Free Time: What to dance to, listen to and watch this weekend | Canada Voices

If everything in the news is making you want to blast off planet Earth, the best antidote is to actually reconnect with it – touch grass, as the kids say. True, you would be caressing snow or wet leaves right now, but do it anyway. There’s lots of evidence to back up the restorative effects of nature.

When you come back inside, these internet delights await.

If you have …

10 seconds: Maps dance trend on TikTok

At first, TikTok dance trends seemed alien. Now, they are part of the vocabulary for me and my teenager (he’s the one who has become alien). Yes, I’ve learned how to “rock like pebble,” a snappy dance to Rock by British rap sensation Stepz. For me, it’s the Brazil-to-Korea ombrinho trend, with its barely there shoulder-shimmy choreography (ombrinho means shoulder in Portuguese) and earworm club beat – pure swag.

The latest dance trend features Maps, the early-2000s breakout hit from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Calling all Gen X, this is your moment. When Karen O sings “Wait,” stick out your hand in an exaggerated “stop” gesture and then wiggle like a penguin on double-speed at “They don’t love you like I love you.” Look up the dance once and you’ll get it in no time. Remember, this is not a time to look cool. It’s time to peep what the hell these kids are doing and to win a prized laugh.

23 minutes and 58 seconds: Song Exploder, Episode 279: Troye Sivan, One of Your Girls

The 2023 Troye Sivan hit, One of Your Girls, with its walking beat and icy chorus of sad robots, is such a jam. It recently got the Song Exploder treatment, in which podcast host Hrishikesh Hirway invites artists to explain how their track came together.

What I love about Song Exploder is that you can pick any episode in the podcast’s catalogue, which features hundreds of songs and artists, and every single one will have the same effect – an elevated appreciation for what it takes to spin a pop confection.

“It’s really, really difficult to write a song that’s both funny and emotional,” Hirway begins in this episode.

Australian artist Sivan then takes over, telling the story of creating a song that is sexy and sad and “the gayest I’ve ever felt.”

Song Exploder never disappoints, disassembling music, layer-by-layer, letting artists explain as they put them back together, and the song shines even more brightly by the end.

11 hours and 10 minutes: Culinary Class Wars on Netflix

So you think you know Korean food? Watch what happens when 100 chefs try to outdo each other on this Korean competition reality show. Obscure ingredients are trotted out. Teams of chefs are unleashed onto meat lockers and entire rooms of still-swimming seafood. One challenge features rows of fridges containing ingredients that, once revealed, make chefs fall to their knees and swear. Every resulting dish is an education in food, culture and history.

The vast scale of Culinary Class Wars is mind-boggling and reminiscent of Physical 100, Netflix’s hit fitness competition show that also features 100 contestants at a time (okay, are Korean TV producers just showing off now?).

The best part of this show is that it lives up to its name, featuring chefs from Michelin-star joints competing in blind taste tests against self-taught creatives and even a cook from a school kitchen. We always root for the underdog, right?

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