Muse

Hi, I'm Dr. Steve Bruhl with Wouldn't That Be Cool? In 1971, Bill Greats invented Microsoft. Wouldn't it be cool if I could remember my dingus password from my email? That would be cool.

In the next hour, we will present information that's both shocking and enlightening. Daddy's here, and Daddy is going to take care of you. Please don't refer to yourself as our Daddy. I am your big daddy, and I am going to kiss the boo-boo. Are you all afraid? No. Daddy's here for you, my widow angels. Sometimes a little comic relief is the best way to deliver a serious message. I think people should listen to TVTL because it will make them funnier, even if it's in their own head. And this, this is your master plan. Huh? Oh, no, no. Now, this is a whole other awesome thing. This is just a goof. Why don't we go get a beer? I'll give you some advice, and we can have what the kids are calling a sausage fest.

This will be blown way out of proportion. You have my word on it.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Social engineering. What is it exactly, and how does it work? My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Are you sure? That's what they said on Ask Jeeves. Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center, high in the sky, above Portland, Oregon, where it is, let's see here, it's very cloudy, a little bit of rain this morning, kind of felt unusually cold. I, though, am going to be heading off later this afternoon to a desert, I mean literally like a ghost town in the desert in California. Like five hours from Los Angeles where I assume it will be broilingly hot and I'll be wishing I was back here in Portland, Oregon in the 50s and 60s degree range. Anyway, before all of that, we've got to do this, episode 3,386 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. And I swear to you, come hell, high water, or mildly overcast skies, We are going to get to these 25 weird science and animal facts. Well, you know what I've found over the years is that the facts are your friends. That I've been promising to do for the last, I don't know, three shows or something. We will get to that, I promise. And then we will talk about what is going on on the internet with breakfast cereal. Of course, everybody's talking about the shrimp that was in this guy's Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I mean, there are just these days where I feel like, I don't know, maybe there's a slight lull in the news cycle and we as a collective, as the sort of the hive that is the internet, we just decide to get obsessed over something. Welcome to the internet. I don't know if the story warrants the attention it's getting. I also think we're sleeping on the other big cereal related story this morning, which is that Grape Nuts has announced they will refund money to people who had to overpay and buy Grape Nuts on the black market. when there was a grape nut shortage the grape smuggler back in uh i don't know a couple months ago uh so we will get into that plus it's a wednesday so we're gonna do this day in tvtl history you must remember the past is history the future is a mystery and of course we'll do all that with the help of this guy the longest drowning cobro of the show known for his drawings Of Tall Ships This is the pep talk that he gives me Every morning Right before show time I'm a number one

Guy

He is Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now From the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington Good morning my friend

Good lord that was more upsetting I knew when I was doing it that that was upsetting I had no idea Actually speaking of upsetting Can I come in hot here? I have so many regrets of things that we've said or done, or that I've said or done on the show in the past couple of days. One thing that I wanted to mention, let's start with the important stuff. You know, we were joking around because we got a note from a listener, a couple of listeners, who said they didn't like the lip-smacking sound in that new ice cream-tasting drop. And so I, you know, did a little spoof yesterday and kind of accentuated the lip-smacking and played it several times, like just the gross part. For some reason, that does not affect me at all. With all of my idiosyncrasies, that sort of sound doesn't bother me.

You don't have any kind of misophonia.

Right. But even before we posted yesterday's show with the amplified version of that, there were more and more people on the Slack channel saying, like, I feel physically ill with that sound.

i don't i mean listen i don't think i'm a terrorist what i did but i also feel like that was maybe over the top so i apologize i wish i hadn't done that i'm not gonna play that it was just a spoof but i didn't realize that was making people that sick speaking of sickness now that we got the important stuff out of the way let's talk about covid for a second um we were talking yesterday about like masks and mask wearing after you get vaccinated and i knew that there was i knew the recommendation was to keep wearing your mask for a lot of reasons but i leaned on the social engineering but we got several um notes especially let's see listener kelly wrote in and just said just because you're vaccinated doesn't mean that you can't be a carrier essentially i actually don't have that email in front of me right now here i can read it right now and i don't know if you were hearing any of this too in where in answer to luke's concerns about wearing a mask the vaccine only prevents you from getting sick not from catching covid you know the virus versus the disease there so you can still spread even if you have the vaccine so i don't know if that's exactly the the science there i'm trusting kelly there but either way i knew there was something like that so i had some regrets over not having that well you didn't do anything first of all i

kind of i kind of put you in a tough spot there by asking you if i mean i that was that's on me more than you um because i asked you if essentially you thought it was performative of me or unnecessary of me even though i'm fully vaccinated uh to you know continue wearing my mask all the time and and i you know i do feel like in my defense i do feel like the the the latest science seems to change kind of or maybe not change drastically but there are shades to it because initially the like i think it was the cdc's kind of advisory on it was if you're vaccinated you have to you have to act exactly like you haven't been vaccinated and then they put out their report on if you're vaccinated actually there's a they put out kind of a lot of latitude about hanging out with your unvaccinated friends and family and unvaccinated and vaccinated friends it was i when i read that the cdc's i think latest on it i was like wow they're actually allowing more of this more stuff to go on than i would have expected so in my in my mild defense to any listeners who are who were put off by that conversation yesterday uh you know it is kind of hard to keep track of what the latest on things i mean i'm i'm erring on the side of caution i am totally masked up and i just like i said this yesterday what i have a bit of a hard time with just internally is doing something that i feel like i'm being told to do that there may not be any real logic behind it now maybe there is logic behind this and listener kelly uh if it's if it's our listener kelly that i'm thinking of who is uh worked in bioethics and um and knows a lot about the science of this i think if this is if this is kelly folker's no oh we have a lot of a lot of smart kelly's in the audience yeah uh maybe they sense that my mom's maiden name is kelly and that's probably and they're drawn to the show like scientific moths to the flame anyway um i i'm just saying that it uh it's hard for me sometimes to like when i'm out jogging i can't believe i'm taking you said you regret that we've talked about this recently and i said well how about we just how about we throw another 20 minutes down on the topic to create more regret i'll try to keep this very short i have noticed like this morning on my little my little jog that there has been a subtle jogging cultural shift around masks three months ago when i moved here it was everybody was masked up while running even if we're 20 feet apart and if you were the odd person to have a mask on you were shamed uh maybe just in my mind but i feel like there were knowing looks from me and the other masked joggers now my move and this is the move of almost every person i saw this morning is you have your mask either kind of around your neck but it's down or you have it in your hand and you are jogging and of course you give everybody a ton of leeway we're talking like 12 feet but people are not pulling their mask up quickly people are not trying to mask up like the

new culture of jogging in portland is as long as you don't have to get too near someone we're all kind of okay with each other not being masked and i'm not trying to weigh in on the rightness or wrongness of it i'm just i'm observing that there has been a certain thawing of of of the of the strict strict strict adherence to what we perceive the rules to be well as somebody who

doesn't jog but does share the sidewalks with y'all joggers and like i said i don't you know this past winter was a little bit more difficult for mask wearing because for the first time my glasses really started to fog up last summer and spring and when we started wearing masks The temperature difference didn't affect my glasses too much I know some people were dealing with foggy glasses But for whatever reason mine were fine But then as the weather turned colder and more damp I was constantly fogging up And I was trying to take photos with my camera And it was like I was constantly steaming up and I couldn't see. And it kind of it was bumming me out. But I always wore my mask on the sidewalks. And I still do, by the way. But I would say that even as a walker, just somebody who's strolling, you know, down the sidewalk, running errands or whatever, wearing my mask. If there's a jogger who runs past me and is giving me a wide berth, like, you know, runs out into the into the bike lane for a second to avoid me or, you know, just gives me a wide berth. I'm not I'm as a mask wearer. I'm not judging that exercising person. Like, I'm just for not having a mask, not having a mask. Like, and again, I mean, my you know, everything keeps evolving. I mean, the news keeps evolving, but also I think our mentality keeps evolving, too, and our level of acceptance. But I don't I all I can say is I wouldn't feel personally threatened or aggravated if you were running kind of towards me or passing me and you gave me a wide berth and you weren't wearing a mask. I don't even know if I would notice because you're exercising now.

OK, can I mention Luke Burbank's trademarked hierarchy of who should be wearing their mask outdoors based on absolutely zero science?

This doesn't sound like I'm glad that we're this is not going to be a show where I regret everything again. this is good no you can regret what i've said yes exactly embrace but you haven't said anything

regretful yet does it is it a thing where when i say something that you that that makes you cringe it just still it still creates that feeling for you or is it only when you say something that

makes you cringe i think what's happening here is i mentioned to you as we were celebrating the one year anniversary of um of kind of like us realizing that yes the country was going to shut down with the rest of the world and doing a lot of reminiscing on that and thinking back to those early shows and I told you that you know we're all trying to figure it out at the beginning and we had predictions and different information and changing information and how I look back at that time of I feel like there's probably some pretty painful podcasting if I were to go back and listen in retrospect and I just sort of feel like now as I'm still continuing to figure out the proper way to lead my life in this in this changing world as we're hopefully crawling out of this I just don't want to be regretting what i'm saying now if that makes any sense like i don't know that my opinion on who should or should not be wearing masks is even really helpful for anybody right now because

oh i know this isn't helpful right my point is this is just this is just my lunatic brain as i'm jogging right so this is not this is not uh in any way how the rules should be structured in fact the the point of this is how absolutely inconsistent it is okay good i i feel like my my responsibility as a jogger if i am going to be sort of chill on my mask i.e not always be pulling it up or my uh my um buff or gator as they call it then my responsibility is to give the widest possible berth to every other person i see particularly walkers so i if i'm running there's like a very wide kind of elevated section like sidewalk basically that goes over the burn side bridge but if i'm approaching people and they're walking and i don't want to pull my mask up i then jump into the road and give them the widest berth possible so that's my responsibility i do think though if you're walking you should pull a mask up if you can because i think of walking as being a less aerobic exercise than running um and so and i know everyone has different abilities i understand that uh but what i mean is and this is just because i'm usually super tired jogging and i'm like yeah but if i was walking i could probably pull my mask up also if you're cycling if you're cycling at a leisurely pace you should have your mask up because that's just like fun and relaxing if you're like one of those like crazy like you're trying to win the tour de france across the hawthorne bridge you can have your mask down but you better go by really fast and you better turn your face away from me so that's another rule in my mind so there's different levels for cycling depending on how hard you're going if you're out for a sunday ride on your beach cruiser and you're just kind of tooling around and you don't have your mask up you're sitting down in my opinion you're in a version of relaxing while doing that so let's have the mask up basically in my mind it's the harder the person is working out the less responsibility i think they have to be masked up as long as they're trying to avoid people um of course the person who's working out the hardest is also expelling the most so i mean there's probably a like a vectoring argument to be made for that person should be the most masked up but yeah and again

i i could be totally wrong about this and i'm only saying how i feel and you know me i'm a pretty judgy person even if i'm trying to be less of a judgy person and less of a petty person it's still like kind of in my it's in my dna so that's something i have to suppress but um as somebody who's generally a judgy person if i see your car parked over a line i'm gonna judge you right if you're taking up two spots like well they're all car related i guess but you know just like these we live in a society things always trigger me um i will just

Say that me personally, if you are biking past me on a beach cruiser or a bike that's going 25 miles an hour, you know, down the Roosevelt bike lane that we have. And there's a slight incline or decline right on our road, too. So those bikes go by really fast. Either one of those scenarios, you're passing me so quickly outside and I'm walking with a mask because I'm kind of with you. Like I'm running an errand. I'm bringing a burrito back home so I can devour it or whatever. Or if anybody on a bicycle, I mean, unless they are, like, riding next to me and harassing me and blowing on me, like, we are literally outside, you know? Right. And I had mentioned to you the other day, like, it's just I cannot wait to the point where I can go back to the gym. And I'm not there yet. And I think that makes a lot of sense because, you know, you're inside. Like, you know, I'm daydreaming about the day I can do that. But, I mean, that I know in my bones. Does COVID? COVID lives in the bones, right? That's the latest science. That's the latest science, I think. But, you know, I know in my bones, yeah, I'm not quite there yet, right? Like, that is indoors, people expelling a lot of stuff. I want to be there. I've heard from some people who are like, you know what? I actually have been going to 24-Hour Fitness, and it's been great, and I feel safe there. And that's good. I appreciate the encouragement. I'm not quite there yet. And also, like I say, I know logically that is a lot of expelling of air in a place that has a ceiling on it and a roof. But, like, I just think beach cruiser or, you know, 10 speed. Do they go up to 10 now? 10 speed bicycle. No. Are you kidding me? I think they go up to 10.

They got 10?

I'm pretty sure.

I saw the movie. You know, a big change of life for old burbs was when I went from my obsession with BMX, you know, biking and bike tricks and the movie Rad. Yeah. Where people are, you know, what's the guy's name? we play it we play an intro from rad let me look for this tape yeah because this is when that was my my obsession and then i i uh i got a little bit older and i i realized no i want to be able to go vast distances very fast and and i also i think i might have seen like the movie quicksilver starring kevin bacon where he is a bicycle messenger person i believe in san francisco Maybe it's New York And he was on a 10 speed And I was like And then I got a 10 speed Because I was like I want to be able to ride Like 30 miles if I need to But I never did And all that would happen is I would go off of the curb And then the tires would always pop On the 10 speed And it was a little too tall for me So I would always just Be jacking up my undercarriage If I ever had to stop And get off of that thing You know what I mean Like did you ever have a You were kind of a tall guy I don't know if you were a tall kid Did you ever have a 10 speed bike That was just slightly too tall for you

I think I know that feeling from maybe hopping on a cousin's bicycle or something from time to time. But luckily, none of my full-time bikes, as I like to call them, none of my forever bikes presented that problem.

But that was when I was becoming a young man, when I moved on to 10 speed.

His name is Crew.

Hey, good looking. BMX is his world. Rad is his way of life. This is a very important race. He's got the style. There's something about the way you ride so naturally. And he's going to prove it. I've never seen this raw determination and talent in one kid.

Against the factory hot shots. Looks like the local Yoko's going to race after all. It's going to take a miracle to beat this guy. Against the big money fixers.

I like the way this is that trailer where they just keep on at, like the sentence never ends. And all of his friends, add a quote. And his mom is angry. Where have you been? And it's like the sentence.

And the big money fixers. You know, Andrew. those big money fixtures of bmx racing i know circa 1987 maybe i mean andrew the i i know that the this i know that my my personal system for ranking who should wear a mask where and when uh it's you know hasn't been cleared with fauci and may cause some consternation among the listeners and that's fine that's their right to feel that way um and it's fine because i don't actually know how to find the slack page right um so as far as no chance of me seeing it as far

I mean, just to be very clear here, I have not I've not been flamed by anybody. You know what I mean? I haven't seen like Kelly sent us this email, but it was just like pretty straight to the point. And I was like, ah, yeah, I had a feeling I had a feeling I just had a bad feeling about that conversation and me not having more answers at my fingertips yesterday. So it was just like this lingering feeling I had. And so I appreciated seeing Kelly's note.

But I just, Andrew, the key to happiness on hosting or co-broing this show is to not know where the Slack page is or the Facebook page is. Yes. That's just a simple, that's just a pro tip from me to you on how you can say anything you want on the program and never worry about it again.

We've been cutting it up on Slack. It's a pretty safe space, I think.

All right. Let's take a quick break.

come back. We will do this day in TBTL history, and also this list of weird science facts that we're going to get to no matter what today because I cannot bear to promote it for one more show and then not get to it. So stay with us. This is TBTL.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle, dazzle. Everybody rattle, dazzle.

Let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the generous, wonderful human beings who are, you know, it's so easy to see them as dazzling donors, Andrew, but they're also human beings. And I just think it's important to focus on that today. Human beings like James McCracken of Fort Collins, Colorado. James says, it's been a tough year for everyone, and I'd like to share what has helped keep me sane while going through it. As always, my internet friends on TBTL have been a source of laughs and confusion we we try to provide those in equal measure in fact i know first the laughs

flow out of the confusion i believe absolutely as does the anger unfortunately sure yeah um uh

and andrew i know you keep a spreadsheet i don't like to pull the curtain too far back no no we're really good at not doing that things really i'm very careful about what's that what's outward facing that we do yeah but um but you keep a spreadsheet of how many laughs and how much confusion we've been keeping over the course of a week and if the if the laughs are getting too big then it's time to up the confusion we have to keep it at exactly 50 50 that's part of our contract

with apm i'm like the fed of the federal banking system of laughs you know what i mean if things are getting too hot. You're the Janet Yellen. I need to put I gotta step on the brakes a little bit, but when things slow down too much we need to gas it up a little bit. You're always feathering things.

That's what I'm doing. You have to watch out for that irrational exuberance. Right. As Al Greenspan was worried about all those years ago.

We actually provide more rational exuberance. I swear that's already been a show title for TBTL, but

let me look it up. Well, at 3,386 everything has been a show title.

Let me look it up

James says T.P.T.L. is a source of laughs and confusion But the thing that has really helped me is getting deeper into stoicism It's taught me that I don't have to be able to solve everything As many things are out of my control I also begin to realize that a lot of things are in my control Most importantly, it has taught me that I can decide what principles guide the choices I make I think we could all be happier following these ideas If you want to get started learning, I recommend Ryan Holiday's book, The Daily Stoic. Fish sandwiches forever, James of the TBTL Science Council. You know what's really funny is I think I'm actually low-key interested in stoicism, but I also think that I have a lot to learn about it because when I was a kid growing up in the kind of religious worldview I did, stoicism was seen as something that was to be avoided. I don't know what it is. I am if I start trying to guess at it, I I will say something that is extremely I will add to the confusion and there will be no laughs and the whole thing will be out of whack.

Yeah, that is probably not what James wants in his dazzling donor message where he's trying to get information out about stoicism, us just taking stabs, stabs at and spreading misinformation is probably not what he wants is his dazzling message to turn into.

But, I mean, I always thought of Stoicism – it's an ancient Greek school of philosophy that taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge. The wise live in harmony with the divine reason and are indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain. So to be sort of a Stoic is to be – my sense of it – I mean, I was just reading something the other day about memento mori. Do you know about this principle? No. Memento mori sounds kind of dark, but for a lot of people it's quite liberating. memento mori basically means hey man we're all gonna die and instead of that being a sad thing it just means that the little tiny as uh as as they might say the vicissitudes of life that hang us up so bad don't matter like the things that we think of as like oh my gosh you know that that person that cyclist didn't move over to the other side of the hawthorne bridge sidewalk as much as i wish they would or they waited a little bit too long that's the kind of thing that will have me kind of annoyed for 10 whole minutes but man memento mori like this is a limited limited time offer i'm only going to be here so long i'm of the belief system that this is probably kind of all there is and so if i am going to eventually not be on this planet nothing that happens really matters to me and so i should i have the choice of how i respond to things Mm-hmm. Now, I don't know if that really fits into stoicism or not, but I have been thinking about that kind of a lot lately. And I have to admit, it's been kind of providing me with a little bit of calm, not in a kind of nihilistic way, like nothing matters, but in a happy way, like I don't need to let things get to me.

Yeah, right, right.

You know, it doesn't like, you know. So anyway, James, thanks for the update on the Daily Stoic. People might want to go check that out. Maestro?

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle, dattle

Everybody rattle, dattle

Let's thank Julie Hazi in Phoenix, Arizona Again, love these pronouncers I love to fart through the silk of these pronouncers Okay, come on, sorry about that, Julie You know, Andrew, memento mori Okay, don't let me say farting through silk Don't let it bother you, memento mori

Julie has been supporting the show for a long time And we've been reading her name on the show for a long time And I don't think I've ever landed on Hazi I mean Julie would know better than us She would remember better But like you know that's another one I don't want to go back to the tape Do you think we've ever said Hazzy before No of course we haven't

Because it so happens That that's also the last name Of your partner Genevieve And of her brother Zachary Who we're friends with Different spelling Oh right Do I need to get into literally spelling their last name Maybe that's too much But it's enough in the neighborhood I think that I just would assume that this would either go Hass or Hassie, but not Hazzy.

And the Z, not S, not a soft S either, is very informative to me.

So, Julie, thank you for donating through the pain of us butchering your name for all these years.

Exactly, and maybe Julie will mention it in her message, but we met Julie, of course, on our very fun trip to Arizona. We all hung out in that rat skeller. Isn't that what we call an underground bar? Is that a generic term or not?

I don't know. It sounds like there's a lot of rats there. Yeah, it's not good. I have seen that name before. You had a theory that was also a place the Beatles might have played.

I think I just call everything Ratskeller now. It's my new thing, Bozo.

I like it. I'm calling everyone Bozo and Ratskeller. Julie says, I've been listening since the days when Luke was doing the show solo most of the time. That was the Dark Ages.

No wonder you like it now.

No, I'm just joking. That was a life expectancy really plummeted during that phase of the show. That was a bad time for everybody. But thanks, Julie, for riding through that, for walking through that with us. That was when the memento mori felt most in the absolute foreground of my mind. The days when Luke was doing the show solo and the entire show was held up by a stick. It has been so much fun Experience the evolution of the show From the days when we were all watching the live stream On Stickam and becoming Stens To now when we all have garbage anxiety Thanks to Andrew I'm so happy to be part of the community I know it gets said often but I truly feel like I'm getting to hang out With my good friends every day and this is special This is special Insert drop here if you like I think I did a better job of it Julie If I can be honest One song that I heard about here on TBTL that has definitely gotten me out of a couple of jams since Luke and Jen played it all those years ago is Just Breathe by Zay Frank. It's come to mind often during the pandemic, and I would love it if you would play it again, as I think it's a good reminder for everyone going through a tough time. To paraphrase my favorite ABBA song, thank you for the music and all the joy you're bringing every day. Power out. Wow, I think there's something going on in our minds, Andrew, and in our spirits and with the listeners where everyone is, both dazzling donors today were suggesting just kind of little helpful tips on how to navigate this version of the world and things that have brought them comfort. There must be something in the air, or we just need that today. So thank you, Julie, so much for supporting the show. And I promise next year we will get your name right again as long as you fill in the pronunciation thing. Otherwise, almost no chance.

hello and welcome to top story i'm gonna pickle here luke because okay why coming off of um julie's dazzling donor message there i don't this song in this band i'm not fine do you know this song i know zay frank but i know i think because i'm not even seeing zay frank and i'm wondering if i'm spelling it wrong on um on spotify um uh let's see it well you're spelling it the way it is in

julie's message right yeah right what if you just did it on the internet and see if like there's a youtube i think i think that zay frank am i are you finding something this is something called

hey you're okay you'll be fine just breathe zay frank chill out is this it i don't know um the chill out version sounds like maybe a remix i don't know and then it just stopped there i know that there's a zay frank song that i like that's a christmas song i think which doesn't help us here but i mean i feel like i know that

that's a thing that exists this band does exist okay if we can't play it today i'm finding a song called chill out by zay frank and i'm wondering and that seems like it's got more hits and i'm wondering is there a chance that julie's well why don't we do this why don't we

play that one today yeah and if it's not the right song we'll play the right one when julie hears this and emails us as to what the right one is yeah sorry about that uh sorry to you for

ruining the show sorry to julie for fumbling around i should have probably figured that out before we read it on the show no that's okay because you gave me time to find my this day in

tbtl history you already know this day in tbtl history trying a new thing where i say you already

know i like it it pumps me up luke i'm very excited about uh this day in tbtl history i don't there's only the third time that i've done it now uh since we've rebooted this and i don't know if i say that every time but i feel like last week i had more trouble kind of finding stuff that i I wanted to play for you from this day on various days in TBTL history. Today, I had so much trouble isolating just one bit. I went back to the earliest days that I could, that it was you and me doing this. March 23rd, 2012. I believe I'm weeks, if not days, into becoming a regular fixture on the show at this point. You're referring to me as producer Andrew in the show notes, I noticed. And I could go back to it, too. So don't. No, that's fine. What I liked about that, though, which is funny is because back then I was so much less of a producer on TV. I didn't produce shit. I just I produce laughs for your jokes and confusion. That was it. Like you posted the show. You recorded the show. You did everything. But I was a producer at Cairo Radio. And that was your way of kind of explaining to people who I was. But we kicked things off in this episode. Again, this is March 23rd, 2012. We kick things off talking about a weekend that I remember very well. Genevieve's family had as a gift had gotten us tickets to the show wicked in Portland and got us like and they set us up in a hotel and they basically created this entire gift package for us so we had this wicked weekend in Portland and we talked about that me not being a huge wicked or musical fan and you you playing the um the the wicked uh I don't know talented theme song for me um anyways that was a very fond memory of me um which I like to have just for myself and then the top story we're not going to be playing this because again it didn't it didn't pop out but you played a drop from mike daisy at the beginning of the show today and the top story on this day over the years is that the facts are your friends you've mentioned this recently you remembered like mike daisy maybe even including you in an apology when he finally apologized for for basically making shit up in his monologue the agony and ecstasy of steve jobs and it's true um when mike daisy was kind of caught in a bunch of lies and he apologized he mentioned you by name luke because you had interviewed him on the um ross and burbank show and you apparently were the only journalist who had straight up asked him about the truthful the truthfulness uh in these fantastic stories before he got in trouble and i now i remember this and you were very proud of that and when it all broke open you're like we had a question and this is funny you even mentioned our quote friend chris hayes of the up with chris hayes tv show on msnbc a very different time um he was playing the clip from ross and burbank of you asking him straightforward about how truthful

all of this was and daisy just i think straight up lied to you in a journalistic setting so you actually played more and and we had played that on tbtl a lot as well so that was the top story mike daisy apologizes to luke burbank specifically um but then the clip for the day uh is not related to any of that it's actually from the email segment and i thought it was pretty funny and pretty telling so here take a listen to this

this one actually just popped into my inbox but i thought it was interesting uh it was uh from listener luke uh hey luke i've heard some people groaning about the short shows at the end of last week, and I just wanted to send an E-pad on the back to you. A full week's worth of original content is more than satisfying for this 10 Zers. I don't know why that's how I make Lucas talk. Keep on crushing it and hope to see you at Comic-Con if I can get tickets. I thought it was interesting because that is something that has been going on lately in terms of short Shortening the show up a little bit, and the reason is because if we had to choose between doing four original shows and then running more or less a rerun on Fridays or doing five new shows, all of which were maybe a little shorter. Instead of the show, it used to go about an hour. Now we usually go about 45 minutes. I know Friday with Corolla was on the really short side, but I figured you're getting to listen to Adam Corolla. That's more interesting than my little musings. I mean the one thing is practical. It's just – it's difficult to create so many shows in a week. The other thing is just I want to make sure that when we do a show, we just keep talking until we run out of interesting things to say, and then we stop.

Right. And also, I have bladder control issues. Is that too personal?

No, but really –

I'm trying to find the line.

No, that's good. No, that's absolutely fine. So anyway, I guess I would just say bear with us. In years past, we have done some of these shows, and they'll go an hour and a half, two hours. And sometimes I'll listen back to them or I'll think about what was going on and I'll think, you know, of that, about 45 minutes of it was decent. And so I guess part of me is like, let's just put out the decent stuff. So that's the idea. And like I said, I hope you guys will all, you know, try to, you know, extend as much grace to us as you can in that department. Believe me, we're cranking out as much show as we possibly can.

And that, dear listener, is why the show has remained so short and to the point and only includes the good stuff for the past nine years.

Yes, this represents the only the best, the absolute. This is the Paul Messon of TBTL. We will publish no cast until it's time. uh also did my voice sound that prepubescent for the first you know i don't know seven years of the program my voice sounds so high and also it is sounds like it's right on the verge of cracking

i feel like mine i feel like yeah you're you actually sound a little normal really i thought because i have other chunks of tape from the same show where i'm doing a lot more talking and i thought mine sounded a little bit higher too and i was wondering could this be a technical thing or It does sound like your voice is a little hoarse, though, and I don't know if you were, you know, we were coming off a weekend, so there's a chance that you went hard that weekend, or maybe you were a little bit under the weather. But, okay, first of all, I think there's so much, it's so funny because we constantly are having conversations about the format of the show and when we're going to tighten things up and go long. It's just like so funny to hear that conversation for so long ago when we're saying we're sorry that the shows are too short where we're now like handing out like hour and 45 minute long podcast. We're leaving everything in there. That seems hilarious to me. And then I can't remember my second point.

Well, that was, you know, it's interesting because listener Julie, dazzling donor, Julie in Phoenix said she's been listening. She sort of jumped into the show when it was a lot of me going solo. And at the time, if I remember right, by the time you came on sort of every show as producer, Andrew, I think was Ross and Burbank was a thing, right?

Yeah, that's how you that's kind of how this whole thing happened.

So it was a thing where each day I was also doing a three hour radio show. That's what I was going to say. Yes. Yeah. And then TBTL. And so I think I was grappling with this question of like how much how much, you know, additional show do I have in me every day? I mean, and there really were there were there was a period of time where I think I was doing the show because I just was too afraid to stop doing it. If that makes any sense Like I just had this kind of grim momentum Where I I wanted to keep going Well I knew that if I stopped doing the show There was no getting it back Like if we stopped for three months And then started it back up A bunch of people would have gotten out of the habit of listening So I was sort of afraid to stop But if I could have conceived of any world In which I could have taken a three month break from the show And then come back I would have done it And so somehow the answer was we'll do you know 45 minute shows we'll keep the shows shorter each day but we'll keep doing five of them a week and then of course when we signed with APM and when this just became our full-time job again then that was well out the window yeah in fact that that was definitely the second point

that I wanted to make that I just totally punted on there was that we're talking about your voice and that ties into what we're talking about that you we were recording this you know coming off a three-hour more than a three-hour shift for you three hours of talking on the radio but you know six hours or whatever when you consider the prep that goes into it or I guess three hours in one minute when you can say the prep that went into the show but and you were just doing that every day and I think it's interesting this is the thing that I wanted to take away it's like pandemic aside like let's go you know let's say what your schedule was like right before the pandemic hit and you're on the road all the time with cbs and you're it doesn't seem like you're less busy now i think you're more busy probably than you were in 2012 but you're busy in a different way and we're not doing tbtl at the end of talking for three hours and again i wasn't doing the talking at this point later on i end up getting a night show and then i'm doing tbtl first that was kind of my warm-up before i'd go into the station and do my show and that was actually a pretty good rhythm but during this period i was really psyched to be part of tbtl and and working with you and dave on cairo so these are very fond memories for me but i wasn't getting off of talking on the radio for three hours like you were

yeah it's interesting i'm glad my voice doesn't sound like that as much anymore and i guess my voice will just keep going down until the show is done when eventually it'll be like a sub audible tone. It'll be disturbing. People won't even be able to hear it, but what it'll do is it'll trigger ads to play on radio stations all over the country. Now, Andrew, it's time to get into some weird science.

Oh.

Yeah, baby. Remember this? God, I had such a crush on Kelly LeBrock. Such a crush. I don't think

I have seen this movie from start to finish. I think I know the broad Strokes, the cultural touch. She had to hit pause a couple

times. Was it a sexy movie? Kelly LeBrock hit the scene. Yeah, it's these two guys, one of whom is Anthony Michael Hall, use science to create their dream

girl. Oh, of course. Right, right, right. Yes.

Yes. And the dream girl is one, Kelly LeBrock, who I was quite taken with as a young boy. This is a list that somebody named Megan Moravchik-Walbert put together for lifehacker.com weird science and animal facts your kids will enjoy i.e. us uh she said that she was basically trying to put together during the pandemic some just something to kind of keep her kids entertained and she started making this list and then she found it really interesting and she she said um next time you need to do a video chat with your nephew or your best friend's daughter you need something to spice up the conversation here are some facts uh i did my best to verify that all of these are true. Okay. Did you know, Andrew, a sneeze can travel up to 100 miles per hour?

No. No, I didn't. It's interesting. A sneeze. I don't think of a sneeze as an object that travels. It must be the... Well, it's probably the expectorant. Yeah, the expectorant. Expectorant? Is that what it is? I believe

expectoration would be the things coming out of your mouth. I believe that.

I'll give it a... I'll sign off on that.

I mean, can we agree that when you have to sneeze and you're driving and you're on the freeway, it feels life and death?

Yes, it certainly does.

Because you can't sneeze with your eyes open, right? Right. And as I've written this on Twitter and said it on the show many times, like, when I'm, like, barreling down the freeway and a sneeze comes out of nowhere and I don't crash, I feel like I've jumped out of an airplane without a parachute and survived. It's quite terrifying. Here's another weird scientific fact. Scientists believe it rains diamonds on Saturn and Jupiter.

What?

Yeah.

Isn't that crazy? I don't even understand it. How could—is there any more information?

Nope. My guess would be that the space debris—I mean, rain is probably being used somewhat loosely, but probably having to do with the age of the universe and what the, you know, What other kind of like celestial bodies And forces are happening out near Saturn and Jupiter I mean Saturn famously has rings That there must just be The debris that comes to rest That comes down into the atmosphere Has probably been formed in such a way That it's a diamond It's very old and under a lot of pressure Or was

That's interesting

A polar bear's skin is black Its fur is white Yes I've actually known this for a while Not to brag But I think that the kind of the amazing evolutionary component of that is that the polar bear's black skin, it absorbs sunlight and maybe warmth.

Okay, sure.

So it's getting it's, you know, it's because we know black absorbs light. So it's getting the all of the benefits, I guess, of sunlight and of maybe warmth when it's very, very cold out. But it's fur is white. Yeah, like to like blend into the snow for camouflage and whatnot. Probably for hunting purposes, because I think that they're the apex predator of where they are. Is there something that hunts polar bears other than humans?

That's a really good question. You're right. I was thinking, like, oh, yeah, to protect them from predators. But who's going after the polar bears? They're probably trying to sneak up.

Well, here's the unfun answer. Every time I don't separate my recycling. That's.

That's the predator. Climate change is the predator that is higher on the food chain above polar bears. How about this? A cloud can weigh over a million pounds?

A cloud can weigh over a million pounds. Luke, can I ask you a philosophical question? Yes. How do you weigh a cloud?

How do you find a word that means Maria? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?

onto a scale isolated environment

I guess it's gotta be I mean that's one of those ones where they must just use math I did weigh myself this morning by the way

did you use math or a scale

I used a scale but I don't it's on the metric system I don't know how to change it over it's from this company called Withings that is based in the UK I think and I have to figure out how to change it over to i have not gotten on the scale in a long time because i have not really wanted to see the results and so today i was like you know what it's it's time to stop uh you know whistling past this graveyard called my bmi so i decided to weigh myself and then i got on the scale and then it it um it was in kilograms first i was like cool i weigh 90 pounds but no i don't i have a scale

it's like i i apparently weigh 140 stone i don't know what that means and you're three hands tall

um let's see here how about uh cats can't taste anything sweet

interesting so a bowl of milk and a bowl of ice cream would basically taste the same to them but

it's about mouthfeel to the cats i believe right but that they cannot taste sweetness i didn't know

that how about you know can i lay one on you do you know that birds can't um taste the hotness genevieve protects her bird food from squirrels by first treating it with a bunch of tabasco sauce and then she soaks in tabasco sauce dries it out then puts it in the feeder and that has really really cut down on the problem of squirrels getting up on the bird feeder or even just having like kind of rats and stuff uh down below when the bird seed falls out because the birds they

don't they don't sense the the tabasco that is fascinating that like scares me because i think maybe they're burning their little mouths but i guess if you don't have if your taste buds don't respond to the capsaicin then i guess it's just you know i guess it's fine you know what i just

thought of and this is a little um untoward but um what if it doesn't hurt when they're eating it but they do have a bad bathroom experience later and we have no idea and we're just like putting

these birds through so well i assume veves got that off the internet and i assume it was put on the internet by people that love birds so i'm going to i'm going to assume that that it's been vetted that like it was it's something that people have thought that part of it through because i know that if i eat a bunch of really spicy stuff and i do love spicy food that is something that i will uh be experiencing later as it's exiting my body that just seems like unavoidable but then again i also taste the hotness so if a bird doesn't taste the hotness does its uh you know

digestive tract also not respond to the hotness and if it does respond to the hotness how like if they're not eating it that's a pretty good uh that's good evidence there that they're they're tasting it but like on the way out like what are they are they filling out surveys saying oh you know i enjoyed my dining experience but the next day i had a real ring of fire situation right exactly like how do we know that the birds aren't going off somewhere else also really having a time

of it i'd say being a bird if you're gonna be if you're gonna have diarrhea being a bird is the way to go because you just go anywhere you want anytime you're just sitting there just like a bird on a wire that was leonard cohen's original that's what it's jumping off point for that song that beautiful song that we love so much was about birds that had diarrhea i didn't that i didn't know we're learning so much that's in a whole other list that i'm going to read you tomorrow um three percent of the ice in antarctica is made up of penguin pee a third three percent

sounds three percent i i not a third three i heard sorry i blanked out for one second i'm still looking for the z frank song and i heard a third and that is how rumors start that is how misinformation gets spread even three percent sounds high yeah oh wow i just did it i didn't I didn't know you had an Adam Duritz in your back pocket.

That's the follow-up to my George Takei from yesterday.

I really didn't do that on purpose. I was just thinking, does 3% seem high to me? I mean, that's a lot of ice, so that's a lot of pee.

One more, and then we've got to – I think actually the best way to do this is just when we need it, I'm going to deploy like four or five fun facts from this thing.

these are good right just go to it yeah i like it but don't you think that like this is actually a pretty good list yeah the diamonds um the the raining diamond thing i need to look that up i need to understand more about that because i don't understand so like were they created because obviously diamonds are made under pressure so were they made on another planet under pressure and then something blew up and they spread across the universe i need to figure that one out it was

when the bad people from superman 2 got out of that glass giant glass thing that they were in

the forbidden zone or in space in yeah i feel you don't think that dr manhattan has anything

to do with this at all at this time i cannot confirm or deny that i don't have enough information um did you know andrew that humans don't just have unique fingerprints we each have a unique

tongue print as well oh i i didn't know that but it raised another question as you were asking that do we have toe prints oh do we have prints like you look at your thumb you can see that you know you have fingerprints like do we have individual toe prints so that if somebody were like the barefoot bandit for example could we have caught could we have caught the barefoot bandit by um

you know having his toe prints i believe that your foot does have a unique pattern because it's like the palm of your hand palm print is a thing hand print is a thing and as our fingerprints i mean Your palm and your hand are operating much like your fingertips, which is that your skin grows in a pattern and there's a certain – there's a pattern in how that happens and that's what creates – it's almost kind of a circular thing. And that's what's creating your fingerprints out at the end of your hands. Your foot has the same kind of thing. And so, yeah, I'm sure toe print is a thing. I've seen on some of those forensic file shows, I mean, not to be gruesome, but like if somebody was in bare feet while they were committing the crime and they stepped in something, possibly blood, they can figure that person out by doing a kind of comparison to the foot of the suspect. That's interesting. And now we add tongues to the list. Yes. So, you know, if you're committing a crime and you're trying to get away with it, don't lick, like don't smash your tongue down on any of the surfaces near the thing you're stealing, near the diamond that you're stealing. Right. I'm going to go with a nonviolent crime so things stay a little bit less. If you're going like heist on it and you're trying to steal the Hope Diamond, don't lick any part of the, you know, container that it's in or anything because that's how they're going to get you.

And while we're doing advice, let me just say, don't even steal that diamond. They're just raining diamonds in space, my dude.

Just take the next trip to Jupiter and collect all the diamonds that you could possibly want. We really don't have time for this because we are hitting the point where we're supposed to be wrapping the show up, Andrew. But I just want to say, can we just put like three minutes on the clock?

Okay. I don't have a ticking clock sound, so I'm just going to do this while you talk.

Go ahead. would like to um apologize to our listeners with misophonia we've replaced the guy tasting ice cream with andrew making that sound that was like um that was actually that wasn't my mouth that was a real clock i held up i am i'm kind of fascinated not even by the actual details of the jensen carp shrimp tail in his cinnamon toast crunch story it's less that somehow in the production of this thing some shrimp tails got in the cereal or that maybe like at a different point that the cereal became contaminated this is a thing that's been making the news in the new york times today there's a full-on article in the times about it no of this guy jensen carp who is uh friends with our friend bean from the kevin and bean show jensen was a regular contributor to the kevin and bean show and then when bean left he became one of the permanent you know kind of co-hosts the program of uh of kevin and ali and jensen or whatever that show exactly was called so he was eating some cinnamon toast crunch the other day which he loves and found these two shrimp tails in it which is strange but i don't know i just assume the production lines of things are so just like i was somehow kind of not that surprised i was like maybe somebody was eating their lunch and a shrimp tail got in there i mean you have a lot of different ingredients being brought together i don't i just figured that could happen like i don't know the story of how it happens but that could happen the mistake on the part of general mills was at some point when they were trying to save face they he was tweeting about it and they tweeted back to him that they had done some investigating and that what he was holding were not shrimp tails they were just a kind of accretion of cinnamon and sugar that had not been properly sifted out like and they said something

like there's zero chance of this being cross-pollinated you know on our line which i understand where they're coming from they're like we don't create anything else in our factories that is at all shrimp related that's kind of where they're coming from but I think you're right too it doesn't mean that somebody didn't make a mistake with their lunch and then somebody else make a mistake when they're cleaning up the place or something

and That was the big mistake from General Mills, which I was thinking, man, I have a theory, by the way, that that was some old white man at General Mills who is about to retire from the PR department. Because I kind of feel like the younger people who get how the Internet works would just be like, take the L. Let's just send him a lifetime supply of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Do whatever we need to do to just, you know, apologize and move on. but somebody there at or in their PR company was like no no we have to own the story we have to own the narrative and the narrative is that we are there is not shrimp tails in cinnamon toast crunch so we have to point out that that's not what it is and anybody who's smart about the internet would know that's a bad look for the company because what jensen came back with was well after doing more research on my part with my eyes these are shrimp tails he took a picture of him and then he said to general mills these famous words stop gaslighting me and also that didn't he

also finally little he's like i went back into the bag now because of this and there were little

bits of string in there as well string and these black things that were cooked into some of the cinnamon toast which some people were speculating might be rat poop he's having all of this stuff now looked at um you know at an actual like laboratory so what i find fascinating though is that like the tweets around this are getting like 60,000 like if Jensen tweets about it it'll have like 60,000 likes like this is the thing that the internet sort of decided to become obsessed with for the last day and a half I just didn't think this was a story that was going to be getting as much as much interest as it's been getting but I will tell you that what I really think is interesting is that Grape Nuts in a genius PR move has decided that they are going to offer refunds to people this is in serial related news they're going to offer refunds to people who were buying grape nuts at a on the secondary market when there was a grape nut shortage now this is a genius thing because you're supposed to provide them with receipts and i don't know how many people bought a box of grape nuts for 110 dollars which is apparently what they were going for up to 110 during the grape nut shortage but grape nuts has said that they will refund you that money if you can provide them a receipt now i bet you the list of people who actually did that is under 20 and i bet you they don't have the receipts but it's a genius move from grape nuts because it has us talking about grape nuts it represents the opposite exactly what

the cinnamon toast crunch people did exactly i mean obviously you knew it before you were saying that but yeah the exact opposite two two tails there like oh two tails two shrimp tails oh yeah Now, one thing, though, that did have me – I think I was thinking about a tale of two cereals. What was I going for there? It doesn't matter. Go ahead. Sorry.

A tale of two shrimps? I don't know. No, I know what you mean. You wanted to have cereal in there because it's not – the story is not about the two shrimps. It's about two kinds of cereal, probably both owned by the same company, BT Dubs. Yeah, probably. My guess would be.

No, Post, I think, maybe does. Grape Nuts, let me look up.

Now, I did see this tweet last night that I thought was pretty funny because Jensen Karp is married to a woman named Danielle Fischel Karp, who is well-known in the minds of people of a certain age for playing the character Topanga on Boy Meets World. And she sort of – that's an iconic character. And somebody wrote a man – this was on Twitter. I retweeted it. A man named Carp married a woman named Fishel. He found shrimp tails in a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. The cereal was purchased from a Costco on Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Remember, her name was Topanga on the TV show. And his wife played Topanga on Boy Meets World. Meanwhile, Carp used to be a guest on Pistol Shrimp Podcast. And as I wrote, did I just start believing in QAnon? Like, that is a weird series of coincidences.

Or to keep it in the parlance of recent TBTL episodes, and you don't believe in God, Luke? By the way, I can't believe it. I got one thing right today. Yes, Grape Nuts is made by Post. Nice. And Cinnamon Toast Crunch is General Mills. I have no idea where I pulled that from, but here we are.

I love it. We never know what nuggets of information your brain is going to hang on to. All right. So we should probably wrap things up here because when we are done, We are going to turn right around and check in with our friend on tomorrow's episode, which we're going to record today, actually, because I'm going to be traveling tomorrow. We're going to check in with Dan Pashman of the Sporkful podcast about his new pasta that he invented. I am really jealous about this, and we'll get into it on tomorrow's episode.

He's as big as Shrimp Dad now or whatever. Bigger. Yeah, bigger.

And he's also got this thing he's selling that I think is flying off the shelves. I mean, it's really something. we need to get into some kind of tbtl product line that we just sell like that this is like just Cash right into our pockets How do you think APM will feel about that

We'll figure it out We'll give them some branding opportunities Maybe But yeah I think it should be Maybe some sort of a fake Not a fake A plant based sausage product We'll figure it out

I like it Did you ever find I know you spent the last 20 minutes of the show Fretting about the Z Frank song Have you been talking all this time Because I've only been googling

Listen I can't figure this out Here's the best that I got here I think the song might actually be called Chill Out because in the song, which kind of keeps on popping up a lot in my Google searches, the lyrics say just breathe a lot. So I think this must be it. But I haven't previewed this.

So, you know, buckle up, everybody. All right. So that's what we're going to go out with. If it's wrong, listener Julie, please tell us and we'll play the right one next year when you donate again. Tough but fair. That's what I'm known for on the show. Alright, thanks for listening everyone We're going to be back here tomorrow With more imaginary radio for you Until then, enjoy your Wednesday Stay safe And please remember No mountain too tall And good luck to all

Just breathe

And now the women sing

Hey

You're okay You'll be fine You'll be fine

Just breathe Now everybody sings Hey You're okay

You'll be fine Just breathe Hey You're okay You'll be fine Just breathe Hey You're okay You'll be fine

You'll be fine.

Just breathe. Power out.