Gilbert Cruz: Hello, I'm Gilbert Cruz and this is the book review from the New York Times. Today I want you to imagine a scenario. You wake up one morning and you start to go about your day as you do every day and an eerie feeling begins to arise. Everything seems familiar, too familiar. Eventually, a realization starts to creep into your mind. Is it possible you're reliving yesterday? You go through the day, the day passes, you go to sleep, quote, "Tomorrow arrives and it is the same day yet again." And then it is the same day yet again. Somehow you have become stuck in time.

Gilbert Cruz: >> Well, it's Groundhog Day again. >> That's what we're here to talk about. Not Groundhog Day. a classic 1993 film starring Bill Murray. We are here to talk about another hit time loop story. This one a seven book series written by the Danish author SV Bala. It's called On the Calculation of Volume and since its English translations first published in 2024. It has been nominated for several major awards and has become something of a an under the radar phenomenon among the literary sect. Book four in this series has just been published here in America and I have two of my colleagues from the book review here to talk about the series. AO Scott, Tony Scott, our critic at large and Jim Katib, an editor here and my frequent guest, my frequent foil.

Gilbert Cruz: >> Jima, welcome. >> Thank you, Gilbert. >> Tony, welcome. >> Hi. Good to be here. You're going to stay on after the three of us talk to make some recommendations for other books in translation that listeners should check out. >> Absolutely.

Gilbert Cruz: >> So, no move. Before we start, I want to just put a brief spoiler alert here. We're primarily going to talk about the first three books, but we definitely dip into the events of book four. So, if you're on the verge of reading that, finish it, come back, we'll be here for you. Okay, Tony, we're going to loop back to the beginning here. Can you tell us where this where this all started? Tell us about this author. Tell us about this this series.

AO Scott: >> Well, it started um SV Bal is uh she's in her 60s. She's a Danish novelist and she'd written some things before this. And at some point, as early as 1987, she had this idea, before Groundhog Day, by the way, was was released to have, you know, what if somebody got stuck in time and and kept repeating the same day again and again and again and what what would that be like? And it it over time the project sort of took over her life. She lives on a small island um a sort of remote island in Denmark and has been working on this for a very long time. It's this seven volume. Um I guess in Scandinavia you have to publish books in groups of seven. The septtology is a big uh a big thing there. Canowskar did it and and Yan Fosa and they have first in Europe and and now in North America really kind of accumulated this following. I can tell you anecdotally, I was walking around with the galley for volume 4 as I was getting ready to to review it and someone who I who I know a little bit kind of said, "Oh, you've got volume four. I'm in the middle of volume two. Don't tell me what happens." And and there's this kind of like urgency and excitement about this book in which in some ways, strictly speaking, nothing happens. And the same day repeats itself. I don't want to spoil it, but by the end of volume four, it's repeated itself 3,6 I think 37 times.

Gilbert Cruz: >> I think it's important at this point just take a step back and and say some very basic plot details here. This is a book about a a woman named uh Tara Seltter. She lives in France and she after taking a trip to uh try to get some books, she and her husband have a company. Do they sell antiquarian books? Discovers on the 18th of November that she has woken up again on the 18th of November. And then on the next day, it is still the 18th of November. And she wakes up every day and is reliving the same day. Nobody else in her life is reliving the same day. It is just her. And then there are all these other things you discover about how she moves in the world, how the things that she interacts with, how they exist or don't exist in the world. It's a very like wellthought through take on what would happen if you had to sort of experience this thing over and over again. Jumanna, how did you first come to these books?

Jumanna Khatib: >> I mean, I was just reading them because everybody else in New York was reading them and I was mildly seasonally depressed. Uh-huh. >> So, I did what I usually do and look to the Scandinavians for comfort and relief.

Gilbert Cruz: >> Jim, nothing that you said just now surprises me.

Jumanna Khatib: >> I think it's time for me to get off the podcast.

Gilbert Cruz: >> Um, one of the interesting things about this book, other than the fact that it is a time loop book that is eventually going to take place over seven volumes, is the very unique style. Here it is. Uh, Tara is writing essentially her life in diary entries. We come into the story, if I'm flip right here, to the first book on day 121 of her reliving November 18th over and over again. So, she's writing her observations. All of the books are through her point of view. There are no direct quotes as far as I can tell in any of the books. A lot of short paragraphs. It put me, and I'd love to hear what it did for you, this style, in in a very hypnotic state where I was drawn along the entire way. At times I was bored, at times I was gripped. Uh, it it's fascinating.

AO Scott: >> It's fascinating because boredom is part of the experience of reading the book. And it's also the subject of the book in a way. I mean, it it there's not a lot of emotional intensity in her narration. There's never a moment where she sort of flings herself on the floor in despair and says, "My god, why can't I get out of this day?" She's very observant. It's a very emotionally muted book and yet there is something gripping about it and something suspenseful. I mean, every every volume is very cleverly sort of leads up to a cliffhanger. So, it kind of gets you into the next volume. And without saying too much, every every volume changes the perspective and the sort of the tenor of the experience while keeping it always, as you say, in her voice, in her moods, and in her kind of very reflective, both practical-minded and philosophical take on what's happening to her. So, she's sort of musing on on what this is like, what this is about. You know, it turns out if you take money out of your ATM on November 18th, the next November 18th, it will still be there. Um, but if you buy something from the grocery store on a November 18th, it will be gone the next day. Your your your your consumption will subtract it from the world.

Jumanna Khatib: I think that that was a very helpful counter for me in those moments of boredom was that there was just enough world building or god god help me I'm saying world building but like like to sort of keep things interesting and there was there's always a new political or ecological angle like it doesn't shock me knowing what I know about Svala that like to her money is so unimportant that it replenishes every day but like a leak that Tara and her husband grew in their garden is sort of like this precious resource. And she has this refrain about how monstrous she feels, that she's a monster, that she's devouring her world, that there's this sort of like grotescery and like there's something wrong with her. But Tara herself never really makes any kind of moral judgments about why she is there. But she does feel a lot of culpability while she's frozen in time. And it's interesting because it is one of the it comes up I think it starts to surface you know more more emphatically in the later books but there is a sort of like these ethical questions that about you know this existence um and and she'll do things like she'll go and shop at different stores around around whatever town she's in so so she doesn't you know deplete things from the the shelves but she does talk about herself as sort of a a predator as a monster as someone who is just taking taking taking resources from the world and and and leaving it impoverished and that you know in in some ways one of the things I think that you can wonder about as you read these books not only about the sort of the details of the world that they depict but you know sort of ask yourself well what what kind of allegorical meaning is behind this if this is you know speculative fiction of a kind which it is what's what's the sort of the picture of of our own world that it's trying to reflect back on

Jumanna Khatib: Yeah. I mean, I had this thought a couple days ago where I I was thinking about the the number seven about this and and thinking because each book really does have a diff a slightly different focus, right? You know, book one, you're sort of just like, what the hell is going on here? Book two, she's she's traveling around Europe trying to give herself a sense of seasons. And I was like, oh god, am I going to have to reread Genesis? Like, is that what Soul Bala is up to? Is that like each book is sort of her designing a different layer of whatever universe she's building? I don't know.

AO Scott: >> There's something about I mean you use the word worldb building to this whole thing that I think leads anyone who reads these books to to sort of start to develop their own theories. Obviously Tara in the book at some point is trying to figure out what happened, why am I here? And the the experience of reading these four books has has taken me in two directions. one, you start to think about these worldbuilding questions. What are the rules and what is allowed and what is not allowed? And then in a way that I don't normally do, I start to think philosophically, which is, you know, there's something about time travel, time loop stories, you know, Groundhog Day is cited, I think seriously by some is like one of the great philosophical films. Like what does this mean about humanity? like what does it mean about the person who has stuck to relive the same day over and over again? What is your responsibility to yourself? What is your responsibility to the world? And so my experience in reading these has has sort of been on those two tracks at the same time. What are the rules? How are the rules changing? And then what does this say about us as people and how we would act or not act in a similar situation? One thing that that's been interesting to me that I've been thinking about, a lot of people who've written about these books compare them to the great modernist time novels, you know, to to P's um In Search of Lost Time and to James Joyce's Ulisses, right, which is cuz P is about time and the experience of time, but it's about memory. It's about the sense of the past racing away in the onrush of modern civilization in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. And Joyce's Ulyses is about all of history, all the sort of epic scale of history, all in one day condensed into one day in June in Dublin. And this is a book about kind of the the loss of the past and of the future. Um, so it's it's about a kind of a a sense of being stuck in this eternal unchanging present in which nonetheless you have to make your life. you have to figure out what what the sort of the human dimensions of your life might be. Um what would it be to live and die your whole life um in November 18th? And I think I mean I can't help but think about the state of the world of the actual world that we live in and a a certain sense maybe of stuckness or stasis or of of a sort of obscured or clouded future as being some of what these books are about and some of what gives them the kind of this very interesting strong appeal or resonance that we've been talking about

Jumanna Khatib: >> throughout the first two books. my brain was thinking for whatever reason, oh, the thing that will get Tara unstuck is a a romance, right? Like it's so interesting that the sort of the the natural, if you're me, the natural place to think like, okay, well, what is what's been the counter in in other stories like this? like what's been the thing to sort of lift you out of TDM or sort of like give you a shock to the system and it's falling in love and you know that Tara is still very devoted to her husband um throughout these books and and I think that kind of longing for him. It's funny in the beginning they have something of a honeymoon like a second honeymoon period you know where they're just like he seems like the most patient man on earth where she's like I don't know how to tell you this but I am reliving November 18th over and over and over and she has to tell him this every morning and he just kind of goes along with it. It's like I guess that's the kind of like absurdity you come to expect when you devote your life to like being an antique book dealer. But I think like I was genuinely shocked when Tara met somebody that was sort of on a similar loop to her and and and that felt like such an expansion of possibility and got so exciting and I loved watching like the little societies form. It felt like like ancient Greece but November 18th. Also, I just want to dispel cuz I think there are a lot of like Bala heads out there who are like, "Oh, like you know, it's it's the day Puce died November 18th." And um there's a really great interview that Bala did on the LRB podcast and she's like, "Well, first I was thinking June, but that wouldn't really work with the sort of like environmental thing." And so I just sort of and then I thought about October and then I just decided November. And then I realized that's when Puce died. So it's like all these people sort of like, you know, like cryptographers trying to make sense of this and she's just like, I just picked it. I don't know.

AO Scott: >> Well, it's like it's like you in Genesis. It's like, you know, trying to read as we do with so many works of literature or or pieces of art, intentionality into things that often are just like, I stumbled upon this. I don't know. The character led me here. This was the day that seemed not too hot, not too cold. November 18th. So, you're saying that you don't think that Bala consciously set out to make herself a god?

Jumanna Khatib: >> Uh, every author is a god uh of the universe that they create.

Gilbert Cruz: Coming up, the surprising paradox about being stuck in a time loop. Shiman, I'd love to talk a little bit more about Tara because you um and I felt the same way but in a different direction when you talk about well I thought she there would be a romance and that would be a thing that would >> you know my and this is my you know pop culture poisoned brain you know I'm like what what is what are the things that she is going to do in this book that give it plot like more of a plot in some way. Is she going to rob a bank? Is she going to fall off a cliff? Is this going to be, you know, is this going to be like other sort of time loop stories that we've experienced where there's a lot of sort of comical and and stereo comical death scenes and then she wakes up again and she's still alive. But this author is just not interested in that at all. And you know that's a like okay that's a great segue into like who Tara really is because Tara really doesn't take pleasure in anything except like kind of squirreling away notes and she has this sort of fixation on things you know things that stay with her and I totally understand that when especially you're sort of all of a sudden living in a universe where you don't quite understand why some things stay with you daytoday and some things disappear. Like there is actually a pretty comic tragic comic we can say scene where she goes to her parents' house and they have Christmas. So they go and like buy a turkey and Christmas pudding and they do the Brussels sprouts and roast potatoes. And part of their Christmas tradition is to have leftovers the following day. And Tara doesn't think that uh she doesn't trust anything to stay in the fridge. So she shoves everything in like a refrigerated bag under her bed so that they can at least have it's like I mean that's that's kind of brilliant, you know? So she's loyal to tradition in some ways, but like she really doesn't take pleasure in food or even when she talks about her relationships with the others in her society, I guess like you don't necessarily feel the pleasure that she gets in human connection.

AO Scott: >> This is one of the things and Tony I want to hear what you say about this. has stood out to me the most about these books. And again, I've read the four volumes that have been translated into English and look forward to reading the other three, but there is I don't know if it's just the way I would feel if I was stuck in time for years and years and years, but there is a lack of pleasurable engagement with the world other than in these little flashes. Like there's one at one point she goes to Spain or Italy or somewhere where she's looking for warm weather and she says there were many days and I danced and you know and and it just passes >> with ice in them. >> Yeah. It passes in one or two sentences and and and I as an obviously very normal person am thinking I would try to maximize my pleasure every single day.

Gilbert Cruz: It's true when when you know she does occasionally she and her husband do have sex in volume one but it's not like it's not particularly steamy or or even described very much but and and you sort of wonder well was she like this before she got stuck in in November 18 like which is cause and which is effect you know is this is this time stuckness a sort of a a symptom of or an effect of some alienation from experience that was there already that kind of prepared prepared her for it. Like is this is this book projecting a kind of a possible world or a possible civilization or is it actually mirroring an aspect of the of the civilization that's already here um say among the educated middle classes of western countries who kind of maybe already live like this

Jumanna Khatib: >> one thing see okay I was shocked to find out how old she was when she stumbled through time cuz I guess I was imagining ing her in her 60s. And I don't know, maybe it was because who in their 20s is an antiquarian book dealer, but I was shocked to learn that she was in her her mid20s when this happened. >> Yeah. >> I I saw her as being uh close to my age for some reason. >> So 75. Yeah.

Gilbert Cruz: >> Tony, what do you think this structure allows for both characters to experience and also us as readers to experience? What is the effect that living the same day over and over again lands on Tara and on us?

AO Scott: >> For Tara, it is a sense of a surprising sense of freedom in a I mean, we've talked about it as, you know, these people being stuck in time, which is in one sense true, but it's also maybe true that they're free. They're sort of liberated in time. That's the sort of the linear progression of days that the rest of us are subject to and have no choice about. They can have the same day um as many different ways as they they want to do it. And and I think it also opens up a space I think you were getting to this a little earlier Gilbert of sort of philosophical speculation even though Tara is certainly temperamentally inclined to sort of thinking and musing and ruminating something about this experience invites that cuz you're sort of going over and you're looking at it from all these different angles and the sort of the same thing is happening but is happening because you're different each day even if the world is not. you sort of >> see all these kind of nuances and and inflections and that that I think for the reader makes it >> interesting and absorbing even when even when it's tedious you know even when you're sort of like there are passages in the book where you know it sort of does feel caught in a wheel and is is repeating and nothing new has happened but I never felt kind of you know itchy or or bored or impatient with it. I just sort of felt like, okay, this is this rhythm and within the sort of the confines of this day, um, so much can happen and you start to have so many questions about it, you know, um, about about the rules and procedures. And I started to feel like every time I would come up with a question all by myself, some pages later, >> Molly would answer it or would or would tease it or would acknowledge it. So there's just a lot of room in these books. Um, and you feel yourself as a reader or I felt as as a reader oddly sort of free in them that I was I was not so much compelled by the the linear movement of a plot as just sort of roaming around in this big space and going into different rooms in this kind of weird giant house, which was a very a very pleasant and very soothing reading experience. H

Jumanna Khatib: >> uh sorry I'm looking up a quote here. Yes. Okay. You know there's a an interview that Bala gave to the literary magazine the drift where she was talking about the title of the book on the calculation of volume. She says you know in 1989 I had started this book. I was in Paris. A friend saw a pile of papers. The title was on the top on the calculation of volume and he said you have to chase that title. That is a terrible title. Um but she she very briefly talks about quote the time loop creates more of a space or a room than the usual view of time as a line or a river or even as a circle. It's sort of this the more she lives this day over and over again the bigger the volume of her time that she is living sort of grows and grows and grows uh until I maybe she'll never be able to calculate it in the end but it's quite big. I was also really struck by the relationships between um there's one time looper who is kind of grateful for this pause because it allows him to have time with his father who has Parkinson's and so and his father's disease actually doesn't seem to be progressing in this period. So, um, it's almost like putting a pause on a degenerative disease, but at the same time, uh, there's another looper who is an entire ocean away from his kid. And, and those are really like the the most like wrenching, I think, philosophical questions.

AO Scott: >> I I found that a a very poignant part as well. It's interesting too that and this is remarked on in volume 4 is that there are there don't seem to be many children in the November 18th world.

Gilbert Cruz: >> I think it's interesting to try to think of Tony as you note. Why are there no children that they have found at by the end of book four? Why why are they all sort of seemingly in the same sort of socioeconomic sort of racial cohort? Like there there is something interesting about the similarities between by the end of book four all of the people.

AO Scott: >> Yeah. And and and that that I think is is one of the really interesting things that develops in in in in the fourth volume because it it does sort of resituate this whole experience on a kind of a collective or social level, you know. So it's it's it's now there's there's a there are a lot of them. We sort of lose count, you know. Um there are at at the end of book three I think there are four and then all of a sudden there are nine and then more and more more um and they have these house meetings and then they they kind of have a convention um of of of all November 18th and they it's I mean and it's one of the comical sort of logistic things about like how do you how do you rent a a hall for a convention for a convention that's today >> but but not the today today you know um it's it's like the thing where whenever ever Tara travels, she arrives in a in a in a new city and goes to a hotel and asks for a room that hasn't been occupied the night before. Um, which is a great precaution, but also just absurd. And apparently all the people at all the hotels in Europe are like, "Oh, yeah, okay. We can we can do that."

Jumanna Khatib: >> I I also shudder to think how long it would have taken me to figure that out. Like how many strangers I would have woken up next to. >> You would you would wake up next to >> next to in the hotel room. I mean, we just sort of think, "God, what? This is just awful.

Gilbert Cruz: >> Yes. Tony, can I ask you um as as we near the end of this conversation, you know, in terms of generic expectations and and these books fall outside of genre in so many ways, >> you know, the the framing for this both in the way that it is being sold and the way I've described it to people and the way that people talk to Bala when they interview her is is uh Groundhog Day, the film >> starring Bill Murray and Andy McDow from 1993. When you say a time loop, you can also say it's a it's a real Groundhog Day type situation. Um, and I'm wondering as someone who was a film critic for almost uh a quarter century, you know, what what that framing sort of led you to to think as you entered these books and how you think other people navigate between those two. How are they different?

AO Scott: I mean, Groundhog Day has this sort of romantic comedy structure um as Jumanna as you were saying and it's about it turns out to be about getting it right like when the Bill Murray character is worthy of the love of the Andy McDow character, he will be freed, you know. So, it's it's what the philosopher and film writer Stanley Cavell called moral perfectionism. That's the plot of that movie. Um, it's about getting yourself right, um, and understanding yourself. And it's a Hollywood story, so it's an individual story. It's only happening to him. Um, and it only matters that it's happening to him. >> This is something else. Um, because the redoing it doesn't seem to impose any kind of purpose or logic or responsibility on people. I don't think it's it's it's it's much more it turns out to be I think much more about what this would be as a general human condition. So it starts out as an individual story but it and Tara is our narrator and and I assume will stay our narrator but it isn't really her story and it's not really about who she is in some ways. We never know we still don't know really who she is. Um, but it's about what it is to live in time and whether it would be a good thing or a bad thing. What it would feel like to to have your whole sense of your orientation forward in time changed or or or taken away.

Gilbert Cruz: >> I think it would be a great thing. My favorite part so far in these four books is when the character Henry on the first or second day realizes that he has time to catch up on his emails. That seems like something I would do. I thought it was great. I have enjoyed living in this time with the two of you. Tony Scott, thank you so much for joining the pod. >> Such a pleasure. I'm I'm sorry that it has to come to an end.

Gilbert Cruz: After the break, Jima digs into the world of literary translation and she recommends some books for you to read next. Okay, Jumanna, these on the calculation of volume books uh started in their first two volumes uh with one translator, Barbara Havlin, and then in books three and four, a pair of translators take over, Sophia Hersy Smith and Jennifer Russell. And I'm I'm curious about two things. What is your understanding of how authors and translators work together? And then this phenomenon or or this situation where two people are working on translating one book that that seems quite difficult to me but it worked clearly in in in these two volumes that we read.

Jumanna Khatib: >> Yeah. And it it does work. I mean um I can think uh Sam Bett and David Boyd translate from Japanese into English. They're great. They're an amazing pair. They they were the ones who worked on the first books by Mo Kawakami to come into English. And she's obviously still something of a sensation among

Gilbert Cruz: >> And what does she write?

Jumanna Khatib: >> Um she's the author of Breasts and Eggs, Heaven. She has a new sort of noir out called Sisters in Yellow. They did not work on that book and I did feel that frankly. But to your earlier question about how translators and authors work together, I think it I mean I think it really depends. So first, a lot of translators have worked on books or work by dead people. So that's kind of a non-starter. >> Um I remember I was profiling an Goldsten who is Elellanena Ferrante's translator. And I asked her, I was like, "How often do you like email her or do you ever email her directly?" And she's like, "I've emailed her directly maybe five times, but anytime I have a query, most of the time I go through her editor." And so that's my understanding of of how it works most of the time.

Gilbert Cruz: >> This is a a very specific question for you, but I feel like you might actually have an answer. You know, there are people that have like favorite audiobook narrators. >> Yeah. Is it? Do you have a favorite translator?

Jumanna Khatib: >> Oh, I do. Can I tell you about him? I love him so much. Okay. His name is Frank Wyn. >> He W Y N E. >> He is an Irish I think savant, right? He's just a genius. He translates from Spanish and French. And I first encountered him when I was reading um Viljenei de Pont who's a sort of like postpunk French writer and all of her writing whether it's her non-fiction or her novels are extremely voiced driven. She has this sort of like feminist manifesto called King Kong Theory. and he he really was an incredible conduit for her voice. And she has this trilogy of books that I think everybody should read. Velon Subutex, it's about a sort of unemployed record dealer just bouncing around the right bank of Paris, meeting a bunch of very colorful characters and and just the way that he's able to juggle all these voices is amazing. And like everything is so alive. They feel very expansive, those books.

Gilbert Cruz: Okay, Jumanna, what other books in translation would you recommend >> from this vast wild insourcing universe? >> So big.

Jumanna Khatib: >> So as a specific comp for on the calculation of volume, I'm going to recommend time shelter. This is by a Bulgarian writer, Yorgi Gosporinov, and translated by Angela Rodell. Um, this one, the international booker in 2023. And this is about a clinic in Zurich that's set up for Alzheimer's patients where each floor of the facility recreates a different decade. And so wherever they kind of live in their head, they can they can have their physical reality match their memories. It's it's really good. >> Wow. Okay, that's a great idea. Another recent discovery for me was Yuko Tsushima. So the book that I love most by her is Territory of Light and this is translated by Geraldine Hardort. Geraldine Harkort I think maybe only ever translated Yukotushima and I wish she had translated everything cuz like her I mean this is one of the most incredible books I've read in I would say at least the last 18 months. It's about a single mom and her four-year-old daughter getting their own apartment in Tokyo and just like rebuilding their life together after the implosion of her marriage. And it's so elegant and funny and surprising and and beautifully rendered into English. I love that book. Uh, another one. Okay. Classics are a blind spot for me. Like I really really need to go reread >> like classics and quotes. >> Class. Yeah. Okay. >> Yeah. What what is classics out of quotes? >> I don't know why I said that. >> Okay. Anyway, so like I need to go back and reread like Tanyv and all the you know Anna Corinina. But I did just finish an Italian classic that I really liked. Um it's called the betrothed in English. uh in Italian it's uh messi sposi by Alexandro Manzonei who is one of the first writers like around the time that Italy decided to unify its language and it's a classic love story. It's a parable. It's a political parable. It's a societal parable but it's also just a lovely translation um that's translated by Michael F. Moore, whose translations from Italian into English, I highly recommend. And then another one that I love. I love this book. This is Chyros by Jenny Urban, who's German. All of her books are great. Go, Went, Gone, etc. Um, so Chyros was translated by Michael Hoffman and is a very very nuanced and complex, I guess you could just call it an age gap novel, relationship, age gap novel. It's really good.

Gilbert Cruz: >> Jima, I I say this with genuine uh sincerity. I always feel smarter after hearing you talk about books. >> Thank you. It was genuinely my pleasure. I could go for 20 more minutes. >> I think we're good. >> Okay. The book review is produced by Sarah Diamond and Amy Pearl. It's edited by Lissa Anderson and mixed this week by Katie McMurin. Original music by Dan Powell and Alicia. Special thanks to Dalia Hadad. We want to hear what you think about the show, so send us an email at the bookreview@nytimes.com. I'm Gilbert Cruz. Thanks for listening. 18-year-olds don't know Groundhog Day. What the What's happening? >> I've never seen it. >> You've never seen it? >> Should I watch it?