Talking you to sleep preview , apple pie

·51 min·5 clips

Dave is not here to wake anybody up. He lays out the idea in plain terms: a light one sided conversation to keep someone company until sleep arrives. Movies give him somewhere soft to land. He talks without research, just memory, drifting through favorite films that can be watched again and again without wearing out their welcome. The episode soon wanders away from the films and into the habits around watching them at home. VHS tapes had their own strange rhythm. Dave remembers recording films from television and trying to pause the adverts at exactly the right second. Sometimes he nailed it. Sometimes he did not, and those rough little gaps became part of how the movie lived in his head. DVDs made that feel even stranger. When he watched a bought copy later, his body still waited for the old advert break to show up in the usual spot. It never came. The film was cleaner, but also missing something he had accidentally learned. Back to the Future pulls him into another memory. Michael J. Fox on the skateboard stuck with him, so Christmas brought a skateboard. It was the wrong shape and the wrong color, but close enough for pretending. That is the preview’s charm. One memory bumps into the next, nothing gets pushed too hard, and Dave lets the whole thing stay soft. Even the ending is awkward in a sweet way: he remembers he meant to say sleepy slumberland, squeezes it in, then admits it did not quite land.

As heard by us

A relaxed movie chat that turns VHS habits into easy nostalgia.

Dave Mack keeps episode two personal and low key, using favorite rewatchable movies to reach memory, home video habits, and the small rituals that shaped how people watched films.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play if you want movies, memory, and a voice that keeps you company at the edge of sleep.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Pop culture pedestal podcast