Muse

What are you doing in here?

Getting away from the bad news. Just trying to, you know, realign myself. You know what I'd like? Uh-uh. I'd like to be cryogenically suspended. Yeah.

And then be woken up in the future?

No, never wake up. Just stay suspended.

Are you drunk?

TBTL! You keep hiding from s*** in the world, and eventually the world comes to your front door. Nice. That's very nice. I heard an episode of Touched by an Angel.

Whoa, watch out, says that bird. Ew, it's got a snake. Oh, it's chasing a jackal. Oh, my gosh.

I'm sorry, all right? That's the kind of guy I am. I give little to no thought for the things that I do or say. I just saw the top of my head, you know. South Dakota, cinnamon buns, tonic attain. Did not think about those words at all.

It's a regional dialect. Uh-huh. What region? Uh, upstate New York. Really? Well, I'm from Utica, and I've never heard anyone use the phrase steamed hams. Oh, not in Utica, no. It's an Albany expression. Aye, sir.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL.

Carol, hold my calls!

The show that just might be too beautiful to live. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. I think this guy's sense of humor never developed past junior high school. Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center, high in the sky, above Portland, Oregon, where we're looking at a decent Monday. It was actually a surprisingly nice weekend around here. Got out, did some hiking at the Catherine Creek Trail over in Lyle, Washington in the Gorge area. And, well, here we are, Monday morning, ready to do this thing again, known as TBTL. It's episode 3,414 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

And I want to tell you about this fascinating article in the New York Times talking about what happens when you burn candles in your house.

Am I panicked about the fire or am I being brave for everyone else?

i was talking to a friend of mine in chicago my dear friend katie and she was explaining to me how like an extremely big part of her sort of emotional well-being was based around these candles that she was buying not like they're you know santeria or something but just like she said having candles around and having them lit nice candles she's like it just absolutely changes my whole mood and i've heard this from other people too we are very much living in the era of folks using a lot of candles and it turns out there's something to be at least mildly aware of around candles and then if you're still listening after that and i hope you're sitting down i've got a hot take on the song candle in the wind it's going to be very hot it's going to be very uncomfortable for everybody uh so um that's gonna happen during top stories Also, oh, look at this. It is the 50th anniversary of NPR. And we are going to well, we're going to ask the question. What would have happened to me and Andrew if public radio had not existed? like what would like we're gonna go real it's a wonderful life on it what what would our lives be like in 2021 if we had not had the opportunity to be part of the public radio world the past is history the future is a mystery uh so we will uh talk about that we will also of course do some emails and v-mails and we will chat with the longest running cobro of the show he may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships he's doing the work he's baby stepping he had a Fairly major surgery on Friday And yet here he is Although I will say, I don't know if it's the painkillers Or just his natural anxiety But he's already pretty nervous About this radio conversation we're going to have Why? Why do I even try to talk about radio? Everything that you say is right Everything I say is wrong Actually, maybe these drugs are fixing his brain He's finally recognizing just how right I am about things He's Andrew Welsh, and he's joining me right now From the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington Good morning, my friend

Good morning, Luke Sorry, there was something wrong with my microphone, thus the stutter. Wait, though, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let's start the show today in the most interesting place, the place where all the listeners are turning right now as well. Yeah, sure. How did you play the morning edition music and put drops over top of it? What's going on with your setup down there? I didn't think that you had the capability of playing two different sounds from your computer at the same time. No, I could literally play a hundred sounds.

at the same time oh they're not coming from different computers you're just mixing the levels on the single computer brilliant that i use brilliant job yes i that occurred to me

while the intro tape was playing which is always a real dicey proposition i was like you know what would be a good way to establish the public radio you know forward promo would be i was like i gotta have i really think i wanted the all things considered theme but whatever i just i had the morning the old morning edition like theme music and so i i was i played that but i also wanted to play the it's my birthday today sound so i was on the fly trying to kind of make all of that audio work together i'm glad it sounded relatively okay no i was well as you can tell i was very impressed

the only thing is i sort of ruined it at the end when your morning edition music uh ran out i i clunkily returned to the tbtl theme song uh in a way that it just didn't have the didn't have the It didn't, you know, it wasn't up to TBTL standards in my opinion.

Well, you know who you really let down was Bob Boylan.

Yeah, I know.

Actually, who you really let down would have been probably BJ Lederman, who I assume wrote all of that music. But then Bob Boylan, famous now of, you know, All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk fame. He used to be the director of All Things Considered. And, you know, so that meant he was the person standing behind the glass, kind of like cueing everyone when the mics go on, when the music happens. And he just loved the bump music so much, the music that, you know, begins or ends little segments that he just would collect all these CDs and then eventually got his own digital show, All Songs Considered. And then that all happened.

And when he heard that, Bob Boylan spinned around in his tiny desk chair. I was trying to think of what would be the equivalent of rolling over in your grave if you're still alive but you're Bob Boylan

That's a great question Somebody wrote on Twitter the other day if I was NPR I'd just get a bigger desk Yeah right I thought that was a pretty good spoof That's probably from the Josh Letterman old friend files Old pal files Hey old pal how did the surgery go on Friday man We were texting a little bit on Saturday It sounds like it was a sort of bigger event Like my imagination of it was that they could do this surgery like literally in the doctor's office. But then I thought about it. I was like, no, they're cutting your body open. It has to be in a sterile environment, like a really sterile environment.

Yes, it was a trip. I was picturing it more as you described it, too, because the only other kind of experience I have with any kind of surgery was when I had oral surgery for, you know, they had to remove some things from my tongue. and that was an intense experience for me but the setting was not that much different than any other dentist office right like there were there were more people on hand they had to you know put me under so that's a you know that's something they have to be careful with so there were more precautions it wasn't just like a trip to the dentist but if you were to look around it was essentially like a dentist's office and a dentist chair and everything like that this was a trip this was not what I was expecting because I went to the same facility on Friday that I went to a few days prior to get my first consultation, and that, you know, I went in one door, and it looked like a regular doctor's office, and I sat in a chair, and the doctor looked at me, et cetera, et cetera. When I went in on Friday, they let me in through a different door, Luke. Whoa. It's a whole different door, and I was obviously very nervous, but I'm trying to, you know, I'm just trying to breathe and just take it all in and not freak myself out too much, and they take me into this little area and they sit me down and uh you know it's like i don't know it's it's almost like a set of cubicles except they're all separated by curtains you know those kind of doctor's curtains and they take me in the one all the way in the corner um and there's a little single-use bathroom there too and they tell me to sit down in the chair and in this little i'll just keep calling it a kind of cubicle area there's one chair and then some sort of a heart monitoring device and blood pressure device and then i don't know some some other kind of medical devices in there um but again still kind of doctor's officey um and the the pa i guess their physician's assistants i was trying to keep track of who identified themselves as pas and who identified themselves as nurses i'm not exactly sure what the difference is but you know i was

going to somebody that i thought was a doctor for a time in bellingham and it turned out she was a nurse and it actually turned out she was a pa oh i mean she and she was extremely competent and great and i got great care from her but yeah the the pas and nurses uh do a ton of the very important work in a hospital and other such places as do the doctors but yeah don't sleep on those pas man right and i met like a whole i mean there were a bunch of people who

were kind of rolling in and rolling out and um you know like Thank you. explaining to me what's going to happen and what their role is in all of this, like anesthesiologists, et cetera. But anyway, so the first person who takes me in, let's call her a nurse. I'm not sure. She was great. Also, she's the one who helped me. Remember, I had to take a COVID test in the parking garage before they let me in. It was a self-administered COVID test. It was actually my first COVID test. I think I'm like the last person in America. Was it a nasal swab? It was, but a self-administered one so it wasn't the kind that goes way up into your brain so that's like clicking yes i'm 18 on the naughty website you mean like there's not a lot of accountability right yeah

you give me the because i've had a bunch of covid tests uh you know back before i was vaxxed and uh because for tv stories and you know depending on the person you get sometimes they'd go way up there and it didn't feel great and if you would have just handed me the swab and say do your best with that i'd have been just at the very periphery of my nostril i've been like yeah i think i got

this one well she told me like yeah this is like because there are different kinds of tests and i think these turnaround quickly ones are known as not being quite as um quite as comprehensive effective yeah or comprehensive um or at least that was the story of these things but the the good thing is there's a quick turnaround time because i think wasn't there a whole like conversation going on in the early days of the pandemic where people were saying there's all this emphasis on vaccines but right now what we should be focusing on is getting more of these quick turnaround tests into everybody's hands and even though they're not quite as accurate it's better to have a whole bunch of people doing self-tests at home that and anyway my understanding is these style of tests never had to go that far up your nose because Genevieve took one just as kind of a because they were available early on in the pandemic and this is the kind where you kind of just swab you don't you don't have to go deep at all but anyway so that was kind of a trip so i i we pulled into the garage you text a number the nurse comes out you know gives you the swab tells you to do the thing you do the thing they take you in um but here's the deal so now i'm back in this uh in this little i'm going to keep calling it a medical cubicle um and one of the first things she does is she hands me a bunch of surgery clothes and says you know here put these all on which like and i was like oh this is this isn't just going to be like the dentist's office

you know this is like if the dentist made you take your pants off you need to talk to a police

officer or a teacher right right no i asked and they said that's fine so i said good i'm more

comfortable this way this was the one who needed to talk yeah yeah you're a real al bundy then i

slid my hand just in the very top of my underwear and i made a toilet flushing sound um i didn't watch a lot of married with children but i think that's how it went that's basically what happened But anyway, so yeah, so she hands me this. She's like, here are your socks and like in a in like what do you call it? A gown to put on the ties in the back, like a full on. Oh, a little hair cap I had to wear. Like so, you know, I had to take off all of my clothes except for my except for my boxers and put on, you know, straight up like all surgery gear. And when I'm putting on these like hospital socks, I'm like, oh, this this is different. This is a little bit different than what I've gone through before. And then I sit back down and that's when like my doctor comes in. And, oh, one of the funny things, I sent you a photo of it. First, one of the nurses comes in with a magic marker and says, I need you to initial your hand. Like, just because it's clear what finger is busted, but, like, just to make sure that everything, you know, just to cover their asses, basically.

So we don't remove the wrong kidney.

Exactly. I had to sign the hand that I wanted them to work on. Did you draw the arrow, or did they? No, I almost did as a joke. It's amazing how annoying I get with rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat jokes when I'm nervous, Luke. You do not want to be one of the health care providers dealing with me when I'm nervous because I'm constantly, like, just rattling things and trying to ease everybody's tension, even though I'm the only dense one. So I almost took the marker and drew a line and an arrow to my finger, but I didn't. And then later on, my doctor came in, and he had to then mark it up again. And he's like, it's pretty clear which one is the bent finger, but I just have to do this. So then he comes, and he has to magic marker up my hand.

So he did, because, like, yeah, that picture you sent was kind of hilarious. It was ALW. So in case there's another Andrew Walsh there who's also being upgraded to first class, we got the middle initial.

I know. I know. That's what she said. Here, take this and initial your hand. And I'm so surprised. I'm like, OK. And then I do it, and then I hand back the marker. I'm like, I guess you didn't need the middle initial. Like, I just was out of my mind.

But then the doctor drew that arrow to the finger.

And then the doctor comes in a couple of people later and he tells me what to do. And like, dude, I really like this doctor, by the way. Like, I liked everybody I met. I mean, I don't know if they could tell I was at a hyper nervousness and they treated me a certain way because of that. I don't. I mean, listen, I'm sure they're kind to everybody who comes in there. I can't tell if they were treating me with kid gloves or not. but I mentioned to you that I liked this doctor in my very brief consultation with him last week, but man, I really liked it when he came in and he prepped me and told me what he was going to do. I did say, you don't have to tell me so much detail. He's like, so I'm going to take your finger and then you're going to be asleep and I'm going to like, I'm going to pull it out. I'm going to try to pull it and stretch it. And then I'm going to start mashing the bone. He didn't say mash, but let's start trying to form the bones together. Then I'm going to start taking these screws and wires and going into your hand. And he's like telling me what he's going to do. And you mentioned cutting the open. There were three scenarios. um i'm in scenario two they actually did not make any incisions in my hand they had to poke through like but basically he was like mashing my finger together from the outside and then taking these needle taking these wires and screws and so skin has been broken but they didn't have to like scalpel me open which is a really good thing i think for me um because sure i see so this was As they would say, minimally invasive. Yeah, probably. But, I mean, I told you I thought that I was going to go in there, and this is the way the doctor had described it to me in my consultation. I thought I was going to go in and they were going to say, okay, here are your options for – what's the word for – To be anesthetized or whatever. Yeah, exactly. There's an easier word for that. But, you know, and I thought that there were going to there's going to be kind of a menu of options. And I was leaning towards wanting to be knocked out entirely, but also knowing that that adds some risk. And Genevieve saying, you know, if you have the option, maybe don't go with that because it just introduces new risk into the process. Well, there were no options like the anesthesiologist comes in and just says, oh, yeah, OK, so you're going to be asleep. Oh, that's that's that's what the doctor said. the doctor gave me three different like scenarios of what could happen to my finger once he's working on it and i said oh do you need me to choose one of those three things and he looked at me he's like no you're gonna be asleep i make the decisions he didn't he wasn't rude he was funny but he's like no no you don't understand you're gonna be asleep and then the so was that

like just kind of not misinformation but like you went in thinking that it was gonna be sort of your call and you were gonna hope that they accepted your call of general but that was never even on

the table um sedation is the word i was looking for before by the way um just popped in my head i wanted to get that out there um yeah and again i'm not sure if that's because in my first consultation i said you know i'm very in my head about these things and and i made it clear or if they read my body language but i don't think that's how things work i think if the procedure is you give the patient options then you would you would give them options but i came in and And again, they just gave me the surgery clothes and the anesthesiologist came in and said, yeah, we're going to we're going to put you out for this. And I said, oh, I thought there were going to be various choices of sedation. He said, no, you go out for this. And I was like, OK. And I was happy to hear it. But they could tell I was really nervous. I think I'm going on a little bit too long here. But I will say this, Luke. So all these people come in and out of this little cubicle thing. I'm sitting there. It's cold in there. And I'm nervous as hell. And literally, my knees are knocking together. And I'm also trying to keep my knees together because I don't want to have a Sharon Stone moment because I'm wearing, you know, like just the little footies and the and the gown and my and my hairnet. And then and then I think it's the anesthesiologist who walks me back. He's like, OK, follow me. We're going to go to the surgery room. And again, Luke, I'm picturing it to be like, I don't know, a doctor's office with maybe some extra equipment. But no. And also, my glasses are off. So I can't see a lot with my glasses off. It's just like a lot of shapes and stuff. And it felt like a dream. He opens this door and it's this big ass, like full on surgery room. Like I've never been in a surgery room at all in my life, like with the huge lamps coming down. And it seemed really big and really cold in there and very blue. It felt like I was in a in a hospital drama. It's like, whoa, but I'm still walking at this point. They give me a warm blanket to cover me up. Once I lay down, I get in the bed and then I'm like, or I get on the, what would you call it, bed, whatever, the stretcher thing. Gurney. The gurney. And then they're really kind of talking me down because they can tell my nervousness is getting pretty peaked as he's giving me the IV for the anesthesia and everything. And basically that's all I remember. But I remember that feeling of walking into this room and it seemed like they could operate on it seemed like they could operate on like 10 people in there at once. Like it was just like this big ass room like I stepped into a different world and again just very different from anything I've ever experienced before. And then they put me under and then of course that's all I remember until they're waking me up again back in the little cubicle and they mentioned this is the best part of the whole thing for me. This is what gives me life Luke. they bring Genevieve back she's allowed in for this part so they bring her back to my little area and I was very happy to see her back there and the nurse said I was so

polite the whole time she made a comment that when they were moving me onto the bed that i tried to sleep onto my side i was like wait i was trying to turn onto my side while they were working on me and she said no when we moved you back onto the wheelie bed to bring you over here you wanted to go into fetal position and i was like laughing at that and then i said something to her that seemed like sort of polite and then she said you are so polite she's like the whole time you just kind of kept on apologizing for things and i was like wait i thought i was asleep and she's like well we had wake you up for this or that or moving you or whatever and like in my sleep luke i am so happy that i am not a virulent racist apparently or whatever else like comes from the worst places of people like when you put them out that you really are this concerned about other people it was like like i was like break all my fingers and tell me that more yes exactly i was it is like

it runs to the core of who you are that's actually really good news i know i would that really that

honestly i don't know what that says about me but that that gave me life so i thought that was pretty funny and that was the main thing i feel like i'm just kind of like rambling all the details again

but that was my that was my power out so you had so that was good news that that you didn't like say anything crazy or inappropriate while you were coming out of it but then once you were like with genevieve and you're in the car were you were you kind of loopy like what do you remember about that

part about the ride home and stuff like that you know i feel like i remember i mean to the degree that i remember anything in my life which on the show we're learning that there's not a lot of

things i remember accurately did you just keep yelling nicole kidman on the ride home i know

i know the names now i know all the names uh what if it was like some kind of like you know this is

like a probably a movie either starring bradley cooper or maybe some years ago a john travolta type where you get a surgery and for whatever reason when you come out of it you have a super memory it's like it's just like you have basically a superpower now that'd be i know i want to spoof

on that except even thinking about spoofing on that makes me so nervous and i've just forgotten every person's name in the world just by thinking about trying to improvise on that hard hard reset on your brain that you didn't mean to do so we know for sure that that did not happen genevieve says that when they woke me up after my mouth surgery which i guess was like now three and a half years ago um doesn't seem like that long ago was that a general as well i think the second time it was and i'm so confused ron and it's again my memory is so bad i went in for two tongue surgeries and i think the first time they said oh don't worry about it's just like a little ray a little laser beam and we're going to just erase this part right we're just he kept saying we're just going to erase it off and he said and i said can i still do my podcast later that day and he said yeah you should be able to talk and then i went in and it was so much more invasive than i thought and i think for that i was just on what he kept calling laughing gas but of course i like to call it by i wish doctors would just call it nitrous like they're nitrous oxide like don't call it laughing gas i don't want to think that my doctor thinks he's in a cartoon right now you know And so I think the second time I went in I said that was rough Put me under all the way And I think that's what happened then And that was a while ago That was three and a half years ago And Genevieve said that There were big chunks of me waking up That I don't remember that she was there for Where this time I mostly remember it They woke me up I remember them saying that I was very polite When I was put under I love that Where's my bell? Because that's again the power out of this entire story Good boy gets a good bell show title okay right i'll write it down yeah exactly but anyway um yeah so i think and you know they booked me for another a follow-up appointment while i was there in the states and i remember all of that so i actually maybe i'm getting used to the anesthesia i don't know but it was a it it was a very intense situation i cannot tell you how thankful i am of how just great everybody was like every everybody i also just think i'm at an age now where it's like i think 20 years ago luke i would have been just so embarrassed even to be sitting there in a in a surgery robe and surgery socks like that alone would make me feel so uncomfortable whereas now i think i'm just at a point in my life and i don't know it's hard to explain exactly why i've just always been a person who's uncomfortable wearing anything than my usual uniform of shoes, Argyle socks, jeans, and a button-down shirt with a t-shirt underneath it. I've been wearing that for 20 years, and there's a protectiveness there, and it's one of the reasons you don't see me swimming in a lot of swimming pools and whatnot, and now I'm like, well, I'm 44 years old, and I'm about to have surgery, and I'm around a whole bunch of people who are looking at me, and I'm wearing a gown and not much else, but who gives a shit? That's the least of my problems right now.

It's kind of funny how you sort of give up on – I don't know if vanity is the right word, but I'm definitely just – I don't know if it's vanity for you.

I think for me it would be vanity. I think for you it's anxiety or anxiousness. Like you're probably – again, I can't exactly anticipate every thought you'd be having in that moment. But I just – it seems to me that when you're in a situation that makes you feel uncomfortable and you feel like it's kind of uncharted territory and you're wearing clothes that make you feel embarrassed or whatever, it amps up your kind of just natural sense of being anxious. And for me, it would just be like, oh, my god. This gown has no waist to it. Like, could I look fatter? Which that's vanity. I don't think that's what would even – even 20 – yeah, exactly. You belt it. I would be I'd be the guy trying to like tie a little back knot in the gown so that it created a little bit of a midline. But like but I don't think even 20 years ago, I don't think that would be what would be going on for you. I think it'd be sounds like probably just more feeling uncomfortable and and awkward and not liking that feeling. But how's your pain, by the way? I can hear that you have you have an ice bag.

Yeah, I was going to say sorry about that. If people are wondering what the hell that is, I'm not moving it around too much. But the ice ice is actually it just feels great. Like I've I don't know about you, Luke. Have you ever been an ice bag guy? You're more athletic than me. I've always I've always poo pooed the effectiveness of ice. Like it's never done a lot for me. It always hurts my skin too much when it gets cold enough. But this is this injury, man. I can't put enough ice on this thing.

Yeah. And they've also I feel like the ice technology has really improved. Like I don't know if you just have what you're working with there. But I'm with you. Like when I was a kid and sometimes if you, you know, twist your ankle or something and they'd be like put ice on it, the nurse would just bring you like a bag with some ice and you'd put it on your skin and it would just hurt your skin immediately. But they've got it all figured out now. So in terms of like Velcro straps that can hold it on places and they cover it so that it's not, you know, giving you a freeze burn on your skin, they're doing pretty well with it.

I will say, in all of my experience with ice packs, since this happened to me, I guess now, like, whatever, however long it's been, a week and a half or whatever, I feel like medical professionals are putting too much air in these ice packs. Like, I'm right now just working with a bunch of ice in a Ziploc bag, and I've sucked all the air out of it because I want as much contact with the ice on my skin as possible. I'm using a towel between it so that it's not, you know, it's not giving me the ice burn that you described. But when there's too much air in the ice pack, you can't get a good like kind of the ice can't really kind of adhere or get contact with the damage as much as it needs to.

It's like a bag of chips when you're a kid and you're all like you're super hungry and you're like, OK, Lay's sour cream and onion chips. Here we go. And then you open and you're like, this was all air.

Yeah, it was all air. Anyway, though, I am feeling a lot better. I've got like now I've got all these doctor's appointments, Luke, in the next couple of weeks already. And so I think that I'm kind of dreading that, like just not not just even going into them. I'm sure some will be better. Give you a general for that. Yeah, exactly. Can I have a general for filling out my insurance paperwork, please?

Genevieve, can you anesthetize me in the car in the parking lot of the doctor's office? Well, I'm glad that you're – I'm glad that the initial – the big thing is behind you. I'm glad that you're not secretly a racist or sexist or any other ist that would have been troubling were it to bubble up to the surface. But I'm glad to hear that you are pure as the driven snow even in your most anesthetized heart, Andrew. Worth it. I would not give myself good chances of finding the same for me. So this is why I have to never, ever need a surgery, because I think it's going to get dark fast.

I was going to say, what would we find out about you? But then it occurred to me, maybe that's not something fun to riff. I don't even know. You know what? I'm sure you see.

Here's my theory. I feel like I am an admitted and outward kind of like sketchy person. So my theory is that in like my theory with you was going into this. you're such a kind thoughtful person on the outside that you're obviously compensating for some really messed up shit and so when like you're you're all of your external behaviors which are very very thoughtful and and and sweet and loving and and inclusive all of those things it's all because there's a darkness inside you that you're covering up and that when you got you know your general that was going to come out for me it's the opposite all of that stuff is externalized Inside I'm very pure I'm a beautiful Innocent way on the inside And then the outside I have this kind of ugly exterior Of like gambling and like Being into my own happiness. So my theory was you're rotten at the core, and I'm good at the core, but it turns out you're not, which throws my theory about me really out of whack. It turns out I'm just Mr. Peanut Butter

all the way through, but I'm BoJack.

How does that show end? I haven't gotten to the last episode.

I haven't gotten to the last episode either, but I'm sure it's a happy ending if I know anything about that

show. If there's anything that show taught us. Oh, man. Alright, well, I'm glad that you're through that, buddy, and I'm glad you're here and doing okay. So we'll take a quick break And then when we come back Some top stories And also emails and V-mails Which we'll finally bring back We've been kind of sleeping on those Because we've been doing a lot of Drops of Stupider Which has now reached round two And we will be bringing you The round two matchups this week I believe coming up But today we will actually get to some emails So do stick around for that It's TBTL, stay with us

On your mark Get set Now ready Ready, go! Everybody rattle, dazzle, everybody rattle.

All right, let's thank some Dazzling Donors. These are wonderful, generous donors who are helping to keep the show in biz with their Dazzling Donations. Just a reminder, as if you need one, that we do have this year's TB Cellathon coming up real soon. And, in fact, even moments before we started today's show, Andrew and I were going over some of the details, And I think it's going to be a lot of fun for everybody involved. Maybe not us. Either the least fun for us, but the most fun for the listeners. We've got some really, really great plans in store.

So are we still doing the thing where we let listeners operate on us?

Yes.

Is that still is that? Oh, shoot. Do you want me to cut?

We have a lot of listeners who are in the medical field. So I feel like if there is a show that could get away with it, it'd be us. Like, I wouldn't want to go with the Joe Rogan fan base doing surgery on me or the Adam Carolla fan base. But I trust the TBTL listeners implicitly because they seem like a pretty smart bunch. Let's thank Honey Hanson of Moab, Utah. God, that is that is beautiful country. Isn't that also kind of where near ish to where that obelisk was? The mysterious monolith, not really obelisk, but monolith.

I think you're right.

It was out there somewhere in that beautiful part of Utah. Anyway, Honey Hanson says, hi, guys. I started listening to TBTL in 2012, so I'm a relatively new dad. Honey gets the show. It's hard to express how much it's meant for me to have my friends from imaginary radio in my earbuds, keeping me company through divorce kids growing up and moving away moving to a small town and then starting a new job being uh a nurse during the pandemic wow we were just talking about nurses and how important they are uh and trying to maintain my chill during the trump administration thank you so much for being there and doing what you do by the way luke i used to be a school nurse and i can check you for head lice anytime isn't it before the break and of course if there's one thing listeners know about me it's that i don't overdo it on the prep i had not of course read honey's email or dazzling donor message but i'm talking about like school nurse bringing you the ice when you like hurt yourself we're talking about nurses and like this is all stuff that's featured in in honey's uh message um what's the headlights thing again i mean you i remember you had an outbreak in your house as a kid right i went to a school that was well apparently now it's like the elementary school to get into in seattle the public elementary school daniel bagley It was a much less elite or, you know, sort of sought after place when I was going there. It was just kind of where the kids in the neighborhood went. But my neighborhood I grew up in was kind of interesting because you had Green Lake in Seattle, which there are some some homes near Green Lake that are really lovely and, you know, solidly upper middle class. and then you had where we lived which was a rental kind of off of aurora avenue one house off of aurora avenue which or highway 99 which is pretty sketchy and then you had a lot of kids who were like actually living in motels along aurora um and so the combination of that and i think definitely the kind of motel living led to a lot of lice outbreaks at my school and so they would come in like two days a week when i think we were in like a um particularly bad stretch with the lice and they would come in and and basically

do a lice check on every kid in the class and i loved it because they would use these long wooden they would like imagine like a toothpick or like something a little bit narrower than a chopstick but basically like that and then the the school nurses would sort of just go through your whole hair with those sticks and it was the best scalp massage you've ever gotten i would be like when they'd like come in and they'd be like lice check i'd be like yes and didn't you excited was there

another part of this story too or it always leads to it like did you get yourself or maybe your mom one of those head massagers the little thing that looks like a octopus sort of my no uh my octopus

teacher did uh no uh my my dad has one of those there's like one in my parents house like now i don't think we had one when i was growing up but there is one in my parents house now and i swear to god i have seen my dad put himself to sleep with it or just his own massaging of his scalp like sitting in his easy chair just like like like he'll be asleep and also still self scalp massaging also when we were kids my dad would you know my dad is a to this day really hard-working guy did a lot of physical labor got to work early again seven kids that's not easy so he'd come home after a long day of doing sign company stuff and my sisters he would let my sister sometimes do his hair like they'd braid it they'd put it in barrettes they would just like because they were into all of that stuff i mean my dad didn't have like crazy long hair or anything but like they were just like messing with it and he loved it for the same reason i love the lice check just feels kind of like a nice scalp massage after a long hard day so anyway the the where this last conversation always ends up and i feel like i have to pay it off i'm like led zeppelin not doing dire maker at a show i just wanted to try to pick right the least important led zeppelin song no the the bagley is where we learned the poem share a toy share a ride share the feelings deep inside but never share a hat or comb or lice could make your head right but you've never had it though you never actually got lice um i don't think i got it but my sisters did okay and so we had we had at least one that i remember bout in the burbank family household where it was like maybe i had it too i don't remember but somebody in the house one of the kids had it my parents did the whole thing with the special shampoo and then like washed everything in the house all the bedding and then like one day went by and it was like someone else had it no yeah and It was like, redo the whole process. And then like one more day and it was like a different kid had it.

Sounds like a nightmare. But better than bedbugs.

Could have used Honey Hansen there. Yeah, absolutely. Much better than bedbugs. Honey, thank you so much for the donation and thanks for sticking with us. And, you know, as a person who's also getting divorced and not a fan of the Trump administration, I feel like I really – I see you, honey, and I hear you. And I appreciate you. So thanks for being part of TBTL. Maestro.

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

Everybody razzle, dazzle. Oh, boy. We know these folks. It's Dave, Carrie, and Gwenny, the Stanwood 10s, at least a significant contingent of the Stanwood 10s. They said, howdy, guys. Let's get right to it. In past years, Gwenny has had you do corny Star Wars jokes. Harry Potter jokes Disney jokes In honor of you discovering WandaVision Let's do Marvel this year Okay, I'm a little bit nervous Let's see Because I don't know if I know enough about the Marvel Universe To get all these jokes

How do you want to do this? I want you to say them to me I haven't looked at the jokes You haven't? Okay, you haven't looked at the jokes

I actually saw the beginning of the first one It's something about Stan Lee, but I didn't get to the punchline

Okay, so I'll administer these to you So it looks like there's five of them. Number one, what is Marvel's favorite trophy? What is Marvel's favorite trophy?

Oh, okay. Now, I did see this part of the joke. So you and I and Gwenny, we all know that the answer is the Stan Lee Cup. Pretty good, actually. The Stan Lee Cup. Pretty good. The Stan Lee Cup. I like it. Was Stan Lee involved with Marvel?

No I think that he invented Superman is my understanding Wonder Woman Why would we Torture them

Dave Carey and Gwenny Who have been nothing but supportive And awesome towards the show Why would we intentionally Mess up the Marvel Universe

They give us money and in this case

content and here we are just trying to aggravate okay question number two joke number two riddle number two what does Peter Parker tell people he does for a living okay

this is Spider-Man right this is Spider-Man Peter Parker I think I have a guess I have not looked at this I have a guess but is it less fun if I guess no I think it's good you should take a guess

does he say web designer ah human relations no just kidding web designer indeed I want to tell you that I

arrived at that punchline in my own head

did part of you try to think wait human relations what's the joke there

it made me happy because I felt like I had on the fly written a better punchline than human relations

web designer that's pretty good would web development work as well I think web designer works

just better because it's more people more people have heard of web web designer than web developer even though they're probably called actually the punchline should be UX experience

that's exactly right

I've just been working in UX for a while everybody's all about that user experience

okay I'm going to get some more music going here number three why were the Avengers flying blind after Infinity War why were the Avengers flying blind after Infinity War

this is actually I think kind of an interesting speaking of bad user experience speaking of bad UX design this is fun because this is a person who doesn't know what the Avengers are or what Infinity War is trying to answer the joke like it's really that was Infinity War the one Thanos was in well Thanos was in a

Kind of several of them, they were all kind of building up to the big Infinity War. But, yeah, he is the main antagonist. But it all leads to the Marvel TV show. WandaVision. WandaVision that you, you know.

Yeah. So if I know about WandaVision a little bit, would that help me with this?

Yes.

Okay. So it's why were the Avengers, what did they say when they were doing Infinity War?

Why were the Avengers flying blind after the Infinity War?

Flying blind because... I don't know, because they couldn't see... What's the answer, Andrew?

What's the punchline? So close, so close, so close. Because they lost their vision. Oh. Because Vision, the guy with the diamond in his head, yeah, he dies. I mean, that's a huge part of what... And so after the Infinity War, they lost Vision, so they were flying blind. Also, too soon is offered up. You know, is it too soon to make jokes about losing Vision is what the Stanwood Tens want to know. I say no, it's not too soon.

I see. So wait, because Vision, well, I'm going to put in quotes because I bet he's coming back. But because, well, also, are we spoiling something right now? I know that, like, WandaVision is something you're particularly—

Now it's been out a little bit, though. I'm less concerned about it now It's been out for some time Are we going to have to bleep the entire

Dazzling Donor message From Dave, Carrie, and Gwenny

This is actually From Wanda Wanda Maximoff

I will tell you this This morning Kumail Nanjiani Tweeted out It's not a trailer For just one of the Marvel movies It's kind of like a I don't know it's like a sizzle reel for the idea of Marvel films and all the things that are coming out oh yeah because he's

in one of them that's why he got all buff

yes exactly and that's what I wanted to see was he said something like I forget what the name of the one he's in is but like Immortals the Immortals I think

that rings a bell yeah I had never heard of it until you know he became associated

with this so he had this link and he was like hey there's a shot of the Immortals in here and I thought it was the trailer for the Immortals but it was more just kind of like It was literally almost – I can't – it's hard to describe. It was just like a hype ad for Marvel just being like, this is why Marvel is good. And they were just showing everybody from the Marvel universe. And they showed, of course, a quick clip of Wanda Maximoff and Vision. And she was touching the little whatever that is. What's the name of the – The little jewel.

Yeah. But it's called like – The Infinity Stone.

It's got a crazy name for it. It's an Infinity Stone, right? The Infinity Stone. And I guess that's not that crazy I thought that what he was made out of Whatever the material they made him out of That was like vibranium or something Vibranium, yes Did you know

Did somebody tell us this on the show Or did somebody tell us this off the show That the bad guy in WandaVision Is Susan Stamberg's son Oh I didn't know that That's Josh Stamberg The guy who is like You know kind of leading the kind of operation

Yeah I can't remember that character's name But the government official

Yeah the government official just turns out to be a giant douche And kind of like working against the interests Of the Kat Dennings's of the world Etc That's Susan Stamberg's son Josh Stamberg.

No kidding. I had no idea. Joshy Stamberg. No kidding.

What a world. Anyway, continuing on, joke number four?

This is number four. This is less of a riddle. This is just a little spoof I'll be reading for you. It's more of a comment than a question. It's more of a comment than a riddle. In the next movie, the Avengers will battle media conglomerate Comcast. It's going to be called Xfinity War. That's pretty good, actually.

Let's see here. And they're going to be... When, like, whatever, when, like, the Comcast, when the Xfinity guy, the bad guy, like, does his Thanos-ing, it's just going to be him saying to the good guys, have you considered turning the planet off and turning it back on? Luke? Yeah. That's the first thing I did. Xfinity.

I'm going to say this in the middle of a dazzling donor message, which I shouldn't do. I think as Americans go, I am someone who tries to give any kind of telephone support operators the benefit of the doubt. I've had some really good experience just by being patient with people. Like if you're calling, you need help with your credit card or your computer or, in this case, your Internet or cable. I've had some really good experiences just by being patient, and then you get to know the person. By the end, everybody's friends. But Xfinity, ever since the ever since the shutdown, has really made it impossible to reach human beings. I mean, in ways that are just beyond the pale, like they just will not connect you to a human. And I've been through this twice now when, you know, suddenly I'm being charged. I think it was like forty dollars more on my on my bill. But there's no good electronic answer for that when they put you in the system. It's like push here if you want to know what your bill is. I know what the bill is. I need to talk to a human about why it just suddenly spiked. And then one time our internet just totally went out and I couldn't get, I mean, they made it impossible to get a human on the phone. Yeah. The other day I got a phone call from Xfinity. I picked up my phone. I saw I had a call coming in. It didn't say scam likely. I answer it. And it's like, you know, some sort of a telemarketer, essentially, trying to get me to maybe sign up for an Xfinity phone deal or maybe to try out a new service with my Internet. And listen, this was just some poor fella who's doing his job, not making tons of money. Sure. Doing it. But he I was snarky towards him and I feel a little bit bad about it, but I couldn't help myself. He I said, hello. He said, hi, I'm calling from Xfinity. Here's the pitch, whatever it is. Are you interested or whatever? And I just said, no, but you know what? I'm really impressed to learn that you guys have human beings on the phone again. I will hope to reach one of you the next time my Internet goes out and I can't reach a human being, which I didn't need to lay that at his feet. And obviously he wasn't like, oh, you know what? I got some real thinking to do. I'm going to change this company. That did no good. And all it did was make me feel bad at lashing out at the wrong person. And I didn't lash out, but I was just snarky. And then we said goodbye. But is it not galling that a company that claims and hides behind COVID protocol to say that we can't offer you any customer service when we jack up your bill or stop providing the service that you're paying out the ass for, but they're hiring other human beings to call you in the middle of the day to try to get you to upgrade to something? Like, I have a right to be galled, right? And also should I not have sworn during this dazzling donor message?

Sorry, Quinny. Well, at least it's not partially related to a young person who probably doesn't need to hear swear words. Like the one dazzling donor of late where there's like specifically a young person is mentioned as part of it. You are absolutely right to be galled for all the reasons that you said. In fact, a couple of things when I what I have found is when I'm trying to get through now to some kind of thing like that, where it's a phone tree and they're trying to somehow say that because of covid there, they don't have as many customer service agents, which makes zero sense because everybody's working from home, including the customer service agents. We live in a day and age where those calls can be routed to somebody who's at their home.

So, yeah, I've talked to them at their homes before.

for other organizations i remember yeah covid should play zero role in if you can get a hold

of a human at xfinity the fact that xfinity also wants me to reuse my tv or throw it on the floor if i'm done with it so as to save the whales i find that very suspicious um but what i what i tend to do now if i'm in that situation is i try to follow the money so sometimes it'll be like click one you know press one if you need customer service help which is a complete waste of time Because what it will route you to is some kind of automated assistant But it'll be like press 3 for sales And if it's something about them getting money I tell you what Gwenny, earmuffs There's going to be a freaking human answering the phone Right I didn't want Gwenny to have to hear freaking Right Or human But you know what I mean As evidenced by them calling Them prioritizing some amount of pay Not enough probably But some amount of pay towards somebody who's working the phones But guess what it's the person trying to get you to change your cell phone coverage not the person trying to talk you through why your bill went up or why it's not working etc so yeah if you go to where they have a potential to make money and then you get there with the salesperson you go hey i actually am not interested in buying anything from you or advertising on your thing or what have you but i would love it if you could please connect me to the human beings you can actually sometimes get

there yeah and also that's what happened to me with the new york times this is going back years and years now um or was it in this apartment whatever it goes back several years where um we just weren't getting our sunday paper anymore a sunday paper that we didn't need we just wanted the digital version but they insisted that well you got to get the sunday paper in order to get this deal on the on the digital access and like it never made a lot of sense to me and then our

newspaper better watch your step around the seattle times advertisement department my daughter works

there oh that's right congratulations adelaide but yeah um but i just remember like i kept on calling to complain about the papers not showing up and it was getting nowhere getting nowhere and then i finally just went through to the department that said i need to cancel my subscription and then suddenly i had like managers calling me back calling me sir like trying to set up lunch dates with me how can we talk about this you know like and it was just amazing all i had to do was say that's it i've hit my i've hit the end of you know the end of my rope is that the expression luke is that an expression that hit the end of yeah my rope yeah absolutely um and uh and i'm gonna you know cancel my subscription then suddenly i'm the best customer in the world and they'll do anything to save me but should we come back around get the nose up on this negativity train and read to you this final spoof in fact i feel like i will ruin it yes we should it's not a riddle so if you want why don't you do the and finally joke here oh okay well let me go back see i was oh did you already close it out i can do it no no i didn't but i just had i was

on a different screen because this is so silly i literally didn't want to know the answer to the joke so i was actually really trying to guess my hardest okay so uh and finally number five marvel's greatest villain is thanos dc's greatest villain is rotten tomatoes hey oh that's a burn actually that's a pretty good spoof a pretty good spoof that would make me uh think that dc does not get the greatest reviews of their films.

They just don't, they just can't figure it out. And I'm not an expert. I haven't seen a lot of them, but like they did the Suicide Squad. That's it, right? Which, I mean, well, you're asking the wrong person.

But that's a movie, I have to say, I didn't see it. But as far as just how stylized it was, like between Jared Leto and Margot Robbie, and their get-ups and everything in it, harley quinn and i think is he the joker actually is that who jared leto is yeah yeah it looked like kind of a cool movie to me just based on like how over the top the costumes and everything were i'm surprised and also those are both actors who are like very very uh well respected and like you know win oscars and things like that so it's kind of surprising to me that that that those movies don't work as well but i guess it's not totally up to them yeah i actually liked the style i never

saw it i'll be honest with you but i love the style like you say of like the trailers and like they keep on they're trying to create a marvel-esque universe with all their dc properties but somehow they just keep falling down like they just can't get any traction i'm actually not a fan of leto i feel like he's always he what i just think that he kind of ruins movies like did you see the latest blade runner movie the the kind of the blade runner like sequel it was like no 48 or whatever it was called no i didn't see it i feel like he just like he stands out like a sore thumb in these movies because he wants to be such a serious method actor and like but then what he ends up doing is just like standing out and i always feel like ruining the vibe so anyway i'm not chewing the scenery a little too hard yeah way too much i felt like he really stood out in that one so anyway yeah it seems like they're always so close We'll be right back. to being like, this is it. We're really going to become competitive with Marvel. But then they always are not that great.

I'm trying to make a 60 Seconds to Mars joke about Jared Leto, which is the band he's in. But I couldn't. So anyway, maybe next year, Gwenny, some good Jared Leto comedy.

We'll Leto you. No, don't encourage me. Thank you. That was terrible.

Thank you, Dave, Carrie, and Gwenny. And we really appreciate you. By the way, they end their little email with you guys rock. keep up the good work the stanwood 10 so uh thank you to all of you and uh hope that you keep up the good work as well educating the youth of america and also being the youth of america in the case

thanks y'all hello and welcome to top story tempted to try to mute my mic andrew because

we're once again dealing with emergency uh you know vehicles and sirens and the like i really honestly fire trucks ambulances and to some degree police they're the theo of my life here they really are like in the way that like theo making noise in the background really doesn't bother me it's kind of i i find it kind of charming it's sort of gives me a sense of like the world that you're in but for you it's something that kind of stresses you out and you're trying to do a lot of things to manage it that's me with like road noise and fire trucks and and ambulances around here like every time one starts coming and i can just see them like literally probably almost a mile away i can see when an ambulance starts coming down burnside and it just begins this dread ball of like when they're going to get underneath my apartment and if i will be a time when you're talking or i'm talking can i mute can i be unmuted it's a whole

thing i am exactly the same way like i i just don't think that those sirens they're not that loud they sort of they're way in the background so it just sounds like texture to me it doesn't bother me but to me i hate the sound i mean not that i love the sound of sirens but the sound of a cat like i feel like a dog barking in the background is you say there's something about the sound of a cat there's something about the sound of a cat um i know that i will hear that again someday i'm sure uh back in my own ear earphones but um i just think a sound of the sound of a cat caterwauling or crying is just a very ugly it sets i feel like it sets people on edge but like you say i've heard from a lot of people saying hey no we hear the cat in the background it's not that big of a deal i just think it's a terrible sound i will well as opposed

to sirens which are notoriously like people have that that's a that's actually a white noise yeah you can do that on the calm app right right siren actually what if we started the worst Relaxation app and it was Theo Wailing and then sirens recorded From my perch in Portland

Yeah I need more siren

Right oh you can turn up the siren Turn down the caterwauling I find The story to be quite fascinating It was like a Q&A in the New York Times Where Somebody had submitted a question Somebody named Abigail in Washington DC Where does a candle go when it burns Anyway is it healthy to be breathing in Melted candle particles how concerned should I be The person in the New York Times who answered The question Is it Randall Monroe I'm not exactly sure who wrote this piece because again when I Print stories out it Gets rid of the byline Maybe you still have the link it is Randall Monroe yes okay cool That was in the like URL data of this thing that was For some reason printed which is why I Was able to summon that name anyway Randall said okay here's the deal Did you know all of this stuff by the way Andrew in this I don't know if you've had a chance to read The article but like you you and Genevieve Were really into making candles for a while So I assume you've also been burning some candles Have you ever thought to yourself how does This whole thing actually work on the kind of burning Side of it no I don't

Think so no I haven't read this either so I'm very Interested in fact I even I brought in a prop while You were doing the intro of the show I ran out because I remember I just Bought a candle this weekend that I absolutely love that I want to tell you about, but I'll hold off on that. But no, I guess I never really – I mean, here's the deal. To the degree that I ever thought about it, which I didn't, if you just asked me, well, what happens to candle wax after you burn it, I would just say, well, it just evaporates in the same way water evaporates if you boil it. That's what I just assumed. It was just going up into the air, but I don't know.

Well, I mean, that is basically what's happening, but I guess the part of this article that surprised me was it never occurred to me that what is fueling the flame is the wax. It's not the wick What's creating the heat What's creating most of the What's going on energetically Is the wax being sucked up the wick It's being liquefied And drawn up the wick And then it's being burned And then it's basically Diffusing into some other elements I guess I always just

which is so dumb of me i always just thought a candle was the light and everything happening with the candle was because of the wick and it's not the wax is the fuel source did you just like

understand that instinctively no i don't want to say that i understood it instinctively but there i think i had maybe a slightly more complicated well here's what i knew like because if i'm making a candle i buy a bunch of wicks right and i have not tried this but if i were just to take that wick without turning into a candle if i just burned it it would probably burn up in a matter of moments right it would just burn down and so i i always thought the relationship was well what happens is the wax slows that burning so i don't think i thought about it in the way that you just described which is like we're actually burning the wax i just thought well what the wax does is it it prevents the wick from burning up too quickly which is slightly different than what your assumption was but it's also not as complete as what you just taught me by the way i'm asking you a question which i shouldn't because if you don't know the answer to this i'm now finally looking at this article the for the first time who does the art for this this is illustrated with these great simple drawings is this actually randall monroe because i've seen these all over the place this oh really yeah is that who randall monroe is he is an illustrator as well or did they hire this illustrator i know this i know this cartoonist who kind of illustrates all these points and it's

really fascinating check it out at the new york times so uh the so yeah so the wax i don't know the answer to that but you're right i'm in fact i think i thought that the illustration was a little bit rudimentary but now that i look at it it's good that it's rudimentary because it just makes it easy to understand yeah it's somebody who's famous for doing these i'm gonna look at i'm gonna look it up so uh the wax is made of hydrogen and carbon and when a candle burns the hydrogen and carbon from the wax combined with the oxygen in the air to become carbon dioxide and water vapor most of the matter of the candle ends up as these two gases so in other words you light the wick it starts liquefying the wax the wax is drawn up the wick it's then turned into co2 and water vapor now carbon dioxide again i'm just reading from the article here and water aren't exactly safe too much of either can be extremely dangerous as anyone who's been on a submarine can tell you that being said the amount of each gas that's produced by a candle is relatively small, comparable to the amount that might be breathed in and out by another person in the room. So in other words, if you're in a room burning a candle and you're by yourself, or you're in a room with someone else and they're inhaling and exhaling, the other human being inhaling and exhaling is probably exhaling more carbon dioxide and water than a candle would, just to put it in perspective.

Okay.

Okay.

Can I interrupt for one second? Only because I think there's probably a lot of listeners who know exactly what I was talking about before. Randall Monroe is the guy behind the webcomic XKCD, which, Luke, if you Google that, you'll see a whole bunch of it. It was a huge cult favorite, and our listeners used to send us stuff by him all the time. So, yeah, he wrote this and illustrated it himself. Oh, nice. Yeah, so he's pretty famous. Sorry for everybody who just broke their phones or whatever.

Especially Randall. Yes. Who's probably like out there being like, give me a little credit here, folks. So Randall talked to a scientist named Annetta Wiersbika, who is a scientist in Sweden at Lund University. And this is what Annetta said. Candles in homes without tobacco smoking are among the most powerful indoor sources of particles, followed by cooking. So in the average home If you're not dealing with a home where people are smoking Or I would I don't have any science behind this But I would add vaping to the list Although maybe not If you're in a place where people aren't smoking And you are burning candles That's actually one of the biggest sources And it's ahead of cooking Which is crazy to me You'd think that cooking would be generating a ton of Particles in the atmosphere of your home or apartment

Yeah, well I guess it depends on what you're cooking And I'm not 100% sure That I agree on vaping either Although I don't know the science behind it, but the fact that it's actually gone there. Well, I only I you could totally be right because, again, nobody knows what's in that shit. But technically it is vapor. So it doesn't you know, it doesn't stink up the way I was actually thinking incense because we like to burn incense in this house, too. And that must you know, but I guess that's not an average house that burns incense in 2021. But like that must create tons of particles on par with smoking. And then I would think like cooking, if you're cooking with a lot of grease or whatever, that seems like that would release a lot of particles as opposed to boiling noodles, right?

So she says constant exposure to these tiny particles can lead to cardiovascular and respiratory disease. But if you're somebody who only burns candles occasionally, the fire hazard is the thing you should be a little bit more concerned about than air pollution. So just, again, to put it in perspective, if you light some candles, it's not the end of the world. You probably need to be more careful about it. not catching your house on fire than like whatever the you know the co2 and water content that's kicking off i love i called it content like it's going to start hosting its own podcast but uh this uh this was kind of interesting she said if you are going to like burn candles on the daily if you're really into candles like my friend katie in chicago she says make sure the room is well ventilated and use clean white candles without too many additives or ingredients since everything that's in your candle ends up in the air so if you're doing some bacon candle or some shit which i'm sure exists sorry gwenny um that i swore there like just know that burning that ends up in the air that you are breathing this was like kind of my favorite part of the whole story though andrew and i heard this from i've probably said this on the show before but our good friend jen flash andrews co-founder of this program who was for a time the producer for a guy who was very taciturn and and not in my experience a particularly nice guy to work for who's no longer on this planet named wiseback he was a conservative talk host in seattle jen worked for him and then was like uh yeah deuces hey luke do you want this job and called me and i got that job and i started the day after I graduated from college. But Jen tells me that Wiseback taught her this one thing, and I have to say, it has also served me well in my life. Always read to the last sentence of a news article, because for some reason, this is, I guess, for what, aspiring radio producers in the audience or podcasters? Somehow the last sentence of the article often has a gem, and here is from the end of this article that Ralph Monroe put together. Wait, Ralph Monroe? Randall, I think. ralph monroe is the former secretary of state of washington for many years randall monroe excuse me um so basically as a candle burns the co2 and water uh it produces will cool and mix with the air in the room becoming indistinguishable from the other uh particles over the next few hours the air in your room is exchanged with the air outdoors the molecules from your candle will escape the room and begin to disperse into the atmosphere after about a year atoms from your candle will have spread completely around the globe which means andrew for the next few years every time someone takes a breath of air they'll be breathing in a few carbon atoms from the wax and a few oxygen atoms from the air in your room everyone every time someone has the duchy upon the left side, bro.

Unicorn mind explosion.

I'm looking at the last panel that he has here in cartoon form. Every time you inhale, you're breathing a molecule from Caesar's last breath and also some of the candle my cousin Steve burned last year in Schenectady.

Isn't that nuts?

So right now I'm breathing a little bit of every candle that's ever been burned in the

world am i understanding this correctly yes and every presumably by the same principle every bit of exhaust that's come out of a car every fart someone's done sorry to be gross ever like it's i mean right because the same it's like if the if the the result of the candle that's burning if that gets distributed molecularly around the world so it's all it all is part of the same thing that by my logic that should mean that every single thing like that every exhalation every song that someone sung at karaoke you're breathing a tiny part of that right i'm putting my i'm putting my

t-shirt up over my nose like we used to do in grade school right when somebody farted realization

because now i'm just like oh i don't want to breathe anymore i don't want to breathe every every fart that's ever been did as you said like that doesn't make me that doesn't make me happy I don't like that at all.

Well, I mean, again, I'm assuming that particles are particles. And so if the candle thing holds, then I would guess that that sort of applies to everything. I thought of it more as like a, you know, we're all made of stars kind of thing where, you know, it's nice to think about the interconnectedness of everything and the fact that it's all just kind of, you know, we're just sort of building up and breaking down these particles constantly. And we get so hung up I do anyway On if the particles are built into the right kind If they're shaped into the right kind of car That then when I drive makes me feel a certain way Or whatever If the digital particles Formulate into the right kind of tweet That gets the right amount of people Pressing the particles that are their phone Pressing the like button on those And there's something for me that's kind of Mentally calming about thinking about this All just being matter You know, it's all just kind of like atoms and shit that are combined and then break down and then recombine kind of helps me have a little.

perspective yeah yeah i could see that doesn't make me not think negative thoughts about the song candle in the wind um by elton john now listen i like everybody who was listening to the popular radio at the time i think i thought candle in the wind was pretty good we probably have some listeners that really love it they probably really love the goodbye england's rose version about princess die i'm not trying to read on anyone's parade but when i was reading this candle story today my mind started just kind of singing candle in the wind inside my head okay and i happened upon the line um and it seemed to me you lived your life like a candle in the wind never knowing who to cling to when the rain set in and i thought is that how candles work does a candle cling to something and also back to the subject of fire hazards do you want a candle to cling to something like a candle in the wind i can imagine that right That's a very clear mental picture. It seems like really what's going to happen when you're a candle in the wind is the wind is going to blow out the wick.

Right? Yeah, like it's precarious. It's precarious. You live a life that was precarious, but you held on as long as you could, but eventually, you know.

Right. You were a candle. You were in the wind. The wind's threatened to blow out the candle. i find the next line never knowing who to cling to to be confusing because it doesn't describe any of the behaviors of a candle or even the behaviors you would want you would not cling a candle to something it would start a fire like i can't believe and elton john's not the guy who writes these lyrics it's like it's his buddy i think right who does like elton john's the music and somebody else is the lyrics i believe i just can't believe that this was the best line that

they could come up with it's funny i mean i you're such a lyric guy whereas i know right we always bump up against this i i'm looking at it and you know i'm i'm just saying that like it never really occurred to me it's also not a song i listen to all that much um but uh yeah it does seem it does seem bernie toppin okay that's that's the guy with it yeah okay well do you want to go i do love uh looking at these things on genius.com formerly rap genius uh where you can click on a lyric and then it'll like kind of pop up and explain that exact lyric to you here is what one contributor says and i'm reading this cold i don't know if this is going to pay off at all usually when i do this it does not so everybody just take a quick break come back in about 30 seconds uh one contributor says to live your life like a candle in the wind would be to live vulnerably yes marilyn monroe encountered various hardships during her life beginning into the young age blah blah blah we knew all of that writer bernie top and told rolling stone the influence monroe's life had in the song she was female and that was more vulnerable but it was really about excesses of celebrity okay yeah no that doesn't tell us anything that we don't know that but that's the theme of the entire song we understand that but what about the clinging that's what i'm saying

candles don't have arms is the problem a candle clinging to something is just not a metaphor it's just not a thing that happens or like i actually like the idea candle in the wind is a very like I said it's a it's actually a really nice way to describe something that is vulnerable and is being uh you know buffeted by winds is that how you use that word like all these winds of celebrity and attention and Joe DiMaggio it's all blowing on Norma Jean it's all blowing on Marilyn Monroe it's it's threatening to extinguish her light at any time like I'm with it thus far And then you go with never knowing who to cling to when the rain set in. It just then the candle thing falls apart for me.

Yeah. Now, I'm going to try something here. I don't love this. I don't love what I'm about to do. But let me at least like just to like your honesty, just to have like sort of just to give it its day in court, as Camaro Kev might say. But when I think of clinging in the context of a flame, a flame that, you know, is being whipped around by the wind and could, you know, blow out at any moment. When you think about how fire works, don't think about fireworks. Shit, that's Katy Perry. God damn it. I ruined this already. No. When you think about a flame like this, what would strengthen the flame, you know, if it's in a precarious situation? Something else that the flame could latch on to. If I put a tiny little, if I started putting toothpicks around it, then that flame would become a bigger fire, right? And so maybe in this case, the idea of clinging, like I could see imagery of, and I used to do this a lot, actually, Luke, as an altar boy. Let's bring my childhood into this, right? Like lighting candles was a big part of my childhood because, you know, there are a lot of candles up on the altar, most of which are not reachable. So we have these long poles. Have I told you about this before? these poles that would also telescope out and become even longer and there were little wicks on the end of them and you'd literally light it and then you'd have to like I don't know if you had done this

too um and you'd reach way up and try to light these candles that are way way higher than your head um and there's that moment very fun by the way as a kid yeah it was i'm not even kidding like it just seems like a fun project but dude it was so nerve-wracking to be nerve-wracking i should say and nerve-wracking um because you would sometimes do this task while some people were already filing into the church and so everybody's watching you and sometimes it's just not it's just not lighting and you can't see it you're like you know 10 feet below a candle and you're just like reaching up and blindly like you just keep dipping that thing up into the candle and like pulling it away and seeing did it light did it light and it didn't and it just felt like every minute felt like an hour as people are watching and then they start laughing and throwing things went to a real badass church um but anyway think about that moment where you're connecting that where you're connecting two wicks together and one has a flame on it and one doesn't like the flame grows stronger there as for a moment, maybe the flame clings to the two together. So there's maybe some clinging imagery there of a, of a flame getting stronger as there's more fuel or wicks around it. Does that help at all?

I really do appreciate you trying to make that argument. But it just doesn't quite Convince me It just still feels like I mean you're Bernie Toppin You're like probably One of the most successful lyricists Like in the history of the world If you think about all of the Presuming he's written all of the Elton John lyrics This is like you're one of You're considered to be one of the best in the world at this And I just think even though you can Make a kind of very tortured argument For wick clinging I just think there has to be a better line

Do I have it? No, but I'm also not Bernie Taubman. I'm at best top 10 all time best lyricist in the history of the world. I'm no Bernie. Right. Exactly. And Bernie, how's your podcast? You know, thank you. But yeah, exactly. But just in again, I'm not I'm not going to the mat on this and I don't think I'm necessarily right. Like I say, but like just to complete my thought, because I realized I petered out before I did. But in that case of the, like, let's say there's strength in numbers, like, as Marilyn goes through her life and then, like, she falls in love with Joe DiMaggio, as you say, like, for a moment there, maybe that there's more strength in the flame because she has somebody. But then it's that. And I don't know enough about her life. I that that relationship ended before her life ended. Right. But, you know, as she goes through these relationships, maybe there are these moments of of, quote unquote, clinging where the flame grows stronger, but then it goes away. And she's again, a candle in the wind. But again, I'm not living and dying by that. I'm just completing that thought.

I hear you. And again, I don't think you're crazy. In fact, the majority of people on planet Earth who love that song would probably agree with you. If you heard my mic muting a lot, Andrew, it's because what I was doing while you were talking was listening, but also singing that line to myself and trying to write a better line in real time.

Do you have anything? No, it's not good.

I know. I have only myself to blame. But no, I honestly feel like if I sat down for 30 minutes, though, I could come up with a much better. Of that song, a better. Like, again, I think Candle in the Wind is a very, very strong start for this song. But I just think if Bernie really puts his effort into it, he can improve the song and make it actually good.

When I type in Candle in the Wind, it says 1997 version pops up first. But that's good by English Rose, right? Is that the more popular? That's not the more popular version. Oh, man. That's an interesting question. I could see that at this point. Really? But if you're driving down the street and that song comes on the radio, it's the original one, right? Here it is, 1973 from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Wait.

That song is that old?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, this is Candle in the Wind from the 1973 record. The song is kind of a banger, honestly. I just want to kind of hear that lyric. It comes in pretty soon, right? So would you have put it in the 80s, Luke, this song?

Yes, because this was being played on the radio when I was a kid. Yeah. Like, I wasn't even born in 1973, and I loved this song. I mean, that's how I learned that Marilyn Monroe's name was Norma Jean. Here we go. Because for years I was like, what is he singing about? And then, here we go.

You lift your life like a candle in the wind.

He must have re-released this in the 80s. Also, this is kind of a brag here. Okay, we get it. You were young. I would have liked to know you, but I'm so young that I was like, not even. I was just a kid, man. That's, I guess, how Elton John talks. They must.

must have been re-released for some reason in the 80s because like why would it be why would i be hearing it on like k hit or or k plus or whatever i was listening to in the 80s i can't answer that

because it doesn't surprise me as much because the songs that i heard as a kid like they were from i mean my parents were just listening to soft rock stuff all the time so i was my parents were sorry yeah so i you know i don't know what your family's radio habits were but like you know for me it's all a mishmash of just like soft rock was coming from the 70s and 80s and

today when i was a kid no i mean my parents were strictly christian music yeah so we had no there was no like listening to you know secular radio in my house at all when i was a little kid so there would have been no like oh my parents just had an goodbye yellow brick road album lying around so and and i wasn't listening at that point i wasn't listening to like the oldies radio you know yeah and also the all the oldies radio or all of the the the the classic rock station also probably wouldn't have been playing that because they were much more into like you know Bachman Turner Overdrive or whatever was going on so that's just quite surprising to me to hear that was released in 1973 because it was like a very um it was a very oft played song in a part of my childhood because again I have all these really strong memories around the Norma Jean component and even just you playing that song let me just say I like the song like that gave me really good feelings to hear it so if you're a listener and you like the song please don't think I'm trying to erase your experience I'm just saying I think that Bernie could have done a little better with that one line Luke is it your birthday

because I have a gift for you here actually your birthday is coming up isn't it

is it this week it's this coming weekend I guess

I always want to say it's the 5th that's Cinco de Mayo, but it's the 8th

or 9th? I've been trying to get that changed to Cinco de Luco. I've been getting limited traction. We've got to name the show

that on Wednesday. Don't forget. We can't remember what we named the show like an hour

ago. Hey, everybody who remembered Lawn Chair Larry, please take an additional note that we're supposed to call Wednesday's show Cinco de Luco, please.

So is it the 8th? Is that right? Yeah, it's May. Oh, happy pre-Blur's Day. I'm allowed to do that on a Monday, but we'll get you in there on Blur's Days. Here's my early gift to you. In 1986, a live version of the song was recorded in Sydney, Australia. This version features only Elton backing himself on the piano, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was released in 87 on the album Live in Australia. In 88, it reached number five on the UK singles chart and number six here in the States on the Billboard Hot 100. And it was that 1988 version or 86 version released in 88 that won best pop vocal performance male at the Grammys. So, yes, it had a huge resurgence in the 80s.

That would explain it. Thank you for that gift. So, yes, I know that I haven't completely lost my mind. Andrew, we should move on to emails and emails. But, of course, today is the 50th anniversary of NPR. How would you feel about celebrating the 50th and one-day anniversary of NPR tomorrow, also known as the 10-year, 11-day Ed Balls Day celebration?

Yes, I was going to try to make – I was formulating an Ed Balls joke there, but I couldn't get there fast enough.

Great. If you would accept that as content tomorrow, I mean, after 50 years, what's one more day? Because I legit I'm legitimately interested in hearing kind of your theories on how the existence of NPR and really public radio. But I just don't think public radio would be what it is without NPR. I'm curious to get your thoughts on kind of where your life would have gone. And I would like to kind of also conduct that thought experiment myself. So maybe we can do that tomorrow, even though we ran out of time today.

I'd be parking cars in Vegas. End of conversation.

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

All right, I would imagine there's got to be an email or two since we kind of have been filling this segment often with the Drops of Stupider contest.

Yeah, in fact, and I went through the voicemail line last week and listened to about a month of voicemails. Sorry, I fell behind. So I have all kinds of voicemails, too. Can we actually listen to a voicemail? How about this one? I don't remember the details on these, but this is listener Stephanie who wants to weigh in on tattoos.

Hey, y'all. It's Stephanie in Portland, Oregon. I'm listening to Luke talk about the tattoo and him talking about how, like, you know, he would want to do research and stuff about the tattoo place or parlor or artist or whatever. And it's reminding me of when I got one of my tattoos when I was...

I think I was 19. I was visiting my aunt and my cousin and my uncle, obviously. And we were just doing touristy things in their city or town. And me and my cousin, who is four years younger than me, so she must have been 15. So she was 15. I was 19. And we got the sudden urge to get a tattoo. And so my aunt took us to a tattoo parlor and let us get tattoos.

Wow.

For the moment, we were not, like, you know, this was totally on a whim. and then my aunt decided to get a tattoo as well and she got me and my cousin got each other zodiac signs tattooed on it so like i got her on zodiac sign and she got mine but my aunt she got her um husband's name on her back um going down so instead of uh i can't do math instead of horizontally it was vertically down her spine basically his name with drops of blood coming off of it i haven't seen her back in a while so i don't know if she's got anything to cover it up but i still think about that because what a what a what a choice all right um talk to you guys later well you know yeah okay listen to you guys later that's probably better anyway um

thanks stephanie um that is i mean that is i mean i want to know what stephanie's parents thought of this although stephanie didn't really raise it so maybe it wasn't it just wasn't a thing It wasn't an issue.

Yeah, like it's one thing when you're – like I was hanging out with my nephews, Jack and Abe, a little while ago. And like maybe I let them have a little more sugar soda than my sister, their mom, would normally. That's kind of the fun thing about being an aunt or an uncle is maybe you let the kids get away with a little something that's not normally okay in their household. Tattoo is a really much more permanent version of that.

Yes, and of course, in this case, your nephews were teaching you how to use a chainsaw, so there is that.

Maybe I should just get a tattoo of a chainsaw so I can remember Jack and Abe.

By the way, I have not received any bow hunting or archery-related ads yet. Some people have been tweeting me about that, but I haven't really been interacting with those tweets in case that would set the algorithm off. But so far, I haven't. I think somebody might have even sent me an Instagram message about it. And if that's the case, that really kind of blows the experiment. But anyway, let me play for you.

Me neither, by the way. No chainsaw ads? I'm looking at Insta's zero chainsaw ads. It's all, for some reason, although I'll tell you what, it's suggesting I follow Rita Wilson on Insta, so it's tracking something I'm doing.

Something's going on. Now, my guess is, and maybe we should just do this now because it's been a whole weekend. And by the way, I've been true to the blue on this. I've been talking to Genevieve. I told her about the plan. And so throughout the weekend, I was just saying, and sometimes she would even bring it up, like, well, have you found the new bow yet? And I would say, I still just don't know where to shop for one. I need information. And, like, nothing has popped up. So this idea that the phone is getting this information strictly from listening to our conversations, that doesn't seem to be holding up. Now, the real test will be, now that it's been a few days, maybe I should just start Googling this or maybe emailing myself stuff about bow hunting and then see if that transfers over to Instagram because my guess is that will happen almost immediately.

Yeah, maybe because, like, you're not getting any play on this, and I am not either. It also wants me to start following Viola Davis, the actor. She actually seems like a pretty good follow. I think of a lot of cute babies being tickled videos. But, yeah, nothing about chainsaws at all. Just shoes. I also did click through – I used Instagram to buy some shoes, and that was – that's the ultimate asking to be tracked thing. Because that's like that – have you heard about this DuckDuckGo app that they're constantly advertising on NPR these days?

Well, it's weird. I have some experience with DuckDuckGo. I have –

Did we do ads for them at some point? No, I don't think – I totally forgot.

DuckDuckGo has been around forever, like way back when I was in New Hampshire.

No, we used to play it in elementary school.

Right. But I it used to always just be advertised as like, you know, you could search using Google, you could search using Yahoo or you could use DuckDuckGo. And that was always advertised as a more secure kind of experience. Since then, they've been pushing like their what do you call it? Like when you can add it to Chrome as an extension. And so I did try that a couple of weeks ago, but it's just like it was just I don't know if it was blocking too much stuff. It wasn't a good experience for me. So I removed it from my from my browser.

I guess that they have their app as well, and we're not doing an ad for them or getting paid by them, but I've heard that it can be helpful. They'll tell you how many things they're blocking at any time, so if you're going to a commerce website, they're keeping you off of a variety of lists. Because I told you that clothing company I don't even want to mention Because I don't want to give them more publicity, but I clicked on an Instagram thing, and it was like, do you want 20% off? You know, let us text you, and I thought, I'll let them do it one time, and then I'll cancel it, but I'll get the 20% off. I never even bought any clothes. It was all kind of overpriced, but I go back to my email account, and I have, like, five to ten spam-like emails that had already happened. Like, in the three minutes of me scrolling this clothing website, they had already sold my info, and it was just a bunch of random shit. It was like Cracker Barrel and like Home Depot and stuff. It was like it was just on the spammiest of spammy lists. So anything that keeps that to a dull roar would be kind of good. Hey, one other thing on tattoos, you know, this John Prine tattoo that I want to get. Listener Kristen heard me talking about it and how I really want to try to get somebody who's really good at portraits. And Kristen was nice enough to send me a link to a great tattoo artist in Seattle that specializes in portraits. And she said she is opening her books on Sunday. Then she linked me to the website. So I was like, okay, maybe I'll go check that out. But, of course, on that particular Sunday, I, like, was busy or forgot about it. So then, like, a day later, I, like, go to the website. And already this artist, who, by the way, appears to be very talented, her name is Susanna Fisher, already her thing says, my books are currently closed. I will post on Instagram and then Facebook When I open them again Probably in the fall I will not be adding anyone to the wait list In the meantime, thanks for your interest Like this is a tattoo artist who Basically there's like a one hour window of time Where you can maybe get on the list to get a tattoo from them

Wow, wow, must be really good Yeah, especially if it's like known for portraiture And stuff that is very complicated Well I have to say

Considering I will not even be able to get a tattoo from this person The tattoos are Incredible looking and it makes perfect sense that there's in fact i'm looking at oh you know i thought it was a um i thought i was looking at a marilyn monroe tattoo for a second it's actually gwen stefani um but that's not because it isn't a good picture of gwen stefani it's because i was it's a was a small thumbnail but anyway this person um is a very very very very talented tattoo artist and maybe in the fall i will be lucky enough during the one hour of availability to get slide my little john prine uh ask in there i have more

voicemails to play but actually before it gets to while this is still fresh I want to read to you this fascinating email we got from listener Dr. Rob we talked about the fact that Genevieve found a baseball at the park the other day and then just grabbed it and brought it home for me she said she found it it was in the air between two young kids who were throwing it back and forth so

sorry she jumped the route she read the quarterback's eyes and jumped the route what are you gonna do you gotta just drive through the ball and get the pick six i love

what sport are we talking about then said see you later suckers and then zoinked out of there where first her legs started moving really fast and then the gravity caught up with it her physics caught up with her legs um dr rob's oh anyway this ball that she found is a official safety one ball and it's got a little bit of uh give to it i can kind of squeeze it in my hand a little bit it's not a hardball the way regular baseballs are and you had made a joke about like wanting to say that like oh it's the softening of American youth but Dr. Rob says this is your local TBTL cardiologist Dr. Rob checking in with you want to add some interesting details about safety baseballs they were not developed because of softening of American youth they were developed to mitigate sudden death now let's get into the dazzling details here well what's

softer than sudden death

or avoiding what's softer than john wayne well no what's softer than suddenly dying from a

baseball you think john wayne would have died if you hit him with a baseball right yeah good point

once every few years a kid would be struck in the chest and again remember dr rob's a cardiologist a kid would be struck in the chest at just the right time and this would cause cardiac arrest specifically they would have ventricular fibrillation from the ball hitting the chest just before the t-wave wow what is the t-wave i would assume that that's part of the electro

kind of the the the electric impulse to use a technical term that it you know regulates your heart like a pacemaker or something probably creates a regulated t-wave or something having to do with the rhythm of your heartbeat and i know that when you smoke a cigarette it's supposed to hit all the t-zones right yes that's what you're looking for the best ones do do you remember those old-timey commercials oh yeah i the t-zone also i yeah i think that was the same was it the same cigarette company that was like i'd rather fight than switch i don't know if i remember that

one my sister used to have a one like cut out from a magazine like a 1940s magazine that was like a I'll see you later.

saying doctors recommend camels. Now, there are more dazzling details in this that I find really fascinating, but just trigger warning a little bit. I think this might be a little bit hard to hear. Scientists realized that a slightly softer ball would deform and transmit less kinetic energy through the chest cavity to the heart. Okay, that's all well and good. It was tested by firing new soft baseballs at live pigs, and they reduced the number of ventricular fibrillation episodes by about half with use with youth baseball you have a perfect confluence of risk factors for what doctors call why did i why did i choose this email commodio i'm fascinated um uh commodio or commotio cordis which is cardiac arrhythmia precipitated by chest wall trauma so one you have young less accurate pitchers and two you have softer more compliant chest walls and then he says here's the paper regarding the pigs play ball um i don't think i'm gonna read the whole white paper the death of the pig the smash of the ball the smash of the ball the death of the pig

baseball's back like no i mean first of all i think i'm glad you picked that email that is fascinating right um and and of course makes a lot of sense i hope it was clear that i was you know 90 joking about soft baseballs because and the other thing that i mentioned was i actually think if the ball you know putting kind of spontaneous cardiac death aside also just like having a ball that isn't as painful to hit you uh when it hits you is great because maybe more kids would get involved in baseball then um because the ball can be a bit scary when it's being fired in there um so yeah so so all of those uh all of those things are are important um and and i think it totally makes sense that is real i'm sad about the pigs though i'm gonna be honest yeah i am sad when i think about the was there a way to test it without firing because it was 50 effective a 50 reduction in these incidents meaning there was still half the time a pig died from a baseball shot at it right right shot at it too like a pigs die of a lot of things so we can eat them i'm not trying to be annoying but i'm like couldn't we have just like is there how about we just put the soft baseballs out for a couple years and see if you know the kids are doing better generally that would have been my take on it but that's the world we live in let me share one more thing with you

only because it's already come up uh uh regarding tattoos this is from listener lenora you mentioned luke that you're interested in getting a john i am having any tattoo i get i want them to do it on a pig first just to test it all these pigs walking around with bruised orange different

different kinds of like varying degrees of john prine tattoo in terms of how good it is

Is the album Bruised Orange or is the song Bruised Orange and the album is – you want the album cover, which features a photo.

The album is called Bruised Orange, and then there's a song on the album that's called Bruised Orange, parenthetically, Chain of Sorrow. Okay.

Anyway, so that's the tattoo that you want. And Lenora says, hello, Luke and Andrew. I had to giggle about your conversation about a tattoo in honor of the John Prine song. My husband and I went to quite a few of his concerts, and he always told really great stories about how his songs were written. He told an experience of a girl who came up to him after a show and told him that she loved the, quote, happy enchilada song. He didn't know what she was talking about until she sang the line. She said, you know, it's a happy enchilada and you think you're going to drown. It's a wonderful memory for us who lived, who loved him. And I doubt that I'm the only listener who will remark on that tale. We loved his music so very much. He was a true American poet. But anyway, don't you get a tattoo of an enchilada with a smile? Love your show. Take care. So give us the actual line again. It's a half inch of water.

It's a half an inch of water, and you think you're going to drown. That's great. I want to open a restaurant called the Happy Enchilada here in Portland. I feel that would be a hit. Now I realize, though, you know what I have to ultimately do, Andrew? My tattoo needs to be a tattoo of a pig with a tattoo of John Crane on it.

I can picture that pig.

I'm going to fully commit to this bit.

Is it a fat, happy pig that's sitting on its haunches so you can see its chest and the tattoos on the chest?

I was thinking more like, you know that rendering you'll see of a pig or a cow in, like, a butcher shop where it's breaking down all of, like, the meat parts of the pig? Oh, yeah. Kind of almost more, like, clinical, but that pig has a tattoo of John Prine, like, on its, like, rump, on its, like, flank or something.

Good emails. Yeah, it had been a while. Yeah. So I still have tons of voicemails we can play throughout the week.

Well, maybe we can get through some of them tomorrow, where I will be checking in from beautiful Ontario, Oregon. Wait for it. I'm going to do a TV story. I hope you. You want to go to beautiful Ontario?

I think there's so many Ontarios, right? Because, of course, you'd think of Ontario in Canada. That should be, like, the first one. But then once you live in California, you get used to Ontario, California also kind of being a thing. So the idea that there's an Ontario, Oregon as well just seems like we're now getting really further down the list of Ontarios that come to mind. But I'm doing a TV story about an onion farmer in the far, far east of Oregon who has developed a huge TikTok following around onion farming and onion storage and all of these weird sort of farmy things. And people love watching his TikTok videos. And he's also apparently very, very pro-immigration, which makes him a little bit distinct as a person from that part of the country. So anyway, I will be there doing the show. Andrew, you will be in the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, hopefully doing the right finger and all of that.

You know what I didn't mention before? Not that it's super important, but I really what the power out I should have told you is I try to send you a picture of this finger of mine. I'll post it as a show pic today. What's weird is I have a big pin going all the way through. I have a bunch of hardware underneath this bandage that I can't really see. It feels like it's an erector set or something. but the big part is I have a big like some sort of a metal pin going all the way through my finger with these plastic green balls on either side of it it's almost like a long barbell sort of and it's it's a weirdly uncomfortable thing because it sticks it's going completely vertically right now I'm like the listener who couldn't who wasn't good at math um no it's going like horizontally through my finger if my fingers are vertical so I can't even really like the other fingers are constantly clacking up against this thing if that makes sense can you kind of kind of picture that

yeah is that a thing so they're going to pull that out at some point yeah so at some point they're

going to pull that out and he says that's a quickie he's like you don't you know you don't need anything for that but i'm not super looking forward to the appointment where they start pulling and prodding at these things but um you know hopefully we get through it but it is oh it's just a weird feeling having this thing going through my finger that i mean you talking about

that and about them kind of trying to manipulate you know your fingers to get everything in place as it were reminds me of when i i broke my arm playing football when i was a kid and it was a i think a pretty bad break and same thing they put me under general for it and i one thing i remember that i had this t-shirt on that said philadelphia that my like i think my mom had gotten me when she was in philly or maybe my uncle chuck had gotten it for me was like my favorite t-shirt why i was wearing it under my football pads i don't know but they cut it off of me and And I was very bummed as I came out. See, this is different. Even as a kid, I was like, really, you guys, you had to cut the Philadelphia T-shirt? As opposed to Mr. Sweetness and Light going into the fetal position. I was angry and complaining.

I just wanted a teddy bear. I wanted to curl up.

You just saved my arm. But you cut what was probably a $2 T-shirt bought off of some corner stand next to a hot pretzel thing on the streets of Philly. But I also remember one of my last memories before I zonked out from the anesthetic was there was – I probably am misremembering now, but there was what I remember looked like – imagine like an IV stand, right? something that looked kind of like an iv stand but instead of having an iv bag it had what i thought were five coils hanging down or five basically like five things that were coming down that were going to they were going to put my hand in there like to like lock my arm in place in some way yeah and i think i didn't know because i was pretty young i think i didn't realize i was going to get a general at this point i just like in the operate and by the way that was also a really big operating room for like a broken arm i thought they're just gonna reset it i hope this doesn't hurt too much and then i saw this like what looked like a very medieval torture device and i remember thinking like oh that's not gonna be fun and then them explaining that like they

were gonna knock me out and me being like phew oh wow but it still sounds like i even think about that people broken breaking all kinds of uh stuff like it sounds like you were so much even tougher

as a no I wasn't I was I'm sure I mean I you know what I definitely I didn't cry when I broke it because I think I was in a lot of shock there was a point and I forget when it was but it was like the arm was broken I was sort of cool with it the fire guys showed the fire truck showed up I was cool with it I had to ride in my football coach Dick's extremely garbage packed Camaro he drove me to the hospital for some reason in my like sling that the fire men had put on my arm i was cool there even though i was very uncomfortable in that car because it was mostly old spent cigarette packs um

And although that was cool of him to drive me. I mean, he didn't have to do that. He was also trying to coach the football team. But anyway, none of that got to me. There was some point, I forget when it was, but there was some point during the intake. At some point, I lost it, and I just cried like a baby. So just so you know, I wasn't like some super tough 12-year-old.

You know what's interesting is it's funny how we stop crying over pain at a certain point, right? Like we should wrap up the show. I don't know why I'm taking it here, but like I'm not somebody who's like too tough to cry. I mean, you hear me get choked up on the show sometimes over nothing. Like, you know, call Dr. Arakaki. Like there's, you know, like I want to talk about T-zones. I need more T-zones. I'm crying all the time. Welcome to the club. Pain, like when you're a kid and something like that happens, eventually the tears will come. Whereas with this whole terrible experience, as, you know, I reacted in all kinds of un-tough ways or what have you if you want to measure it like that, it's never about tears, you know, for some reason.

That's an interesting thing. Right. It's very strange how we tend to evolve. I think, yeah, you're right. Adulthood – and certainly there are people that are in pain that is so intense that it does just bring tears as an adult. Sure, yeah. Absolutely. I mean that very much happens. but yeah there's a like when you're a little kid and you hurt yourself your first your body's first way of processing it is to go to tears and as an adult i think it's it's not your your first thing you have kind of a different weird reaction but it's not i am much more apt to cry over emotional things i'm much more apt to cry out of happiness or the beauty of a particular moment yeah but i'm also you know i've cried out of sadness a few times in the last couple of years and um you know for various reasons but but yeah it's it's strange how that kind of how that kind of evolves um i had a thought this is like you know since i guess we're just gonna like fully go out on the most kind of emo note i had a thought for a song to go out with okay good yeah i was just gonna ask

if there's an elton john song you want um sure how about candle in the wind um what were you

gonna say well it's funny because you were talking about being tough or not tough or i said i wasn't such a tough you know kid necessarily and it made me think of the isn't there a bruce springsteen song tougher than the rest uh let me just hear what i actually for are you tough enough yes by

the fabulous thunderbirds yes yes yes i knew it was the b-side to wrap it up i'll take it

dude fabulous thunderbirds and george thorogood can just absolutely never get played again as far as my needs

go. I found it tougher than the rest. I do not know anything about Bruce Springsteen. I only know the songs that I hear on the radio from time to time. Alright, we'll go out with this. Is this a famous song or is this just one that touches you?

I learned about this song because another very emo band, Everything But The Girl, who I loved, covered this song. I think they did a whole album of covers and so I thought it was just a great Everything But The Girl song And then I learned later that it was actually A Bruce Springsteen song Although it may have been We may have literally had this conversation And this song may also Be covered by Tom Waits Or have been originally written by Tom Waits It's very possible I feel like Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits Downtown Train really clouded the whole issue for me Then you got Rod Stewart involved In that whole debacle Because you know that song Downtown Train I'm sorry to do this to the listeners There's a great song, Downtown Train, that Tom Waits does a cover of, and I think it might actually, it's either written by Rod Stewart or covered by Rod Stewart.

Rod Stewart has a more famous version of that.

That's right, and I assumed it was a Tom Waits song that Rod Stewart was covering, but at some point I thought maybe I learned that it was actually a Rod Stewart song that Tom Waits was covering.

You know, that sort of rings a bell, but for this, we will play Tougher Than The Rest, which actually came out in 1973. on a record called Yellow Brark Road by Bruce Springsteen. Oh, wait, I messed that up. It's goodbye, Yellow Brark Road, actually.

No, the brark was enough to get me. All right, thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you tomorrow with more of this imaginary radio. Until then, be safe, take care of yourselves, go Mariners, go eat a Bregel, and please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. Well, it's Saturday night, you're all dressed up in blue. I've been watching you for a while, maybe you've been watching me too. So somebody ran out of me. Left somebody's heart in a mess Well, if you're looking for love On the eye, I'm tougher than the rest Some girls, they want a handsome dance Or some good-looking joke On their arms Some girls like a sweet-talkin' wrong feel Well, round here, baby I learned you get what you can get So if you're revvin' up for love On the island to earth and the rest Yeah, the road is dark Power out.