Listeners send Doree and Elise their news sources, how they’re keeping busy and proactive, drugstore skincare recs for the winter, and updates on Trader Joe’s. 

Mentioned in this Episode

• Jennifer Walter Sociologist Patreon Post

• Morning Announcements on Betches

• Roy Wood Jr's show CNN’s Have I Got News For You

• News Not Noise from Jessica Yellin

• Robert Reich's drawings

• Politics Made Easy by Ben Sheehan

• Heather Cox Richardson's Substack

• VEEP on HBOMax

• Sharon Says So

• The Small and Mighty by Sharon McMahon

• The Ezra Klein Show from the NYT

• Mini-Ep 428: News You Can Use

• ScanCafe

• Use code Feb2025

• Apostrophe.com/forever35

• Loreal Revitalift Retinol

• ELF holy hydration face cream

• ELF holy hydration serum

• ELF holy hydration night cream

• ELF holy hydration moisturizer

• TJ Pimento Cheese Dip

• Unexpected Cheddar

• Inside 'Teflon Joe’s': Why your favorite grocery store is not what you think 

• Click here to shop all of Forever35's ShopMy Shelf recs.

To leave a voicemail or text for a future episode, reach them at 781-591-0390. You can also email the podcast at forever35podcast@gmail.com.

Visit forever35podcast.com for links to everything they mention on the show or shopmyshelf.us/forever35.

Follow the podcast on Instagram (@Forever35Podcast) and join the Forever35 Patreon.

Sign up for the newsletter! At forever35podcast.com/newsletter.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. 

Transcript

This episode transcript is AI generated.

Doree (00:10):

Hello and welcome to Forever 35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.

Elise (00:17):

And I'm Elise Hu. And we are just two friends who like to talk a lot about serums,

Doree (00:21):

And this is a mini episode where we hear from you, we share your comments and your thoughts, and we answer your questions to the best of our ability. But please remember, we are not experts. We're podcast hosts. We always encourage you to seek support first and foremost from a medical and or mental health professional as needed. Elise, how are you? I feel like I haven't seen you in a minute.

Elise (00:43):

Oh yes. You were in the desert again, right?

Doree (00:46):

I was in the desert again, yes. My weekly trip to the desert.

Elise (00:50):

How did it go?

Doree (00:51):

It was great. We didn't win, but it was super fun and yeah, it was a good time. Glad I went. The team had a great time. One of the members of my team is a private chef, so she made us dinner on Saturday night, which was awesome.

Elise (01:11):

It looked delicious and also very green, like very healthy, too

Doree (01:16):

Healthy. She made roast chicken on a bed of panzanella. She made roasted squash with this pomegranate molasses sauce. I don't know. It was very good. And then there was charred broccolini that she made on the grill. She's like, I don't have that much time. I'll just whip something together. And I was like, amazing. Better than 99% of restaurant meals I've had.

Elise (01:43):

Get yourself a friend that knows how to just whip something up and have it be gourmet.

Doree (01:50):

Those are the best friends. Seriously, I was truly, truly in awe. It did feel a little bit like I was chopped because she only had three hours, which is not a ton of time to make a meal for 10 people and she wasn't in her kitchen and it was sort of funny, but it was very interesting to watch her. She definitely knew the order of operations of everything and what needed to be prepped first, and I don't know, it was very interesting and delicious.

Elise (02:23):

This actually reminds me of helpful and useful use of AI that we haven't talked about, which is whenever you have random ingredients in your fridge or just like one banana, then you can essentially just tell chat GPT, I have one banana and I want to make breakfast with it. What should I make? And then, or sometimes I will just pop in and I'll be like, these are the things in my fridge. Help me use them and not waste them.

Doree (02:50):

What a great smart use of chat GPT.

Elise (02:54):

Yeah, and it's actually, it's not bad. When I first started doing this, I don't know, half a year ago, it was a little wonky and my options, the recipes weren't that great. And then as the AI has improved over, I mean it improves every minute and so as it's improved, it's gotten better and more creative and my options are more delicious. But if you have one banana, it'll come up with two muffins or you can make some sort of oatmeal banana thing in a Ram Akin and pop it in your oven and

Doree (03:24):

It's great.

Elise (03:25):

Yeah, I find it really awesome. And whenever I want chocolate chip cookies serving size or the recipes are always for at least a dozen chocolate chip cookies. But what if you only want to make two chocolate chip cookies, but then don't want to do the math. That's what I also do with Chachi pt. I'm like, Hey,

Doree (03:46):

Oh my gosh,

Elise (03:47):

I need a recipe for two chocolate chip cookies.

Doree (03:50):

That's so smart. That's so smart. I

Elise (03:53):

Love

Doree (03:54):

This. How was your weekend?

Elise (03:58):

It was pretty good. I was supposed to be also in the desert, but in Phoenix, in Scottsdale, and then my girlfriend that I was going to go with, she got the flu. There is a lot of flu going around.

Doree (04:12):

There's a lot of flu and a lot of neuro,

Elise (04:15):

Not that we would know it because the CDC data is just getting systematically wiped off of federal databases. Yeah, no big deal. But yes, doctors say there's a lot of flu going around and a lot of Neurovirus, Luna's entire class went down with Neurovirus a few months ago. The whole,

Doree (04:33):

Oh my God, did

Elise (04:35):

She

Doree (04:36):

Get it? It was

Elise (04:36):

Crazy. No one could escape it. Yeah, she got it and came home and then that night on the WhatsApp one by one, each family was like, we've gone down.

Doree (04:48):

Did you get it? I don't remember you having Noro.

Elise (04:51):

No, it's probably because nacho cheese runs through my veins. I eat so poorly anyway that my gastrointestinal system is just like, okay.

Doree (05:04):

Right. Oh my God.

Elise (05:06):

But no, yeah, knock on wood, I avoided it.

Doree (05:08):

It sounds like Nora's really going around.

Elise (05:13):

Yeah,

Doree (05:14):

Yeah.

Elise (05:15):

So yeah, I had a pretty good weekend. I ended up not having to travel, so it was really quite chill. And then there was a big lunar New Year celebration here on the west side that Issa danced in. They did a traditional fan dance. I had a nice long meandering dinner with my good friends, a couple, and so I was third wheeling there. I love it. I feel like I'm going out to dinner with my parents and then they get a tab. It's sort of like when it was parent week or whatever at college and your parents would come and you're like, yes, we get to go out to nice places to eat and maybe mom and dad. So I had a pretty good time. It's just obviously the barrage of changes at the federal government level and the things that are being dismantled are happening so quickly.

(06:03):

And so over the weekend we saw the reversal of the pause on all federal payments, but then basically the collapse and the ending of federal payments to us A ID, which is how America had often supported the poorest people on the planet and all of these payments were stopped at the direction of the richest person on the planet. Elon Musk, who is essentially running government with his 18, 19, and 20 year olds. And so a lot of the dinners and a lot of the weekend has been just like they've been fraught over these quick changes. There were the Grammys over the weekend in LA and all traffic was stopped from the valley to the Grammys because of protests against Trump's immigration executive order. So there's a lot going on, a lot of attempts at resistance. It just feels like everything's coming at us pretty fast, like the fastest.

Doree (07:00):

Yeah, it's really giving fascism.

Elise (07:04):

It gives the fascism vibes for sure. And it's intended, so I was actually talking on offline with you about how there's a great sociologist named Jennifer Walter who has put out kind of this is what happens. There's shock and awe, and so I'll find a way to just do a Patreon post if that's cool, so that we can all be informed in this moment.

Doree (07:28):

Yeah, it's not great. It's not great.

Elise (07:31):

The quick takeaway from the writings on this and just how to respond in this moment of overwhelm is to find three or four things that you really care about. Three or four things you really want to focus on, whether it's the CDC data and the preservation of that, or whether it's immigrant rights or whether it's, in my case, I care a lot about U-S-A-I-D and being able to support the poorest people on the planet and prevent disease. U-S-A-I-D was helping, there's an Ebola outbreak going on right now in Uganda and it keeps Americans safe if we help contain Ebola outbreaks in Africa. And so all of this is connected. We are not like an island unto ourselves and we can't policy make that way. And so I care a lot about that. I'm doing what I can to share on that front, but whatever y'all care about, our focus is a form of resistance. Not getting overwhelmed is a form of being a good citizen in this moment.

Doree (08:30):

I love that. That's such good advice too, because it can feel like, ah, there's so many things. I can't do everything, so I might as well just do nothing. And so focusing on just a few things I think is such a good idea because everyone will be focusing on the exact same thing, so we'll be able to cover a lot of ground.

Elise (08:51):

Yes, yes.

Doree (08:56):

On a completely different note, we got a text from our free mugging listener, one of the many, but who has been corresponding with us, and I believe the last time they wrote in, I said something like, why don't you just use a travel lid that you get at Starbucks or whatever, and they wrote us and said, wait, let me clarify. A closed lid won't help. As 97% of the spills sadly happen whilst drinking from said tiny hole. It just dribbles out my mouth. Can't hold what my brain thinks it can. I don't even know what to say to this, but thank you for the clarification.

Elise (09:49):

Yes, yes. Different strokes for different folks.

Doree (09:54):

Yep, totally. Alright, well before we take a break, I just want to remind everyone, if you have updates on your free mugging or you want to tell us the areas that you are focusing on in the current hellscape, you can text or call us at (781) 591-0390. You can also email us at Forever 35 podcast@gmail.com. We also have our website forever 35 podcast.com. Our Instagram is at Forever 35 podcast. Our newsletter is forever 35 podcast.com/newsletter and you can shop our favorite products at shop my US slash forever 35. We are going to take a short break. We're going to come back with some recommendations from listeners about their news consumption.

Elise (10:39):

Okay, we'll be right back.

Doree (10:49):

All we have returned, I really appreciated all of these listeners suggestions. Thank you to everyone who wrote in this person, wrote that they listen to podcasts that give me the headlines, the morning announcements from Bees Media gives me the top line stories with a little snark and I can go about my day. The other way I get news is from comedy Roy Woods Jr's show, have I got news for you on CNN is great. And Stephen Colbert's monologues, they give me the joy of comedy with the pain of the news. Thank you for those suggestions. Next email, this listener wrote, hi Lisa door. I want to second what y'all said about local news and PR and substack as primary news sources. Right now, I still get the New York Times breaking news emails, but don't always open them for some other reasons. I'm feeling a little disillusioned by the times, but love the games and recipes. So we soldier on the substack that are helping me feel fully informed and mostly grounded. We are current political HealthScape are Jessica Yellen's News, not Noise. We actually got a few suggestions for Jessica. Yes,

Elise (11:49):

This is her. Yeah. Longtime White House correspondent for CNN. She left CNN and started this news, not Noise franchise and it's mostly on Instagram, I thought, but it sounds like it really expanded. So good.

Doree (12:03):

Yes. We got several suggestions for news, not Noise, Robert Reich for the Kids. He was Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor. He's also a cartoonist. He shares his drawings and has a caption contest each week, so that's fun. Also fun fact, he was my college graduation speaker and everyone was sort of like, what? No disrespect to Robert Rech, but it wasn't, I think it wasn't like the fun stature, the stature that our class was seeking.

Elise (12:39):

I have no idea who gave our commencement speech because he was such a nobody, I guess.

Doree (12:45):

Oh, that's really funny. Jackie J's, that's Jackie Johnson's husband. Ben Sheean started one too called Politics Made Easy.

Elise (12:54):

Okay.

Doree (12:55):

He has worked for Crooked Media for a long time and has generally good opinions on things. Heather Cox Richardson's, letters from an American. If I had to choose just one out of all of these, I think I choose Heather's. She's a scholar and a wordsmith. I also just want to thank y'all for all the newsletters slash beautiful humans I follow that bring me healing and joy because of this podcast. You two, Kate Spencer and Shen, nor McInerney, Caroline Moss, the list goes on and on. Stories and community matter more than ever. So thank you both for telling and building good ones in the truest sense of the word love and light. Another Kate.

Elise (13:33):

Oh, thank you. Another Kate. Thank you another Kate. Great

Doree (13:37):

Suggestions, such good suggestions. I am going to subscribe immediately to all of your suggestions. Elise, do you want to take this next one?

Elise (13:47):

Yeah, sure. Hello, E and do, I was just listening to your app about mental health and the news and wanted to share my current coping mechanism, rewatching Veep. I find the hilarity and absurdity and maybe everyone's incompetence soothing as I think about what's going on in Washington right now. Fingers crossed the new administration bungles their various attempts to dismantle our rights and government in a Jonah esque fashion. All joking aside, I am a social studies teacher and am also struggling with how to balance presenting my students, including many who are terrified about the deportations with all the news in an informative, productive fashion, hugs and solidarity. This actually reminds me, there are two other great sources that I'm sort of turning to in this moment for clarity and just to keep myself sane and one of is actually a history teacher named her. Instagram is at Sharon Saysso. She's a very well-known history teacher now because she's become kind of like a history influencer, American history influencer on Instagram. And she came out with a big book last year. It was like a surprise bestseller. Let me find her last name. Sharon McMahon. Sharon McMahon. She wrote a book called The Small and Mighty last year, and she's now known as America's government teacher. So she is somebody who's, and pretty puts things in historical context and it's like news, not noise or it's history, not noise, if you will.

(15:22):

And then the other is I've been listening to the first few episodes, Trump administration from Ezra Klein and the Ezra Klein show on New York Times, and they've been having really incisive conversations. I think that pull back the curtain a bit and have actually been calming in that it's delivered in a really measured, calm, non cable news kind of way. And so I've been able to make it through those in order to stay informed and not be in a heap because I think y'all recall that last week I was basically on a heap in a heap on the floor and joked that I was podcasting from there. So I'm getting a little bit better. I had the weekend to kind of pull myself together and those are some of the places that I'm turning to.

Doree (16:05):

Okay, thank you Elise. Alright, on a totally different note, we got a text from a listener that said I wanted to chime in on the digitizing photos, et cetera, discussion from mini PP 4 28. I have used Scan Cafe multiple times to digitize old photos with great results. I was doing a lot at one time, so it could be expensive depending on how many you are looking to digitize, but the quality is great. They also offer restoration if the photos are old or not great quality and they take great care of the photos. You mail the photos in, you can divide them up into envelopes for easier sorting slash organizing if needed. They scan them, you can review the scans and opt not to pay for a certain percentage of the scans that didn't come out well. And they will either send you a USB drive or a CD with the scan photos or allows you to download them from their cloud storage service along with mailing the photos back to you. Of course for a small fee. They even give you the option to leave all of the photos in an album and they will take each one out, scan the photos and put them back in the album. They did this with my dad's baby photos and my parents' wedding album. So it works even with old and or delicate photos. How cool.

Elise (17:21):

Okay. That's a really strong recommendation for Scan Cafe, cafe Scan, cafe,

Doree (17:28):

Love that just went to their website and they have a 30% off code for February Feb 2025. Great. I'm going to check this out. Very cool. You know what, Elise, we forgot to mention that we are collecting listener questions about Friendship.

Elise (17:50):

That's right. It's friendship month For Friendship

Doree (17:53):

Month. Yeah. Friendship month is starting on Monday and at the end of the month we are going to have one of our guests back to respond to our listener questions about friendships. So if you have listener questions about friendship as a listener, email those to us at Forever 35 podcast at Gmail or call or text us at (781) 591-0390. Alright, Elise, we're going to take one more break and we'll be right back. We'll be right back. All right, we are back. We have a voicemail.

Listener Voicemail (18:34):

Okay, I need my para social older sister. I'm turning 30 in a month and decided that I'm going to start using Fentanyl at 30 because that felt right, but I'm kind of also terrified. So what are the tips? What am I supposed to know? I've read the internet and the internet gives a lot of steps or do I need to follow all of those? Is the internet being aggressive? Is there not enough? Is there a hack? Yeah, all the retinol tips.

Elise (19:10):

Thank you. Doree. I feel like retinol is part of your routine, right?

Doree (19:15):

Yeah, I use Tino and you can get a prescription from your dermatologist or you can use one of the many online pharmacies that exist now to provide online dermatology services, including one of our sponsors. Apostrophe, you can go to apostrophe.com/forever three five and you get your first visit, which is basically just like telemedicine with code forever 35. So you can check that out. They will prescribe you Tretinoin or again, if you have an IRL dermatologist, you can get it from them as well. I would recommend starting with the very, very lowest dose, which I think is 0.025%. That's what I use. And you start out very gradually start out doing it twice a week, whether or not you need it. I don't know. I can't make that determination because I'm not a doctor, I'm not an expert.

(20:13):

Some people start at 30 I there's think there's a one size fits all when it comes to this. The one thing that I will say as a non-expert is that you do have to be very careful about the sun when you use Tretinoin. I stop using it basically all summer because the sun here is so intense and if you know you're going to be outside a lot, don't use it the night before because it makes your skin very sensitive to the sun. So that's just something to note. If you're like a lifeguard, trentino might not be if you're like a beach lifeguard, trentino might not be for you. Although maybe some people make it work with a ton of sunscreen. But yeah, that's what I would do. I would either go to your real life dermatologist or use one of these online dermatologist like apostrophe and go from there and they might say to you, Hey, we don't recommend, we don't recommend retinol right now. Here's something else that we think you should use. Again, not an expert. So I can't make that determination.

Elise (21:20):

I don't have any prescription strength retinol, but I have products that have retinol in them. So we should note that there are plenty of

(21:27):

Over the counter products, skincare products that include retinol, like night creams. And there's one I like that I've used for a while now. It's actually drugstore, it's, y'all know I love my drugstore stuff. It's the L'Oreal Revital lift night serum with retinol in it. They have derm intensives as well, which is more of a serum specifically. And there's the cream that has retinol in it, which is what I meant to say for the earlier mention. And that doesn't trigger the skin sensitivity that you can get with the more higher strength, more potent formulations. When retinol is mentioned to me, it's when I'm getting my eyebrows wax like, have you been using any retinol on your skin? I guess it's your skin gets more sensitive to

Doree (22:19):

Yes,

Elise (22:20):

Sunlight to wax. So just be aware of that. But yes, consult your dermatologist first.

Doree (22:28):

Okay, hot tip. Alright, next voicemail. We have three voicemails here at the end of the show. Unusual but is what it's

Listener Voicemail (22:40):

Hey, Doree and Elise. I was listening to the latest full episode I think, and Elise had mentioned the elf lip oil elf recommendation that I recently discovered. I live in the Northeast and it's been extremely cold, so therefore it's extremely dry inside because the heating is going 24 7 at max capacity. And I tried their holy hydration line. I've tried the serum, I've tried their day moisturizer and then they have a night moisturizer or a bomb or something. They might have both, but I have the thick cream and it comes in a little pot and they're amazing. They've made a huge difference in terms of the hydration of my skin. They really keep the dry, tight, terrible winter skin at bay and I highly recommend it and it's very, very affordable. I got mine at Target, I think it was between 10 to $20. I don't think I paid more than $20 for a single item, which is unheard of and fantastic. So just wanted to throw that out there as a wreck or a product wreck. And yeah, love the pod, love you both, and I hope you guys stay safe and have a good week. Thanks. Bye.

Elise (24:03):

That is a great wreck. Holy hydration. Who knew? Stealing my daughter's elf lip oil would be a gateway to more elf products that are highly affordable

Doree (24:16):

Would pay such dividends.

Elise (24:18):

Yeah, it is. It's coming back. What you get back way more than you give.

Doree (24:23):

Yep. You know what, Elise, since this is, we're running a little long, I'm going to save one of these voicemails for our next episode, but we did get a Trader Joe's wreck for the pimento cheese dip. It's phenomenal warning, you may not be able to stop and then it becomes dinner. No regrets. I use the TJ's pita chips to scoop up the cheese dip and that's from Kate in Boston. I also, I try a sample of the unexpected cheddar cheese spread. It's

Elise (24:53):

Delicious. I love unexpected cheddar. That's my favorite cheap cheese at Trader Joe's. It breaks really easily. So it looks really nice on your charcuterie board. And I always serve it on my boards when I make one, which is rare. But yeah, I love unexpected chatter. That's awesome. And now it comes in a spread.

Doree (25:13):

Now it comes in a spread. Alright. And we did get an email from a listener named Danielle that said, did you read the recent article series in Fast Company? That's basically an expose of Trader Joe's. It's a well-reported three-part series about their bad business practices including unsafe organ conditions. They sent a link to the first article and they said, I was so shocked to read all this. Don't feel like I can shop there anymore. Hope you are both safe. Best, Danielle, thank you for sending

Elise (25:42):

This. Doree, you read part of it? I

Doree (25:45):

Did,

Elise (25:46):

Yeah. I don't think I read all of it. I also read part of it and then I watched the summary from the reporter, the investigative reporter who investigated it so it details more frequent recalls of products than other places. There was little metal bits found in the donut holes, there were a series of sexual harassment complaints that went unaddressed. So yeah, it didn't seem great.

(26:12):

And then I saw, but then some people are so devoted to Trader Joe's that some of the comments were like, just let me eat my metal screws in peace. So I don't know that this investigation is going to make a dent for me. I do notice that there are a lot of recalls regarding Trader Joe's products. So I think anecdotally that does seem like it tracks. I just feel like we have to be more aware now as consumers. Everything is a little bit more as our institutions and our safeguards and our watchdogs are all kind of either being dismantled, this seems a piece of this moment that we're in where we're called upon to be more individually accountable because our institutions don't feel safe. What was your take on all of this?

Doree (27:06):

My take on all of this was like, I'm glad my eyes have been opened. Will I stop shopping there? Honestly, probably not. Does that make me a bad person? Maybe. I don't know. I feel like sometimes when people read these things they're like, well, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism moving on. And I feel like that is also a cop out. But I also feel like kind of to go back to the discussion we were having earlier, so much is so fucked up right now that I can't, trader Joe's is not one of the three or four things that I am going to focus on.

Elise (27:46):

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, you wanted to just bring it back. You what mean Nice callback. Thank you.

Doree (27:51):

Thank you. Thank you so much. And you know what? They have not increased the price of eggs.

Elise (27:58):

They haven't,

Doree (27:59):

And Kroger has. So I don't know. I also know people who have worked at Trader Joe's for 20 years and I think there's good and bad probably to all of these places. I don't know, am I just saying a cop out? What about you? Are you going to still stop at Trader Joe's?

Elise (28:22):

Well, I stand with my L-G-B-T-Q allies always, and I believe that, but then I still get my Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches. So I feel like I'm kind of a hypocrite when it comes to some of these corporate boycotts that we could take part in. And so the answer is, based on what I read, these are safety issues that I think that I can live with. I'm taking that risk. So yes, I probably will still shop at Trader Joe's. I'm glad to have my eyes open. I'm glad to be aware of it then I feel more empowered having the information. And so listener who called in, if you can't shop there anymore, that is a valid choice and you should make that choice. That's exactly what information should empower us to do. It should empower us to make informed decisions. But for me, I guess I'm with you where my main issue is fossil fuels. I think fossil fuels contribute so much to climate change. And so I'm part of those investment portfolios that are like anti fossil fuel. We don't take sponsorship dollars from fossil fuels companies. There's ways that we can take a stand against the things that we care about, but I have to pick which corporations.

Doree (29:42):

Yeah, that's kind of boycott. That's kind of where I'm at.

Elise (29:45):

Yeah. But yes, thank you. Thank you for bringing that to our attention. If you haven't seen it, that investigation is in Fast company.

Doree (29:53):

Yep. Alright. And we will link to it in the show notes as well. Alright, well thanks everyone for listening. We appreciate you and we'll talk to you soon.

Elise (30:02):

Keep calling in. See you later.

Doree (30:03):

Bye.