Muse

My name is Dr. Gail Timlin, president of Diet Supplement Industries Incorporated. And people say to me all the time, but Gail, you're not a real doctor. And I say to them, oh yeah, well I graduated with a Ph.D. in Religious Studies at Kent State University. Is that real enough for you? No? Well, how's this for real? I lost hundreds of pounds by taking the best dietary product on the market, dietiloxapam. But can something so good be legal, you ask? Hey, you ask a lot of questions. Of course it's legal. And I should know, I'm not only a doctor and president of Diet Supplemental Industries Incorporated, I'm also the junior state representative of Rhode Island.

TBTL! That's it, the radio. I'll go on the most popular program of the day. I assume that's still Don McNeil and his breakfast club? Like I ask people, what's in your muffin? Huh? How about me? why don't you ask me anybody anybody ask me what's in my muffin i don't know what's in my muffin

if you two dirtbags ever mess with me again i'll take this to the next level you don't do 22 episodes of celebrity outhouse with lorraine above it without learning a few things dude you

are the best you're awesome dude you are god get to the airwaves what have you got to say for

yourselves. It's hammer time. Let the freak out begin. All right. Hello. Good morning

and welcome everyone to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Spock sabotaged the system coming to you. Well, first, let me tell you who I am. My name is Luke Burbank. Hi, everybody. I'll be co-hosting things today. I'm coming to you from the nest broadcast center which is high in the sky above portland oregon uh where it is really quite a uh lovely wednesday morning just some high clouds lots of blue sky i'm looking out on this construction project that um is actually a very good privilege check for me because you know this is a very fun job to have and i'm very lucky to have it and yet it is a job somebody said anytime you have to do something at a specific time in order to get paid, it is at that point a job. And there are some mornings when I'm like, I wish I could lie in bed for 10 more minutes or I wish I could, you know, I don't know, take a walk. I wish I could be doing something that isn't my actual job. And then I look out and there are these very hardworking construction folks who are lifting heavy pieces of lumber many mornings in the rain and the cold and are tethered by safety line because they're building they keep building up level after level of what looks like it's going to be an apartment building. Good news Portland we're getting more apartments and so that's one thing is just looking out on these mostly guys and just thinking you know I'm lucky that I'm in here I'm dry, I'm warm, I'm in sweats this is what I'm doing for my work. But then right after that moment of gratitude, there is a moment of anxiety, which is, how many stories are they going to build on this building, and is it eventually going to totally obscure my view? So, you know, it's a dance, this thing we called life. It's going to be an adventure, this thing we called episode 3,346 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. We have an update on the latest in stonks and short pinches. Now, short pinches aren't just something you should talk to HR about if it's happening to you. It's also this thing that we got into yesterday where a subreddit is doing everything they can to drive the price of GameStop up. so as to kind of mess with Wall Street fat cats and stonk knowers who think GameStop is, you know, not a very good business plan. Anyway, that stock is still going through the roof, by the way, and all of the official Wall Street types are saying this is wrong and should be illegal, and people in subreddit should not be allowed to get together and decide to buy the same stock or at least buy an option on the same stock.

Meanwhile, now they're doing it to the stock of AMC, the movie theater company, and Bed, Bath & Beyond. And they are driving the prices up of these things, too.

People just came out here and was getting hella money.

So we will continue our hot streak of talking about financial matters that are way over our heads today. We'll actually just give you an update. Also, Elon Musk is weighing in. So that makes it news, I guess. Also, some interesting...

Social science data about why we are all so much more impatient, why many of us are suffering from something that psychologists call pedestrian aggressiveness syndrome scale, and why we get bored so fast and feel like everything is taking so long when we're in line at the grocery store.

This is so boring and forever taking.

And then if we have time, we'll bring you a story of the coconut water that Target has said it will no longer carry because the coconut water is being harvested through illegal. Well, let me check my notes. Yes. Monkey labor. It was the best of times. It was the blirst of times. So we will get to that, too. Plus emails and emails. Time permitting. We'll do all of that with the help of this handsome young stranger, the longest-running cobro of the show. He's known for his drawings of tall ships, their grace, and their majesty. We have a big meeting coming up later on today with some of our colleagues. And, of course, as always, we'll have to sort of try to summarize what this show is about, what it is we do day in and day out here on TBTL. And my big hope is that Andrew does not use this description for the show, which he tends to use a lot just when he and I are talking offline. Post-coitus jibber-jabber. Anyway, he is Andrew Walsh, and he is joining us right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. This meeting, actually, I don't know if you saw the latest, has changed a little bit now. It's less of a meeting. They need us to haul lumber for an apartment building that is apparently going up in the Twin Cities.

I think I might rather do that than have a meeting where we're imagineering the future of TBTL. We do have an imagineering meeting.

We do.

I mean, there is something – this is easy for me to say because I'm not doing it, but having had many labor jobs earlier in my life, on some days there is something very calming and uncomplicated about picking up something relatively heavy and moving it from one place to another. Again, I'm glad this is what we do for our job, and I'm not out on that roof, but every once in a blue moon, getting out there and actually working, kind of using your hands, there is definitely something to that. Can I say something about this meeting that's coming up later today? I mean, I don't know. I mean, tread carefully, I guess. I'm not going to. I was actually going to – I thought, oh, if this comes up, I'll try to be vague about it, but I've already sort of blown it. why does the meeting have to happen on zoom you you sort of jokingly said to me before we started recording oh hey what are you going to wear for the meeting and um you know obviously i will try to look presentable but what i was thinking and this is probably not new this is not a new uh sort of conversation almost a year into a global pandemic where most of us who are lucky up still have jobs are using zoom technology and microsoft teams and all that stuff but what i've noticed is that all meetings that i have whether it's apm whether it's with prx the distributor of livewire almost all of the meetings i have now are just zoom as a default and i don't phone number i

mean just call in i mean i my journey with this was you and i were were whole were zoom holdouts especially because you know our company was using zoom long before the pandemic you know sent everybody to their to their zoom computers and you and i were always holdouts we always called into those even things that you know meetings that i was on by myself and my argument was like i don't like to be stuck kind of in one place when i'm talking like when i'm uh imagineering things i'm a pacer i also have very loud floors in here so i'm never sure if the people on the other end of the phone line can hear me creaking and squeaking my way around the apartment as i pace and talk at too fast of a speed, both pacing and talking. And then everybody started using Zoom. All of these departmental meetings went to Zoom. And for most of them, I was like, oh, wait, it's kind of easier for me just to kind of sit here, put on some headphones, and be behind the computer. For most meetings, I don't turn my camera on anymore. I got a little, like, drawing of myself that I throw up there. It's a stick. It's a dirty stick figure drawing that I made. I just throw that up there. Post-coitus jibber-jabber. That's the name of it. You heard of jib jab? I got jibber jabber. It's not for kids. But anyway, my point is, it's like what you and I are supposed to meet with like three other people. It's like five of us on the call. Like if you call in via phone, like I don't think anybody's going to say to you, Luke, why are you on the phone? Just do it.

I do feel, though, it's a low key power move because what's been established. I mean, actually, it's not a bad idea. once it's established that it's

the zoom meeting and once a certain number of people once critical mass of the people who are in the meeting have said yeah you know what i will comb my hair and i will sit down and i will look into a camera because you're not going to have your crude rude drawing as you as the only thing we see of you in the meeting you'll turn your camera presumably right well i will have a

large blown up uh drawing of the rude crew drawing behind me and i'll have the camera of course no No, but I'm being actually very serious here. Like, yes, I will be there because in this case, it's fine. Like, I have a setup for it now, and it's simpler, and I can run my audio through my board, and that's fine. But also, if I preferred, not even if I had to, but if I preferred to be on the phone for this meeting, I would not – I don't think I'd have any hangups. I might – no, I don't think – I was going to say I might even send a note to the gang and say, hey, I'm going to be on phone. But I don't even think I would do that. Like, I think that's fine. Like, I don't think that and maybe this is me just being old and pushing back on new technologies. But I think that, you know, we're we're all spinning a bunch of plates and, you know, squeezing meetings in and doing things like I think that if we want to meet by phone, we can get the same exact information across. I mean, I guess the one difference is, yeah, these are probably like PowerPoint people, aren't they there? I guess that's the one thing if they have like a PowerPoint they want to present. What a piece, dude.

I noticed. Yeah, I mean, the thing that I think has developed now is because, you know, we've worked remotely on this show for years and pre-pandemic, there were plenty of conference calls. Now, definitely the, like, all staff that happens on Thursdays that you Zoom into and, frankly, offend everyone with your avi. Have they been talking?

I didn't hear anything. I didn't get any feedback.

You haven't been on Slack? No. By the way, somebody asked us to promote TBTL Slack because I think we were talking about trying to low-key other social media, you were anyway, and somebody said, please, please promote the TBTL Slack because we want to keep that a vibrant community of people. So is there any special instruction on how people can find the TBTL Slack?

If you go to tbtl.net and then I think click the contact us or I think you just pull down the drop down menu in the top left and you'll see little icons for like Twitter and Slack and whatnot. Click the Slack button. If you don't know what that looks like or whatever, you can just email me like we'll we'll figure it out. We'll do this together. But actually, Slack is kind of a fun place to be. But no, as far as I know, I have not been in any trouble for my rude, crude drawing. I got one email here from HR that says something about short pinches, but I don't think that's related.

No, that's a separate thing. That's why we're not allowed to go back to St. Paul. But I guess what I was going to say is for a meeting where there's like 50 people, it's definitely much more helpful to do it on some kind of video conference because it's so many people. It's so many different voices. It's really hard to keep everything straight. I mean, there's a real practical, I think, element to that. And to be honest with you, there's a practical element or there's probably an improved experience for everyone, even for a meeting of five people where there will be PowerPoint. So it's like I'm not even arguing. I'm not saying that I think it's – it is less productive or something. I just am – because maybe I'm just in a mood this morning. I just it bums me out that now the default setting for almost every meeting that you're good that one is going to have in a professional environment has gone from being hey I'll give you a call or we'll call to here's the zoom link that I've just that somebody has just sent to you. And now for me, somebody who's incredibly vain, it just it just sort of it sparks a whole bunch of other thoughts in my head, including how do I coordinate my jog and my shower so that I can look presentable, but I'm not jogging too close to the event. So I don't look like a red tomato. And then, you know, does is my yellow little light lumen cube light, which, by the way, I do think is maybe the same company that's now sponsoring our football stadium. But anyway, is my little light charged up so I can have some yellow on me? And again, this is all in my own head and my own vanity. But it's just added another dimension to meetings in the modern version of life. And you're right. I could just call in. But if one person is calling in out of five, to me it feels like that one person is starting the meeting by saying I care a little bit less about this than everyone else, which is not a good look. And I don't want to make our colleagues feel like I don't care about the meeting. You know what I mean? So I guess I'm just kvetching here a little bit.

I don't think it's the same Lumen because I think Lumen, the field is not – it didn't change hands. It's just that CenturyLink changed its name to Lumen. So unless you have a CenturyLink light, I don't think that's the case. I do think that there was a shift in what happened. Like I said, I don't want to repeat myself too much, but I do think there was a shift.

what happened probably globally or nationally as far as how meetings are regarded since everybody began or most people started working from home at the beginning of the pandemic, because here's the deal. And also you and I are kind of in a unique position, I think, too, based on like our kind of traditional relationship with American public media and the fact that you and I existed as an entity of TBTL before we joined them. We always kind of operated out in our own little bubble a little bit and then we're like the a team we're like they're like the a team we're

soldiers of fortune we've escaped to the los angeles underground and if you if you need someone to bore you for one to two hours a day and if you can find us maybe you can get the tbtl team

that's right the t team um but anyway um so you know if you you and i maybe had to collaborate with people um back at the home office and maybe special projects maybe three four projects a year That would involve various meetings. But I do think there was a casual. I don't know if casual is the right word, but they would be check ins. And so we would we would do it by phone because most people would just I don't know, just run to the conference room or swing by somebody's cubicle and have a quick meeting. If you were all working in the same place now that everybody's working from home or like I say, many people are working from home. People who used to work in offices, they're taking their more traditional office structure and replicating it remotely. Right. So back in the day, these people that we'd be meeting with might – maybe it doesn't totally apply to today's meeting because we're spread across the country. But in the example that I'm trying to set here, like you might just all meet in the conference room. Somebody would show their – what do they call their PowerPoint slides now? Their decks, you know, and whatever, and then you would leave. Now, these are the folks who are meeting again, so they're recreating that experience on Zoom. So why wouldn't we all, like, meet in the virtual conference room, I guess? I mean, there is something that changed there. But I just keep repeating myself. I just think that especially I mean, listen, different meetings mean different things. But I kind of disagree with your comparison to a big meeting. I think a big meeting with 50 people or more, all the more you can just call in. Nobody's noticing who's actually on the line, who isn't, whose cameras turned on, whose isn't. Like that's an easier like I can listen to this meeting while I'm driving somewhere or jogging because this is a smaller meeting and it's very specific to our show. Yeah, maybe you can make an argument that maybe we should all be like kind of on the little bit more on the same page. But I still think that if it's a huge inconvenience, you can do your job today, which is participate in this meeting and use your brain without having your camera turned on or your computer.

I agree with you By the way my point about the big meeting Wasn't that you can't get away with I mean it's much you're right it's a much better Environment if you're somebody who wants to Sort of lightly interact With the content because there Are so many people I'm just saying if you're like Our boss and you're actually engaged With the meeting and you actually Want to run the most Sort of most useful version of the meeting I think that having Everybody in little boxes on a grid where you can At least see the name of them and kind of know who's there and kind of talk to them like if i was running a meeting with 50 people i would rather it be on zoom than be on the phone to be just less confusing for me yeah but i'm with you that that is for those of us who detest meetings that is a better environment as far as like i mean i have literally been jogging during a couple of those meetings early in the pandemic um which i think we talked about on the show i thought i had pulled off the perfect crime and you were like yeah no it's exactly what you were doing and it was very clear to everyone the other thing i would just say is what this basically comes down to and you kind of alluded to it is we work with a bunch of people who are professionals and who are used to getting dressed every morning and and in the normal times driving to an office and sitting at their desk and interacting with colleagues and going to conference rooms for meetings that's how normal people work and then when you're in a pandemic they continue to work as you said andrew in a similar fashion They schedule meetings They have those meetings They sit in front of their computer Or maybe behind their computer However that exactly works And they look at the screen And they do the meetings The problem is I have been operating in an absolute Just liminal state Of being employed for the last 10 years Where most of the time I'm just in some random room Somewhere talking into a microphone Not quite at my leisure But free from all of the constraints of a normal kind of nine to five existence. If I'm doing live wire, it's like a lot of this stuff. And then, I mean, in the before times, then for about three hours being hyper focused while on stage in a suit. But it's just what this really just highlights is that I have lost all ability to be even remotely professional.

Let me ask you this. Do you think it's interesting that there's another layer to this, which is a couple of people will be meeting with today probably are not like I'm going to say intimately familiar with TBTS. Like, you know, maybe it seems to me that maybe some of the folks I said TVTL, not APM. I would guess that a couple of people on this call might be doing some like, OK, now it's time to engage with this TVTL property. I should figure out what it's all about. So I would say that probably two shows that they're most likely to listen to would be yesterday's and today's. Now, I will make sure not to publish today's show until moments before our meeting begins, but there is a chance.

Is that what it's come down to now? We have to basically drag our feet on posting the show so that our colleagues won't hear it and be offended or annoyed when we have a meeting. Is that really how this now works?

It would time out that way. I mean, I wouldn't slow walk it for a really long time because – but, I mean, our meeting begins around the time that the show posts every day. anyway it's right at one o'clock which is usually the time that i'm hitting the final button to get this thing to the internet so um i think it'll just kind of work out that way but um you know i could also see a world where uh you know we get off the meeting and they're like okay i'm gonna do some more of my tbtl homework i wonder what that wonder what the fellas talked about on the

show today and then they hear all of this but i mean again i mean i think like you know yeah i stand by this the point of this whole thing is that i am a person who has a very hard time now Meeting even the minimum requirements Of being a semi-professional Employee It's not even about our colleagues It's really about me and how All I have to do outside of this I mean I have about 20 things I have to do today Related to my various gigs but as far as TBTL life goes all I have to do is this show With my friend Andrew And then look semi-presentable And kind of Engaged and turn on a webcam In my house for what is scheduled to be A half hour and just be pleasant that's not a high bar and even that feels like i may not get over that bar

today can i offer a suggestion i came across something yesterday medication and um is there a medication that you should be on um i was looking for i was just like you know i was looking for commercials for the show prep for yesterday's after oh i'm sorry that i i was no i was i was

flying so high on my uh my having known exactly the commercials that you were referring to like two weeks ago or two shows ago for after these messages and so i got real cocky yesterday when you had another question about a commercial and i sent you a link from ispot and i was like you did it again burbs and then i was totally wrong no no actually maybe me if there's time

and interest we can talk about that after the break because i could put out a call for this commercial that i'm looking for not that it really matters i did that on after these messages too i spent a long time trying to track down a specific commercial that just ran during the holidays and i just can't find the right search terms for it but um what i was going to say was in going through um when you're going through like what the computer must think are somewhat random videos it starts suggesting some weird things and it it suggested like a two and a half minute clip from the howard stern show i'm gonna put this at maybe i don't know early 2000s and it was um the producers took a bunch of clips of howard imitating his mom but then reassembled them so they could prank a heating company is that a famous one or is that just i don't know

that specific bit but it's something they do on the show a lot which is they'll take howard talking about something they'll cut it up into sort of statements and then they'll prank call you know various a lot of times they'll prank call like internet call-in shows and stuff you know there are it's people would be shocked to know not this is where you're trying to take this but people would be shocked to know that there are productions that are even more low profile than ours that are going on all the time on the internet it'll be like a few friends who have decided that they're going to jump on uh you know i don't know what platform it would be but then they start taking calls but no one ever calls in so these are the places that the producers it's often Sal and Richard will call because they're the only places that will pick up and they're kind of like poor

man's Alex Jones type of shows a lot of times a lot of times yeah anyway all of that is to say do you think the people on this call today would be interested in hearing less from you and more from Howard's mom because you could either grab that tape or you could get one of those voice distorters that you put on the phone, and you could just do it. I mean, you've been listening to Stern for long enough. I think I could do it.

You know what he uses for that? By the way, we are super serving a P1 named P. Fletch.

Yeah, I was going to say, yeah.

Our colleague and friend, Phyllis Fletcher, who is the world's biggest Howard Stern fan. Interestingly enough, you know what he uses for that voice when he's doing an impression of his mom is just a megaphone.

Oh.

And he's just talking through it into the microphone. and it's...

It's very kind of like Phil Hendry-ish to me, and it is a real skill, I have to say, or like a real talent, I should say. Like he can go for hours in the persona of his mother or in this kind of trance state where he's channeling the things that his mother would be saying, and he's really, really good at it. Like it's an improv skill or an improv talent that is actually pretty entertaining. But I would be more than happy today if you'll allow me to call in on the phone and not the Zoom. If they see me on camera, it'll be a dead giveaway.

That would be funny, too, though, if you had a megaphone.

I'll do my impression of Howard Stern doing an impression of his mother, Ray Stern. Howard. Enough with the carrying on. Et cetera, et cetera. If I had a megaphone, I think I could get pretty close to the real thing, but I don't. And so I will – well, that's what I need to do between the end of this show and when we have our meeting a little bit later today. I've got to go find a megaphone somewhere in the greater Portland area.

Or because here's – I was very tempted to buy something a couple of weeks ago when I was listening to some comedy bang-bangs with Genevieve on our road trip. They were doing their end of year, like they do this huge four part end of year best of these shows where they also talk about what went on in the background of because it's an improv show and they never really tear down the fourth wall until these shows at the end of the year. And so you have Scott and Paul F. Tompkins and every year they do it and they review all the things they did. And Paul F. Tompkins was talking about this bit he did where they called him up and asked him to improv on the spot. He wasn't supposed to be on the show that day, but somebody had summoned one of his characters. And so they frantically text him during the show, and they say – Scott says, hey, can you join us? And he's like, yes, I have this new toy that I want to test out, which is a microphone that is essentially an old-fashioned telephone handpiece that plugs directly into my board or my computer. I don't know if it's USB or what. I don't have you could ask him you have his contact information I text him but I was thinking I want one of those so bad that was one of those things where I want the technology so bad and then Genevieve says yeah but you don't improv and then I'm like oh yeah like you know like what what you need is the talent first and then you buy the tools you need to to you know support that but instead I just want the tools I don't have the talent I want a telephone microphone so bad Luke But then that would seriously change the dynamic of TBTL if we started looking for ways to use it.

I never ask myself, do I have the talent for this, for anything? I will buy expensive tools because I'm trying to do one project, you know, particularly at the Bellingham house. And it's like, do I know how to make a compression cut for molding, for crown molding? I don't know, but I need this chop saw that's $200, some sort of level built into it. because I'm much more tools before talent as a general way of being in the world.

You always mention your outdoor winter. You're like, hey, want to hike a mountain with me? Because I have all the materials for it.

That's right. Thanks to sponsor BackCountry.com, Andrew. You and I, we could build a snow cave, and I don't need to be written up in the New York Times over it because if it doesn't work out, we'll get on our snowmobile and we'll drive out of there. Call back to a show from last week. Anyway, let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, we will bring you the latest on all of the stocks that are moving around in quite a volatile fashion. Because, again, much like the weather, much like the inauguration, there's almost nothing of more value to the listeners one to two months from now than the exact stock price of AMC at 9.48 a.m. West Coast time on this Wednesday. I mean, that is a very evergreen piece of information I think we can both agree.

Well, we could do live breaking coverage of the inauguration again if you prefer to do that.

I plan to bring that up, by the way, with our colleagues later today. What you don't understand about TBTL is we are able to bring people news that is both not well described and also months old. That's the TBTL difference. All right, back with more in just a moment. Let's thank some donors of the day. Instead of buying options for a stock that's being artificially inflated, they're taking their hard-earned money and they are contributing it to American public media which then contributes some of that back into our bank accounts as pay for doing this job and we absolutely wouldn't be here doing it without folks like Laura Evans in Addison, Texas. Laura, thank you so much. Also, Matt Bookman is in San Jose, California. Then we've got Kevin Lynn Shumway in Layton, Utah. Did you drive through Layton, Utah on your way to the Salt Flats?

That doesn't ring a bell to me, but possibly, who knows, maybe.

Did you guys stay? Did you end up actually, like, overnighting in Utah, or did you just pass through on your way to the Grand Canyon?

Yes. You know what? Oh, Walsh. You know, when you're on a road trip, you think, oh, I'll never forget the names of these towns. There's a piece of me in them and a piece of them in me now. Yeah, by the way, I was leaving pieces of me around. Yes. Wow. Easy, Jewel. Yeah. But, you know, I can't remember the name of the town.

I love how much you didn't get that joke, but you just went with it.

No, Jewel, what's her piece of? Oh, pieces of me, Andrew. I just thought Jewel would be kind of off your radar. Not her first record, but it's just kind of a big deal when we're in high school. But anyway, what I was going to say was we stayed right near the Salt Flats, like two or three miles away from the Salt Flats. There's a little town in Utah that is a border town right on the edge of Nevada.

Am I getting no love for that, Jewel?

Well, I'm just trying to finish one sentence. There's a gambling town right at the edge of Nevada. at the Nevada-Utah border and I feel like you would know it because you tend to know about these types of things and we had texted our friend group from there and somebody said oh yeah my brother goes there about once a year for some gambling can you think of a Nevada Utah border town that is has maybe it had like five to seven like mid-sized casinos in it but would it maybe be jackpot yes you'd think I could remember a name like jackpot it was jackpot we stayed in a utah town right over the border from jackpot ah was it leighton leighton yeah why didn't you

kevin lynn shumway yes hey you know where i've stayed a time or two bellingham washington which is where jason hart is checking in my guess is that might be my friend from the airport jason out there in bellingham uh jason thank you so much and if it's a different jason i thank you as well and also what have you done for me lately at the airport yeah well other jason is you know hooking it up left and right uh rachel raider is in muckle teo washington beautiful muckle teo washington that has a casino too does it not no um it's confusing because there's a muckle shoot oh right casino which is down actually um south and um east of seattle also known as east some people call it say yeast some people say yee some people say yeet i say east um that's the muckle shoot casino but then there's also the talalip casino which is in marysville washington which is uh also a little bit confusing anyway rachel raider is in muckle teo washington and is donating to the show and then we've got eleanor johnson in belmont massachusetts who is also supporting the program and we really appreciate it thank you to all of our donors for keeping this thing going 3,346 episodes later. We would not be here without you.

Hello, and welcome to Top Story.

All right, just a quick update. We got into this as much as our, well, I don't want to speak for you, Andrew, as much as my feeble brain could really try to talk about, you know, large sort of financial markets and their movements i think i used up and by the way no emails yet this could be this could be explained by the delay uh you know between when we put the show out and when people hear it um no emails yet telling me how completely wrong i was about trying to describe what the process of shorting a stock is so that either means we have no listeners left or i was mostly accurate in how i described it so i i'm going to take that as a win and i'm going to mostly try to quit while we're ahead but that being said i do feel like we kind of were like don't you feel like yesterday morning my guess is was i was i hipping you to this game stop thing like was it kind of like the first you'd heard of it when when i put it on

the show sheet i'd written a small blurb about it for cnbc they come to me for stories like that but i hadn't dug quite as deep as the article you're referencing but i had done kind of just an overview thing because I have your catchphrase try to keep my eye on these things make a heck yeah's and then you play a sound effect no I had not I had not heard about it since I before I saw it in the show sheet yesterday and I will say that yeah then this morning I woke up and I breathe by it very quickly but I saw that oh yeah this is really in the zeitgeist like somebody was writing I believe an op ed for the Washington Post I could be wrong about that but something along those lines like what what the GameStop situation says about our current culture and the photo was of the people raiding the Capitol so like people are like writing opinion and think pieces connecting our current culture with this story so yeah having not read that op-ed piece i firmly disagree yeah you know i might even not be fully describing it correctly but my point is yeah who knows how much bullshit that is but my point is that this seems to be way more part of the zeitgeist than i thought when you were talking about it yesterday yeah i mean i i

was kind of searching for stories yesterday and then i saw this piece by alex kirschner in slate and i thought okay and then i read it and i was like this is kind of interesting and it just involves a brand GameStop that I felt like Andrew and I will have something to riff on about that but I was kind of like is this even really a topic for our show and then we do the show and then throughout the day it's just blowing up as a story like everybody's tweeting about it and weighing in on it and Elon Musk is tweeting out hashtag stonks which apparently put a lot of energy into the whole story because he's Elon Musk you know and so So even though it seemed noncommittal to me, I think he was just kind of LOLing at this what's been going on. In case you missed yesterday's show, basically GameStop, the company that sells video games in malls and stuff, that stock for that company has become the subject of this kind of little bit of a battle between the people, the sort of Wall Street mutual funds and hedge funds people who think that that company is not going to do well, So they bet against it. And then a subreddit that decided to bet on it. And and like, you know, the value I I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but I mean, it was at a certain point it was like GameStop's stock was like one hundred and forty one dollars up from three dollars or something. I mean, it was just like, in fact, it might have even been higher. They have driven the price way up. Well, they've also decided to do this now, I guess, with a couple of other stocks. AMC. Shares of AMC Entertainment jumped more than 300% this morning, Andrew, at the opening bell. Also, Bed Bath & Beyond. This is all coming out of this subreddit, WallStreetBets, where they're just going around finding stocks that they feel like are undervalued. and and also i again i just think that some of it has to do just with entertainment like it can't be a total coincidence i mean the thing with amc is and again this is i don't want to get into trying to analyze stocks because i don't know anything about it i i guess i technically own some stock but it's only to the degree that any of my retirement stuff there's somebody else investing it in stocks you know what i mean like i don't and and my 115 dollars by the way went down again overnight my 115 dollars worth of bitcoin which is not even a stock andrew why did i say that

anyway bitcoin taking a hit well i know it's flying too high there for a while is it just

correcting i mean again anything i say will be so embarrassing because i just don't understand the market economic or the market forces of this i just know that my little bitcoin is now 114 39 i believe i lost five dollars and 44 cents yesterday um but anyway the point is that uh what happened with amc was they got a a big infusion of bailout money which sort of shored up their finances enough that they're not like it would seem unlikely they're going to go out of business you know before the uh the vaccine is more widely distributed so that was a piece of real sort of financial news uh and then i guess you know the um the the folks that uh are liking to do some short pinches basically uh you know they want to get in and drive the price of the stock up one because i mean there's some money to be made for them but two because i just think they like messing with these uh big financial types in fact uh one of the things i i read in one of these articles was that there's a couple of uh particular like hedge fund managers that the that the this subreddit just doesn't like just on a personal level and so and i don't have the names of those hedge fund managers but they basically like it would appear that what they do is they just figure out what are the stocks that these hedge fund managers these particular like couple of dudes we don't like what are the stocks that they have bet heavy against and then what can we do to make the price of those stocks go up so that those dudes are getting pinched and have to sell it almost feels like they they're just sort of trolling these guys now i am not we

for these hedge fund managers Argentina because they're beyond wealthy and are doing fine but it's just kind of funny how sort of how personal and quirky this whole thing has gotten then the other big conversation online is like you have a lot of like stock knowers saying this should be looked into this is collusion or this is you know this should be regulated in some way you can't just get a bunch of people on the internet getting together and deciding to do something and then everyone on the internet is saying what are you talking about this is exactly how the stock market It worked. It's just not happening in a boardroom somewhere or some cigar filled back chamber of some, you know, hoity toity club in New York City. It's just happening out there on Reddit. And like there's nothing illegal going on. And again, I don't know enough about this, the law around this, but the sense I have is that this is there's nothing happening here that hasn't been happening for for millennia. It's just now happening with a different group of people, and the rich, mostly white guys who are used to this being their move are not liking it.

The gatekeepers suddenly don't like what's going on, and they don't have as much control as they once did. It's hard not to get behind that from just a kind of cultural perspective. Here's my question for you As we continue to talk about this story And we talk about you know Stocks and hedge funds and all these things Are you and I at a level where we can Start referring to Wall Street as the street Because that's where I'd like That's kind of where I'd like to get I want to get to the street Well that's your CNBC blog I'm as real as the street Andrew Walsh's Financial Musings That is that you think you know what i am glad to know that you are following my work over there thank

you um i want to let you know andrew that and this has been coming up on the show kind of a lot actually it's just been coming up on a every couple day sort of basis during the pandemic because i think it's something that's happening to all of us which is going into say a grocery store and feeling frustrated around how everything's working or not working uh in terms of people obeying the rules etc but even before that we have talked a lot about like how i've talked about how impatient i am now and how i'm trying to ask myself in situations am i late for something is there a reason why i'm having this intense feeling um other than i'm just i've just become a spoiled brat right like you know there are the times when you have to get somewhere at a certain time and it can be frustrating if people are sort of dawdling in front of you but most 90 percent of the time i just don't like being delayed for reasons that i can't quite put my finger on well this is an article from a website called nautilus written by chelsea wald a freelance writer in vienna it's actually an old article it's from 2015 but it just came through my algorithm of this thing pocket that i follow and i thought it was interesting um in it chelsea is writing about something called pedestrian aggressiveness syndrome um which is uh this university of hawaii the psychologist leon james came up with this and it sort of measures or ask while walking in a crowd do you find yourself acting in a hostile manner which includes staring presenting a mean face moving closer or faster than expected and or do you find yourself enjoying quote thoughts of violence um and if that's happening you are you are charting on the pedestrian aggressiveness syndrome scale. What Chelsea goes into this article, though, is that being impatient is something that is actually an evolutionary trait that we have. And scientists think it goes back to when we were largely foraging for our food and for different resources. And you had to have something in your brain that told you when your time was being wasted. So you had to kind of know that we're out here, we're looking for this particular berry, but there's none of these berries out here, and now I don't want to do this anymore. This is a bad use of time. And the people who didn't have that internal clock or whatever, that internal impatience, they just stayed out there, they didn't get enough berries, and they died. So we have this kind of genetic programming to make us want to be impatient, but the problem is it's actually getting way amped up. They think that the speed of human movement from pre-modern times to now has increased by a factor of 100. So we actually – we literally move faster now than we did before we had – I mean I guess it would make sense. Cars and planes are going to move you around faster, but we're just – everything is sped up. I don't think that's a huge surprise to people.

But what's happening is it's messing with our internal clock. So this guy named Mark Whitman is a psychologist at an institute in Germany. And he basically says.

that our experience of time is subjective and so uh basically what happens is if something bad is happening like we don't have in our mind a specific uh clock in our brain but we do have an ongoing feeling in our body that's our body thinks is measuring time and that refreshes about every second and that's how we get the sense of how long we've been in a situation and what happens is if we're in a traumatic situation like let's say you're afraid of spiders and you're in a room with a spider your brain is making a ton of memories it's remembering everything because you're afraid you're agitated you're heightened and so the more memories that are being made the more little snapshots that your brain is doing because it's amped up the longer time feels so when you're waiting in line and you're frustrated it feels like 20 minutes when it was only two minutes because you're agitated because your brain is noticing everything it's like totally amped and turned on so it this is not just like you andrew or me i think you're less impatient at the grocery store than i am you're more about rules being followed i'm more about violating the rules but then being mad that it's taking too long but for me standing in line and just feeling this is so boring and forever taking that's an actual thing my brain is doing that's in some way related to evolutionary me which doesn't make it okay but at least explains it the worst is when you're

stuck in line behind a spider then it's just like triggers so many things i i'm stalling because i have several things i want to talk to you about that i feel are tangentially related to all this let me start with another road trip story because i think this this might be off by a click but i think it sort of speaks to the same kind of brain function when we were driving one of the beautiful things about this trip that I really embraced and I think Genevieve did as well was this is the first time she and I were going somewhere well I mean with the exception of like some family visit road trips that happened on the east coast a really really long time ago this is the first time we were traveling somewhere for fun where we didn't have to rush to the airport like for me like traveling is like you know I'm a little anxious about airport travel and getting there on time and clearing security and then clearing this hurdle in that hurdle there was something very luxurious about just being on our own schedule going down to the Grand Canyon and knowing that we could stop whenever we wanted and all of those things. And to that end, a lot of the roads I was driving on were 70 miles an hour, some were even 80 miles an hour. A lot of these like kind of rural highways, which are just two lane roads, but they're in the middle of nowhere. And you could go 80 miles an hour. Well, sometimes, you know, I don't like causing traffic, But assuming that there's nobody behind me, I didn't feel a need to always go the speed limit as fast as the speed limit. Right. Like I found myself at times like looking down and be like, oh, my God, I'm only going 75. I'm wasting that five miles an hour. And I'd have to kind of remind myself to go faster. And then sometimes I'd be like, well, it doesn't matter. I don't have to go faster if I don't want to just whatever. Sure. But on the occasions when you're driving through a like a city or some sort of a population area, let's just say I'm cruising along. I'm going 70 and the speed limit is 70. I don't feel a need to speed. Don't feel a need to speed. That's my answer to Sammy Hagar's song. I can drive 45. But then when other cars are around me, suddenly I start speeding. There is something about cars being in my way or cars being around me where I'm like, well, I need to be in the fastest lane here. I need to get part of it maybe is about that rule following thing. I really don't like it when people are poking around, driving slow in the passing lane. Although I will say once you get out of Seattle, that drops significantly. People out on the road really know like if they're not passing, get over to the right. It was a beautiful thing to see. It reinforced my feelings about humanity. But anyway, there was something about it where if I was by myself, I didn't have to go 75. I'd be good at 70, but then suddenly a bunch of traffic is around and I got to be passing. I got to be passing. I got to go faster, faster. Like there was something triggered in my brain about other people around me going slower.

Yeah, I was having some of that when I was driving around Texas too, which was like – not that I was actually going – like taking my sweet time, but it was – I get really mad when people tailgate me. I don't get really mad, but I just get kind of anxious around it. so like if i was driving fast and somebody came up behind me even if i was exceeding the speed limit and they want to go around me sometimes i would want to just like stay in the i mean i guess let me ask you this andrew is it your contention and maybe this is i mean this is i guess technically the law let's say that it's a 70 mile an hour speed limit and i'm going 80 which is not a great idea it's probably unsafe but it's a big open road somewhere in texas Thank you. I'm going 80, and I'm in the left lane because I'm going past the people in the right lane who are going 65 or whatever, the right lanes, and someone comes up behind me, and they want to go 90. Is it my responsibility to get over and let them go 90, even though 90 is now 20 miles over the speed limit?

I get over when you can. I feel like you don't always have to be as fast. I mean, now we're getting into just like my personal rules, which why would you want to follow those? I'm a basket case. But I feel like in the scenario that you're talking about, as long as you're like, let me let me let me put myself in the perspective of the car that wants to go faster. If there's a two lane highway, you know, two lane going the same direction and the car in front of me isn't going as fast as I want it to. But it is passing the cars on the right. You're like, well, whatever. Like they're passing the cars on the right. They're doing what they're supposed to be doing. and then you just got to trust that when they've passed that final car they will get over to the right and then you can continue on your way and as long as there's good faith that people know like yes I'm passing but then I'll get over and let you pass my problem is and it does seem to be very concentrated up up here in the Pacific Northwest I don't it must not be emphasized in school as much because people just seem to like be in the left-hand lane going the same exact pace as the traffic in the right hand lane, just causing buildup behind them for literally no reason other than like, I don't know, I'm socks and sandals guy. And I just feel like being in

this lane and you can't tell me not to. Did you and Vives have to remind yourself a few times on this trip that you were on vacation and that you didn't have to be anywhere at a super specific time? Like, was that take a while for you to kind of like sort of decompress into that mindset?

that weirdly not so much and even as i'm talking about this and i'm getting all like aggro road rage andrew here i don't even think we had any moments of like frustration with another driver or like there was no like even like hint i think of road rage there's one guy who like in utah his lane was ending and he just like sped around me on the right and basically cut me off if i hadn't slammed on the brakes then it would have been bad news bears like that really sucked so i honked and then i hope it wasn't kevin lynn shumway um oh i think it was right outside of they have a 10 sticker um they they did layton thank you latency trying to remember the name of that time um anyway but for real like that one quick moment that lasted 10 seconds and the person was a jerk to me and then we just let it go like we didn't get all like aggro or whatever like there was not a lot of um no honestly we both like really slipped into just like all right Now, on the way back, we had time constraints. We had to drive 11 and a half hours the first night on the way home and then leaving us nine hours, I believe, for the second leg because of the way our trip was broken up and where we wanted to spend our actual anniversary date. That's why it ended up being that way. So we put in some really long, long haul days at the end to get home. But even that, like Genevieve even said, because, again, it had been so long since we went on a road trip of any kind together. she was saying maybe on day two or day three like how fun it was she's like oh yeah but you know i know we'll get into a we'll bicker at some point especially when time is of the essence i was like don't have that attitude and no we never and you guys had an argument about that i said shut up don't poison the moment no everything was like fine like i gotta say we were remarkably chill and and kind of had the i think kind of had the vibes we're supposed to have i'm lucky i guess i

was i didn't even mean as much driving as just like going into stores like i found myself in texas i'm sorry going into like a mini mart and being impatient even though all i had to do on that particular day was head towards where the airbnb was and get there whenever i got there and yet i'd be like are we really doing this in this chevron right now you know like that was a part of my brain that i had a hard time turning off even though it wasn't real life for me i didn't

have to be anywhere yeah you know i'm i don't remember any moments like that on the vacation i feel like we were pretty chill um i will say though you you give the example of being at the grocery store and you don't have to be anywhere but you just feel like this is so long and forever taking and you get anxious there have been a few times like that for me where i have to like consciously remind myself wait a second it's like there's literally nowhere else i can't even go right now the grocery store is the only place i go i'm not in a hurry i don't have a meeting to get back to this is the last thing i have to do for the day before i you know go home and play a dumb video game or something just chill out and then once i remind myself of that i actually like i really enjoy the moment and then i and sometime well this is like real too boy scouty but then i even try to like make sure that you know if there's somebody who looks like they are in more of a hurry or somebody with like a bunch of kids hanging off of them as they're trying to get by I try to buy the kids cigarettes. I sell them at a higher at a higher rate. There's some danger in there for me, some legal danger. But once I remind myself of that, I'm like, oh, yeah, no, I like being here. This is my grocery store. And then I'm just like nicer and more forgiving to everybody around me.

This last story that we'll do today, it's weird because as the listeners of the show know, I got a lot of animal empathy thoughts and to the point where like even when I'm looking at tick tock now if there's anyone like i saw this video i basically next video so fast on tick tock if animals are doing anything other than just being cute like as in hey we have a pet beaver and they're trying to build a fake dam in the house or whatever like there was a video of these like very beautiful hunting dogs and they had basically cornered a huge like puma or mountain lion on kind of a cliff and i assume that the person who put the video up was the hunter or the the owner of these hunting dogs but i was like i don't want to nobody wins in this situation i do not want to see this big cat getting scared for no reason it's just living its life out in the woods you got to send a bunch of dogs after it i also don't blame the dogs they're just trained for what they're trained for anyway point is i'm like extremely sensitive to this stuff now and yet when i read this headline target drops uh coconut milk over allegations of monkey labor the first thought i didn't have i didn't have the thought of like these poor monkeys i thought boy if i was a monkey picking coconuts would be the best job i could have now pita is involved in this and pita says that this particular company in thailand uh is exploiting monkeys and lying about it. Costco has also dropped this particular coconut water, by the way. It's called Chowco, coconut milk, I should say. Now, the actual, like, conditions, and I tend to believe PETA on this because I'm a bleeding heart when it comes to animal stuff. The monkeys are forced to pick coconuts and perform for tourists, and that they are tethered to chain, or chained to old tires, which is not cool, or confined to cages barely larger than their bodies. That is also not cool. I'm sure if I went there, I would be horrified. That being said, I didn't even know you could get monkeys to pick coconuts. I didn't know you could train them to work. And my thought was if you did this in a better way, if you didn't make the monkeys live in horrible conditions or cages that were too small for them, this is an amazing solution. I mean it's probably not good for the job market, monkeys stealing our jobs. But like if you were a monkey And you were going to have to do a job Wouldn't picking coconuts be at the top of your list Don't you think if the monkeys lives were generally good They were being fed They were being loved and cared for And then what they had to do was For like five six hours a day They had to climb coconut trees And pull down coconuts That seems like an ideal job for them

I'd like to be a monkey foreman Maybe like that would be even better right If you could be in charge

Like, are you a human or are you a monkey? No, I'm a monkey. Are you a human in charge of monkeys? You're a monkey in charge of monkeys.

Yeah, you're saying if you're a monkey, what's the best job? Is it picking coconuts? And I'm saying that that is near the top, but also the foreman of the monkey coconut picking operation really has the best of both worlds because the monkey is there on site, gets to enjoy the labor to a degree, but isn't putting in as much of the elbow grease.

You know that monkey is smoking a cigarette Has a hat on Maybe a pipe

Is there any chance it's a pipe or is that too much

That's the owner of the coconut plant The monkey owner is a sort of a Dr. Zaius type

He's smoking a pipe

He's behind a He's working in an office And then he's got his foreman Who used to just be one of the monkeys That were picking coconuts but showed more promise And now that monkey is out there on the field But he's he's, you know, he's a he's a real Darth Crumbo. He's kind of a little bit yells at the other monkeys. He's smoking a cigarette. He's, you know, he's sort of he's part of the problem, if you will, of this whole thing. I mean, I'm sort of I mean, I am joking. And of course, I can only say that if I were to see a monkey being mistreated in this way, I would be really bummed out. But I was it was genuine news to me that you could even train monkeys to work in an agricultural environment. And again, my thought was, let's not have this be a negative. Let's figure out a way that the monkeys can have a nice life that's fun for them and also pick fruit. That just seems like what they would be doing anyway.

Yeah, maybe a good job with benefits and worker protections. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm not sure what like what would a monkey and there's so many different kinds of monkeys.

don't know anything about them and genevieve gets mad at me because i call all i call everything a monkey even if it's an ape or a chimpanzee and i don't know the difference like i'm really well dumb i think is the word we're looking for i don't know the difference either by the way i mean

i know that the uh orang utan that is the old man of the forest or old man of the jungle that's what orangutan means and orangutan is are they that's an ape right well i just told you i don't know i figured that one you would know that's like name a beach boy song even people that don't know

the beach boys could probably name like surf and safari surf and safari um anyway i would have guessed i would have gone with god only knows but um who knows i i don't think there's been a time

in the last five years that i've listened to the song god only knows and gotten through it without At least tearing up a little bit It is just One of the most beautiful I don't know why I find it heartbreaking because it's an overall Positive song You know well although I guess the line I may not always love you But sure as there are stars above you Do you think that I mean that's I assume Brian Wilson had to have been the one I know Mike Love didn't write that song Right so Brian Wilson probably wrote that song

That's my assumption I mean this is all Pet sounds right which all has that So it's kind of got a mourning quality to it.

Do you think that he went with I may not always love you because it was part of the message of the song about how complicated relationships are or because it just rhymes with stars above you?

Probably the second, probably the latter there. Yes, I think it's a rhyming thing.

It's an intense statement, though, because it's like God only knows what I'd be without you. I mean, that's a that's a really that's a powerful statement to somebody else and a very loving or at least a statement that makes me think of a loving relationship where someone really appreciates someone. But then when but when you also say I may not always love you, it's like, damn, this just got complicated.

I was I'm looking, you know, I don't I'm not good at paying attention to. Oh, well, first of all, I'm looking at the lyrics for God only knows by king and country like that's no good. What is king and country?

Those are the two things I serve.

Anyway, I don't analyze lyrics as much as you do, and so I don't have any good answers for you at all about monkeys, apes, Brian Wilson, Mike Love, the Beach Boys. I'm just like I'm out of my element, and I feel like I could flounder around and try to make it sound like I know what I'm talking about, but I don't.

I may not always love you, but as long as there are stars above you, you never need to doubt it. I'll make you so sure about it. God only knows what I'd be without you if you should ever leave me though life would still go on believe me again Brian getting a lot of mixed messages here the world could show nothing to me so what good would living do me God only knows what I'd be without you it just feels like it's kind of back and forth he's saying I need you so much but also I mean you know life would go on

believe me I guess he's saying I may not always love you but so long as there are stars in the sky i will so i mean we're talking about such a such a extreme time and place it's such an extreme situation that i would stop loving you like you don't need to worry about this like i think that's

the oh i see so in other words when he says i may not always love you he means like in 10 billion years when the sun burns out and some kind of you know event horizon unfolds involving our universe and there are no more stars because the universe has Big Crunched or whatever. That would be the time when I... Also a HR violation. When I don't love you. Short pinches and Big Crunches. Welcome to a Wednesday edition of TBTN. Could that be a show title, Short Pinches and Big Crunches?

Maybe, I think so. I guess we'll probably have to run it by the lawyers.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man. It's not from a female.

All right. Any emails or V-mails that you're interested in today, sir?

Yeah, I got several things for you here. Let's start with a little audio, right? You like audio. This isn't. I do. Audio medium. Sure. John says, gentlemen, yesterday on the show, you talked about the legend Kevin Harlan. Of course, that's the NFL announcer who I believe works for CBS. And you also talked about a instance where Westwood one, right? Yeah, that's what it but isn't there a connection there? Westwood.

Oh, maybe you think I would know as a person who sort of works for CBS.

I feel like there's some mixed DNA there that might, you know, with all the conglomeration. Yes, I might not. But I always I always just equate those in my head. I don't know. Anyway, so Kevin Harlan, NFL announcer. John says you talked about him. You also talked about an instance where there is a cat on the football field. We played the Tony Romo audio of that. But John says you didn't come across Harlan. amazing call of the cat on the field so i don't know if this is the same cat on the field situation or if this is a different cat on the field situation according to john's email it sounds like it's the same situation just a different call would you like to hear a little bit of this please yes and by the way that could totally that could that could have happened because

kevin harlan would have probably been doing the radio broadcast yeah so exactly roma was doing the tv version and kevin harlan's maybe watching the same event i would love to hear let's take a

listen to this oh there's a cat a black cat is taking the field a black cat oh you know I think

this might not be the same because that was not a black cat um and and there's this audio has a photo of the black cat this is a different cat than I was looking at yesterday for what it's

worth oh there's a cat a black cat is taking the field a black cat is running from the 20 to the near side the 10 from the 39 in Dallas here's a short throw down the middle caught by Ingram caught at the 35 went to the 30 now the cat running the other way and so is Ingram at the 30 to the 25, to the 24-yard line of the Dallas Cowboys. It's a catch run of 15. Now the cat is stopped at the 50. So is it bad luck for the Giants? Is it bad luck for the Cowboys? I don't know, but they've stopped playing. The players with hands on hips are watching the cat run and zigzag all over the field. The black cat is at the other end of the field. He's at the 8. The black cat doesn't know that it was last Thursday that was Halloween. Thursday night football, not Monday night football. He's a little bit late. Now he is sitting and looking. Now he's at the five. Who brought the cat? He's walking to the three. He's at the two. And the cat is in the CDW red zone. CDW, people will get it. Now a policeman, a state trooper has come on the field, and the cat runs into the end zone. That's a touchdown.

That's red zone efficiency right there. That cat is 100% on converting for touchdowns in the red zone. You love to see it.

I was also expecting an apology for a homophobic slur in there for some reason as well. Based just on how things tend to go in this world? Just the way he was integrating the football call with the cat action at the same exact time at the beginning of the play. It reminded me of who was the Reds announcer who had to give the on-air apology. Oh, Tom Brenneman. Oh, Tom Brenneman. That'll be a home run for Castanellos. Who was that? I don't even remember.

Yeah. And he was in the – I mean I think most of the listeners probably remember this, but he was in the midst of – well, he had said a horrible homophobic slur when he didn't realize he was actually being sent – his voice was on air. and so then a few innings later he had to do an apology and he basically while he was doing the on-air apology which didn't feel very genuine he then also continued to call the game and it was well should I just play it here because yeah yeah no it's far why not some of the best oh my goodness sorry I've got a little bit of email music going in the background I'm going to stop that And now, the world's least convincing apology for having said something absolutely terrible on live television. Oh, whoops, that's actually, I was about to play. Oh, no, you're about to actually play the slur, which I'm quite glad I didn't. Here is the only slightly less bad is the not heartfelt apology.

Through this game, as Holland takes over on the mound, I made a comment earlier tonight that I guess went out over the year that I am deeply ashamed of. If I have hurt anyone out there, I can't tell you how much I say from the bottom of my heart, I'm so very, very sorry. i pride myself and think of myself as a a man of faith because you know historically the christian

faith has been very friendly towards uh gay people so i mean that's a definitely that's

you're bulletproof tommy as there's a drive in a deep left field by castellanos it will be a home run and so that'll make it a four nothing ball game i don't know if i'll be putting on this said said again i don't know if it's going to be for the reds i don't know if it's going to be for my bosses at fox i'm going to apologize for the people who signed my paycheck there you go let's

focus i want to should i apologize to the people who were hurt by this terrible slur that i said uh let it mean sort of but let me start with apologizing to the people at fox who signed

well i don't i think we've heard the good part so i don't know if you need to play more of it but yeah i'm not this part that is just beginning is the most infuriating part from an apology standpoint because he doesn't know who he's apologizing to or what he starts by saying Fox and then he starts he's saying I apologize for the people who signed my paychecks like he's you know speaking on their behalf but then he Lumps in people in the gay community Like he doesn't even know who or what He's apologizing for he's just He doesn't even know what to apologize for he's just An asshole

Who also in his mind Prioritized that the people watching Him apologize needed to Also be updated on the reds Going right or nothing right That's just like that was what he Prioritized in that Moment so and I'm happy To report that Tom Brenneman Is no longer one of the voices Of the Cincinnati Reds It is true

That'll be the first thing a lot of people think of When they hear his name And by the way

We don't need to relitigate it That's not something That you casually say for the first time In your life into a hot mic During a television broadcast That my friend is the tip of the iceberg Of a deep deep Amount of homophobia yes like to even say that word aloud ever is horrendous and i'll tell you what that ain't the

first time but anyway um where were we i have another i mean i have a lot of emails but we can't get through them all but i'll share this one with you i thought this was fun this is from eric and culver city a place that's uh close to both of our hearts your favorite bar in the world is in culver city i lived there for a while anyway um eric wrote in larry king bagel story in three acts are you ready for this uh hey boys after listening listening to you talk about larry king's passing on monday's show i thought i'd share my favorite la celebrity sighting story in his three parts act one shortly after moving to la in 2014 i stumbled upon a great bagel place in beverly hills called brooklyn water bagel and quickly became a regular there their whole shtick is that they brooklynize the water and they make a showy production out of it but the bagels are legit it's not the water when i mentioned the place to a local friend he tells me that larry king started the business and owns the restaurant act two a month or so later i'm stopping in for a mid-morning nosh and i see larry king sitting alone at a booth in the nearly empty restaurant reading and eating a bagel he looked great i wish i had noted what kind of bagel he was eating act three several months later i'm back and standing in line scanning the walls i I notice a series of plaques with the names of, quote, New York greats, such as Frank Sinatra, Jay-Z, and others. As I look more closely, I see that one of the plaques has the name of Larry King himself. So the upshot is Larry King moved to L.A. and started a New York-style bagel shop in which he regularly ate and which displayed a plaque commemorating him as a New York great. Honestly, I applaud it, and I haven't found a better bagel in L.A. That is from Eric in Culver City.

I wonder if that's the same place that Steve Proffitt was telling me about. In my mind, I thought it was a diner, but maybe it's just a bagel place. I wonder.

Yeah, maybe that is the same place. But then he also – am I – well, this is probably just a one-off that was maybe more for the cameras. But didn't Snoop Dogg take him to Roscoe's Chicken Waffles?

That would be very unsurprising. Can we – I think we need to acknowledge that Snoop Dogg is the master of the cross-promotion. between his, like, Martha Stewart friendship. I mean, Snoop Dogg is the go-to hip-hop person to pair with someone who seems unlikely for the purposes of promoting a product.

Yes. Bad Bunny. You know? Yeah, I know you love the Bad Bunny crossover.

Well, that one actually, to me, they're both musicians, and they both play in the sort of pop music reggaeton space. So that one actually, I'm thinking more like, yeah, him and Larry King, him and Martha Stewart, him and whomever I just think he's sort of the go-to for oh I wouldn't expect Snoop Dogg to be palling around with this person who seems to have nothing to do with the dog pound what's going on

with those murder charges by the way I'm just joking I actually don't know like somebody met it was probably on Levitard somebody mentioned well Snoop had a high-profile murder trial like early in his career right like well he was in jail yeah but not prison right he didn't

was he well i mean he was he was in jail when i think when um when his first album came out he had been only recently released from prison oh okay so we actually did serve i when you said

i thought maybe he was in jail while he was waiting a trial or something but he actually

did time in prison i believe he was doing time for something i don't remember what the thing was i mean that's a whole very complicated thing to unpack because i mean there was an incident at Heathrow Airport where his posse, his bunch of guys that travel around with him, beat somebody up, and that seemed like a really bad situation. I believe there was a thing that happened on stage in Washington State where somebody got on stage. It was during – I want to say it was – I forget. It was one of those big mega concerts.

Concerts were promoted by a radio station, I believe. Maybe it was Summer Jam. And there was a bunch of violence that was committed on stage by people that were in Snoop Dogg's crew. Like, I mean, that's the thing. It's like it's complicated. And I guess we're just like it's cute because he and Martha Stewart like to bud tend together or whatever.

Are they doing that now?

Well, I mean, I think Martha Stewart is now part of her. the latest um stuff around her is that she has been living you know out in her like estate in the country during the pandemic and that she really likes i don't know if it's cbd or weed but she she or she vapes or i don't know what she does but she's out there having the time of her life i don't know begrudge martha stewart by the way on that uh that she's associated with snoop dog i just it's complicated because we've all decided that snoop dog is just a kind of a friendly face but i i think it's more there's there's a little bit more complexity there around the life of one calvin brodus than uh than than the quick narrative would tell you i got an article here

actually from the la times from 1996 what i like about this is snoop's uh full name back then was snoop doggie dog that was his of course um birth name rapper snoop doggie dog one of the nation's Preeminent artists was acquitted along with his bodyguard Tuesday of first and second degree murder charges. Well, shooting death of a gang member.

I mean, I guess we in this case, we choose to go with the court. If the court acquitted him, then I guess, you know, then I guess innocent until proven guilty. It's funny because I say that because there are other people like O.J., for instance, who, you know, was also acquitted. Was that the final actual verdict? I forget what the technical where they came down. if it was a hung jury or if he was acquitted or if it was not guilty, but it's like I don't buy that in that particular case, the murder charge, but with Snoop, I don't know enough about the case. Yeah, I don't know anything really about that case. But there was something to it. I don't know. I try to be fair, Andrew, about these things, even though we deal with so much information, it's hard to really be an expert on any of it, but I try to be fair, as here's a drive into deep left by Castellanos. It'll be a home run, and so that'll make it 4-0 in this episode of TBTL, and we should get the hell out of here Before we say more dumb things

I don't want to make you cry So let's not go out with God only knows But would you be happy with wouldn't it be nice But that's also a sad That's got a very sad vibe to it too

Also some heavy Romeo and Juliet vibes Oh you mean just the song I don't mean it's inappropriate But I mean isn't the premise of that song Like we're young we can't get married Because we're legally not of age

Oh I didn't know that it was an age thing Well wouldn't it be nice if we were older then we wouldn't have to wait so long

but I don't think that the song is problematic I'm just saying Is Romeo and Juliet problematic? How about we play the Dire Straits version of Romeo and Juliet How about that? That's a song? That's a song I love that also makes me cry Every song makes me cry Andrew including weirdly Everything by Snoop Dogg

Oh well he's a murderer so what are you going to do?

Yeah how about I really thought I got the nose up with that Brenneman callback but no we're right back in it I know this seems so random But how about the Dire Straits song Romeo and Juliet Okay I got it here I bet you when you hear it you might recognize it Only because I'm sure I've played it on the show A few times because I was kind of obsessed With this song for a while What do you think about Dire Straits

I don't think about them very much They came up the other day because I Was dancing I was dancing in the kitchen but I was dancing some sort of blocky like for some reason i pictured myself like a like a minecraft character or a blocky man for some reason and in my head it evoked the uh money for nothing video do you remember that video they had like these very square characters i first i was doing some robot dance that like seemed like that and so i said to viz oh i'm i'm picturing myself like the character in that video and she didn't remember it so i dialed it up and i played it for it she said huh dire straits i'm I'm like, yeah, don't people sort of fetishize, like, Mark Motherbaugh or whatever?

Mark Knopfler.

Knopfler. Yeah, Motherbaugh is the Devo guy. Right. But both of them kind of, like, I feel like are associated with big acts, but then as solo artists, they're, like, super revered amongst musicians, and they score movies and whatnot, right?

There's a certain kind of generally white guy of a certain age who is not the same guy that's listening to The National necessarily, but he's maybe a little older than that guy, and he really wants to tell you about Mark Knopfler.

And Zappa, probably. That same person dabbles in some Zappa.

By the way, it never occurred to me how right you are that the computer rendering of the people in the Money for Nothing video is exactly the aesthetic of my— kind of minecrafty right like i dialed it up because i i wasn't i hadn't seen that video in decades but i was like telling thieves and she said i don't remember that i'm like i think so and we dial up the video and then yeah it's kind of got this proto minecraft vibe what was the

what was the weird owl version of money for nothing right what was the cover he did because

i only remembered that's right because he incorporated the video elements yeah he totally

He does it with the glowing headband and the guitar and the whole thing. But what was his parody?

I'm looking it up as we speak. We won't go out with this. Let's just take a little bit of a listen to this. Oh, you know what? I think that this may have been part of UHF as well. I could be wrong. I remember that. Okay. Yeah, he's at his desk, and he's starting to nod off. This is from the movie, but it's also the video, I believe. He's watching the Beverly Hillbillies Oh yeah

Little story about a man

That's right he just re-does The Beverly Hillbillies theme Oh my god this is so great The video is amazing We have to just go out with this Alright sounds good I'm good with this This is better than anything Mark Knopf But by the way if you want to cry later Listen to Romeo and Juliet Is this going to make you cry Andrew I already told you Everything makes me I mean The cement pond I mean Granny couldn't even swim They had a cement pond And she couldn't even swim Alright Thanks for listening everybody We will be back here tomorrow With more imaginary radio for you Until then Enjoy your Wednesday Stay safe Take care of yourselves Go eat a brungle And remember It's not the water And also Please remember No mountain too tall And good luck to all

Look at here people Listen to my story a little story about a man named jed you know something that poor mountaineer they say he barely kept his family fed now let me tell you one day he was shooting oh jed was shooting at some food went all of a sudden right up from the ground there well it came a bubbling crew Oh, that is, well, baby, you call it Black Gold and Texas Tea. He gonna move next to Mr. Drysdale and be a Beverly Himalay. Before you know it, all the kinfolk are saying, yeah, buddy, move away from there. That little clapper got his own cement pond. Power out.