Timothy Heppner is fighting to preserve heritage, and how articles about Mennonite sex positions are not as controversial as you may think! My thanks to Andrew Unger for talking with me about all things Mennonite, as well as his writing and approach to satire. I really enjoyed both my conversation and his novel Once Removed as a way to connect with and laugh alongside a part of my family story and my own identity. As Andrew mentioned, you can find his work at AndrewUnger.com or at dailybonnet.com. Now I said off the top that this interview was going to wrap up Season 1, but I actually have one more special episode left, which will drop on the one year anniversary of the first lockdown restrictions coming into effect here in Alberta. The first case was reported on March 5th, but on March 17, when total cases had already reached 97, the province declared a state of public health emergency. You know the rest of the story, it’s been a year to remember since then, or a year to forget I guess. At times it feels like the longest year, and at times I am amazed that a full year has already passed. To…commemorate? Acknowledge? I dunno, on the one-year anniversary of these restrictions, I’ll release the season-ending bonus episode. I’m going to talk with someone from right here in Edmonton who spent a good chunk of this winter in Europe, doing some pretty amazing things with large groups of other people. It’s getting back to the podcast’s roots: talking with cool people doing cool things, and I think the difference from our lives this year will be an interesting one. So watch for that episode coming next week and find out who did what! Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts! And as we count down the days of final week of people experiencing first-time pandemic birthdays, stay well, and happy isolation reading!
February 21, 2021
Book Club: Jenna Butler
Hello fellow isolators, and welcome to the fifth edition of the Well That’s Cool Book Club! For our February meeting, we had the first poet to make a special guest appearance at the Well That’s Cool Book Club. Jenna Butler is more than just a poet, however, she is also an essayist, professor, and organic farmer. Jenna’s writing includes the poetry collections Seldom Seen Road, Wells, and Aphelion; a collection of ecological essays, A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail; and the travelogue Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard. Revery: A Year of Bees, is her latest work, and features essays about beekeeping, climate grief, and trauma recovery. It is now out from Wolsak and Wynn. In this episode, Jenna and I talked about poetry, prose, emotion, writing as social justice, farming, climate change, and publishing. It was quite the discussion, one that helped me understand poetry and its role in conveying different messages, from hope for the future in a challenging world to the experience of watching the summer solstice. Our conversation really brought forward the passion Jenna has for her work and the world around her, something I think you’ll hear throughout the episode. Jenna’s recommendations to the live audience included Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer and Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm by Isabella Tree. Thanks again to Jenna Butler for bringing such passion and interesting experiences to the Book Club this month. I loved hearing about those direct, personal experiences dealing with and taking action against climate change, as well as nerding out on poetic Svalbard adventures. I know a number of the club’s members this month went right out and bought copies of Jenna’s work, and if you want to learn more you can find them at jennabutler.com. For me, I’m halfway through Once Removed by Andrew Unger (more on that below) and have started Spitfire by John Nichol. This is a history book about “Britain’s greatest warplane” that jumps through the story of the Spit with little vignettes and excerpts about the people who worked on and flew the great airplane. I’m not sure I can define the style of popular history, it really does seem like Nichol put all the little bits he could find in archives together independently rather than using them to put a narrative together like you might expect. It’s not a bad effect, and nice to be able to read in short chunks. What are you reading these days? You can send me a recommendation on Facebook at wellthatscoolpod or on Twitter at @well_thatscool, or by sending me an email at wellthatscoolpod@gmail.com. As for this podcast, it is amazing to think I put out the first episode 11 months ago, back at the end of March 2020. This show was going to be my little experiment in podcasting for fun, finding cool people doing cool things and sharing their stories with cool people like you. When I started I really didn’t know where this COVID thing would go, how bad it would affect me personally or the people around me, and how our lives would be shaped by it in the weeks, months, or, worst case, years to come. We’re almost a full year in now and here in Alberta things have been…well not amazing but not the worst in the world. I’m very lucky personally not to have experienced medical issues, but am definitely feeling the impacts of the isolation and lack of socializing that came with everything. The way this podcast evolved into a book club this fall helped connect with friends and keep that curiosity flowing through the dark winter weeks. But what next? Well, future plans and interest in hobbies have fluctuated just about as much the temperature this week or our moods this year. With a year fast approaching since the first Well That’s Cool episode was published, I’m going to wrap up season one next month. I’m really excited to have one last author interview to share with you, I’ll be talking with Andrew Unger about his Mennonite satire at the Daily Bonnet and his new novel Once Removed (I’m loving it so far and can’t wait to ask him all about it!). Watch for that season finale episode in early March. I’ll be taking the break to get back to my half-finished model airplane kit, dusting off my typewriter, catching up on work, obviously, and actually doing some of the reading I keep promising myself. After a breather I’ll also be looking at some new ideas, either for a season two or a new show experiment, so watch this space. We are a year in and can all use a break, but I will miss putting together these book club meetings and episodes for you. If you want to take up the torch and host your own club, don’t forget to send me an invite! Thanks as always to Ron Yamauchi for the theme tune and to Anna Schroeder of Annather Design for the cool podcast logo, check out her work at annatherdesign.com. Other music heard during this episode and all the other podcast stuff is done by me, Ben Fast. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts! Until next time, stay well, and happy isolation reading!
16 total episodes available
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- What is Well That's Cool?
<p>Well That’s Cool is a new, quick-release podcast launched by Ben Fast. Grown in an age of self-isolation, curiosity still drives us to seek out cool things, interesting people, and fun distractions. The podcast is ideational, growing as it grows, so follow along and don’t forget to share what you find cool!</p> - How often does this podcast release new episodes?
This podcast updates daily.
- Where can I listen to this podcast?
This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
- Does this podcast accept guests?
Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.
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