Reverse Mailbag: What Is The Best Temperature?

I ask, you answer

Hello and welcome to our first Reverse Mailbag. The concept is pretty straightforward: Every few weeks, provided this all goes according to plan, I will send out an email to paid subscribers that includes what will usually be a very stupid and open-ended question. I will then wrangle a handful of my favorite replies and publish them here, in the free edition of the newsletter that goes out on Sundays. If you would like to play along and participate in this, you can do that by upgrading your account…

Our first question was a surprisingly contentious one: What is the best temperature?

For me, the answer is 78 degrees. This is too warm for a lot of you. I get that. And it’s way too warm for inside, too. But the question isn’t “If you could only have one temperature forever, what would it be?” The question is “What is the best temperature?” And I can’t think of anything I would enjoy more than sitting outside with an iced tea on a sunny 78-degree day, maybe with the smell of grilled meats wafting through the air. That, in my opinion, is perfect. Your mileage may vary. And it does, apparently, based on some of these answers. Which we’ll get to right now. 

This was fun. Let’s do it again. 

Mike

It varies by season but the criteria is the same: whenever it's most comfortable to wear shorts-and-a-hoodie.

In the fall/winter that's around 74 degrees, and in the spring/summer it's closer to 70.

Hoodie season is an important time and we should celebrate it as such. Here’s another good answer that gets at the same point…

Michael

People are going to say "a crisp fall 72 degrees" but they are fools. They are dogs wagging their tails jumping into the car with visions of the dog park only to roll into the vet parking lot. That 72 is not a nice relief from the summer heat. It's an omen of short days, dark cold nights. It's the neutering of long days of summer.

The right answer is "a surprisingly sunny March 72 degrees". Break out the shorts but keep your sweatshirt handy. The winter may not fully be over but you know its days are numbered. You can almost hear nature stretch and shake off the rust of winter. Hope springs eternal.

The first warm day of the year is always wonderful. When I was in college I called it Frisbee Day because it was the first day after the long cold winter when everyone was outside doing stuff, like catching sun on the lawn or, yes, whipping a frisbee around. One time a friend of mine threw a frisbee that tailed way too hard on him and ended up flying into the open window of a car that had stopped at an intersection. Imagine sitting in your car and getting surprised by a frisbee walloping your head. Springtime is full of wonders. 

Katie

The surface of the sun is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. If it were significantly cooler than that, we would all freeze to death. If it were significantly warmer than that, we would all blister and roast like a green pepper on a grill. Other temperatures are good, too, but 10,000 degrees is probably the best only because we would not be able to enjoy them if we were all ice cubes or piles of ash.

Hmm. This one got a little dark but I suppose there’s no way to argue with it. Also, I am hungry for grilled peppers now. What temperature are those? That’s a good temperature, too. 

Eric

I was born in a city with summer highs of +45C

I live in a city of winter lows of -40C

And what I've learned is the best temperature is +5C because that's unzipped jacket weather and I can carry my phone & keys in a jacket pocket instead of weighing down my pants pockets.

[typing ‘Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion’ into the search bar] I can support this given the circumstances. I also like that -40 Celsius is also -40 Fahrenheit. I do not particularly want to experience either. 

I'm going to lump these next two answers together for reasons I will explain shortly…

Chris

99.6 Fahrenheit, bc it means I have enough of a fever to have to stay home but I'm still healthy enough to waste time.

Julie

The best temperature is 39 degrees because that’s the temperature I can look at and say it is too cold to go out so I might as well just stay in for the night and watch six episodes of 30 Rock. I was probably going to do it anyway but it is nice to have an excuse.

Okay, so two things:

• I love that Chris and Julie both chose temperatures that gave them an excuse to be lazy, which is the type of creativity I was hoping for when I posed this question

• These two similarly reasoned answers raise the possibility that two people could meet and fall in love and get married thanks to this stupid newsletter, which honestly had not dawned on me until this moment

All I ask is that I get an invite to the wedding. And that I get to give a speech. I will try not to swear. 

JJ

The best temperature is the one that is cool enough at night that allows me to put my winter comforter back on my bed. Oh the anticipation of going to bed that night is so great!  It was this past weekend in the Chicagoland area and it almost brought a tear to my eyes. Sweaty summer is over cool as a cucumber autumn is in!  Now there are those out there that will lament the coming shorter hours of sunlight and the general chilliness but I say bring it on!  All hail our cool dark king - long may he reign.

While I am typically anti-winter, I can see the merits of this because it supports my long-held belief that humans should be allowed to hibernate like bears. We shut it down January 2, after the holidays are over, and then we don’t come out until late March, just in time for everyone to shop for my birthday presents. It’s a reasonable plan. Everyone agrees. 

Justin

I genuinely can't imagine how anyone could come up with any response other than 69.

Yes, I got a lot of these. Yes, I feel okay about it. 

Two more we can lump together…

Evans

The perfect temperature is cold and snowy, and I'm indifferent to the relative merits of how cold or how snowy, but definitely both.

I hear from people how they only get 2 weeks of summer or fall and then it's cold, but as a lifelong resident of Kentucky/Tennessee we get the same before the worst hot, humid summers you can imagine. 93 with 37% humidity makes me want to wander off the grid forever.

So give me cold weather, where I can always put more clothes on if it gets colder and snowier.

Matthew

You're in Saudi Arabia because the Navy sent you there. It's 115 degrees outside; the sun feels like a laser burning your life away. You step inside your room, pick up the remote for that little wall-mounted A/C unit, and turn it to its lowest setting: 16 degrees Celsius. How cold is that? No idea. Is it cold enough? Just about. 

Again, perspective is important here. If it is 500 degrees in the shade, there is nothing in the world that feels better than sticking your head in the freezer for a few minutes. Would I want to be that cold all day? No, of course not. But that moment of relief is so thrilling it feels like heaven. 

Wing2J

205 degrees: the internal temperature at which a smoked pork shoulder is ready to be shredded into perfectly delicious foodstuff.

Gonna go ahead and give you a resounding “hell yeah” on this one, brother.

STUFF I TYPED

— my Five Spot newsletter, which opens with a big thing about Detroiters finally hitting Netflix and, hey, while I’m on the subject, here’s a commercial Tim and Sam did for Totinos that is… well, basically perfect 

totinos

A post shared by @totinos

STUFF I CLICKED ON

— GQ’s big How to Watch TV guide

— Defector is all over the conker scandal, naturally

— Billy Bob Thornton profile 

— Paul Mescal profile 

— Cristin Milioti talked about how awesome she was on last Sunday’s episode of The Penguin 

— my buddy Alan Sepinwall got Matt Berry to say the line 

sepinwall

A post shared by @sepinwall

— turtle smuggling

— big pumpkin

— robot shark

— baby born in microbrewery parking lot honored with special beer

— why is this so funny to me???

— you will never guess who said “I’m putting this dress on, these rings, and I’m going crazy”

— this headline — “Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff” — is much funnier if you pretend the “AI” means Allen Iverson and the former Sixer legend has been personally violating the copyrights of thousands of authors 

— driver caught speeding while dressed as Cookie Monster

— excuse me, Al Roker…

— stolen art recovered 

— Go Birds

— look at Al Pacino’s Shrek phone

@bbcnewsObsessed x #AlPacino#Shrek#TheGodfather#Scarface#Oscars#Films#FilmTok#BBCNews

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Okay, that’s it for this week. Please subscribe and share and do not change the temperature of the sun.