Books, Magazine & Names | Drift Off with Cozy, Meandering Talk

Looking for a sleep podcast to fall asleep fast, reduce anxiety, and quiet an overactive mind? This relaxing episode of The Insomnia Project is designed to support insomnia relief, stress reduction, and gentle nighttime unwinding through calm conversation.
Marco Timpano and guest Amanda Barker explore books, magazines, and the soothing experience of reading in a slow, low-stimulation discussion perfect for bedtime listening. From how people engage with printed media to the simple joy of browsing magazines, the conversation creates a cozy, familiar atmosphere ideal for relaxation.
The episode also drifts into the topic of names—unusual, memorable, and meaningful—and touches on libraries as peaceful spaces for quiet, reflection, and discovery. With soft-spoken storytelling and meandering topics, this calming podcast episode helps ease racing thoughts and promote restful sleep.
Whether you’re looking for a relaxing podcast for sleep, calming background noise for work, or a gentle way to unwind at the end of the day, The Insomnia Project offers a comforting, reliable escape.

​Books, Magazine & Names

(Original airdate: Aug 14, 2016) 

Marco:  Welcome to the Insomnia Project. Sit back, relax and listen. As we have a conversation about the mundane, one thing that we can promise is that our conversation will be less than fascinating so that you can just drift off. Thank you for joining us. We hope you will listen and sleep. I'm your host, Marco Timpano. Feel free to rate us on itunes. And and joining me on this episode is Amanda Barker.

Amanda:  Hi. Thanks for having me.

Marco:  Amanda, I wanted to talk to you about books and in particular I wanted to talk about getting a new book and cracking that spine or thumbing through a book that's been well worn, which is your preference.

Amanda:  I think both has equal pleasure for me. Okay, so. But there is something really lovely about that first crack of a new book and knowing that you'll be able to relax as you read it. And there's this promise of both relaxation and adventure almost as you have a chance to just sit back and enjoy the journey of the characters.

Marco:  Now, when you read your books, is there a type of book you like to read at a certain place? For example, when you're on the beach, do you read books or magazines?

Amanda:  If I'm reading, then I'm relaxed. So whether it is at home with a cup of tea on the couch, outside on my deck, lounging on a chair at the beach, on a plane, for me, reading a book is to relax.

Marco:  I see. So let's say on the plane, do you prefer to read books or magazines?

Amanda:  Magazines for the plane.

Marco:  I see any type of magazines. And do you have subscriptions?

Amanda:  I have many, many subscriptions to magazines. Do you want me to list them?

Marco:  No, you don't have to list the magazines. But what type of subscriptions do you generally?

Amanda:  I have two subscriptions to style magazines, interior design or house home type of magazines. I have two subscriptions to Canadian women magazines.

Marco:  Okay.

Amanda:  I have another subscription to an organizing magazine that focuses on simplicity. Okay, let me think. I have another subscription to Canadian Theatre magazine.

Marco:  Oh, I see.

Amanda:  Those are the ones that readily come to mind. There's quite a bit.

Marco:  When you read a magazine, do you flip through all the pages first and then go back and read or do you read a page at a time and not go forward?

Amanda:  Well, the thing about me is that I was raised in a left handed family. I was the only right handed person in the left handed family. And so both my sister and mother, when they would read a magazine, would start in the back. They said it was a left handed thing. I don't know if that's true, but I often will start at the back of the magazine as well, depending on the magazine. I have quite an affinity, in fact, for magazines. When I lived in South Korea when I was 21 and 22, reading material that was in English was scarce and very coveted by the English teachers that I lived and worked with. So if somebody was to get a magazine, even an in flight magazine from a trip, then it was sure that every one of us would have a chance to read it and really indulge in it. I also had a roommate at the time who had just graduated from Ryerson University and she had a degree in journalism with a specialty in magazines. So she knew all the editors by name and could tell you about their style and their trademarks and hallmarks and all of that. So for me, I really started to enjoy the differences between each magazine and that's where my appreciation grew.

Marco:  I see. One of the things that drives me a little crazy with magazines are those little cards that you find in the magazines that are for subscriptions to that same magazine.

Amanda:  They're called blow cards. In fact, the reason they're called blow cards is because they use a machine to blow them into the pages.

Marco:  Well, I'm not a fan.

Amanda:  No, me neither. In fact, there's nothing I hate more than taking a bath and then getting out of the tub. And there's sort of these soggy, wet subscription cards on the floor by my bed. There will also be a collection of those that sort of start to fall onto the floor.

Marco:  You know what's interesting is I tend to lose bookmarks. I have a ton of bookmarks and for some reason I can never find them when I'm reading a book. And I love bookmarks, but for some reason they, they seem to disappear on me.

Amanda:  Well, there's. I can tell you where they are in this house. There's about five to ten of them upstairs.

Marco:  There you go. So what about you and bookmarks?

Amanda:  I'm much the same, although I've recently cleaned and purged all of our books. So we have a lot of books in my house. And so I was able to clean out and store some of those bookmarks. And I have some with Frida Kahlo's face on them that I bought as gifts for people, some of which I gave out, some of which I kept.

Marco:  I see.

Amanda:  That was after a trip to Mexico City a few years ago. So those tend to be my go tos. But I'll use a blow card as a bookmark or an envelope. Was my bookmark for my last book.

Marco:  I see. And what is the first book you remember reading. Is there a book that you remember reading as a child and that was your first book?

Amanda:  Yes. In terms of novels, the first book I really remember reading and being excited about was a choose your own adventure book.

Marco:  Love those books. For readers who aren't familiar with choose your own adventures, they were books that you would get to a certain page and it would give you an option. So if you wanted the character to say, go down the tunnel, you would turn to page 72. But if you wanted that same character to hop on the flight to Japan, you would turn to page 11.

Amanda:  Well, and I remember it was written in first person, so it would say, do you want to do this or do you want to do that? And man, I loved that book. I remember picking it up and bringing it home. It was in the summer and just sitting on the back porch and just devouring that book. I loved it so much.

Marco:  Do you remember the name of the book?

Amanda:  I remember it was about Stonehenge. Oh, yeah. Which is interesting because I finally went to Stonehenge last year for the first time. But yeah, it was. I think it was called the legend of Stonehenge or something about Stonehenge.

Marco:  Anyway, what was it like when you went to Stonehenge?

Amanda:  It was gray and a little bit cold, even though it was in June. Very, very green and very filled with tourists.

Marco:  Was it what you expected or was it not?

Amanda:  It was exactly as I expected. Yeah. It's sort of these massive formations in the middle of a field. I think the thing I didn't really consider was the energy that you could sense being in the presence of those rocks. It's clear that energetically they were very special.

Marco:  I see you can no longer go up to them. I heard at one point you could actually.

Amanda:  I think that's a good thing. Yeah, yeah. No, you can't touch them. I think that's a good thing.

Marco:  Sure.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Marco:  Now, I love libraries. I'm a big fan of my local library. I love going online and picking books and having them delivered to my library. I have to say that the Toronto library system is fantastic.

Amanda:  Yeah, I would also agree with that.

Marco:  What are your thoughts about libraries?

Amanda:  I also love libraries. I remember my first experience with my local library. It was in a beautiful big old building with high ceilings. And I remember the smell of the basement, which was the children's section. And it had its own entrance so you could go through the side entrance into this magical children's section. It was air conditioned and it had a sort of almost of a gummy Smell like a gummy book smell. And I remember the delight I would have in flipping through those books and talking to the librarian and picking out books. It was something we would do quite a bit in the summer. And I really, really did love the library at that time. I still do. I spent so many hours in my university library years later. Days and days upon days in my university library during exam time and finals and midterms and all those papers that I wrote there. So there's stressful associations, but ultimately I always found it was the place I could work best.

Marco:  I used to love walking through my university library and seeing people asleep at one of those little cubicles because they had been there all night working on a project or something.

Amanda:  Was your library open all night?

Marco:  I believe there was a library that was open all night.

Amanda:  Mine wasn't. Trying to remember the name of it. Ralph something. Ralph Pickard Bell Library at Mount Allison, where I went to university. Yeah. And it was a round library. It was four or five floors, maybe, but round, so you could. As you walked in, you looked up and you could see the circular floors. And there was always a legend that someone had hung themselves from their fallen. I don't know that it was true,

Marco:  but it seems like a lot of libraries have that sort of.

Amanda:  Sure, yeah.

Marco:  That sort of myth.

Amanda:  Like in Ghostbusters. The original Ghostbusters starts, of course, with the ghost of a librarian telling them to be quiet.

Marco:  I used to not love going to libraries because it was so quiet. And I. It always kind of, you know, I was always worried that I would be loud. And I think it goes back to my grade school days when a librarian told me to hush because I was so loud. So I never felt comfortable in libraries. And then as of late, I love going to libraries because I consume a lot of books, in particular the audiobooks. I love listening to books on CD or, you know, books you can download in particular if the author is reading their own work. Something I really enjoy listening to.

Amanda:  I love listening to books that way as well. But it depends on the book. I think something autobiographical is probably my preference. I'm not really interested in listening to someone tell me fiction. I'm not sure why, but if it's autobiographical, then it's just like a friend talking to you through the speakers of your car or through your headset. So earphones, whatever.

Marco:  For me, large books. So books that are a big canon, I can't sit and read. So I will listen to those books and I feel like I plow through them. I remember Bill Clinton's book was so big, when you would hold the book in your. In your hand and I thought to myself, I'll never read this. But then I found it at the library on an audiobook and I listened to it and I thought it was very interesting read. And I like to. I love listening to biographies as well. In particular biographies of people whom I'm not a big fan of.

Amanda:  Right.

Marco:  So I would, you know, one that I would never sit and read. I will actually listen to them read their own biography and find out if there's a reason that I'm not a big fan of theirs or if there's something that changes my opinion about them.

Amanda:  Yeah. The one that stands out for me. There's two that stand out for me, actually. I really enjoyed listening to Jane Fonda's book. She's had such a rich life and such a vivid memory of her life from, you know, her being a child of a famous actor who was also very political, to her own political dealings in, you know, in the 1960s with Vietnam and so on, sitting on that tank. Sure. And then to her, you know, love affair with Ted Turner, which was equally fascinating.

Marco:  Did she read her own book?

Amanda:  She did, yeah.

Marco:  And the other book.

Amanda:  The other book was. I'm drawing a blank at the name, but it was the woman who played Marcia on the Brady Bunch.

Marco:  Oh, Maureen.

Amanda:  Maureen.

Marco:  Oh, my goodness.

Amanda:  Maureen. Maureen.

Marco:  Anyway, Maureen. We'll figure out the name.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Marco:  But Nitty would know if she was here, she'd be like, maureen. The only name that's coming to me is Maureen Stapleton. But I know that.

Amanda:  No, that's not it.

Marco:  But you read her audiobook.

Amanda:  I did, yeah. She had quite. Quite an unexpected cocaine habit. They would call her the Hoover because she inhaled so much cocaine. So that whole, you know, that sheds a very different light on a show that I loved and watched throughout my childhood and early teens. So now I'm still drawing a blank

Marco:  on the Maureen McCormick.

Amanda:  Ah, there it is.

Marco:  Not Maureen Stapleton.

Amanda:  No. Or Maureen Welch, who's a friend of mine.

Marco:  I don't know too many people named Maureen.

Amanda:  Maureen was a very common name where I grew up in Massachusetts because it's obviously a very Irish name and it's an accessible Irish name as opposed to IFA or Enya or any of the other sort of hard to pronounce or hard to read names. So there were a lot of. A lot of Moiras and a lot of Maureen's.

Marco:  Now, do you know what the name Maureen means?

Amanda:  I will say trustworthy.

Marco:  It is a It's a Celtic baby name, so you were right on that.

Amanda:  I don't think it's just for babies. I think anyone would be named Morin,

Marco:  and I believe it is bitter.

Amanda:  Oh, goodness.

Marco:  It means bitter.

Amanda:  Why would you name your child bitter?

Marco:  In Latin it means dark, but it's an Irish name. Well, that's what it says here.

Amanda:  Well, if I have a baby, I will not be naming it bitter.

Marco:  Well, there you go.

Amanda:  Or dark.

Marco:  Or Maureen.

Amanda:  Or Maureen.

Marco:  There you go. That's not to disparage our listeners whose name is all the Maureen's out there who may or may not be bitter. Speaking of bitter, do you enjoy bitter things? No, you don't. See, I love bitter things. That's why you're not a fan of Campari. No, not often.

Amanda:  I think I'm a super taster. I think that's why.

Marco:  Oh, what's a super taster?

Amanda:  It's a person that has more taste buds on their tongue than the average person. Grapefruit. I shudder at the thought of grapefruit. Oh, really? Yeah.

Marco:  What about bitter leaves?

Amanda:  I can do a bitter green.

Marco:  Okay.

Amanda:  Like a dandelion or Swiss chard maybe can be a bit bitter. I have some beet greens in the fridge right now. Those will probably be bitter when I cook them up, but, you know, there's. They're tempered with. If you saute them with some salt and olive oil and garlic, I feel like anything is good with salt and olive oil and garlic. So bitter greens are as bitter as I get, I think.

Marco:  I see. See, I love bitter things. I love a good grapefruit.

Amanda:  And yet you're not into bitter greens so much.

Marco:  No, I'm not, actually.

Amanda:  So maybe it's a different type of bitter.

Marco:  Maybe. I wonder if there are categories of bitter.

Amanda:  Likely.

Marco:  Like there's categories of heat or spice.

Amanda:  Sure.

Marco:  You have something very spicy. I forget the name of the. The scale. I think it's like the.

Amanda:  The spice scale.

Marco:  Yeah, it's kind of like the Kofer scale of, you know, like a ghost pepper is really high on that scale where, let's say a red pepper isn't. I don't know if it's just for peppers, it might be just a sort of scale of heat for peppers.

Amanda:  I was talking to a friend last night who said she didn't like. She likes hot pepper, but she doesn't like jalapeno. And it didn't really occur to me that jalapeno is its own unique flavor in the world of peppers, you know, very different from like a Chipotle or Adobo or something along those lines.

Marco:  Right, right. It's the Scoville scale, and it's a measurement of spicy Scoville.

Amanda:  Looks like someone's last name was Scoville.

Marco:  Scoville.

Amanda:  Wilbur Scoville.

Marco:  Good old Wilbur Scoville.

Amanda:  What? What are you learning about him?

Marco:  Well, I'm just learning that it is a scale of spicy spiciness or pungency.

Amanda:  It says he was a pharmacist. It looks like.

Marco:  Well, there you go. Do you know anyone named Wilbur? Speaking of names.

Amanda:  No. There's a theater called the Wilbur Theater in Boston where I performed quite a few times in the last few years. That's as close to Wilbur as I get. It's the name of the pig in Charlotte's Web. That's right. That's right.

Marco:  Wilbur.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Marco:  Wilbur the pig. I don't know.

Amanda:  Wilbur. Wilbur. Yeah.

Marco:  It's funny. Funny when you think about names, different names. Ones that are sort of in fashion and ones that fall out of fashion, and ones that are popular for the year. They often do. Like the top five baby names or top 10 baby names of the year.

Amanda:  I wonder what they are. Should I look them up?

Marco:  No, you can feel free. Feel free to look them up. But I know it's interesting. With a name like mine, for example, which is an ethnic name, oftentimes people won't recognize the name when I say it at first. So, for example, if I order a drink at Starbucks, I'll say Marco, but they'll write on the paper cup, marco. Like sparkle with an oh, really? Yeah, they'll write.

Amanda:  Or are they just doing that on purpose? Which is.

Marco:  You would. You would.

Amanda:  Which is the lore.

Marco:  No, because it's different. Starbucks I go to, and they'll. I'll get the cup and they'll say Markle on it. Perhaps it's the way I'm saying my name.

Amanda:  There's an actress named Meghan Markle who. Who's Canadian, so perhaps people are thinking of her.

Marco:  Well, since she's not ordering the drink and I am, I doubt they would write a random Canadian actress on the.

Amanda:  But maybe it's just floating in their consciousness. Maybe. Okay, well, here's our list from last year. In no particular order. Do you want to hear girls or boys?

Marco:  Sure. Start with girls.

Amanda:  So starting at 10. Harper. So that's a nice name. Reminiscent of Harper Lee. Charlotte. Of course, there's Princess Charlotte. Right.

Marco:  There's also a spider from Charlotte's Web named Charlotte.

Amanda:  We just can't get out of Charlotte's Web Tonight, which was one of the first books. I remember very vividly reading Charlotte's web in grade three.

Marco:  Oh, really?

Amanda:  Mrs. Hough's class.

Marco:  What do you remember?

Amanda:  I remember crying. Oh, yeah, it's spoiler alert.

Marco:  Well, this is another episode. We had an episode where we had a lot of spoiler alerts.

Amanda:  Well, maybe I won't spoil it, but one of the main characters dies and that's very sad. Anyway, so that's Charlotte.

Marco:  I don't, I don't know any Charlotte's either. What's the short form for Charlotte?

Amanda:  Charlie. A lot of little girls named Charlie happening right now.

Marco:  Oh, and so their, their full name is Charlotte.

Amanda:  I didn't know that then. Eight is Emily. Pretty classic name. Seven, Abigail, which was the name my brother was gonna have if he was a girl.

Marco:  I see.

Amanda:  He's not Mia. Six.

Marco:  That's my niece's name.

Amanda:  It is indeed. Number five, Isabella.

Marco:  Oh, I hear a lot of babies named Isabella.

Amanda:  Yeah, me too. But a lot of Bellas, especially in the Italian Portuguese community. Spanish community. Ava is number four. That one's been strong for a while. Sophia number three. Olivia number two. And then Emma number one.

Marco:  Oh, Emma's number one.

Amanda:  Yeah, that one became really popular when. About ten years ago when Ross and Rachel named their baby Emma on Friends.

Marco:  Oh, it's amazing how that happens. Something very popular will be on television and then people name. For example, the name Tabitha, I was told was not a name. They had it on Bewitched. It was until after. I could be wrong.

Amanda:  That's interesting.

Marco:  Like Wendy.

Amanda:  Wendy was not a name. Yeah, until Peter Pan. I remember that.

Marco:  So I think you won't find a Tabitha older than maybe 45 or 50 years old because the, the series Bewitch came out, I guess in the 60s.

Amanda:  Right.

Marco:  So anything prior. Now don't quote me on this, I could be wrong. So what are the boys name names

Amanda:  for boys names, starting with 10, we have Benjamin, Michael, Alexander, James, Ethan, William, Jacob. Mason.

Marco:  Mason. Mason can be a girl's name as well. I know, I know. A little girl named Mason.

Amanda:  Right. Liam and Noah.

Marco:  Noah is the number one.

Amanda:  Yeah. Wow, Noah. Very biblical name there. Yeah, none of those really stand out for me. But I noticed Daniel is number 12 on the list alongside Madison and Amelia for girls.

Marco:  Madison is another one of those names that was not a name prior.

Amanda:  Prior to the movie Splash.

Marco:  Yeah, when the character who is the mermaid doesn't have a name and Tom Hanks asks her what her name is and I, I think she points at the sign on Madison Avenue.

Amanda:  No, what happens is she. He's listing off names, right, for her, girls names that were popular at the time, which would have been 1981, 1982, maybe 1983, whenever that movie came out. And he's listing off these names. And then he says in the middle of this rant, she's saying no to all of them. And then in the middle of the rant, he looks up at the sign and said, what street are we on? Oh, Madison. Anyway, and then he starts. And she said, what's that name you just said? And he repeats it and he. And she says, no, the other one. He went, madison. Well, Madison's not a name. And then she gets really sad. And he said, fine, fine. We'll name you Madison. Which is funny now because obviously it's a very, very popular girl's name.

Marco:  This flash came out in 1984, and I believe they're going to be making a remake of that film.

Amanda:  I hope it's good. Yeah, Maybe they'll swap the genders and

Marco:  have a male mermaid.

Amanda:  Sure, yeah.

Marco:  A merman.

Amanda:  Why not? Yeah, sure, why not? A merman.

Marco:  These mythical, mythical creatures like the minotaur and unicorns and.

Amanda:  I don't remember a movie in the 80s with the Minotaur in it.

Marco:  Didn't Labyrinth have a minotaur?

Amanda:  It may have. I watched Labyrinth one time. It didn't stick with me the way it stuck with most people. Labyrinth. Oh, I'm getting it mixed up with the never Ending Story. Those two. I always get mixed up.

Marco:  Well, there's mythical beasts in that as well.

Amanda:  Right? The one out of all of those, the one that really stuck with me was the Dark Crystal. The Jim Henson movie.

Marco:  Right.

Amanda:  I saw it on my seventh birthday.

Marco:  Wow. Was it a whole gaggle of kids?

Amanda:  It was just me and my mom.

Marco:  Oh, wow.

Amanda:  Yeah, it was just a special day. I just wanted a special day with me and my mom. Even back then, I kind of enjoyed just a quiet, private birthday.

Marco:  Now, are you a popcorn eater at the movie?

Amanda:  I am. Terribly so. The only thing that will cure my popcorn addiction is if I have a really nice iced coffee of some kind that seems to cure me of because it's so different than popcorn. You know, smell wise, texturally and so on. So if I'm sitting drinking a really good latte of some kind, then I won't want the popcorn. That's the only way to do it for me. I store can it be depending on the season.

Marco:  I see.

Amanda:  When I saw the Quentin Tarantino movie, I'm Trying to think of what that was called.

Marco:  Kill Bill Inglorious Basterds.

Amanda:  The one that came out this year, last January and last December. Can't think of it, but it's a very cold movie.

Marco:  Yeah, the movie. The western one.

Amanda:  Yeah, yeah. Very, very, very cold movie. So I needed a lot of hot lattes to get me through that movie. You feel cold in the theater just watching it because everyone is so cold. There's no. They're just in this cold, cold little winter cabin for the whole movie. Can't think of the name of it. Hateful Eight.

Marco:  That's it.

Amanda:  That's it. It's funny how you can't remember something when you try to, and then when your brain switches to another channel, somehow you have that access to that information.

Marco:  It's funny, every time we record a podcast, things will come come to me, and I can't remember the name. And I'm always like, it'll come because I know as the podcast continues, it'll often come to me or Niddy will sort of signal to me or she'll remember as we're going along. It's one of those things, I think, when you're on the spot and you're so focused, it'll often be something that. That slips the mind, if you will. Well, speaking of slipping the mind, we've come to the end of our podcast. I want to thank Amanda Barker. Amanda, where can people find you on Twitter?

Amanda:  You find me on Twitter mandaisariot. I haven't updated my own Twitter in quite a while because I can't remember the password. But that's on my list of things to do this week. So please do tweet me at. Amandais a riot. You'll find me there.

Marco:  Well, thank you so much for being a guest on our podcast. Oftentimes I will ask Amanda to join me, especially when a guest isn't able to make or make a recording. Amanda always feels ins.

Amanda:  I'm on the bench. Always.

Marco:  There you go. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Insomnia Project. It was recorded in Toronto, Canada, and always produced by Drum Cast Productions. We hope you did, like, listen and sleep.