The perfect winter survival guide
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Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I'm Lila Raptopoulos, and this is our final Friday Chatshow.

Today we have a very special episode for you. We are gathering our best advice for how to make the most out of winter. A while ago we did an episode on how to make the most out of your summer, and it included a lot of very small, very delightful advice that had a surprisingly large impact. Things like put your normal sad drinks in your nice fancy glasses with nice fancy ice. Or actually buy a ticket from a scalper outside of a gig.

And it turns out that episode stuck with all of you just as much as it stuck with me. As we've been collecting your cultural questions, I got an email from a listener, Ann Stukas, who asked us for this same episode, but for winter. So today, we decided to do it. A winter survival guide.

So let's get into it. I have two very special guests today. Here we go. I'm Lila in New York, and in the winter, you can find me starting and then promptly abandoning new hobbies, whether that be sewing or pickling or running or Peloton, making matcha, selling used clothes on the Internet.

That's not a joke. That's just true. Joining me from London, she's currently re-watching all 32 seasons of Real World under an electric blanket. It's the FT's magazine editor, Cordelia Jenkins. Hi, Cordelia. Hello.

I was thinking, what is the first reality show? I think it's the real world. Also in London, thank God we have her here because she's kept me up to date on highbrow culture for years. She will be at the theater while we are watching Bravo. It's my good friend, former co-host, and the FT Magazine's commissioning editor, Griselda Murray-Brown. Hi, Gris. Hi, Laila. Nice to be here. So nice to have you. Okay, so to start off, where are you both coming to this from?

Yeah, what are your feelings about winter? Like, are you a winter person? Do you hate it? Do you love it? Cordelia? Well, I have to confess to actually being a bit of a winter fangirl. Oh, really? I think I'm in the minority. I'm a November baby, and I just think a lot of my life has been invested in...

in the idea of winter so that I can make myself feel better for the fact that no one would come to my birthday parties. I can never do anything fun. But I've successfully sold myself the brand of winter to such an extent that I now feel like...

Do you remember that Twitter meme in about the 2000s of the autumn goddess girl? Yeah. The like massive scarf and pumpkin spice latte and she's like in Central Park with like the autumn leaves swirling around her. Yeah. I feel like I want to be like that but for winter. I mean, I should say that you're sitting here in the studio wearing a coat. It's on brand. It's on brand.

True commitment to the winter. That's why I love myself in winter. I love that. Okay, Chris, what about you? Are you a winter girl? Well, I don't think I am naturally a winter girl, no. But I think I have sort of made myself a winter girl. I think you have to. I think it's essential. I did grow up in Scotland where it gets dark at about 2.30 p.m. in the winter. So you have to kind of, yeah, you have to embrace that and learn how to live in winter, I think. So...

Yeah, reluctantly a winter girl. Yeah, I feel, first of all, I want to know like what one learns from it getting dark at 2.30 in the afternoon about how to deal with darkness. But I feel sort of mixed about winter. I feel like in equal parts, I dread it and I love it. Like I dread the feeling of looking outside and seeing the frost and like knowing it's going to be annoying to get to work and like that I'm going to freeze my...

hands on a city bike and I'm going to forget my gloves and I dread the darkness, I guess. And I like dread March when the darkness gets really painful. But I also love that everyone's around in the winter and love that like people don't really have plans and they'll like come over for dinner and you can cook meaty things and warm the house up. And yeah, I don't know. I even like the kind of like repetition of the food of the winter. Like

The only produce that's in season is like citrus and potatoes. Yeah, I can see you being like a winter food person, Laila. Yeah, I can see you really like vibing with the winter food. All right. Yeah, I like it. I think you're going to be fine. Yeah. And what is it about it? Like, what do you like about it? I feel like maybe it's that winter is like permission. It is permission. It is permission to just lower your standards, I think, if they weren't already quite low.

I just like to be cozy. I think coziness is a really undersung, or until recently maybe, undersung quality. I love fire, all fire. Yes. I think, you know, if you're going to go down the, like, things to set fire to from, you know, a bonfire outside to a real fire inside to stoves to candles to whatever, the tiniest thing you can set fire to, I'm into all of that. Love that. That's a good thing about winter. Yeah, yeah. Grizz, um...

I am curious what it was like to grow up having it be dark at 2.30, like how you guys adapted to that. Were there ways that your family made that fun? Yeah. My mom would always make us go for a walk before lunch or just go outside before lunch. She would open the back door and be like, go outside. And I didn't like doing that, obviously. But now...

I completely get it because by the time you've had lunch and like the daylight is going, it's too late. And there's something quite depressing about realizing you haven't been outside yet and you quite wanted to and you're feeling cooped up, but it's already three o'clock and you've missed your chance. Right. You're going to have to wait like until the next day, which is quite depressing.

A long time away. Totally. So you've really got to make the most of those daylight hours. You've got to kind of seize the day. And I also think, yeah, if you kind of front load the day like that, you then feel kind of smug and you can just kind of sink into your gremlin mode for the afternoon and the evening. And it's completely guilt free and you've earned it. Yeah, good stuff. That's when the ribbed slippers come out.

Exactly. Switch that electric blanket on. Yeah. Smuggle down. All of it. This is the perfect segue into our collection of recommendations. I was thinking that we could break this up into basically like three categories. The first is little things we can do to make our day-to-day life better. The second is what our producer Lulu has coined as wintertainment, which is like...

Stuff to watch, listen to, read that really hits in the winter. And then the third is how to not get too lonely and isolated. How to stay connected to people. So let's start with the little things. Having your mom open the door and yell, go outside to you is a perfect first little thing. What else do you guys have? Cordelia? I have a weird one, which I do more for my children, but I've really realized it's good for everyone, which is on a cold day...

Before you get dressed, just tumble dry your socks. Even though they're cold already, just stick them in the tumble dryer for 10 minutes and get them really warm. And then you put them on and it's just like...

That's like a good hour of your day sorted. That's awesome. That's a really good one. That's so nice for your children. It is. It is. Lucky them. See, they've got a winter goddess for a mom, that's why. I did ask listeners last minute for theirs too. And I got a lot of responses from people that were basically like, figure out your cold weather situation.

And I thought that was a really, like, it's an obvious one, but it's like, your socks reminded me of it. We go through all these years of just, like, not liking winter because, like, we just didn't get the right socks. And, like, we just didn't invest in the jacket. So I guess I recommend that. And also, my in-laws got me a heated vest last year. Ooh.

Wow. How does that work? It slaps. It's basically like, it's like a regular vest that you wear under your coat and then it has like a little battery operated, a little like rechargeable mechanism in the front pocket that you can turn on and it has like coils built into it and then it just like keeps your whole body warm. Do you not get quite sweaty? Yeah, kind of clammy. No? No. No.

I'm not sure about that. I'm just going to say that. You don't like that? No. Really? Why? It's cheating, isn't it? It's cheating. It's like electric car seats. You've just got to go outside and do some star jumps, Lila. I think what we're seeing here is the British-American take on comfort as immoral. You just flick a little switch and then it's all better. Yeah.

Okay. All right. So actually, our recommendations is just to suffer like a real man. I got one from our colleague Mamta Bhadkar, and it's one of these...

Little tips that I never had even thought of and now I'm going to do and I think is awesome. She moved from Bombay to New York and it was freezing and she was unhappy about it. And so she opened up her weather app and she created a new location right below New York. And it was Verkoyansk.

It's just this town in Russia that's, in her words, always stupidly, horrendously cold and people actually live there. And every time she looks at it, it makes her feel better about New York winters. And I think it's genius. Like she sent me the screenshot and it was like New York, 30 degrees. Verkoyansk, negative 50 degrees. It's good stuff. Yeah, it could always be worse.

Okay, let's go through a few more kind of basic tips before we get into entertainment.

Chris, what do you got? I mean, I have a friend who is a freelancer and she works from home with an electric blanket turned on and wrapped around her. Do you know, like, do you have electric blankets? Yeah. Yes. Like, kind of like the vest you were talking about, but it's on a bed, so it's a bit more normal. So she sits with that wrapped around her instead of having the heating on all day because it's much cheaper to do that.

It's really good. She says it's cozy. I'm sure it is cozy when you're in it. You've got to get up and go to the bathroom and you're freezing again. You can't afford to have the heating on all day if you work from home. So I think that's quite a good hack. Yeah. I do think like all the ways to keep warm. I mean, however you want to do it, fine. But I also think light is quite important, right? The thing that's actually most depressing about winter is not the coldness so much, as long as you can get yourself warm. But there's something about the

the dark that just sort of seeps into your bones in a way. And I do think a few years ago, I sorted out the lighting in my house. This is like such a middle-aged tip. No, this is good. Guys, it's all about lamps and not overhead lights. I'm just going to say that. Don't use the big light. Never use the big light. Never use the big light. And warm, warm light bulbs. Yes. It's such a small change you can make in your life, and it does help. Yeah, it's huge. Yeah.

Another one that is light related is from James Edwards. This is one of my favorite pieces of advice. He said in January and February, he starts obsessively looking up the sunrise and sunset times for the upcoming Friday. And then you do that. And then he just like tells everyone all week, like the sunrise is 11 minutes earlier and the sunset is 15 minutes later. Yeah, it's so annoying. I do that all the time. Yeah.

There's like one website that tells you, oh, it's just like annoying for everyone else. But I'm with him. I do too. Yeah, he said it's very uplifting. I rather that than the other way around, which is my dad likes to say as soon as like the summer solstice has passed, he likes to say the nights are drawing in. Yeah, that's annoying. In June. In July. In June. Nice. But we are just one week, less than one week away from the shortest day. So in fact, we're about to see the turn. Yeah. Yeah.

Everything's about to change. Yeah. Yeah. I want to give one more sort of like lifestyle tip and then we'll move on to entertainment. But Natalie Specht said, don't let people bully you out of drinking iced coffee. If you love iced coffee, you can still order it even though it's cold. And then she said, and I quote, it's not like we all start only drinking hot water in the winter. Can I

That's true. Why does it become illegal in the winter to drink iced coffee and iced tea? I think, you know, each to their own. That's fine. I'm not going to stand in between anyone and their iced coffee. Do you think?

Okay, let's talk about winter entertainment. I like this category. I think that Lulu put it best when we were brainstorming for this episode. She said that winter is a good time for cultural discovery because you can, like, take time to think in the winter and figure out what you like and get into something. And she also said that you can listen to jazz in the winter without seeming like a knobhead. Like, that's only a winter thing. Yeah.

That's very true. I love that. I'm curious what kinds of things you all read and watch and listen to in the winter. Well, I first of all should say Lulu should know because she has spent the last few weeks and months watching every single Christmas movie as far as I can tell that ever existed. That's true. For the magazine that we've both been editing. And I'm, you know, as a Christmas cheerleader, I do watch Christmas movies, but I think the...

The task that she set herself was so thankless that even I was like, I can't believe she's done this. Why would anyone do this?

Incredible. But she's got a very good thesis about it, which is that, in fact, at Christmas, we all relax our standards, as we were saying before, and we're allowed to do things that we otherwise wouldn't do, and we're allowed to like things that we otherwise wouldn't like. And people can watch Love Actually if they want to and pretend that it's a good movie. Totally. I don't know about that. No, but, you know, let them do it. Allow it. I don't know. I mean, it's just a red flag. If someone tells you they like Love Actually, don't trust them. Grizz.

I have something to tell you. No, no, come on. After all these years, don't do it. Come on, it's fine. It's all fine. It's Richard Caine. It's his worst film by a mile. It's the little boy in love with a little girl. Oh, God. I think that's a really good point. We relax our standards in the winter. And, yeah, and we have the time. What about outside of Christmas? Are there things that you like to...

watch or listen to or books or is it a good time actually to go out to plays and see musicals and stuff like that? I mean Cordelia and I both have young children so the amount of going out to plays we do. It's in my mind though that I'll be doing that and I feel like in the old days you know that's such a like festive time to go out and you want to be like on the streets looking at the Christmas lights and you know I imagine myself having a glass of champagne in a sort of foyer of some Victorian theatre and

And, you know, getting home and discussing it. That's not really what happens in my life. But, you know. One day. Yeah. Okay. What about at home, maybe not event related and beyond Christmas? Are there certain things that you like to kind of do at home as it gets dark and cold?

The long, long stretch after Christmas is the worst bit, right? Like Christmas is all fun. Yes, exactly. Then there's like January, then February, then March, and you're still in it. So what do you do then? I like like a fun, like to give myself a project, even if it's sort of like arbitrary and stupid. Like, for example, I'm going to use all my spices. I have 45,000 spices that I don't use. Like I'm doing it. Like I'm going to spend the next couple of months doing that. Or like...

I'm going to watch a list of 90s movies. Like, I'm just going to get deep in 90s movies. Or like, I have a pretty short attention span. So like for a few months, I can do something like that and then give up. Or like, I've got all these books that I own, but I haven't read. Like, F it. I'm reading the books. I think this is the perfect time of year to do that, though. Because that's, especially after Christmas, the bit in between Christmas and New Year, I actually love because it's sort of like,

suspended in time and like you can just completely switch off from things like if you can if you're not working you can switch off completely and in a way you can use that time to kind of catch up on the stuff that you feel like you've missed you can read the books that you meant to read in the summer and never got around to you can just sort of

Do it in a relaxed way that's slightly out of time. Out of time is right. Yeah, there's no pressure to be like on trend. Yeah, exactly. Also, quite often you're in other people's houses, right? Like you might be staying with family or you've gone to see a friend and you can just kind of take books off their bookshelves that you wouldn't usually have thought of.

I quite like just staying with someone for like one night and you just like pick up a book and you're like, I'm only going to read one chapter of this book, but that's fine. Totally. And that's just a little like window into that world. And then you just leave it behind you when you go. Oh, I love that. Yeah, that's a nice tip. Yeah, I've done that. I like that.

So as we start to wrap up, I'm wondering if there are any sort of like final speed round recommendations for things that are fun to do in the winter or good to do in the winter that could make your winter a little sweeter. I can give a few final listener ones. One of them is...

buy flowers at the supermarket like it's a living thing in your house that has color in it and it's you know 10 pounds or 5 pounds and it's worth it oh a lot of people said this is an obvious one but like

Like you were saying, Grizz, like, go outside. Yeah. Yeah. Go on walks. Like Andrew Garrow said, winter hikes in the snow are really nice. And actually, you can, like, the sun rises later, so it's a good time to watch the sunrise. Ana Nicolau, our...

media correspondent in the US said that city winter walking is great because it's quieter, there's no gross humidity, there's way fewer gross smells, and there's no gross bugs. That's very good. Yeah, that's true. Winter does smell better than summer. Winter smells better. Yeah, yeah. Any others that you both have? I think it's very good to drink whiskey in winter.

Yes. Because you can't really do it in summer, can you? But I'm not in the kind of hot toddy mode. I don't want to like add honey and hot water and stuff like that to it. I just want to drink very cold whiskey. Okay. That's a nice one. Cold, straight. The fire inside, right? Yeah, yeah. What, one ice cube? Yeah, sure, one. Okay, one. Pubs?

Dive bars? Yeah. Yeah. Spend all day there. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. You know what also I've realized is actually fun that I used to think was really stressful is like communal cooking or baking. Because I think my memories of Christmas are of like kind of being given a task but then not really being given very good instructions. Like the Christmas preparation, doing it wrong and then like my aunt or somebody shouting at me.

But actually, I think communal cooking can be really, if you have your role and it's defined, it can be really fun. Like my sister-in-law is half Polish and she has a tradition on Christmas Eve of making pierogi dumplings. She makes the filling and we all sit around like just doing the little dumplings and chatting. It's also like canapes. If you're having like a New Year's party and you want to make a lot of canapes, you need like a production line. One's doing the bread, then one puts the salmon, then one puts the lemon. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like the classic mindless task so you can have a nice chat at the same time. And it's kind of boring to do it all yourself. Those kind of things are not fun. Totally. And they're like time consuming things, but they, yeah, it's great.

Another funny communal one that I liked is, well, it's just like, one, the idea that spring cleaning, spring's a weird time for cleaning. You're in the house in the winter, so do your spring cleaning in the winter. But Hannah Nagami said that she sometimes does Japanese...

Osoji in the new year, which is like this communal house cleaning thing. Like the whole family gets together and makes a plan and then does like every corner of the house kind of together. Oh, maybe you're going to hate that, but I think it's nice. Yeah. That does sound good. I'd love that. Yeah. If I could persuade my family to do that, I'd be into it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a thing that's hard to do alone, but like might actually be kind of fun with like snacks and music. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. I guess my last question is just if there's any final sort of big picture mindset thoughts you have about that you want to leave listeners with about the winter. I did read a book recently called Wintering. You guys come across Wintering? No. It was like a big book. It came out just before lockdown and it was really big in the pandemic.

And the subtitle is The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. So you can kind of see why it would have been popular in the pandemic. But yeah, it's sort of like...

I mean, it's one of those books that I feel slightly cynical about because it's like ticking a lot of publishing boxes. It's like kind of a memoir. It's kind of nature writing. It's kind of about therapy. It's kind of like these little potted biographies of like forgotten people. I know. I am skeptical so far. And the front cover is like a wood cut engraving. You know exactly the kind of book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Make the case for it. Come on, bring it in, bring it in. I'm not recommending it as such.

However, because I also don't love the writing, but I would say the idea of wintering like as a thing that you do and you kind of prepare for winter, almost like an animal does. And you kind of see it coming and you don't shy away, but you sort of like embrace it with open arms and you like ready your nest. And yes, when it hits, you're like fully braced for it.

So from that point of view, reading this book has kind of readied me for winter in a way that I think in previous years I was not ready. So in some way, this sort of slightly cheesy self-help book has really worked. And also you learn fun facts like a

A dormouse hibernates for six months of the year. It eats loads of berries in the summer, gets really fat, and then goes to sleep from October to April. Half its life. Yeah, and you can pick it up when it's sleeping and it's still asleep and sort of make its little jelly belly and then put it back again. Oh my gosh. This is like, hibernation, this feels like a fake fact to me. Like I've always kind of felt like, what's the bear doing? You know, like what's the mouse doing? The idea that you can pick the mouse up and touch it.

Yeah, their metabolism slows right down. So they're like barely alive, but still alive. And for six months of the year, they're just asleep. Yeah. Okay. So we are animals and we should also accept the hibernation and we can be sad. Like, that's the other thing I was like, I didn't want to like make a episode that's like, winter, how to avoid sadness and be happy. Like, it's okay. It's a little...

all sad it's like but sad is fun too so yeah yeah I mean Lila maybe this book is for you because you know that's what wintering is all about there are fallow periods in one's life and you just have to accept it yeah and live with be the animals we are forcing you to be joyful and and falsely cheerful about life in winter you can just you can just be real yeah maybe that's why I like it Christmas has passed everyone's got their face on everyone's complaining about something you know in the

In that, there's a real camaraderie. Yes, totally. We suffer together. Yeah. Yeah. Chris and Cordelia, this was so much fun. For our Southern Hemisphere friends who feel left out, I am going to put the Summer of Our Lives episode in the show notes. Still holds up. And we will be back in just a second for more or less. ♪

Welcome back for more or less where each guest says one thing they want to see more of or less of in culture. Cordelia, what do you have? This is my favorite time of year because you get all of the media companies produce their lists of the stories they wish they'd published, the jealousy lists.

I love to read those. You hope you're on it as an editor. You hope something you've edited is on those lists. But really, I'm just kind of intrigued by what other people are liking. The FT is doing one this week, has done one this week already. And there are some other really great ones. The Bloomberg one is always one of my faves.

We'll put some of them in the show notes. So these are lists of pieces that the publication didn't publish that they loved. Right, but wish they had published, wish they had produced themselves. It's quite revealing, isn't it? Yeah, it's nice. It's cool. Chris, what about you? I also have a more, and it's more Laura Marling. Yeah. Oh, I love her. I know, she's great, isn't she? Yeah. She...

I came out with a new album a couple of months ago called Patterns and Repeat. And I think it's one of her best. Her previous album was in 2020 called Songs for Our Daughter. Yeah. And...

despite the title she didn't have a daughter at that point so it was kind of like a thought experiment like sort of imagining this life as a mother and I listened to it just having had a daughter and then she did give birth to a daughter and then Patterns in Repeat which came out this year is kind of the sort of real experience of what that was like and it's very it's kind of funny and tender it's not overly sentimental I don't think but

And it feels quite intimate. She recorded it in a studio in her house in London. And there's like, you can hear the baby babbling a little bit in the background and sort of these domestic sounds. And the songs are quite paired back. It feels very kind of true and unhurried. And she's just doing, she's just making the album she wants to make. Yeah, yeah.

As I was coming in to record this, our last Friday episode, I realized that I had not thought of a more or less. And I was like walking into the recording like, shit, no.

I forgot a more or less. I forgot the last more or less. And I realized that, like, that it perfectly encapsulates what my more or less should be. Like, as the show is ending, I will miss it deeply. And I also...

I think my brain will appreciate the break. And I actually want in the new year to just do less. Like we were saying, like less reading the buzziest thing the moment that it comes out, less watching the buzziest thing the moment that it comes out, less kind of like being on the cycle, less new stuff. Yeah. And also just like less internet. Yeah.

Just less. I mean, that all sounds great. Yeah. More staring into space. Less sounds great. Yeah. Yeah. So that's mine. I like that. Very meta. Chris and Cordelia, this was so much fun. Thank you both so much for coming on the show. Thank you. Thanks, Laila. Thanks.

That's the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I have put links to everything mentioned today in the show notes, including winter tips from our magazine Advent special and Lulu's piece about Christmas films. I've also included a link to a discount for subscription to the Financial Times.

Monday is our last episode of the year, but we are still collecting your questions for our final, final bonus episode of all of your cultural questions answered. That episode is coming out January 17th, and you still have time. So if you have one question that's rolling around in your head that you think our critics could answer, send me an email at lilarap at ft.com or write me on Instagram at lilarap. That's L-I-L-A-H-R-A-P.

All right, I'm Lila Raptopoulos, and here is my exceptional team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smith is our producer and produced this episode. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner, Sam Jovinko, and Joe Salcedo with original music by Metaphor Music. We had help this week from Katie McMurrin. Our executive producer is Topher Forges, and our global head of audio is Cheryl Rumley. Have a wonderful weekend, and we'll find each other again on Monday.

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