I've seen it all
I just read that colgan trains people to relax back pressure as stall recovery...yet earlier on I read that powering out of a stall with minimum altitude loss was course de rigeur.
Forum readers may also recall that someone would be fired for losing altitude in a sim check...so one has to pull up a bit while waiting for full power to come in.
And , as to the non pertinent conversations, we have to at least acknowledge that they were speaking int he relm of aviation...its not like they were talking about knitting, or car racing, or the battle off samar.
They were talking about careers in aviation. Granted, not required for landing, but indicative of wanting to get out of colgan.
One thing I haven't seen spoken about is the FO's choice to bring up the flaps (retract the flaps) without being commanded to do so.