Muse

This is Richard Splett, and I'm here to say, you should leave a message for me every day. Your name, your number, and what you need, now I'll get it back to you, yes indeed. Just wait for the beep. You know how to do it, then later on, I'll listen to it. Unless I'm asleep or lost my phone, either way, wait for the tone. Which you'll hear soon, unless this is broken, so I may not hear a single word you've spoken. So send an email, or text me too, to increase the odds that I'll connect with you.

I don't want people saying, uh, Andrew's a hero, or, you know, Andrew, he's king feminist, please.

Yeah, no one would ever say that about you. Oh. Um, what kind of rap do you do? Are you, like, sort of sing-songing a rap, like Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, or are you more like Streak, like Will Smith? Your mouth might be saying, hey, we cool, but your eyes are like, no, we not. Nice to meet you. No, it's not. It's all good. The story of this situation is, it's extremely personal.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

It's about creating positive vibrations in a sacred chamber.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. You paint your bald spot? What bald spot? Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center, high in the sky, above Portland, Oregon, where we had kind of a very mixed bag of weather this weekend. There was just moments of sunshine and spring feels and then also just torrential rain. It's kind of weird. This morning here on this Monday, it's a bit overcast, but otherwise dry. And I'll tell you what, I am feeling weirdly good.

I feel happy of myself.

For a Monday morning. I had a little bit of the Sunday scaries, as I guess we're now calling it, creeping in yesterday. But I got a ton of sleep last night. I was up early this morning and just, I slept so well last night. And I think it was because I had the window open. So I live, as I have now described, on the kind of right off of a very busy street here in Portland. And this bridge, the Burnside Bridge, that has a lot of traffic on it. And so I usually keep the bedroom window closed just for noise purposes. But I decided to try something last night. I opened the window. Then I also ran a fan. So to try to kind of even out the sound of the traffic noises. But I had one of those experiences I haven't had in years where I closed my eyes when it was time to go to sleep, and I opened my eyes, and it was two minutes before the alarm went off. So I'll have to run that experiment again tonight and see how it works out. I'll give you a full report tomorrow. As far as today's show goes, episode 3,374 in a collector series, We got a lot to talk about, including the interview that Harry and Meghan did with Oprah yesterday. Is this a thing people care about? I didn't know it was happening. I didn't personally watch it. But boy, when I fired up my Twitter dot com last night at about 8 p.m. local, it was the only topic anybody cared to talk about. So I guess we'll look at that. Luckily, I think Andrew watched it, so at least one of us knows what happened with it. I have been focusing on more interesting storylines from my own life, like the fact that on Friday they came to look at my dishwasher. Now that's interesting. And while I wasn't watching the interview with the Royals, or maybe the former Royals, I was watching so much television this weekend. I watched all of The Mandalorian. Here's some money. Go see a Star War. And all of WandaVision. Like yesterday, I went into a like a bender of of of of premiere television, of premiere kind of fantasy meets sci fi meets whatever those shows are. Spaghetti Western meets Bewitched. Anyway, watched a lot of TV this weekend, which most of you watched months ago, but I don't care. I just saw it, and I want to talk about it today. And if we have time, other personal revelations from my life include the fact that I am running a study using my own human body as to what will happen if you don't own toenail clippers. You're a gross person.

Will your body figure out some kind of solution to the problem? Or will one become like one of those sheep we were talking about?

who they find in the wilds of Australia overgrown with wool and incapacitated. Will that be me of toenails? I don't know. We'll talk about it with this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his drawings of the tall ships and for not wanting to talk about my toenails with me. He is Andrew Terry-Poo Walsh, and he is joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I have a question for you. You tweeted something over the weekend that you labeled as a true story. And I want you to know this was on Saturday that you posted this. I've been waiting to talk to you for over 24 hours now because it is so important to me that what you wrote truly is a true story and that you didn't just write true story as a punchline to make something funnier. Please tell me. Don't worry about the listeners. You and I know what the tweet is. We won't tell you what the tweet is. But just tell me it really was a true story because I found that delightful. I was having a birthday dinner with Genevieve yesterday. I pulled out my phone to read your tweet to her, Luke. That is better than a red heart, man.

Wait. It was Genevieve's birthday.

It will be tomorrow, but we had a little Sunday.

See, I'm also including your loved ones and life partners in the... See, that puts you in a pickle because you can't hate on me when I'm wishing Happy Blur's Day to my family if I'm having... But I want to answer your question about the tweet, too, by the way. But just happy early Blur's Day to Veeves. Absolutely 100% a true story. I had my nephews, Jack and Abe, hanging out with me on Saturday. So we were doing things that are fun to do with 8- and 10-year-olds, including going to Mount Tabor, where we walked around. And then also there's like a kind of a jungle gym, which was described later by Jack as being mostly for baby stuff. And I had a feeling it was a little bit it was a little young for them, but they still had some fun with it and did all kinds of physical feats that would literally kill me. Like I just watched them without even – they wouldn't know their core strength from an apple core, Andrew, but they can just do monkey bars and all manner of just like upper body strength and things that involve like doing pull-ups and chin-ups, and it doesn't even phase them. And I'm just looking at it like, God, getting old sucks. But anyway, we were at that. I was sitting on a bench. They were running around having fun. And these two kids that look like they're about maybe a little bit – well, they look like about 11 or so, kind of tweens. They are sitting at the bench that's next to me. And one of them has – they're wearing like – one's wearing like a Portland Timbers kind of kit. Like I thought maybe they'd been playing soccer, but I think that's just the style here. And the other kid was dressed in kind of like athletic clothes Like they maybe were doing some athletic-y thing before this But they both had their backpacks They sat down on the bench and they started eating their lunch And the one kid pulled out an apple and started eating I thought, boy, that's healthy And the other kid, I couldn't see exactly what he was eating But they were having a conversation And the one kid said, do you know what signs are? And the other kid said, huh? And he said, yeah, signs, like astrology Have you heard of astrology? And my ears pricked up, Andrew, because you and I were just talking about astrology and also the Z-plus system that Dan Harmon is proposing. So I'm like, I noted it because I was like, this is so weird. These children are talking about astrology. Like, this supports my point that astrology has really been a thing lately. And the one kid is explaining to the other kid what his older sister told him about astrology, which was about as much as I know about it. Like, there are these things about when you're born and what that means. And he goes, and I am a Libra, and that's why I can talk to people so easy. That's why I'm so charming.

I love – I mean, I just – we're not even to the best part yet, but I just love – it's so rare that I get to hear the world through the ears of an 11-year-old who learned stuff from his older sister. Like this is so great. And, yeah, you said that – have you heard of being a Libra? That's what I am, which is why I'm so charming.

he went off for a good 10 minutes on the word charming by the way he was like charming he goes i didn't think that was like they literally talked about the word charm and charming for he goes yeah charming goes i thought that was just like a word from movies and stuff i never even knew what that like meant but that's a libra thing and he's just like they're just talking and talking and then his friend who's engaged but not super interested and maybe i don't know if he was the more how do i put this he well his response was i don't know if he was like slightly if he was more mature or less mature than the kid that was talking about astrology but what he said was he goes you know my sign is d's nuts

i did not know that children in 2021 were still saying that like does that strike you like i'm

not somebody who ever until this weekend thought that was a funny response i don't think it's funny

in its original it's not funny if you and i are doing it to each other yes and honestly that was

um was that on the snoop dog or the dre record that was in a skit like whatever i didn't think that was funny that like i've never i've never really thought that was funny but just in my head picturing everything that you just filled in the details and again i only heard the story as

two short tweets which is one kid saying i i'm a libra that's why i'm so charming yeah my sign is these nuts 2021 kids on a playground how is that happening and why does it delight me so much

Well, I was so taken by the conversation, and I felt it's so necessary to tweet it out to the world before I forgot it that I started writing on my phone as I lost track of my nephews who had now gone over that hill. Another tweet said, has anybody seen my nephews? Yeah, exactly. Like my nephew Jack just went bombing down the side of the hill well past the playground area. And also I will mention my phone was on 1% of power, which was a problem because we needed – I needed the map function on my phone to work so we could go to Beaverton, Oregon later and get a pizza from DFTB who worked at the mod out there. So I was like very, very, very worried about my cell phone power. And yet in that moment, I decided to risk it all by composing those tweets, even if it meant that my phone died, because that was how that was the impression that that conversation made on me.

Well, it was a good allocation of resources, because otherwise, what would Genevieve and I have talked about over her birthday?

Tell Genevieve that's my birthday present. Over reporting on what the 11 year old set in Portland. And, you know, that's also just the kind of thing that because I don't have young kids that Saturday, first of all, it was such a fun day and it was I can you can feel things. And I'm not trying to. How do I put this? I'm not trying to weigh in. I'm not the CDC. I'm not trying to give guidelines and I'm not even trying to make a political statement or a health statement about what we should or should not be doing. But what I can tell you is that we – so we walked from my place down to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, OMSI. Is it industry or innovation? I don't know. OMSI, whatever that stands for. And it was just so fun to be outside and walking down this particular street near my place that I've never seen any of the places open. And it helps that it was a sunny day. And there's a lot of outdoor seating But also the rules have been relaxed Here in Portland to some degree And again I'm sure people could say That's a bad idea for a bunch of reasons Those reasons might be legitimate But I'm just telling you what my emotional experience was Walking around what's called produce row You would dig this Andrew If and when you come visit me We'll go down there It's like where all the produce gets dropped off I mean a lot of it for like New seasons and a lot of restaurants It's very industrial it's literally like cobblestone and along with the places where the the you know produce gets dropped off there are also these different some little restaurants cafes maybe bars what have you and walking with my nephews in the sunshine as people were sitting outside at tables just having a you know an afternoon drink or whatever it was really a strong i mean i was having a very strong emotional reaction to the whole thing um it was really really fun but i guess my larger point is like there was just a bunch of things that i wouldn't have done on a normal saturday by myself like walking to omsi and going on a submarine tour or going to mount tabor and sitting at the playground those are not things that i do by myself um and it was fun to get to do that and it gave me access to a whole new world including what the 11 year olds are up

to yeah well if you hear any more news uh news from the um from the uh yeah from the world of

11 year olds please do let me know uh another quick update they came they saw they fixed andrew my um i now have a working dishwasher here in my apartment uh it took about five minutes they uh um you know because i for folks that maybe missed the the latest update on this uh the ambulance uh appliance hospital doctor jeff came out and um assessed that the the the dishwasher in my place not only was it not plugged in which was a problem but it didn't work anyway the pump was broken and um and that was probably because this was the model apartment and they just figured it doesn't

need to work which was not a not a terrible assumption on their part but they just somebody should have passed that info on to somebody else when i actually moved into the place so they've been very responsive my theory is that they have heard about the podcast somehow this is now on their radar well it went from me having to bug them to them bugging me about how i'm doing and when can they get in and fix it something changed and i can't put my finger on it but

things got really responsive at some point it could be a management i mean you'd you'd hope that maybe it was a management change or just something that they came to their own conclusion that things need to get more ship shape around here we need to close the things to close but uh yeah maybe it is i i really hope that that's not the case i hope that they haven't

been listening and i promise that i'm not complaining about it here because i'm trying to big dog them and get them to i actually better content the longer they take to fix things right right like i looked i looked at the dishwasher uh over the week and i thought well that's now that's off the table for content. We'll get one more spin of that record, which will be me closing the loop on the fact that it works.

So then you're like, what can I do? I'll throw away my toenail clippers. I don't know if listeners know that, but every story on TBTL, it's like energy, right? There's always the same amount of energy in the universe at the same time. Whenever we lose one boring story, we have to create another boring story.

Exactly. Sometimes I have to invent two 11-year-olds who like to throw on the terms I can describe them vividly, Andrew. The one kid, the kid who was a Libra, had blonde hair like he had dyed his hair blonde with sun in the top part of it. But then the lower part was brown. And I was like, man, I would have killed to get been allowed to do that when I was that age. Yeah.

Anyway, can I can I interject one thing on the dishwasher, though? Because this is important. And it's hashtag listener content. Somebody texted me this morning at 751 this morning. somebody in seattle i don't know who it is but they really wanted to make sure that you took a photo of the note that was discovered on top of the dishwasher that said that it didn't work you told this story last week or the week before finally somebody came after an electrician came to supposedly check out the situation but never even removed the unit from its place uh in the wall or in the in the um counter space somebody else finally came pulled it out and saw there was a note on top that said yeah this thing doesn't work the water pumps broke like did you take a

photo of that i didn't because i never i've never even seen the note myself what happened was i showed up as jeff the appliance doctor was literally like kind of cleaning up you know folding up his blanket he had brought etc and i could tell that he was really trying to be diplomatic because he you know his client is essentially this apartment building so he didn't want to throw anyone under any kind of bus as far as like what was going on he's so he was he was very and he was like and i was i think i must have said something like well how did how did you have a sense that the water was because well there was actually a note on i see but i never saw the note the note was only described to me but if i mean i will absolutely subpoena jeff if i have to i mean there's i will i there's no doubt in my mind if this if this goes to court uh i will bring him in And, you know, I assume that he will repeat the conversation we had and maybe even through discovery we can get the note, you know, entered into evidence.

I'm going to ask you a question that is going to get in your head and I don't want to get in your head about this because it's not a problem. I'd like to say this before I ask my question. I'd like to say for the record, it is not a problem. After I ask this question, don't get into your head about the topic. But are you drunk right now? No. Do I hear Randy the Roomba in the background?

You do, and I was curious if you were – I was going to try to princess and the pea you on that. I was going to see if you could notice because – It's like freezing. Well, you know, because the whole story of the princess and the pea is all of the mattresses, and can she feel the pea under – can you hear Randy underneath all of my interesting talking and anecdotes and stories and things? I figured let's give this a try because and now I've gotten my answer which is you can hear the Roomba in the background when it does go past the door

of this room just barely it's not a big

deal but I just wanted to make sure that my ears weren't deceiving you're no you're not crazy he is out there doing his thing and I think most of the time if he's like in the living room area or down the hall you won't hear him but there will be times when he when he you know like goes right by the door of this room that it would probably be a noticeable let me why the schedule change though because what happened was uh i didn't realize this but when he tried to start today his bin was full because the other thing that my nephews love maybe more than mini golf, which we did, or some marines at omsi is trying to skateboard past around and over a moving roomba that roomba got such a workout this weekend because the whole thing randy must have slept great he's got him good and tuckered i mean it's just fun to see him to just see that just when they're just so tired they can barely move god you love that but no jack and abe had a field day because i have that skateboard here because i'm a young cool guy and i have that roomba and the like a big portion of saturday was skateboarding up and down the hall with the roomba moving around and doing all kinds of different activities related to it so anyway the bin was full and when the when the dustbin is full it won't start and i didn't realize this was the case until right before showtime and i thought yeah i'll run it today i'll empty the bin and i'll run it and i'll see if it's noticeable

and now we know that it's noticeable you know what i love about that story is randy even when randy's playing randy's working you know like randy was just playing with the boys and it's so fun to see like a robot get to play with kids its own age and um and but while it's while it's frolicking and being you know it's rolling around and skating with them it's still doing its job

it's still vacuuming that's what's awesome i mean it's the roomba code yeah work hard work hard right um uh i i i just said that you know we're probably we've reached the end of the road with dishwasher conversation but have we Andrew because let me I want to ask you if if I have unrealistically high standards now for what life in an apartment building where there's you know maintenance and management and all that if I have unrealistically high standards for it so I kind of was under the impression that after all of this they were going to give me a new dishwasher yeah me too like a new new dishwasher but what it's very clear to me is they've given me a dishwasher that works just from a different unit and when they put it in i told you it took maintenance five minutes i know because i was hiding in the office which uh you know they're very they were very careful they called me in advance and they read a whole covid questionnaire to me over the phone to make sure that i wasn't putting them in danger and they wouldn't be endangering me but i have to admit sometimes those conversations can be a little bit awkward when you're having kind of service or repairs done and i and and i liked i didn't hate the fact that i it was socially acceptable in fact encouraged for me to just stay in this room and keep working right i could just hear them bringing the new one in and taking the old one out the funny thing is

everybody's happier with that i'll bet you the people right fixing it are happier you're and And it's just like, yeah, very strong rules here because other times you're kind of like, do you – so I'll be in here if you need me. I mean, do you need some lemonade? Like where is the line of courtesy when folks are in your house fixing something?

Right. You're absolutely right. Unless we're talking about an adult film where somebody doesn't have the money to pay for the plumbing repairs, there's almost no scenario in which anybody wants to have anybody else in their space. Again, the people doing the work would like to just do the work and be done with it. The people who are having the work done would probably like to just have the work done. Like this kind of – the before times socializing around stuff like that is probably not anyone's favorite. So I was hiding out in here. They were in and they were out. The thing is the way that the kitchen is set up in this apartment is kind of cool looking, but I've complained before. It's not super functional. It's basically just, like, one wall of the living room is the kitchen. So it's got, like, built into that is, like, the cabinet, or I should say the countertop, the stove. The dishwasher is next to the sink, but it all has this kind of, like, special cabinetry covering that makes it almost look like it's one solid mass of gray, kind of shiny melamine, whatever the material is. But it's just kind of this very modern designy wall, and, like, the refrigerator fits into it because everything has – every appliance has, like, a cabinet put on the outside of it, so it all kind of looks the same. Does that make sense?

Yeah, very much so.

Sounds kind of modern-looking. Yeah. So the dishwasher is part of that whole situation. And I noticed the first day I moved in, even before I knew the dishwasher didn't work, I noticed that the section of cabinet or whatever, the false front that's on the dishwasher is really jacked up, like from being used a lot and then from maybe some part of it getting cracked. Because it's like basically its interior is it's just that pressed wood, whatever like most stuff from Ikea is made out of. It's that inside of some coating that's supposed to make it waterproof and everything. But if you get a crack in that and the water gets in there, it starts to want to split and bubble and have problems. It's doing that to some degree, which I wanted them to change that. But then also what I noticed when I opened this dishwasher was two things. The new one now, the replacement When they screwed it all back together They like cracked parts of the dishwasher In trying to screw this This special facing onto it

Can I need a clarification here So are they using The old casing? The old, the veneer? Is that a good way of describing it? That's a better word, yes, the veneer So the one that you had was already a little bit jacked And they're not replacing the veneer?

No, they're not replacing the veneer So they just took the veneer off and they put a replacement dishwasher in and then screwed the veneer back on. But the problem is they cracked part of the replacement dishwasher because clearly they screwed the veneer down. I can take a picture of this later.

Yeah, I actually do because I'd like to know. I think this will, in my head, I'm starting to get worked up again. We're going to tamp that down for now. But, like, it really depends on how badly it's jacked up. If this is just, like, one small little corner but it's kind of in your head, I can associate with that. But if this is, like, really – if it just looks crummy, like, that's crummy.

It doesn't look super crummy from the outside. Nobody – the issues are now more, like, internal, if that makes sense. So here are the two issues. One, they just did what felt like kind of a slapdash job putting it back together, and they're trying to fit this thing onto something that wasn't the original – I mean, it all – probably the specs are all the same. I'm sure they have 50 of these dishwashers floating around. So they clearly just grabbed a dishwasher from a unit that's empty and brought it up here. So it just looked kind of like you could have taken a little more time with this, but whatever. That's an extremely minor point. The other problem is the door of the dishwasher does not, when you open it, it does not go down to a completely, like, horizontal position.

Then what about the bottom drawer? Does it keep rolling back in?

Yes. So when you roll the bottom drawer out, you know, it should be, if you guys can all imagine this, everyone has a dishwasher probably. The bottom drawer, you open the dishwasher, you roll the bottom dish drawer out. That sits on the door of the dishwasher. But if the door of the dishwasher is still slightly elevated, like at an angle, the thing doesn't want to stay on there. The rack doesn't want to stay on there. And I was just having this moment of loading. I will say, by the way, it seems to work fine. That's good as an appliance. I did have to use pots and pans, but whatever. Is anybody not washing everything on pots and pans?

Yeah, no, no. I have the same conversation with myself every time I start the dishwasher.

Like, why would you not? I mean, unless you had some fine china in there, why would you not just have it go to 11?

Well, you're right. It might be a gentle cycle thing. Although, if you have something that you even have to ask that question about, I would recommend not putting it in the dishwasher. It's just not worth it. And if you're worried about breaking it in the sink, by the way, a nice little trick that I learned recently is just take a dish towel and lay it in the bottom of the sink. Well, you, Luke, I don't know if you have it in the new place, but you had the perfect solution at your old place. You had that nice fine wire rack that would be at the bottom of the sink that would prevent breaking. I miss that thing. Oh, that thing is sweet. But it's so achievable.

I mean, I miss other things from my previous life, but I put the top of the list. At the near the top of this, I put that dish rack that sat in the bottom of the sink.

Sorry, Rudy. You almost broke the top ten. But anyway, now I'm off. But yeah, I don't know. I asked myself that same thing because this weekend I ran a small load and I was like, well, maybe I'll just do like the small load button. I was like, nah, pots and pans. There's grease on that shit.

And so I – anyway, I was sitting there like – and it's not like it's not functional because what I realized is if I drag the tray out and if I put something like a plate in the lower drawer, it creates enough weight that it sort of keeps it in place it's not like it's unusable it's just kind of like it's 80 of the way there on every front you know what i mean i thought it was going to be i was kind of excited about having a brand new dishwasher yeah i was going to ask you like

what was your first load but knowing that it wasn't really the first load right kind of that i you know but but okay i was just going to say a couple of things here first of all it does make me really appreciate my dishwasher more i was somebody who never even used dishwashers until not too long ago but we had an old one when we took this apartment over and then it broke almost immediately on a rare cycle and then they finally replaced it and um and they did replace with a brand new washer not a top of the line one but i really do appreciate like opening my dishwasher and it still is very clean and nice in the inside i'm not saying that to rub it in however what i will say is you know how immediately i honed in on the idea that that drawer is not going to stay in place because yes uh i believe my brand new dishwasher does something similar and it it does drive me a little bit crazy i got used to it though and i'm remembering what i do is this is an imperfect solution but for whatever it's worth if you kind of pull the um pull the rack up a little bit like kind of like get it off its wheels a little bit so that it won't necessarily necessarily naturally roll back so easily just right get it off its track a little bit um just nudge it uh until it's got enough dishes in there that's one way to kind of get around that right

and that's probably what i'll end up doing and you know because i had my nephews over we generated like more dishes than would be typical for me just here by myself and i ran it on pots and pans and then took a look and everything was clean and that was nice so it's fine and also it's like this is an apartment i don't own this place i'm not going to live here for the rest of my life like some interior part of this thing got cracked when they screwed it down it's not i don't own it doesn't matter and for the next whatever eight nine months however much longer i live here i'll have this i'll do this quirky thing to kind of make the dishwasher you know to load it's like i don't think even me with my persnickety ways am i super maximizing i don't think i can in good conscience email them again and say please have them come back out and make sure that this thing lays flat no i don't think so either so um so so but the good news is if i do get frustrated and reach back out to them you the tens of listeners hearing this right now and the hyzer heads who've joined us on this journey you will be the first to know and we will have more hashtag content uh created by the uh the trials and tribulations around this dishwasher um okay let's take a quick break and then when we come back i do really want to talk about the british royals or what we talk about when we talk about the british royals and then i i would like to um six months too late get into the mandadorian and wandavision because i watched both of them this weekend and have a lot of thoughts so stay with us this is tbtl on your

mark on your mark get set get set now ready ready go everybody razzle dazzle everybody

We have got some dazzling donors to thank. These are folks who are donating a dazzling amount of dough each month. And it is vital to us being able to do the show. It really is. And as an appreciation, if you're a dazzling donor, we sort of turn a little segment of the show over to you to read whatever message you would like us to read. We want to start by thanking Cinder Conlon of Traverse City, Michigan. Cinder says, I've been a big fan of Luke's since his Bryant Park Project days. Yes, I really listen to the BPP. I'll recycle, Cinder, my common joke. Oh, you're the listener. With the BPP, at least during my era, that may not be so much of a joke, Andrew, as a reality. I don't really know how many people, when it was happening, were aware of the BPP, but Cinder was one of them. One day after the show's demise, I was thrilled to catch Luke on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. I don't think Cinder means literally one day. Like, they ended the BPP, and then the next day, I was on.

Oh, right. No, just one day.

The reason I know that is because I was banned from NPR for a while. Oh. After the demise of the BPP. There were a lot of people that were very unhappy with me for piecing on that project. But at some point, I was allowed...

The Bryant Peace Project?

Yes. The Bryant Peace and Love, Peace and Love Project, which was what I wanted the show to be called. Anyway, at some point later on, Cinder caught, I guess, me on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. I was even more thrilled when Peter Sagal announced that Luke was the host of the podcast TBTL. I said, Luke has a podcast? Sign me up. I started listening immediately and never stopped. I love Luke, Andrew, and all of my TBTL friendos who are truly a family. It's true, Cinder. Thanks for everything, guys. I'm a proud 10 for life. For outro music, can you play This Old Heart of Mine is Weak for You by the Isley Brothers? It is a total jam and probably my favorite song of all time. I don't know if I know that song.

I don't know if I – there is a line going through my head, This Old Heart of Mine, but I don't know if I'm I think you're thinking of

This Old Heart of Mine, Been Broke a Thousand Times

Yeah, I'm thinking of a different song, yeah

What is that one from?

It's definitely not this one

This Old Heart of Mine, Been Broke a Thousand Times

Each time you go away Something Well, this is good. Again, just welcome to all the new listeners. I just want to thank you. You can see why people donate their hard-earned money to the show so that we can keep this kind of content going. We'll get back to Dishwasher's Gaze in a moment. I love you. Do you figure it out?

Yes, I do. Yeah, but is that the Isley Brothers?

I thought you were Googling it while I was babbling.

Doesn't it end up with, I love you. Yes, I do. Is that an Isley Brothers? This is it. We're singing the song, I believe. This is an I. Yes. You know, I'm more of the Rod Stewart version. This is one I jam out with. JK, I do think that maybe the first time I heard that as a kid was like a Rod Stewart cover.

Oh, I see. He did it in 1975. The Supremes did it in 1966. Anyway, so that, yep, we are all on the same page. I believe that is the song. We will find out for sure.

Do you think Cinder still needs to hear it even after hearing our version of it? Because I think that was pretty solid.

That's actually a really good point. That's a really good book.

Cinder, thank you so much for supporting the show, and thanks for being part of the TBTL fam all of these years. That's incredible. And if you could send an email to whoever's left from the BPP days in terms of management, I don't know, maybe Sharon Hoffman. I'm not sure what Bill Stern is up to these days. Ken Stern, I should say. You know, when you've forgotten the name of the people who ran you out of a network, that's probably some kind of personal victory, isn't it? I have Newsom's contact information. Do I need to reach out to that guy, or was that after your time? He was not one of the people who ran me out. So I have no official beef with him.

And once again, you and I are just talking to each other. I couldn't even identify who I'm talking about.

Cinder, if you could write a couple of emails letting those people know they were wrong and I was right. When you're not donating a dazzling amount of dough to the show, I'd really appreciate it. So thank you very much.

Maestro! Oh, I was taking a sip of coffee right as I remembered.

You'd sip with one hand and activate with the other?

No, it's a two-handed thing. One hand on the potentiometer, one hand on the button. It was just a bad look for me. Sorry. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go.

I'll tell you who forgives you, Andrew. Asha and Cameron Little, our next donors of the day. Asha and Cameron write Now I don't know if they sat down And penned this together Or if one of them is writing Kind of in the We voice

I like the idea of Asha saying Cameron take a note And then Cameron transcribes What Asha was saying

Oh I slept on Maybe one of the more Dazzling deets about Asha and Cameron Little checking in from Krakow, Poland. Right? Dag. How do you say take a note in Polish? I think it's Musica Conchalata. Yeah, I think you're right. The Littles. I'm just going to say that. Whoa. I know. It gets confusing. Aisha and Cameron write, the benefits of being married now is that we can combine our individual donations into one big dazzling donor donation. Okay. I got a lot of questions. I bet maybe they're answered in the following paragraph. That doesn't mean we aren't on our grind. Cameron is working away on computer projects to make his and other people's life better. You can check out his projects at camlittle.com. So that's C-A-M and then little, L-I-T-T-L-E, dot com. Aisha quit her job and is now making her way as a freelance copy editor, job interview preparation advisor and experience planner if any of those sound interesting to you you can learn more and find links on how to hire her at asia little.com and i'll just mention asia is a-i-s-h-a asia little.com uh that said a big imaginary radio hello to the other tens in the Little family, okay? That last part, I'll admit,

I'm a little lost, but okay. So Asha and Cameron have other family members who listen to TBTL is how I take that. Oh, got it. Here's one thing, because you and I both pause for a second. For those who haven't been following all the ins and the outs of this, it's a little confusing because we've been speaking about these, well, as we call them, Heiserheads, these listeners of another podcast who call themselves Littles in the same way TBTL 10s call themselves 10s. And so that was why we both made a little noise before when we saw the last name Little. And then when you say the Little family, you were thinking, I don't know if you were picturing a bunch of Heiser heads or what.

Yes, I was, but I see. So there are other folks in the Littleverse, which is how I describe Asha and Cameron's family, the Littleverse, who are also listeners. So thank you so much for the donation. Thanks for keeping the show going, Asha and Cameron. We absolutely would not be able to do it without folks like you hello and welcome to top story as i mentioned earlier in the program i was not aware that's not true i was aware that something was going to be going on at some point

with Meghan and Harry and Oprah. I had seen headlines kind of alluding to a bombshell interview, but I didn't know the time or place. And so last night, as I was just deeply embedded in the world of Westfield, New Jersey, and the Dagobah system, I like that I picked the one thing that doesn't come up in The Mandalorian. I don't think they ever go to the Dagobah. It's literally the only place they don't do a callback to. But anyway, I was deeply in those worlds. And then I looked at Twitter and everybody was tweeting about this interview. And I will just be totally honest. I have for my whole life of being a sort of media literate person. i have always been deeply uninterested in the story of the royals like at least the modern royals i i never cared what was going on with prince charles and camilla i never cared what was going on with uh lady diana r.i.p it just never held any interest to me i think because i don't it always felt to me like it's not a real thing they're not really the king and queen i mean they are entitled the king and queen of a country but they don't have any real power it feels ceremony it feels like they're they were the kardashians before the kardashians that's just been kind of my my my reaction to it so i've always been pretty checked out on the news of this um but what i started thinking about yesterday as somebody who again couldn't possibly care less is i was unsurprised at the revelations uh because i would assume that these bunch of very rich sheltered white people uh would have bad takes on race like i was not shocked to hear that they did not do a good job of making megan marco feel welcomed in the family um and then uh i yeah i just was not i was not shocked by what the supposed big revelations were it doesn't mean that i think it's not uh you know something that they should be reprimanded for or quote-unquote in trouble for But I just was like – I was not that surprised over the whole thing. But what I noticed is the folks on Twitter who were having the strongest reactions to this tended to be the people I follow on Twitter who are people of color, in particular women of color. And what I started to realize was I think this Meghan Markle thing in particular is a much, much bigger story to the – I'm going anecdotal here. But to the people of color, in particular the women of color that I follow on Twitter, could not tweet about this enough. And my eyes were open to the fact that, like, because I am a white person, I've had the privilege of never giving a shit about anything involving the royals because, one, the Commonwealth has never subjugated my people, right?

Like, I don't have any experience with the British Empire destroying a place where my ancestors lived through colonialism or what have you. And then also Like when When one of the royals hooks up Like when Kate Middleton And is it William When Kate Middleton and William like connect up It's like okay whatever To me as a white person it's like I don't know Now they're going to have babies and whatever He should have started shaving his head earlier Not a good look the hair loss Like that's my take on it But if I'm a woman of color in particular And a woman of color is marrying into the royal family That's big news And that gets to a whole other larger question of representation. And what I saw a lot of people tweeting was, hey, by the way, this is the story of every interracial couple in America and probably in England and probably everywhere. I saw a lot of people checking in saying, we're paying attention to this because they're royals or ex-royals. But this resonates because if somebody has been involved in an interracial relationship, this is something that they've had experience with. So I guess I wanted to say I couldn't be less interested in a story that also probably has some fairly important important implications for a bunch of people whose experience I do really value.

How many I ended up I have never in my life sat down to watch a two hour celebrity interview. This is not the I can't believe you watch. Yeah, I watch that. That's what shocked me this morning. I am Windsor heads. You very much like you, though, Luke. I never like honestly. Well, I probably on the show within the last year, I've probably messed it up. And by the way, one, I want to set some ground rules for this conversation. For real, you are not allowed or I refuse to answer any questions you have. Like you cannot ask me what so and so's title. What's the relationship between this person, this person, because while I have been watching various documentaries, not that we've really addressed that on the show much, but there was a little documentary that paused for a while when the pandemic started, But then it came back on HBO Max and everything's fine But Even though like I

have shown more interest in these topics in the past year i still always get things confused and i'm not steeped in it and i always irritate our listeners especially our british listeners but also just people who know a royal from a hole in the ground which i do not um but uh yeah i never cared just like you like i would not have been able to tell you the difference between harry and william or even probably charles like two years ago like no joke i did i knew that one of them wore a nazi costume to a halloween party because i remember that made a lot of headlines um a long time ago but that was harry i think that was that was harry but apparently there's been you know enough i guess redemption since then but yeah i'd um it's weird that i had any interest in this either sort of except now that you know i didn't finish watching the crown but i've watched a lot of the crown um i um did get obsessed with that uh windsor's documentary on CNN. And it started for me actually with like, actually reading some of these more historical fiction books that take place in the Henry VIII and the 1500s. And Genevieve always trying to draw the connective tissue for me. And so yeah, in the past year or so, I've had a better understanding of the issues with the royal family and just this cycle. I mean, for me, it's interesting, because like, how many times do they go through the cycle, it just seems like it's, it's you know somebody is in line for the throne somebody falls in love with somebody who doesn't fit the royal standards in some way you know whether it's a class issue whether it's a the person wasn't american whether it was this person was divorced in this case american divorced and biracial you know like it just sort of seems like it keeps happening and and every every what 20 what was 95 to whatever every 30 years or so somebody there's some huge blow up about this and each time the the the royal family and the royal crown just looks worse and worse and like and in this case what came out of this was some sounding like really abusive really racist shit and I just I'm interested in knowing like with each one of these scandals I think scandal I don't like the word scandal there but with each one of these kind of um eruptions and exposures uh does the does the kind of monarchy and that system weaken a bit more like could we end up seeing it even play less of a role in because that's the one it's funny that you mentioned the the kardashian comparison before because i thought of the kardashians after i watched this yesterday i thought like i would never sit down and watch a two-hour um interview and i don't hate the kardashians like some people do right some people use nor do i as a symbol of of i don't know just like a our thinning cultural intellect or whatever but like i i don't i don't hate the kardashians but i'm not interested in it either this does have a little i throw a little topic

on my thinning cultural intellect i need to shut up now i'm i'm at that point where i'm you can

hear me struggling no i like that i like that terminology i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt

keep going but anyway this one does have some sort of like even though they don't the royal family doesn't make political decisions necessarily it does have real world consequences of some sort so i do think that it's it is interesting and also it was appalling you know like what came out of

that was really appalling i guess i just and again this is this is sort of like somebody saying like when when there's revelations about the nfl and something bad that a particular team did or an owner and then someone's just like who cares i don't even watch the nfl it's like i hate that take because it's like well either engage with it and have an opinion jerk or don't engage with it but leave the opinion having to those of us who are engaged with it yeah right i don't want to

be that you don't have to announce that you don't have an opinion or if you're not watching the super bowl you don't have to tweet i hate the super right so i don't want to be that of the

royals because i i know i mean i will say at some point when enough people are paying attention to something or someone then that thing has importance in that there are a lot of people paying attention to it you know and so by that definition this is very important and i again i don't know enough about like what the actual status is of the royal family as far as who they report to if anyone or what they're i mean my sense is that they will always exist for at least you know for a long long long time because this is my theory and this also sounds like I'm trying to subtly neg people who care about the royals I do think that a lot of it is driven by some kind of princess fantasy like I just think that in the deep interest in like or maybe prince and princess fantasy like we're raised on Disney shit and somehow we then we're into like kings and queens and princes and princesses and I don't know it was because I didn't grow up with that that part has never really it's just never been that interesting to me and yet it is deeply interesting To a big section of the population so if I guess They are held To account for this stuff And it somehow moves The ball forward a little bit on what Acceptable behavior is around Inclusion I guess that's a positive If that happens obviously

Yeah and also I will say this And I'm not exaggerating at all Like Not all that long ago I would not have been able to tell you who Megan is like I would have confused Megan and Kate in a second. Like, I just would have gotten them. Oh, I don't know. They're both, like, the young princesses, right? But, like, once you do kind of understand the backstory, especially going into this one and the way it seemed like the royal family was, like, setting media traps for Harry and Meghan before this interview and just seeing that they were going hard on this, you're like, oh, wow, there's something kind of serious going on here. And I will say this, sitting down, like, that was the most exposure that i had um to megan ever and like just sitting there and watching it like she's i mean i'm just saying what so many people know but like she's an incredibly charming person you really got sucked and and hey guess what oprah's kind of good at her job too i don't know why nobody ever told me that like you understand why people are attracted to this this form of you know whether it's entertainment or journalism or whatever you want to call it like these were two really compelling people and then a third awkward guy who came at the end his name is Prince Harry oh really what

was so wait so it started off with it's was it a one-on-one with Megan and Oprah yeah just the

two of them and and it was very and she got in some really really personal stuff about her own mental health uh while you know being with this family that really treated her wrong and wronged her and her family um and then and then Harry comes on later to kind of give his perspective on everything. And I don't know how everybody feels. Genevieve's like, wow, he really... I hope it's okay. Yeah. It's okay for me to say that. Genevieve's like, wow, he really is handsome. And I just spent the rest of the interview being like, him? And then they flashed a picture of William. And I was like, oh, yeah, I guess Harry is the handsome one. I didn't realize that. At least with the current hair situation.

I did like the suit he had on. If I can just take this to the important part of the story. I wanted him to buy him up. I've seen though. Oh, see? If I actually... If I could still pull that look off, like the unbuttoned suit without you know having much more um belly than i had before the pandemic i'd rock that look that was my takeaway from this international story andrew was suit looks pretty good on old harry there i thought i'm sorry i meant he i feel like and this is maybe just me

like he had an extra button unbuttoned on his shirt you know so he was showing a little bit more chest which is fine on on some people can really pull off that look but like he looked so awkward sitting in the chair like because seeing Oprah and Megan like sitting there just looking like talking about some serious stuff but seeming very comfortable in their skin and just like beautiful in their own ways and then him kind of like kind of looking like and hey listen I would have looked worse no doubt about it like it was a very uncomfortable situation he's probably a bit of an uncomfortable guy but like the way he was sitting in his chair with his shirt unbuttoned and then at a certain point his jacket was getting really bunched up in the back and when they would do a close-up on him like yeah and then they fixed that at some point so I don't know what looking at him made me very uncomfortable but again it was the most exposure I'd had to watching anybody like that ever so I just didn't have any context

for what his vibe was yeah I when I saw that like everybody tweeting about it in the headlines and I hope that this doesn't sound in any way like I'm trying to diminish like what Megan Marko was saying about her experience because I don't mean it that way at all but like when they were just like all of these bombshells i was kind of like expecting i was expecting to be truly shocked and when i heard that like like if you look at the queen do you think has a nuanced take on race was that what anybody expected the case to be again none of this is to say that megan markle is being extra or that her experience isn't her experience or that she deserved any of that treatment but it's just like the things that i saw the bullet points all sounded exactly the way i

expected this bunch of uptight white people to be yeah for what it's worth um i feel like harry went out of his way to protect the queen several times he kept saying that his relationship with his grandmother was good i mean i think that my my a lot of the implication is probably a lot of this race stuff comes from philip who has a pretty bad his family oh you mean yeah philip you mean uh

of the family of former nazis yes oh i was thinking isn't isn't philip also the um the the uh the guy who was flying around on the plane with the sex predator oh i think that's andrew oh sorry i gotta keep gotta keep my royal street oh philip is the guy that's in the hospital now right yeah

but either way yes like these are two yeah the fact that andrew's not behind bars is pretty amazing right but anyway for whatever it's worth but my vibe is basically the same as

yours as well just saying like yeah you you would guess that it's an oppressive situation but to hear it in such detail i think and and also and again megan is just so compelling and seemed so i mean they're also just incredibly smart i mean they're so media smart her and harry to do this and roll this out in this way we have to kind of remember that but um but also you know she really seemed to bear it all as far as her emotions and her emotional state and got into some really dark, dark territory where she didn't want to be on the earth anymore. And like that, you know, and then and then having to go in a in a ball gown to, you know, shake hands while pregnant and being in that mental state like there were the details of what she was going through, which was just incredibly human. And and to kind of hear her story about how she was victimized in this way, but then still had to let kind of do her job was, oh, it was really compelling.

Well, I am glad to hear that they have mostly extricated themselves from that. And I like the idea of them just living their best life, presumably like in California. And I mean, let me say this too. This is where my like major class chip on my shoulder really comes into play. The other big thing was like Harry confirmed he's been totally cut off from his family financially, which is why he's had to forge a deal with Netflix. And I was like, yeah, dude's going to be fine, money-wise. I mean, I guess maybe that gets into the – and again, I didn't watch the interview. So what you're saying actually is good for me to hear, Andrew, which is a lot of it is not about the bullet point headline. It's about the emotion for particularly Meghan and to some degree Harry when talking about what this is just like as a human. So the emotional feeling of your family saying you're cut off, that would be a big deal, I guess. but like i don't know harry being cut off financially when he and his wife are two of the biggest media stars on planet earth i was just i had this feeling of like i think they're gonna land on their feet with this financially but anyway i was gonna just say like the idea of them not having to do those things that she was describing or that you were describing to me about these you know sort of like um obligations around being the royals the idea of them and their kids just living in California in a dope house with a swimming pool and just like being their own people makes me very happy for them. It's got some strong Andy Dufresne sanding a boat in Z1 Tanejo. Yeah. Like after you just get out of a really constrictive

environment. Yeah. And again like I think they had I mean they didn't they didn't have control over this interview. They made that clear before the interview and actually the very first thing Oprah said was like can you just confirm that like you didn't approve of any of these questions. You don't know what I'm going to ask you nothing was off the table like we're just doing this and also yes we are neighbors in this very rich neighborhood and we're borrowing a neighbor's house right now oh seriously and they're like this isn't either one of our places but it is a neighbor and megan's like yeah this is a really lovely patio um but um but anyway yeah i mean oprah does ask those questions because that is honestly and i'm so like kind of in the bag now for them now that i understand the story more and just like what what a job the press has done on them and on other and on obviously Diana and other people who found themselves in this situation and like you know Harry even said straight up like being cut off it's like no they they love their life right now and also he said I thought this was pretty poignant he said well my mom left me money directly Princess Diana because and he said like because she knew like she knew she knows what happens there and she was a victim of it too and she probably was protective of us and that was a kind of a and again i'm sure he was prepared with that answer but it didn't they didn't portray themselves as victims necessarily in the financial realm and the one part that i sort of didn't like was it was really clear that they wanted to get a plug-in for their netflix and and spotify thing which just seems so just seems so small like it just seems spotify i think are they doing i don't know what i love here's the thing here's the number

one thing can we just have one thing that's for us like podcasting you didn't know that they did

royals out of it they started a podcast like six months ago it's just like so funny like what is a podcast anymore it's just like get the most famous person anyway um here's the thing that you and i should be focusing on here's the number one takeaway prince harry just released a british term that i had never heard before he didn't release it he said it in just in in conversation his mouth released it but he just referred to it as our streamers and it's this i apparently he's just using it as like this generic term for i don't know podcasts audio or netflix stuff just streamers as a generic term for it i love it is streamers what he's doing or is the people that

are are is is is he the streamer or are the people who like engage with his him and megan's content Are they the streamers? I think the content is the streamers. I don't know. Our streamers are streams. He just said. it quickly yeah but he said streamers he said you know and of course yes we are working on our streamers but like that's not that's not why we're doing this or something you know andrew

you may say i'm a streamer are you the only one i'm no i'm not the only one it turns out hold on uh just one quick second hi it's luke and andrew from the future as in after this whole episode has already been recorded with a little WandaVision-esque mind-bending interstitial. Andrew, you wanted us to put in this disclaimer, right? Because in a minute, the listeners are going to hear some pretty heavy-duty spoilers on WandaVision.

Yeah, so Luke and I have both seen WandaVision now, and if you're somebody who has not caught up, because the latest episode did just drop, if you're not caught up and you don't want any spoilers, just know that this is filled with spoilers. This is not a spoiler-free zone. You might just want to hit the fast-forward button a few times.

Just, yeah, and then come back when you've watched WandaVision because I can promise you our commentary on the show is unparalleled.

And I don't think anybody else is commenting on it, which is interesting. Well, that's the thing, too.

So just a heads up, though, we're going to do some major spoilers, so listen at your own risk. Thank you.

WandaVision!

i was streaming the shit out of some disney plus this weekend my dude like uh because my little nephews were coming over and because they live in a yurt on a piece of property where my sister and her husband are going to be building a house but for the time being it is a very rural lifestyle things like disney plus do not come easy out there in the in the wilds of of washington state so i knew they would be psyched to watch the mandalorian also it turns out they had watched like three of the episodes because my dad had bit torrented it i gave it to him on a thumb drive love it i couldn't tell if it's very weird when you have like two kids who are very young you know eight and ten trying to manage your experience as the uncle like i could tell that they were not being 100 clear on how much of it they had seen because they knew that i wanted them to have the experience of seeing and I was like bringing him down to the big city you already have these kids managing your emotions oh my gosh good job oh at one point I bought them a little trinket in the gift shop and my nephew Jack said he just looked at it for a while it was a Newton's cradle which is that like series of like steel balls that bang into each other from different it's technically called a Newton's cradle I guess and Jack was so happy about it he just was staring at it as we brought it home and then he just stopped and just said i'm gonna give my mom some of my allowance so she can give it to you to help pay for this oh my gosh such a sweet guy but anyway i told him well 10 bucks max anything more than that would be would make me feel embarrassed but if you could kick your mom 10 bucks of allowance and just make sure you get that though make sure it comes get me out of a couple of jams while we venmoed it so we're good now i mean i put in the request on venmo anyway it was uh it was very cute but uh i was all excited to watch the mandalorian with them and it involved many a hoop andrew because the tv i have it's like if i try to go through i i pay for like xfinity or whatever and xfinity has some things on it but they i guess they see disney plus as their natural enemy let me start at the most important part of this story which is how i got the mandalorian onto my television i had to download a disney plus app onto my phone and then go to the smart cast feature on my television and which means that all the time that i'm watching these disney plus shows the remote control functions of stop backup etc go back to the episode list it's all on my phone yeah i've played around a little bit maddening i don't know why that's the system i don't like it but whatever i got it all downloaded dialed in and we started watching the mandalorian or as our friend camaro kev calls it the mandadorian yes which that's how we call it that's what we call

it in this house quick important question for you though luke while you're streaming this from your phone and it's um and you're projecting it onto the tv for lack of a better word does this mean that you cannot use your phone to scroll through twitter and whatnot while you're watching the show

because that would be a big difference no and the reason that i had been delaying on this whole like smart cast streaming thing is because what i was under the impression was happening is my phone is now sending a show to the television and then the television is just is just playing the show but that's somehow not how it works because i've done that before for like football games and things like if i'm trying to get like when the stew bot and his family were visiting once and i believe the vikings were playing but it was like an out-of-market game and i wanted to watch like the Seahawks upstairs it was a whole thing where I was trying to basically like mirror mirror my laptop that was like illegally watching the stew game i was trying to mirror it on a tv i thought that's what this was going to be it's not that somehow i don't understand the technology because there's no lag it's everything is fine it's just i have to use my stinking phone to tell my tv what i want to watch but there but it's it's not mirroring if that makes yeah no i i try

i actually one of the last phone conversations i had with camaro kev was because i couldn't get i was trying this is so complicated and you're in the middle of your story but it's kind of related because I got obsessed with WandaVision but WandaVision there's so much stuff in WandaVision that you have to know from the other Avenger movies and the lore and the whatever I found myself re-watching some Avenger movies to add some clarity to what was going on in WandaVision and there was one day where I was sitting at the table doing something Genevieve was just in the living room which is you know there's not a wall between us but I was a little bit far away from the TV and so I was watching I was watching a movie on my computer and then trying to stream it onto the TV at the same time so we could watch the same exact content on two different screens but there was no way for me to mirror the screen it would only cast it onto the TV and then I couldn't watch it and then it drove me crazy and I had to call Camaro Kev not exactly early in the evening and say am i crazy is there no way just to make it on two screens at once and he said i can't make it work on my end and i said well then if you can't make it work say no more it's

not a function get it uh yeah if camaro kev can't can't you know remedy the situation it's it's not it's not able to be remedied but anyway i was i guess i would say i was happy that it it just played it like it was a normal channel i don't know why i can't just get it more simply or why I have to use my iPhone as the remote now. But anyway, we got over that hill. We started watching The Mandalorian. I enjoyed it very much. It is, you know, like a Western, obviously. But I think once I kind of went into that place with my mind, I was just kind of along for the ride. And then my sister came and picked them up. So then I watched like three more episodes that night. And then I think I might have even gotten through season one into the wee small hours of Sunday morning. woke up Sunday morning and was like oh should I watch the the mandatorian and I was like for some reason uh I had WandaVision on my mind because I'd been you know just hearing all the chatter and so I started I watched an episode of WandaVision on my laptop while sitting in bed and then I was actually it wasn't that hooked on WandaVision at first like episode four episode So for it all.

It takes a minute. Yes, it does.

And I kind of wanted them to, like, I wanted them to throw in the first couple of episodes, like, you get it. Like, this 1950s sort of framing is played for a bit of a joke. But every once in a while, and by the way, spoiler alert, if you haven't watched it, we'll probably, there's no way to talk about it without doing some spoilers. But, like, when that helicopter drops in to the bushes, I wanted, like, more stuff like that. i wanted more kind of like just like indicators of something dark happening over just like because i got the joke pretty quick on the 1950s on the dick van dyke show kind of references and everything um but i will say this once it gets you it really gets you and the show is so is pretty genius in in that it's both a very interesting kind of mystery and adventure and whatever you call it show but then just the way that they parody eras of television like the malcolm in the middle season is so fucking good i kept being like what are they going to do with the 90s what are they going to do with the early aughts like i was more interested in just the kind of like texture of the the particular wandavision episode but when they broke out the like malcolm in the middle one uh which was the halloween episode i was like this is fucking high art sorry i'm swearing i don't know where that's coming from well you're into it i am into it but anyway i enjoyed it it was a little heavy on the witchcraft at the end like i didn't think i was signing up for a show about witches like i feel like that's and they were smart to not tell me it was about witches because i don't really like the royals i don't really care about witches instinctively it's just not i don't spend a lot of time on what's the latest going on with witchcraft and And so I thought I was watching a show that was about, like, Marvel, Avengers, and superheroes, which I guess relies on a certain amount of magic anyway. But, like, when it gets into the heavy duty, like, I'm trapped in the chamber with Catherine Han, and she's a different witch, and now we're in Salem. That was the part that was the least interesting for me.

That's a huge spoiler, so I hope everybody took your spoiler warning seriously.

Well, yeah, I hope they did, too. And if not, that's on them. How long has the show been out? Is that one too new? Should I have not said that?

One thing I would like to talk about, actually, that I thought was – brilliant was because i had no i didn't think i was going to get into this at all there's a lot of marvel tv shows that i'm not into um but our friend kiki lolo asked me hey are you watching this and i was like no i haven't been should i and she said yeah check it out and let's talk about it and it turns out that kiki lolo is deep in the marvel verse man she yeah and so one of the things i loved about this was that it didn't drop all at once it they they you know offered the up the first two i think on the same weekend but then after that it was like a tv show we had to wait each week oh wow and so the last one did just drop the last one is only like maybe four days old or something like that so um i don't know if you want me to edit what you just said but or we can just leave it in and hope people took the the spoiler alert um seriously maybe we just

write in the comment like in the in the the you know uh show description just like hey just a heads up that we do talk about WandaVision and you know finale or whatever

but I will say can I just say one more time like that my WandaVision experience I will remember as an experience and that's what I really liked about it because again I'm not even though I've seen a lot of the Marvel movies like I can't really remember them all that well they kind of blend together I got the broad strokes but this pulled me back in and the fact that it was like you had to wait each week I think I binged the first I think I binged the first three and I remember thinking like kind of like what you were saying like I get it you're good at recreating these tropes but and there's some weirdness around the corners and you're slowly turning the heat up on us a little bit on the weirdness and I was definitely intrigued but I was like if this just keeps up like if you can I've talked to other people and they're like I don't know I watched the first three and I gave up but then if you can get to episode four and then you're like oh okay I see what's happening here and then I was just hooked and I would like Watch an episode on Friday afternoon, usually, or late on Friday night, and then I would read about it, and I would read these cheat sheets on Slate, like the casual Marvel fan's guide to each episode, which would then put everything into context for me and get me more excited for the next week. And then I would rewatch it a second time with Genevieve, and then if Genevieve had questions, I would tell her what I had read in Slate magazine, and then Christina Lopez is filling in all the details. Kiki started a channel, a Slack channel on our work, Slack, that's for all the WandaVision lovers, which, again, I've never been this way with a TV show, but it was like a little bit of community. It was a little bit of learning. It was a little bit of me thinking between episodes, well, what is going to happen with X, Y, or Z? and like for me i really i really love that and i thought it while it drove us all crazy every time it went to like to be continued at the end or whatever it said that became a trope or a meme in and of itself and i loved the experience i think they were so smart to do it this way

that's okay so i um this is interesting to me because like you and i just had such different experiences and how we consumed it i like woke up yesterday morning having never seen any episodes and then by four in the afternoon I'd watched every episode that would ever exist so I just like really did binge it in the most literal way I also have never seen any of the Marvel movies I don't know who anyone is I just assumed when I didn't understand something that there was some something made sense with it that I just didn't know about like the mind stone or what vibranium is I was like I'll just go with it that's a thing three billion dollars of vibranium vibramium okay whatever sounds expensive it sounds expensive boy that vibranium could really get me out of a couple of jams um but i really enjoyed it i mean and again i don't i don't usually get into those kinds of things but i mean i found it really i've elizabeth olsen is so good i mean every i think rightfully so everyone's talking about katherine han really stealing the show but she was great um i thought kat dennis was really good in it and Kat Dennings

I think

Kat Dennings I thought I loved I mean I I thought everybody was a really really well acted and for that kind of movie or show and stuff like so yeah I enjoyed it tremendously but I also was just in awe of the filmmaking around how they or like the intro for the sort of 1980s era when they've got the kids you know and it's like I forget what the exact song is well I mean it always ends in WandaVision but like with the sort of watercolor of the family being drawn in it was just like so perfectly sort of family ties what we do baby without us like you and you just forget that that was like for a while every sitcom was like a family being slowly drawn and like why that was what people wanted in the 80s or maybe the late 80s around their sitcoms but you just like there was this eye-opening for me to see those eras kind of uh i don't want to say parodied but i guess to some degree parodied and just so i was enjoying it on about 10 different levels there are i could go on forever about this there are some there are so many like small jokes that are references to the fans that i want to make several points here and then we should wrap this up because we're running out of time but one little joke i want to let you in on to the to the degree that i can explain it and i will not to the fans first of all if you haven't seen it spoiler alert big time here secondly to those who have seen it know what you're talking about i apologize i'm going to butcher this but one of the incredibly interesting meta commentaries about this is this is a disney production now right and over the years there have been various studios that have owned different parts of the marvel universe before the whole mcu thing kind of started and they're slowly kind of wrapping their arms around all of it as disney continues to acquire more and more properties and one of the properties that i believe disney acquired was they now have the rights to the Fox properties, like the 21th Century Fox, I think it was at the time, which did the X-Men, which is kind of an unrelated thing. But there's one character who actually appears in both the X-Men and in the Marvel universe, and that's her brother, Pietro, if I'm saying his name right. And and when he shows up again, big spoiler, when he shows up, Luke, a big joke is and Kat Dunning's character even says it like they recast Pietro because they pulled the Pietro actor from the X-Men universe to play her brother. When in the MCU universe It was a different actor Playing her brother And there's just a whole lot going on Just with that And I thought that's just one example of how There's so much meta commentary going on That actually has to do with intellectual property Like in some ways WandaVision was about IP And then the other thing that I really Wanted to mention is How much a second Viewing really helped me enjoy the first few episodes

I don't know if I'm going to blow your mind here and again we're still in heavy spoiler territory but the first time you're watching that very first episode and you have no idea what's going on right and the boss brings his wife over to dinner at Wanda and Vision's house and there's the choking scene where the boss starts choking and it's really weird and I'm getting chills even thinking about it

the mom from that 70s show where she's just staring in the distance saying make it stop

she's saying stop it like so her husband is choking and she's saying to him stop it stop it but in a very weird way yes but also why if you're if your husband's choking why would you yell at him to stop it and then you re-watch it and you're like she's not yelling at him she's yelling at wanda stop it stop it stop it and just the second time watching that i'm just like I got to rewatch all of these like now everything like a few things like really paid off on second viewing once I understood what was going on oh damn that's a good one unicorn brain

explosion yeah right I'm glad because I hit you the same way because that scene because because that would that scene definitely stuck out to me because she is not delivering the line she's delivering the line in a way that indicates there's something else going on yes and then it's not just later someone's choking on something oh my god of course yeah so i i really enjoyed uh wandavision to be honest i'm well i don't know it doesn't it don't have to be a competition i really enjoyed the mandalorian as well like like uh it i mean i like i said i kind of settled into it being what it was which was just like kind of like kung fu you know in the way that kung fu was kind of a western with david carrie it was just like what's the adventure this episode what's the what's the obstacle gonna be and how are we gonna solve it and just kind of i don't know i really enjoyed there also were a lot of inside jokes woven into that i don't you didn't get into the second season but there's this i'm only the ones i caught i'm sure there are many more than that but like there was this one point where bill burr's character uh comes back and they're trying to get the codes to something and they have to basically go to like um i guess it would be a sort of imperial kind of hidden imperial power plant or something i don't know what they do there but anyway and they're trying to they get kind of accosted by a um like a some like sort of high up person with the empire who's they're in like a workplace environment basically and then they're trying to leave and bill burr's trying to get out he goes well we got to go pick up these tps reports okay and it's like too much of that might take you out of it but there were just enough little like jokes like that layered in where i saw you know the hand of john favreau in there which i kind of appreciated anyway i i really enjoyed both of those shows for different reasons um this weekend and i just wanted to tell everyone that i like those tv shows is there a chance that the tps report actually start

It started in Star Wars, and it was actually a reference in Warholics. Wow. Is this the show where you just continue to? Because I told you, my unicorn brain has already exploded. If you explode it again, I don't know what happens. I mean, it's like there's already been a pressure release. But I could see that. I mean, that would be – I could see that being something along the lines of, like, Womp Rats or some kind of, like, a silly Star Wars-ism that George Lucas wrote at some point that then was brought back in Office Space as a subtle joke reference.

reference to i'm wrong though okay i looked it up though i'm wrong no i would have believed it but i was just like wondering like is there a chance that yeah judge was making that joke for office

space but no it looks like that was a mandatorian anyway dig those shows and um you know maybe i'll get slowly drawn into the into the mcu like a little bit i will say i don't know why we're at a natural end point so this is where we should end which is why i probably won't but like i am more drawn to the less sky fighting for me personally the better like i like it i like this kind of superhero stuff where it's a little bit more still rooted in i guess physics and science like so i guess you know um vision is a is i'm gonna just really mess this up a vision is essentially a very very very expensive android very very high functioning android or at least started out that way and like that stuff kind of makes sense to me because it's like and okay fine I got to go with something called a mind stone existing all right cool I'm with it I'm more into that than just like people in the sky shooting energy bolts at each other but that being said I really did enjoy this and it made me think I should I should look dip into the MCU at least the parts of it that are you know kind of more the stuff that I'm into I'm exactly with you on that

Like I liked the stuff that and I just like I love the universe building and I I love the comic bookiness of it. Like all of this stuff has roots in the comic books and I'm reading along and people are like, well, I think, you know, I think the neighbor is going to end up being this person. And you're like, oh, Agnes. Oh. And then so you sort of see it coming. But like I don't go for the action scenes. That's why a lot of stuff I forget from the movies because my brain kind of just goes once there are like explosions and people are chasing and wrapping things up with their web and throwing it across the city and it's a banker truck or whatever. Like my brain just starts wandering and I start thinking like, oh, I really like vanilla. But sometimes you're missing plot points because, you know, as Genevieve and I were discussing, like actually Marvel does a relatively good job of putting important plot points in the action, not just to have action for action's sake. But my brain just doesn't like I loved the I just love the character development and oh, I will not remember their names, but like the Kat Dennings and and I'm going to say one actor's name and one character's name. But the Kat Dennings character and Jimmy Woo, like I love their dynamic. And the last point I'll make on this is I didn't even get that, like when Dr. Darcy, that's her name, when she comes on the scene and she's acting all hokey and I'm just like, oh, this is starting to, this is tropey and gross. Genevieve's like, no, this is another TV parody. She's like, this is the procedural. They say, okay, people, let's work the problem. You're not getting the joke. I was like, suddenly I realized, oh, this is knowingly schlocky. And then suddenly I loved it again. Those two were great.

That character that they had Kat Denning playing was why I tweeted, just once in my life, I would like to say, well, what do we have here after I hack into the mainframe? Yeah, right. Because it was just totally that moment where she's on that battle-hardened laptop, and she's getting in to figure out what the bad guy from S.W.O.R.D. is doing. And it's a lot of those moments of just kind of, and the quarterback is toast kind of language, which I love so much. And it is so tropey, but you got the sense intentionally so. Oh, by the way, also the Office-esque episode, where it's just called Wanda, and they just keep showing Wanda. That was also genius, too.

Yes, yes.

All right. I think we've run slightly over time here, and so why don't we do this? I know there's at least one email that I'm very hot to get to tomorrow. Oh, I wonder which one. is on the subject of me not being a crazy person, which I always like emails that confirm that I'm not going full Wanda on it. Oh, I know what we're talking about, yeah. So let's get into that and other emails and emails tomorrow. But for today, I think we'll probably need to wrap things up here at this point. And we do have the Isley Brothers song that Cinder had suggested. I guess... This is it. But I guess my version of it wasn't enough for you, Cinder. So, wow. Okay. Well, thanks again for the donation and for hurting my feelings. All right. That's going to do it for the show today. Thanks. It really did. Well, that's what happens when you're in the Burbank verse. You got to go back and read the Slate Cheat Sheet. on what I'm doing. It's layers upon layers and layers of things. Thanks. We'll be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. Until then, have a great Monday. Stay safe. Take care of each other. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Power out.