Muse

Uh, Alex is here buying some gifts for her baby. Oh, really? What's the name of that cutie? Lucian. Lucian? Yeah. You named your baby Lucian? I did, yes. That's my lizard's name. What a small world. He passed away recently. He was run over by an ice cream truck. Sad story.

TBTL!

I'd like to say that I'm passionate about walking, and I'm passionate about TBTL and I think, what a great combo. I love to walk and listen to TBTL at the same time. Targets, targets. You want a toe?

I can get your toe. Believe me. There are ways, dude. You don't want to know about it. Believe me. Yeah, but Walter. Hell, I can get your toe by three o'clock this afternoon with nail polish. Baby crow's feet. Little chickling's feet. I mean, chicks. Chickie, chickie, chickie. Yes, again, well thought you have a way with words. This is ludicrous. I don't want to hear it. Call me when you're good.

All right. Hello. Good morning and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL, a show that just might be too beautiful to live. The vibes will be the illest and the jams not ridiculous. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I'm sorry. I'm tan. I like to be tan. It just feels good.

Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center, high in the sky above Portland, Oregon, on a big, big day for the show.

Attention, everybody.

We have an announcement about the plan for the TBT Elephant 12. I've been waiting for this moment for months, and it's finally here. We will explain what we are going to be getting up to next week as we seek to delight and entertain you and also remind you that this show only exists because people like you, the person hearing my voice right now, many people make donations to the show. That's how this whole thing works. Once a year, we take a week, we call the TV Telethon, try to do something extra interesting, and that is going to be our goal next week. We'll tell you what's coming up in just a minute. First, though, let me remind you, this is episode 3,424 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. And along with the big news about the TBTL-a-thon 12, we have some breaking news, at least what counts as breaking news in the TBTL world. TBTL Breaking News. The guy who has made a lot of money giving motivational speeches writing not one but two memoirs and even having a major motion picture filmed about his life. It's going on right now. They are in production. The guy who's done all of that based on his story of inventing Flamin' Hot Cheetos.

I just love hot Cheetos!

The LA Times says, he didn't invent flaming hot cheetos one of the most carefully researched pieces of journalism I have seen in years calm down Atlantic take a seat New Yorker whatever Axos the LA Times has really really done their research on the story of the flaming hot cheeto and how it was invented we will share that with you coming up uh in a bit too oh and speaking of deep dives in the microfiche we have i think some confirmation that the mariners may have been referring to their day games as business person specials long before we talked about things in a much more inclusive way when it comes to gender So we'll get to that in the emails as well We'll do all that with the help of this guy Longest running co-bro of the show Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships He is also very excited about the TBTL-a-thon 12

I'm like seriously excited I'm kind of shy but mostly excited

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

Good morning Luke It's an auspicious day here in TBTL I'm excited to tell people what's cooking And I also want to say I was writing some, you know, like, email copy related to the TBTL-a-thon last week, and I had a typo in there. At one point, I called it the TBTL-a-thon instead of thon. I just ordered one of those, by the way. Yeah, no, I mean, there was a recall, but I think they've worked it out with some software upgrades. That's why I got a deal on it. Yeah, yeah. But nobody knew, like, there were several people in, like, editorial chain who thought it was another inside joke. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. We can either get away with everything or nobody will ever correct us because how many times in the past?

Have we had a new editor in the email chain And somebody says Fix that for you, put the T on spreadsheet No, actually that was on purpose So now everybody's scared to correct typos Because they think it's some inside joke on TBTL

Well, that's kind of on me Because I sent an email last week About what we're actually calling The TBTL-a-thon 12 And it's a bit of a play on words As we are wont to do Because we're relentlessly funny We're relentlessly clever so i i just clarified i thought just to just to be clear like we're trying to actually say this word that's very close to a different word lest you think that was a typo oh yeah that's right so that set a tone that now everyone is probably you know cowering terrified that if they correct something it's it's some like you said some inside joke when it just turns out we have poor typing skills oh we got an update on that as well in the email section a lot of people including my own sister reaching out regarding if kids are being taught typing or not yeah yeah i've been getting

a lot of that too a lot of a lot of action all over the place this week and by the way my apologies you know i was doing a great job people were texting me um and people continue to text me a lot on the tbtl voicemail number line we can receive texts there and i get them on my phone if i'm in the middle of something sometimes you get a food order from me yes look that comes in via email i did not get any emails uh telling me what you were eating this weekend it was quite disappointing um i've gone dark i i gotta say i've fallen down a little bit in responding but i do see all the text messages so if i don't respond right away it's just that um sometimes there's a lot coming in or i'm in the middle of something and then i kind of forget to go back to it but i really have enjoyed it so if you sent me a text message i think some people are still a little sheepish about it like really should i be texting you i don't want to bug you you're never bugging me but uh if i don't get back to you don't read that as me being passive aggressive Anyway, it's been fun

For instance, Rita Wilson responds to zero of my texts to her about Chet And I don't assume that's because she's not seeing them It's just because she's very busy trying to deal with Chet

How is White Boy Summer going? Or is that what you're trying to find out?

I saw, you know, I don't want to be Because I'm also somebody who's going through a breakup I don't want to be glib about a person who's famous Although, you know what, by the way Sorry, the plan here is to announce the TV telethon 12 and i'm going to just start by going on two quick tangents one i don't want to you know john mulaney and i guess his now you know former wife uh he came out of rehab and then it was announced that they were splitting up and then it was announced that he's dating olivia munn oh i didn't see that uh the the the the much uh the much admired actor and performer and somebody wrote on twitter john mulaney went to rehab came out got divorced started doing stand-up again and is dating olivia munn he said white boy summer with his whole chest which was a funny way to put it again offering that with peace and love to everybody involved in that situation because it's a sad thing now i also remember the one time i tried to actually take the high road on something I was saying, you know, it seems like Bill and Melinda Gates are just these nice people that people don't need to be, you know, making too much making too many jokes about them on Twitter because, you know, they're just they're breaking up and that's too bad. Well, today, it's a series of stories about Bill Gates being a creeper.

You know, I saw this is this is such a Andrew story. I saw some like notification. So I think it was New York Times pop up on my phone saying breaking news. But what the New York Times and The Washington Post consider to be breaking news has become pretty negligible lately. And so I just get time and I get breaking news.

These two ad executives wanted to find something on the Lower East Side for under $700,000. Which one did they pick? Exactly. Simmer down, old gray lady.

Not what I signed up for. But what I was going to say really quickly is so I'm so used to, as my dad might say, blasting those push messages away. Like they pop up and I look at them really quickly. But then I saw something about

You swiped them like women swiping left On my Tinder profile

I assume that's the bad one, no offense I don't know, I think so But all I was going to say was I blasted that notification away Like kind of too fast, right as I was like Swiping it away, I saw Bill Gates Before divorce, I was like, oh no I'll bet you, and then I went to look for the story And then I got distracted by something shiny So I didn't see it, is it actually, is he actually problematic Or was it just like, again, personal relationship stuff Because I'm kind of not in the business of judging people's personal relationship stuff.

It's more in the personal relationship stuff. But basically, it's, you know, in true Bill Gatesian fashion, it seems, I'll say, to be relatively mild compared to other things that have gone on in the world. And yet it's not just, well, let me put it this way.

It surprises me that Bill Gates was apparently as amorous as he is. I don't know why. He just doesn't scream. He just doesn't scream. Swordsman. He does not scream swordsman to me. By the way, that's the TBTL-a-thon 12 theme. Screaming swordsman. The cuck stopped here. Come on. Screaming swordsman.

I knew it. I knew you were going to like, I thought we'd bury that on Friday. God damn it.

We should have. What is alleged in the New York Times and the Washington Post is that, well, one, he has confirmed that he did have an extramarital affair 20 years ago, which happens all the time to people. And that, to me, as long as it wasn't non-consensual or their power dynamic wasn't out of whack, seems like something that is between grown adults. but um the other thing is that he apparently had the habit of asking women out to dinner people who worked for him people who worked for him or with him and there were numerous reports and it sounded very similar which would be he would say he'd be talking to somebody he would sort of you know sidle up to them i guess at an event or even if they're like walking out of the building and he would say um i'm interested in you would you like to have dinner which is

kind of a weirdly old school approach so he's not like he's not playing coy and again i'm sorry i'm not trying to i should just read the article but the stories that you're telling it sounds like he's not he's not being coy and just being like no no we just need to go over this paperwork and then like he's taking them out on false pretenses he's being awkwardly up front about his intentions

yes and awkward is the key part of it because what people who were spoke anonymously to the times and the post said was they were they sensed that he thought he was giving the people he was asking out the room to say no and in fact many of them said no apparently or laughed it off which isn't great because if you work for bill gates and he asks you out to dinner that that is an impossible situation to be in and it's and it's not okay it's not you know that's a that would be a very uncomfortable moment potentially traumatic moment for somebody because your whole career is flashing before your eyes but what people were saying was that they got the sense that he thought that he wasn't being one of the things they said and i forget if it was the times or the post no one described him as a predator okay like that was in the piece in other words if we can try to frame these things it was it was more uh ham ham fisted if you will it was like he wasn't didn't appear to be real great at it um and then there are the other bigger problem and this is where things get a little bit less casual is his friendship with or his

association with Jeffrey Epstein oh oh that that came up in the past I'd forgotten about that

and his big argument was his thing was I don't I was never alone with Jeffrey Epstein um or I was never at a party with Jeffrey Epstein I was purely talking to him because he was someone who knew how to raise large sums of money or at least put me in contact with billionaires so his his argument has always been this was strictly business and i was not like one of those guys that was hanging out on the island with him but there was this weird email that he sent to a colleague that was uncovered where he basically says the the point of the email is to say i don't think we should partner with jeffrey epstein which you know that's the right answer yes but what he said was something to the effect of while his lifestyle is very different than mine and somewhat intriguing i don't think this is a good partnership for us why you got to throw in somewhat intriguing yeah well that's just unnecessary yeah so that's that's that's the that's the upshot of the whole thing it's you know i i was even it's funny because after we talked about it on tbtl and again i was mr kind of moral high ground and well let's just leave them alone then it was a topic on wait wait and that will also put me in me in an odd position because I had already staked out a position on this show of not making fun of it and then I ended up kind of caving and making I don't even know if it got on the radio but a joke about Clippy representing Bill Gates in his divorce which was honestly just because I felt like I'm hired to keep the needle moving on this comedy show yeah and I mean I mean honest I go

guys we shouldn't make fun of them and I don't think that's an offensive joke I would tell you if it is I mean I think that that is exactly the type of thing that i might say in that situation because it's like the you're not punching you're not punching at either of the gates at all you're not punching up or down there it's just a joke about how it's just a ridiculous concept oh they're gonna need lawyers you know and clippy is gonna be his lawyer that's not an offensive joke i don't think and i don't think it's prying into

private lives i guess my larger point is that it was just it's a little more complicated interpersonally than i expected it's like the one time when i'm i'm lecturing everyone about leaving them alone. I mean, it would appear that Melinda Gates is in the same position we imagined her to be in, which was a person who was dealing with a complicated relationship.

Yeah. Yeah.

And Bill Gates sounds like was a little bit more complicated in his behaviors than I had fully realized.

Yeah. And it says right here pretty early in the story there was a previously undisclosed sexual harassment claim. Oh, that was against the guy who worked for him. Oh, that was against his money manager. My apologies. My apologies. I was reading that too fast on the fly. That is slander. TBTale 12.

sinking into slander it's the swordsmans of slander tbdl 12 is it too late can they reprint

the t-shirts get emily on the line oh god can that be a show title though it might be you know it's tinged it's tinged in the blue um but uh but maybe that one can pass because that that got me

All right. That sounds like a Dire Straits record, by the way.

Yeah, it does.

All right. Now that we've demonstrated proof of concept, let me explain why you want to listen next week and donate money, because it's the TBTL-a-thon 12 contentless delivery.

Hey, Lloyd, do some delivery.

It's your lucky day.

You just found a USB flash drive in the parking lot. It's a delivery the Wong family wasn't expecting this holiday season. It's time for Operation Crazy Plan.

Two Cobros, one 1993 Mitsubishi Delica camper van, and a plan to visit the tens of listeners at their actual homes, or we should say in front of their actual homes. We are going to hit the road next week And we are going to be doing the show From the driveways and front stoops Of A variety of listeners With the ultimate goal of ending up in Phoenix, Arizona Where we will finally force Mary the TVTL Virgin To listen to an episode of TVTL Why? Because we will be Broadcasting it at her house From the van In her condo community

we're gonna pull up into i imagine this is because i've i've been going back and forth with mary um and my understanding is this might be kind of a like a housing community uh with an hoa type of situation i'm picturing cul-de-sacs i don't i haven't seen photos but i think that's about right and um luke i i don't know i don't know if other people are going to be coming out of their houses to figure out why there's a weird japanese van broadcasting some nonsense out of a boom box outside of Mary's house, but we have to be prepared to deal with that scenario. Are you ready to deal with that scenario?

Absolutely not. I'm already dreading every single episode that we are doing because it will connect with my deepest insecurity related to this show, which is strangers hearing it.

Yes, right, which is one of the things keeping our numbers down.

I mean, I don't like people who know the show hearing it, but strangers hearing it is even worse so this plan was hatched because last year of course we sort of quarantined in a safe secure location and this year we wanted to get back out and get back with the tens of listeners but we also just didn't know where things were going to be in terms of covid and things like that so we had to come up with a plan that could sort of work under any eventuality and what we realized was we could do the show safely from in front of the houses of the listeners, if they want to come out and bring a lawn chair and sit and listen, they're welcome to. If they want to stay inside, they're also welcome to. They're free to live their life. They want to close the blinds and call the cops. If they want to turn the lights off and get down on the floor, like my parents used to make us do on Halloween because we had no candy for trick-or-treaters, that's also fine. But that's what we're going to do. Now, the other thing is we're going to be at some point at the end of the show, when the show is done, when that episode is done we will also be putting the show that episode onto a usb drive and possibly either handing it to the listener or leaving it in a parking lot in their town where they can then

find it what i've done is be their lucky day i have two thumb drives for each listener and one of them has malware on it the other one has an episode of tbtl they have to play a very dangerous

game dano also you know really raises the question is tbtl worse than malware that's a good point

Like, which one are they hoping for? Basically, audio malware.

Wait, isn't that the thing where we're trying to raise money and I'm saying our show is worse than malware? I got to really – I got to work on my sales pitch before next week. So the plan is on Monday, we will be in court. Corvallis, Oregon, at listener Cheryl in Corvallis' house, where Cheryl, her husband, and maybe more importantly, her children are all fans of the program.

Our youngest donors, as I like to call them. Not to dehumanize them, but you know.

No, not to see them purely as dollar signs. But by the way, kids, make with the donations. We're coming to your house. Wait, is this a mafia shakedown or a fundraiser for public radio?

Sometimes I think we're not great at this.

Tuesday we're going to be driving dangerously close to the birthplace of 1LB so we are going to swoop into Humboldt County and the greater Eureka California area where Andrew if you think it's annoying anytime when you and Vives had recently moved to Seattle if we would be in a neighborhood that I had grown up in I would force you on the the involuntary Burbank lifestyle tour or life history tour boy it's gonna really really be kicked into overdrive when we're in eureka because i mean that is very much the cradle of my birth yeah can you just give us this the very

obviously we'll talk about it tuesday when we're there and you know you've told stories from this era but it's remind us what era this is you got stuck in a you got stuck in a fence as a baby do

i have that right yes my parents left me in a fence with a note and there were no takers so And then they came back hours later and were like, all right, fine, we'll raise you. They floated you down. Yeah, when I was a little kid, so I was born in Northern California, and then my mom kind of sort of briefly moved back to Philly with me. We lived in a tent in my grandpa's backyard before he passed away because he had rented out all the rooms in his little house on Ripley Street, I think, to cover his bills. Anyway, we then came back to Northern California and lived for a bit on what was called the lighthouse ranch which was this big i think former coast guard station then we moved to a house on s street that my memory now this could be the mandela effect my memory is that it is literally across the street from sequoia national park but i don't know how that would work i can't imagine that that park literally comes into eureka california but my childhood memory is living in this little house and then going across the street again apologies for the ambulance i don't understand why the siren has to be on when they're going back to the warehouse just seems unnecessary um and then uh we then lived in this little kind of these little shacks that i think had originally been constructed for uh migrant farm workers off of elk river road that was where i got caught on the barbed wire fence my jacket arm did as i was out in a field and what age age three three probably three you know just doing some just doing a little solo field

investigating at age three like you do sure just clear and brush okay yeah so so that was that's the era so you're there from like maybe two to five or something like this this is yeah okay gotcha um so you can show me the barbed wire fence we can see if there's i mean we could get

on elk river road and go see you know i don't think i've been back there i mean i have been back to eureka but i don't think i was went out to elk river road um maybe since i was three years old or something or whenever it was we moved so uh that will be probably a pretty uh if it's still like if the if that little my sister liz was born there that's a crazy story too i think i even told this the other day but basically my mom had my sister liz at home and the midwife who had been hired who was probably somebody who was doing it voluntarily like from the church or whatever had eaten too much peanut butter and got a stomach ache and was like lying down when my mom eventually basically had my sister and I ran across this little cul-de-sac and I say cul-de-sac it's not like where Mary the Virgin lives the TBTL Virgin it's like this was just like a gravel I don't know what you would call it it was a very very ramshackle like series of dwellings but anyway I ran across this little dirt road to where our across the dirt road neighbors lived because the guy who lived there was a nurse i think his name was um ben fluno and i went to get him so he'd come back and cut my mom's umbilical cord oh my gosh where was pa pa was there but pa i mean listen where was pa ingles walt was like probably like 23 at the time i mean he may have passed out himself that's a lot yeah and by the way this was like you know the first kid that he and my mom had together so this is like the first child my dad is the biological father of and they're doing it at home have i mean having the baby at home they did it at home nine months previous which is how the baby came about and then now it's like the midwife is down for the count the baby is out he just may not have been up to dealing with the umbilical

core right right right i just i mean it just sounds so little house on the prairie though it just sounds like get to fetch doc baker you fetch doc yeah wow wow also by the way that's the second most thrilling story of somebody who ruined something by eating peanut butter the first of course, being the guy who couldn't win the call-in game show. What commercial was that for where he's trying to say Aaron Burr, but he's got a mouthful of peanut butter? I don't know, but that's a pretty good premise for a commercial. You don't remember that? That's how I know who Aaron Burr is. There was a commercial in the 90s where I can't – I think it was Got Milk. I think it was a Got Milk commercial. There's a guy, he's calling into the radio show. He knows the answer is Aaron Burr, but he just keeps saying, and he's just eaten a bunch of peanut butter,

needs out of milk yeah famous commercial so from uh eureka we will then head over to sacramento california where we will post up at listener megan french's house now this is or megan freedom as she's known in some yeah that's what this is kind of perfect because megan is also a dazzling donor and she i believe literally mentioned in her dazzling donor message that she hoped to see a tbtl live show at some point in the near future well you asked and we answered megan we're coming to your house or at least the yard in front of your house regrets i have a few right be careful what you be careful what you wish for oh that god that would have been a great TBTL 12 Be careful what you wish for So then we will head After Sacramento we will head down to Oceanside, California Where listener Lisa is Lisa famously of Attending many Many live concerts But In TBTL Live concert come to you Right God I'm all over the place today I actually came in with a plan It's one of the rare days that I actually had a plan, and I've completely abandoned it. No, this is good. I'm getting hyped. I want to mention, too, this is fun. On our way down to Oceanside, we are going to make the quickest of stops in Los Angeles, California, and pick up our colleague, Kiki Lolo. You're going to get hop-ons. Who's just going to be riding along in the Delica with us. So we'll hit Oceanside, and then that'll be Thursday. And then Friday, we will be at Mary the TBTL Virgin's home in Phoenix, Arizona, and we will once and for all be able to make sure that she has listened to at least one episode of TBTL, unless she decides to not come out of her condo, Andrew, which, again, is a possibility. She's very into this status as being a fan of the show who's never heard the show. And, of course, she will lose that status after we do this episode of the show if she emerges from her condo.

Does she lose the nickname is the question. We have plenty of time to figure that out. No, I don't think so. I don't think we don't have to legally strip her of the nickname. No, that seems especially cruel. Making her listen to TVTL is cruel enough. Stripping away the nickname seems just like too much, a step too far.

Now, I would like to also, Andrew, give you and the listeners some of the specs on this 1993 Mitsubishi Delica van that we are going to be driving. How long is the van? 16 feet. How many people does the van sleep? Two. What kind of fuel does the van use? Diesel. I don't know if I've ever driven anything that's diesel. I assume it feels like you're driving something that uses gas. But I'm sure it's going to take me a few refuelings to remember that it's diesel. And by the way, I hope that it's that thing where the regular gas, you know, nozzle doesn't fit into the diesel thing. Because I will probably try to put regular gas in the van.

Didn't we – I'm getting deja vu. I swear that you and I had to drive a diesel vehicle at one point for another one of these cockamamie schemes because being – I'm just now remembering how nervous I was about not filling it with the wrong thing. And it was in Australia. It might have been the RV. Does that ring a bell to you, or is this a false memory? I don't remember it, but there's a lot of things I don't remember. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, we got to be careful about that. We can't go, you said it'll take you three times to remember. By that time, it'll be broken. So, no, we need to tattoo it on our arms.

How fast does the 1993 Mitsubishi Delica camper van go? 55 if you're flooring it. We are going to be living in the right lane, Andrew.

Yes, we are.

Which is, along with being nervous about setting up shop and doing the show in public for people that have no idea what's going on, the thing I'm the second most uncomfortable with is how slow we're going to be going on this trip with people zooming past us on the left.

And, like, I'll be honest with you. I've never seen the movie Speed. And so my grasp on the concept is loose at best. But is there some sort of parallel to speed here?

Are we, like, the opposite of speed? Because we're going to have to get, like, I think the biggest challenge would be getting from Sacramento, stopping in L.A. all the way down to Oceanside in one day in a van that can't drive 55. If you floor it, apparently it can go 55, I've been told. All right. I wonder if it's going to rattle the whole time.

Well, that's it. I mean, this thing is, at this point, an older van. And it's, well, 28 years old and definitely has some quirks to it. Andrew, here's another question. Are we supposed to take the van east of Nevada based on the rental website? That's a big no. But we did get special permission from the people that own the van. By the way, the van is the couple that own this van, and I think they own a couple of vans. They rent them out here in Portland under the name This American Van Life. which I knew immediately meant we were dealing with kindred spirits. Yes. Yes.

I wonder if they have a GPS on – or what would you call it? Like a GPS tracker on this thing. Did you ask him that? I didn't, but – I mean, you know, people put those on their vehicles for, like, if they have their kids or driving their cars or something, right? Like, that is – if you owned a van like this and you were renting it out to boneheads like us, wouldn't you track that guy?

Well, you'll be – I guess you'll be happy to hear this, Andrew. This is one of the rare times where I went with the ask permission approach as opposed to asking forgiveness. So it said on the website, you know, these are the parameters to take this van because it's an old van. It doesn't go very fast. And, you know, it could break down at any time. By the way, all of these places that I've mentioned we're going to be are with the huge asterisk that the van may not make it.

Yeah, yeah. We might just be doing five shows in Humboldt County. We've got to really draw out those stories.

Yeah, we might be doing five shows in Gresham, which is like six miles from here. That would be fun. But but yeah, so the van is the van is kind of quirky. And I saw on the website that they said, these are the states you can take it to. And, you know, me, Andrew, my first impulse was to just say, OK, and then like, how are they going to know we went to Phoenix? But I thought, God, that could just we if we have an incident in Arizona, we're not supposed to be in that state. That's going to be a problem. And so I asked them. I was up front. I said, our plan is to enter Arizona airspace ever so briefly and then head back home. And the folks that own the van said, that's just fine. So we're completely and totally – we're being fully transparent with the people that own the Delica. By the way, the Delica's name is interstellar because it travels through space, Andrew, at 55 miles per hour. That's what the owner told me when I went and checked it out the other day.

By the way, you know, I meant Grisham, and the joke still didn't work, even if you did say Grisham. I said that would be firm. Like, I don't even know what I was trying to do there. I just wanted to – for people who are like, that went by quickly. What happened to Andrew? Did he just have a stroke? No, I just messed up there.

Why was he muttering about the pelican breed?

Yeah, I just – I tried. Like, you just – sometimes you just kind of swing, you know?

Yes, absolutely, Andrew. You know what? Honestly, you know that I'm a first-pitch fastball pitcher. So if you're going to get a hittable pitch, it's probably on the first pitch, and you just got to come up. You got to be aggressive. And I like that. I want you to bring that aggressive content-generating attitude to next week because we – I mean, I am not kidding you, Andrew. This is going to be an emotional journey for me. Like you and I in the run-up to this, we're talking about – you mentioned how you could tell as we got closer to Laramah in the northern territory of Australia when we did the THON in Australia a couple years ago. you could tell as we got closer to that the pink panther pub where we were going to do the show in a semi-public space you could you could feel me tightening up it is for whatever reason the thing that gives me the most agita is doing the show somewhere in public for people that aren't in on

the joke or yeah exactly it's like you can you know well i mean for live wire you do shows in front of i mean i don't know thousands what's your biggest crowd usually a couple of oh maybe once in a while a thousand yeah generally like 300 but obviously you can handle yourself in front of crowds and of course you can handle yourself when it's just you and me it's that weird awkward space sorry do I make you nervous um when you do that voice it's a little bit of celery man in there I feel like I have a new sequence I've been working on would you like to see it oh that's good um but uh yeah no it's that it's that weird uncanny valley right like I was telling you I could tell like when we were in Larima and not that I don't want to make it sound like i'm better at this than you but i do think you are for whatever reason less scared about this shit than i just slightly it's not that i'm less scared about it but just in the moment i decide well it's got to happen now and it's not going to be better if i'm acting awkward about it so i just it's kind of like when we when i used to go out and like

I have to do like what we call Vox Pop, where you'd like take a microphone and go out on the street and just stop strangers and get their opinion on neighborhoods or their memories of Sesame Street. Those are Vox Pops I happen to make in the past. And it's just like you have to go up to like at least 90 percent of the people do not want to talk to you. There's going to be an embarrassing aspect to it. But like when I used to have to do that stuff, I just remember saying different mindset. You're a different person. You just got to knuckle through it. And I remember kind of doing that at Larima. Like everything was pretty awkward setting up before, you know, we set up in like some weird little, it's some weird little alcove table-y area.

Which, can I just say, I mean, listeners can't see, couldn't see us there and we'll have no idea what I'm talking about. But the original plan had been maybe to be actually in the pub pub, like right in there. Right, right, right. And I think I just, one, I think there was some technical challenges with that. And we didn't want to like completely throw off their afternoon service. But also, I don't think emotionally I could handle that. So we were like adjacent to the pub, but what was also funny is, well, first of all, once we got into it, it was fine, and then there was a couple people who had seemed a little uninterested in what we were doing or even maybe a little put off who then were just watching from afar, and then there was the one guy who was yelling out clarifications, I believe, while we were doing the show who clearly wanted to be on the show.

I don't even remember. I don't remember seeing people. I do remember, though, if you go back to the tape, I could be wrong. I'm not trying to put you on blast here, Luke. But if we go back to the tape, I'm pretty sure you can tell that you're sort of talking and like sort of sotto voce, like sort of like you're you can tell that you're not ready to let it rip. And so, you know, that's kind of the situation we're going to be this is like an HOA officer standing there with their arms closed. Like, what are these on 12?

not ready to let it rip.

Well, that'll be good for the van, I suppose, if I'm not ready to let it rip in the van. But anyway, I will try, I promise. And I'll bring beef jerky, too, so you won't know the difference if I do. But anyway, yeah, so I think it'll be fun, but that'll certainly add a layer of intrigue to it.

It really will. I'm going to have to just get over it. I'm very excited to see these listeners. I'm very excited. I'm genuinely excited to hang out with you, Andrew, Hang out with Kiki Lolo I think it's going to be great But when I imagine somebody Who is the neighbor of one of these listeners Hearing this noise Coming out of a boombox That's what we're bringing for our speaker by the way And then kind of walking over perplexed Looking at us like huh That is going to be something I'm just going to have to really get emotionally ready for that And then we'll be fine

You got to tell yourself that this is normal And that we're in the driver's seat

Oh speaking of which Is the driver's seat In the Delica on the typical side For the United States Absolutely not That's the biggest dazzling detail of this van Yeah because these vans Were I think they were Sort of big in Japan But where they were really big I learned today Because I was trying to find some Like an old ad For one of these vans I thought maybe that could be some funny tape to play But the old ads are all in Japanese And then a bunch of them are in i think they're uh like from new zealand i think these vans were pretty big in new zealand and i think they were sort of used in the uk they were used in places where the you know you drive on the other side of the road what's going to be unique about this is of course we're going to be in the u.s so we will still be driving on the u.s side of the road but the driver of the van will be on the so-called wrong side of the van and that's legal right like i'm not even finding

We didn't have to get a special license, right? No, because, I mean, you obviously see, like, mail trucks. Are they still?

Oh, we also have to deliver some mail. I forgot to tell you that part.

But, like, if these folks are renting this van out to all kinds of people who are going on little adventures, I'm sure people aren't getting special licenses. We're fine. Don't look it up.

No, I think this is all. We have special insurance for this, Andrew. Okay. We have special, like, roadside pickup. You know, like, it's not AAA, but something like that. So, no, this is all very much above board. In fact, I'm shooting a little video later today kind of showing off the van that will roll out at some point this week. And I was talking to the owner, and I can only drive the van on her street to make this video for insurance purposes. Because our insurance hasn't kicked in yet. Kicked in or something. So it's all, like I said, this is all very, unusually so for me, Andrew, this is all very much above board.

Can I actually say quickly, like I'm very excited about this too. You're going to go and record this video That'll be like kind of next week's Hey Dummies In the newsletter, so if you are not signed up For the newsletter yet, sign up for it now Because you do not want to miss Recording the first Video from this cockamamie van

Yep, so that is The plan for TBTL-a-thon

12 next week we will be out in the world um making some limited safe contact with some limited number of tbtl listeners but we will be um you know of course putting the show out and are we talking about this or is the plan to try to stream the shows as well yeah um it looks like

i mean i'm testing equipment so far it's looking good so again i guess there's a half a percent chance that this doesn't actually happen if we get out to some place and we don't have good internet or something but the plan here is to actually be streaming a live video of these shows at tbtl.net so we will be broadcasting it in that way so you'll be able to join us like for example when we're at Cheryl's house with broadcasting to Cheryl's family from their driveway you should be able to go to tbtl.net and click on the YouTube video there and watch us stream that show live and get the actual audio of the show if you would like oh go ahead go ahead if

you would like to see what the look on my face is when i'm not quite ready to rip it you can tune in

at tbtl.net and see for yourself and just remind me one more time we're calling it tbtl 12 from

gresham to grisham is that what you said all right let's take a quick break and then we'll

come back and hold on can i just say one more thing luke please i'm sorry to interrupt i broke your flow but this is really key okay we can't say what they are right now but we i know we say this every year but we may have the most exciting thank you gift of all time coming up for this tv telethon would you am i overstating that do you not like me saying that because i'm overselling it

be honest no it's really cool it is i will tell you this it is a thank you gift that first when Sarah, our colleague in Minnesota, when she sent us a video of this thing being made at the factory, like, they had sent her a video, like, proof of concept. I immediately – I freaked out, and I think I sent that video to, like, DFTB and other people. I think I might have posted it, like, in our criminals chatters. I mean, I was so excited by this thing that that was one of our thank you gifts that I immediately violated every NDA that we have. And I don't think I've done that with any other thank you gift before. So I definitely in particular, one of these thank you gifts, I think, is just absolutely going to be a delight for the listeners.

Yeah. So anyway, I just want to get that in there because I'm really excited about it. I hope I didn't oversell it. Now it's going to be like, well, no, but it's it's very exciting. It's it's the highlight of the Swordsman T-shirt. It is. It says the Swordsman of Slander. That like ACDC font is pretty sweet.

Oh, hell yeah. All right. Let's take a quick break and then we come back as if that wasn't a big enough news in the world of TBTL. How about the fact that the guy who's been claiming to have invented Flaming Hot Cheetos, a story that I have repeated many times, a story that I have, as they say, dined out on many times, apparently did not actually invent Flaming Hot Cheetos, according to the L.A. Times. We'll talk about that in a moment here on TBTL.

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

Speaking of the donations that are the lifeblood of this programming, let's thank some dazzling donors. These people last year during the TBTL-a-thon heard us asking for donations, and they said, yes. They said, indeed, Queen, we will donate to TBTL. And it's vital in doing this thing. We want to thank Stacy Martin in Kalispell, Montana. Stacy says, hey, dummies. Not too much to say here from the frozen tundra of northwest Montana. Looking forward. That's, by the way, frozen tundra of northwest Montana.

Do you think it's still a frozen tundra or do you think this just came in like a while back? I would be shocked if it were still a frozen tundra as of right now.

I guess I don't know everything about Kalispell and maybe its elevation. I'm going to look up the temperature now. But my guess would be it's not frozen anymore. And in fact, I don't know why I've got to take it here, but with climate change, if it ever were a frozen tundra in mid-May, it's probably less likely to be the case now.

Oh, it looks like it's a beautiful 69 degrees there right now, so that's wonderful. Ooh, nice. Yes, nice.

Not much to say here from the frozen tundra of northwest Montana. Looking forward to the summertime and whitewater rafting, which is my passion. Wow. I was out by the Sandy River yesterday, Andrew, here in Oregon, and saw some people kayaking down the Sandy River, and I thought, that looks really fun. But that whitewater rafting, that's not for the faint of heart. No, it is not. Depending on the class of rapids you're dealing with.

Yeah, that seems like the type of thing that people underestimate, and then they get themselves into trouble.

Well, it can happen, and I know of people. that it's happened to. But Stacy apparently has it figured out, and it does seem super fun, by the way, although very cold also. Stacy says, We have a short window for rafting on certain rivers, so we pack a lot of fun into a short amount of time. Here's hoping the lakes and rivers fill up and the fire season is mercilessly short. Yes. Power out. Yeah. Let's just... Everybody cross your fingers and, I don't know, wish on whatever star you wish on that we don't have another ridiculously bad fire year because that thing is that's really i mean what i say this all the time it's probably not even a tip o'neill thing but you know supposedly he said all politics is local i.e people care about their own experience a lot and you know wildfires are have devastated listeners to this show and people in communities all over but it wasn't until a couple years ago when the smoke started ruining my summer in my urban dwelling for two weeks that i really realized no this is really happening and now that it's like you know i mean in bellingham you get this smoke that comes down from canada here in portland last year all my friends and family here had literally sealed themselves in their homes thank god yeah i remember because of the air quality because of the fire so fingers crossed we we get lucky this summer by the way ps says stacy remember the weird youtube pronunciation robot that used to use to pronounce cities in America. How can I forget, Stacy? The Kalispell one is pretty hilarious and is for sure not the way you pronounce it. It is Kal, short I, spell. I believe that's Stacy clarifying that it's Kalispell. Can I find that on the fly? I think I got it here.

Oh, sweet. Kalispell, Montana. Kalispell, Montana. The great place to visit Kalispell, Montana

That is such a jam. It never gets old. You know, I have to say, I kind of like saying it that way. Kalispell. Yeah. Like Kalispell. It's more fun. Yeah. Maestro. All right, just give me a second.

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

Columbus, Mississippi, Columbus, Mississippi. Who could this be? The tone is so weird in that robot's voice, what it's going for, literally from a tonal standpoint. Of course, we're talking about the one, the only, Jamie Nettles in Columbus, Mississippi. Again, I feel like everything is coming back around to the Thon. And, of course, one of our TBTLathons, what did we call that one? Thumbs up for rock and roll or something? Thumbs out for rock and roll? Do you remember what that one was called? Yeah, maybe it was thumbs up for TBTL. Thumbs out. That's what it was. Thumbs up for, like, TBTLathon 9. Thumbs up for TBTL. Because we hitchhiked and then had to, full disclosure, use buses and rental cars to get to Jamie's house in Columbus, Mississippi, where we capped things off. Jamie has just been an incredibly wonderful supporter of the show over the many years. In fact, she was like putting people up in her house that weekend and feeding everybody. And that was after, of course,

she won the listener contest and got all those strangers to listen to TBTL. Yeah.

Be careful what you wish for. TBTL-a-thon. Jamie says, hey, y'all, Luke and Andrew, and all y'all, the 10s. I've listened for around 11 years And the show just keeps getting better Wow, Jamie Can I forward you Lily's email address Our boss I love the way you talk to each other And about others And honestly, I don't know what I would have done without you During the dark Trump years we just emerged from Plus, after so long My family no longer worries That I get Valentines from strangers

The side of that never occurred to me too Yeah, how do spouses feel when these love letters come in.

Right, like we ask so much of the people that are adjacent to the people who love this show. Like, first of all, just tolerating our voices so many hours a week just in some room in your house where your person is listening. Then there's like the donations that we ask for. And then there's also just the fact that your partner may be getting valentines from someone that you've never met because it's a TBTL project.

It's fine, don't worry about it.

I'm sure they love you very much Plus after so long My family no longer worries Spucking valentines from strangers Or that I spend hours making paper USB drives And tiny garbage cans to send back Ha ha ha ha Uh

Call my warming oven the chicken drawer. That is true. That will forever be the chicken drawer. Jamie has like a steam drawer. I guess it's called a warming oven. But she had made some fabulous fried chicken, and it was in that oven. And I will never get over that. That was the coolest thing I've ever seen. Yeah, it's pretty good. And then did I display eerie bobbleheads in my office? or that I flew to Florida to get a tattoo and see Ten's in a Waffle House with a hot dog greeter. God, this is really a lot as I see it all written down in this email, Jamie. Is there a chance that you didn't break out of the cult?

You just became the cult leader? You're talking about Humboldt County. I'll tell you what. Remember those old culty days of Luke's youth? Oh, wait, wait. Maybe we've lost the narrative a little bit.

Flew to Florida to get a tattoo with a guy dressed like a hot dog. It doesn't sound uncult-y. My message is to remind people to check for company matches for their donations. APM is a 501c3. And I know it seems crazy, but my reputable employer also dazzles. Wow. Thanks, Jamie. So if you like the show and if you feel like it's a priority, and of course, there are so many things that are more worthy than TBTL for donations. But on the other hand, if you like the show and you want us to keep doing it for our job and you work for a company that does matching, you might check that out. Jamie has and it seems like it's worked out. I saw a lot of virtual shows over the last year, but Alec Ownsworth's were the best and will stick with me as a memory of COVID days. I'll mention one other thing, which is that Jamie, in the before times, and I assume once again when everyone's vaxxed and healthy, would host these great house shows at her house in Mississippi called Sunstroke Studio. And you know what's actually kind of funny is I was so jealous, Andrew, that Jamie got Faye Webster to do a performance. Yeah, I remember that. But guess who I'm interviewing later? Faye Webster. Nice. Today? I mean, it's on Zoom. Yeah, today. Cool. It's on Zoom, though. So, you know, whereas Jamie actually had Faye Webster and her fans in her actual house. But anyway, Jamie is a noted music fan. She says that she loved these shows by Alec Onsworth or Ownsworth. They'll stick with me as my memory of COVID days. Will you go out with D, Forgiven from the latest CYHSY album? The song is pretty peak, Alec. and not for everyone, but it is my latest song, Crush. Is the band, do you think, called C-Y-H-S-Y? Oh, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Oh, this is the guy from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

Oh, I see. Okay.

Of course. Well, it's so interesting I never knew that guy's name because I was listening to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah yesterday, Andrew.

I love them so much. Wait a second, though. I don't think. Are we playing with Alec Onsworth? Alec Onsworth. Okay, I just wanted to make sure you pronounced it right That was from YouTube

The album was produced by Will Johnson He and Alec have both played at Sunstroke House You don't have to say this Braggy part, wait, I just read it, so sorry That's another thing, we were trying to get This is, Jamie's got some real Booking skills for Sunstroke House Like I told you, we were trying to get Faye Webster on For like, years And finally, we were able to make it happen, but virtually And we also Were always trying to get, I just knew him as the guy from clap your hands say yeah but we were always trying to get the guy from clap your hands say yeah on like i think we were in new york doing a live show and we're like we couldn't ever get

him yeah the fact that you're calling him the guy from clap your hands say yeah might be the fact

that i thought the band was called c y h s y i kept calling him the guy from c y h s y and i feel like it didn't convey the authority that i was hoping it would your efforts sure so that we will go out with that song jamie jamie says uh closes things out by saying no mountain too tall a listener jamie so jamie uh for reals thank you so much uh for all that you do for the show and the tens you are like an extremely important uh sort of element of the tens community and like kind of connector of people like in the best way like we need there are the people that we need in the tens community that help coordinate things and get tens in touch with other people and and sort of jump in and make things happen and jamie's very big on that and we appreciate it along with the donation. So thank you so much. We would not be here without you. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. I want to give a little hat tip to listener David, who tipped me off to this story, Andrew, which I was amazingly in the dark about over the course of this weekend. Sorry, I'm now logging into you know that this story was so compelling to me andrew that i actually subscribed to the la

times oh you did that's interesting i was going to tell you that that was a bit of a yeah i haven't read this yet i saw it flying around but i was getting stymied by the paywall and i saw that a bunch of other other listeners were as well well yeah it's um you know again here we are talking

about the tbtl-a-thon and i paying for content is is something that makes sense particularly if it's content that is you know valuable in your life but we also all have to do that math on like can i subscribe to all of the content and so i wasn't doing the la times but now i'm doing the la times they're now on the list they join such publications as the washington post the christian science monitor the washington times jk by the way addy went i think she'd be okay with me saying this she went on a date with someone and she works at the seattle times now but she went on a date and the person was under the impression that she worked at the washington times which is like that weird paper that's run by the moonies yeah yeah and that was the beginning of the end of that date as she told me later in a text anyway los angeles times sam dean putting out this incredibly detailed piece andrew about the history of flaming hot cheetos the title for the piece is the man who didn't invent flaming hot cheetos for the last decade richard montanez has been telling the story of how he invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos, the world has been eating it up. It goes like this. He was working as a janitor at Frito-Lay's Rancho Cucamonga plant when he dreamed up a chili-covered Cheeto and believed in himself enough to call up the chief executive and pitch his spicy idea. Corporate backstabbers tried to sabotage Montanez for stepping out of line, but he out-hustled him, driven by hunger to succeed. Flamin' Hots have become a runaway hit, and montanez rose through the ranks and became an icon there's just one problem he didn't invent flaming hot cheetos the article goes on to say this is a crazy story andrew and one that i can totally relate to that is lying about having invented something like there's no i mean is

there a kernel and again i apologize that i haven't read this because i should have read it on another um like another platform but um is there a kernel of truth there is a kernel of

this guy montanez working at frito-lay and being involved in some product development over the years he was kind of a liaison to uh you know the latino community and what the taste

preferences might be within the latino community but his job was more like custodial though and then he kind of well found himself in this world or no was he always a product person

um well that's i mean there are so many little things that aren't quite true about the story so he he pitches himself as he was a janitor who took home some discarded cheeto makings And then made a Flamin' Hot Cheeto And then called up the president of the company And pitched it to him And I remember talking about this story And thinking in my mind, god, that's really wild That like, that's a huge company And that anybody could call that person Like a custodian And again, I mean, it was such a cool story But I was like, that's just Even when I was telling the story I thought, that's just amazing that happened Because that's a very busy person Being like the CEO of Fritos Or of Pepsi or whatever At the corporate level That didn't even sound realistic Before I knew that it was made up But anyway He was initially May have been hired as a janitor But basically within short order Became somebody who was an engineer Working on the equipment So he was not He wasn't sweeping the floors When he did this He was a person who was Working there I don't know if it was a union job or not But he had I think a pretty well paying job Working in the factory Doing production and working on the machines Keeping them running Which is also an interesting job But it doesn't sell It doesn't sizzle the way I was the janitor And I pitched Flamin' Hot Cheetos

Honestly though I mean I maintained You know I was a person there maintaining equipment And then I invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos Still not the worst story Not the worst story at all

The problem is he didn't invent Flamin' Hot Cheetos

Yeah okay That's where the TV Telecom 12, I didn't invent Flamin' Hot Cheetos.

This is the official statement from Frito-Lay when Sam Dean reached out to them. None of our records show that Richard was involved in any capacity in the Flamin' Hot test market. Frito-Lay wrote in a statement to the Times. Now listen, no offense, LA Times, but I speak as a new subscriber. When you say the Times, we're thinking New York Times. No offense. They got there first. The only paper I think that can say the Times And get away with it Of papers that have the Times in their name At this point is the New York Times

That's interesting. I think the L.A. Times always does that. I just accept it because, I don't know, there's pride. There's a lot of L.A. pride.

And they should. The L.A. Times is a great newspaper. And as a part owner, I just want to work on the style standards.

It's a co-op situation.

The Times, in response to questions about an internal investigation whose existence had not been previously disclosed, we have interviewed multiple personnel who were involved in the test market, And all of them indicate that Richard was not involved in any capacity in the test market. Now, here's the thing, though. This is where Frito-Lay is in a weird position, Andrew, because it's the publicity around the idea that the janitor invented Flaming Hot Cheetos is not bad for Flaming Hot Cheetos. You know, so they're on a certain level. There is a motivation for them to kind of let this go. And in fact, that's part of probably what happened was this was a great story. It was getting them plenty of attention. There was no upside to shutting them down Until the lady who invented Flaming Hot Cheetos Read a blog post on GQ And was like WTF When was this? Because this is such an old story at this point So one of the things So basically what happened was I'm going to try to synthesize I was going to print this article out Andrew, it was 23 pages I'm working digitally here Which is not my most comfortable thing I can't just flip the page easily And get to exactly the part But I'll try to summarize basically what the L.A. Times is saying. It would appear that this guy Montanez, he worked at the factory. There was an initiative at some point that from the corporate level all the way down, basically encouraging employees at any level to kind of take ownership of the company, which is the kind of thing that companies do all the time. Because, of course, you want everyone working on a project or working at the factory to feel a sense of pride and to do their jobs to their absolute best. So there was some initiative that was launched about taking ownership, and as part of that, this guy Montanez, who at that point was kind of a senior supervisor, was brought into some conversations about developing some snack foods. But the thing is, it was well after Flamin' Hot Cheetos had been invented. And the reason that Flamin' Hot Cheetos were invented based on exhaustive research by the LA Times was because Frito-Lay's salespeople that were in charge of what's called the up-and-down-the-street market, which, by the way, they just call – I think they call it the – they abbreviate it in this way that's really funny. It's like UPDS. The UPDS people, the up-and-down-the-street. Up-and-down-the-street means any place you can buy snacks that's not a full-on grocery store.

Okay, yeah, I like that

So liquor store, gas station, bodega

Sure, yeah

Quickie Mart, like that's the up and down the street market That's awesome Isn't that cool? The Frito-Lay salespeople in the Chicago, Detroit, kind of the upper Midwest The up and down the street market, they were getting killed Because people were buying spicy snacks from these little bodegas and places And so they launched a very specific program to try to steal that market share away from them.

And these spicy snacks were probably smaller brands, like maybe even Mexican brands and what have you.

Exactly. And so Frito-Lay saw that this was a popular market. And so they basically went after it using a bunch of food scientists and researchers and people that had graduated from business school. I mean, it was a whole thing. Now, Montanez's story, which, again, it's amazing to me, he's on his second memoir. Like, one memoir, if you invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos, okay, I get it. Did you leave that much unsaid in the first memoir? And, like, is memoir number two, like, one other thing about when I invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos? There's just more story to tell. There was one more thing I was thinking about. um a big a critical part of his story is that he called this particular president of uh of of frito-lay to pitch him on these flaming hots and he was in this the guy invited him in and he had this meeting and he was in front of all these people this is all laid out very dramatically in his book the core problem is the guy who he says he called the guy who launched the program that was like take ownership of the company he launched that program two years after flaming hot cheetos were already on the market so the timeline doesn't add up if this was the thing that gave montanez the inspiration to take ownership of his idea for flaming hot cheetos it doesn't line up with the fact that flaming hot cheetos were already out and in development of i mean they've verified this now basically the flaming hot cheetos were already in existence two years before this guy became president and therefore could not have given this guy the speech that caused him to invent Flamin' Hot Cheetos.

And it's just, and again, I think I keep saying the same thing over and over. This guy just starts... this narrative it's big enough to at least have two books published about it i mean for whatever that's worth and a movie i could get you a book with nail polish um but uh like and and the idea is this is just coming out now because the company didn't feel like obviously this is on the radar of the marketing teams and the pr teams of the company but nobody spoke out because it just wasn't in anybody's best interest to change this narrative it just seems so weird where did this come from and how could it survive so long this just bald-faced lie well a couple of things

one i think what happened with montanez is that he just started embellishing his story so he you know he became uh somebody who did again they this project was actually very it was a cool idea which was they this one rancho cucamonga like you know production facility they really let the employees have a bunch of input in the snacks because my assumption is the employees were largely latino and so and and they were trying to be the company i think was trying to actually back up their statements about really kind of uh emboldening and enabling its employees to be part of the process so he was in on some of that and and then eventually started giving these you know it was like but he was developing or he was part of the people kind of helping develop this whole other side called saboritos that was like these other snacks right but at some point I think the story just evolved like he probably Told the story a bunch of times But then when instead of saying I helped kind of give Feedback on this thing called saboritos That no one's probably heard of Probably one time he said I helped invent Flamin' Hot Cheetos or maybe He said I was part of the team That helped develop Flamin' Hot Cheetos And then what happened was the story he started repeating The story over and over again then it got Picked up by the news media And all of a sudden now this is the part that I can identify With something that was probably an embellishment that he was doing just to make himself sound bigger or more important or even to maybe help him with his motivational speaking career that he was trying to get off the ground it eventually became memorialized and then get you know offered as the story and then once that's you know once that horse is uh you know out of the barn it's kind of like no getting it back in unless the la times writes a huge expose about how you didn't invent flaming hot cheetos right

It was probably also when he started talking about how his helicopter was forced to land in Iraq when it came under fire. That's really that set off some alarms, too.

Yeah. He's now hosting the 12th hour on MSNBC. So and then if you're asking, Andrew, how was that this lie, I guess we'll call it. I mean, it is a lie. It's like if the L.A. Times reporting is to be believed, it's not like there's not really two sides of this story. It's I mean they just have all this documentation That just makes it all not make any sense And in fact just his whole like one of his things Is that he grew up Poor and you know On the outskirts of he grew up in Ontario California and Part of his kind of rags to riches story is that he Like dropped Out after third grade and but then they go To the high school and he's like in the freshman photos Like he may have dropped out after His freshman year but just little things like that It's just like there's stuff that's just provably doesn't line up with his story um the the woman who actually invented or is credited with literally coming up with the name flaming hot cheetos and with really spearheading the project let me see if i can find it here uh her name is um oh this is why i do not like uh not having my 23 page printout uh her last name is greenfeld i think i'm trying to find her first name but anyway The woman who spearheaded the project Just wasn't looking at the social media That Montanez was using to spin this yarn Is what the LA Times says So he was out there on TikTok And on, you know, Instagram Apparently he's big on Instagram He was just out in all these mediums Putting his story out But the people that were actually involved In the development process Most of them are retired now It's happened kind of a long time ago they're not on tiktok so it just happened to sort of evade everyone's notice who had anything to do with it wow until this uh this woman uh saw like i said a blog post on gq about montanez and at that point she writes an email to like the one person she knows who still works at frito lay and she's like uh have you ever heard of this montanez guy who's saying he invented flaming hot cheetos uh she was sort of irked by it and so off of that email frito lay did a huge internal investigation and what they found out was this guy didn't invent flaming hot cheetos but again they were not super duper interested in in dispelling the myth so what this guy who wrote this la times piece goes back and finds various points at which frito lay was asked like

Like, you know, spokespeople, the CEO, whomever, was asked about Montanez inventing it, and they always give these incredibly parsed answers that are, like, the biggest waste of words ever. They would say, like, our research and development team come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and they all have contributions that we appreciate. Like, something that doesn't say he invented it, but just leaves it boring enough that the reporter probably didn't even put it in the piece.

Do you get a sense – I'm putting you on the spot here, but do you get a sense of how far back this bullshit goes from the company? Like you said there was an internal investigation. Is that in the last 10 years, 20 years? Do we have any sense?

Oh, I think it was more recently than that. I think it was like in 20 – it was like probably within the last five years. And here's what's also interesting. So Frito-Lay at some point told the publisher of his memoir And also told the people making this inspirational movie about him That he didn't invent Flamin' Hot Cheetos They did say it They told them The company told, like in direct communication Told these places that this guy didn't invent Flamin' Hot Cheetos And the publisher moved forward And the film production is casting currently Jesus

Well, not anymore Well, I mean, I'm glad that this article came out It sounds like it was quite the investigative piece What do you mean not anymore? You don't think this story now will kill the production?

It does not appear that the film production is stopping Even though he didn't invent Flamin' Hot Cheetos

Well, but I mean, according to the story, it's not stopping But now the story is out, and so now we'll see, right? Yes, I guess you're right

But I guess to me it also raises this question of how much it matters to this film. I mean you could say based on true events. Now here's the one thing, and this is how they could probably get away with still making the movie. There is a guy, one dude, who used to be like I think maybe the CEO of Fritos. He was kind of a high-up person, and he backs Montanez's story. Now the thing is this guy, his last name is Cary. and the LA Times presented him with all this contradictory information and then he was just like yeah well that's weird I can't explain that but he definitely invented them now this guy and Montanez have given speeches together they're kind of my guess is it's the Mandela effect on this guy Kerry like I just I tend to believe that people don't openly and knowingly lie I mean Montanez I think at some point decided to just start lying about this because he saw an opportunity to make a bunch of money but my guess would be the other dude doesn't have a lot to gain from lying about it i think it's one of those things where he's just misremembering or he's confusing what particular spicy snack montanez was bringing in at what time uh you know and so that's i think that you know montanez was on variety it was released a statement in variety today basically saying look i don't know what these people are talking about i only know what happened to me and what i was doing and this is a huge company and there's all these different you know fat like different elements of the company developing products and so maybe they were making a flaming hot cheeto up in up in chicago and i didn't know about it or something that's his argument is that like he was he was inventing this at the same time it was being invented somewhere else in the company so there's a chance that he can still

just kind of create he can still continue to create enough like kind of confusing smoke around the story so there's enough plausibility so that the project can go forward that he already is

which i want to like find um i want to find the this quote if i can of what he said on his instagram page because it's very funny and it's exactly let's see here um yeah he's basically already spinning it as you know as as to be honest with you it seems like he's a little bit framing it around race and just saying that like he's being you know erased from this story and he was on he was on instagram again i can't find exactly the part of the story because it is epically long where where it describes what he said on instagram but he's already spinning it on there saying haters essentially are gonna like try to deny oh he said something to the effect of if you invent anything write it all down because someday someone's gonna try to take it away from you So he's framing himself as this wronged person in it and that, you know, and I bet you that'll be a successful narrative for him because most people now don't believe anything.

No, it's true. Yeah, it's true. They don't trust the media, which is a problem.

I'm sure that there will be – I'm sure that whatever people are going to go see – and by the way, this movie is being directed by the actor Eva Longoria and it's being produced by what's described as a Christian film company. and I don't want to generalize about you know Christians but my guess is a lot of the people who are going to go see a kind of feel-good family-friendly Flamin' Hut cheetos movie are not going to be super hung up on who claims they invented it if it's you know this food executive who by the way is that's not a exciting you know story of the food executive who graduated from college after studying how to be a food executive and then noticed that people were buying spicy snacks and then led a team that developed a spicy snack and then that was successful like that's that's not going to get any lifetime movies made around it but the janitor who invented flaming hot cheetos is of course a great story yeah absolutely i am you said if you have an

invention write it down i had at some point this weekend i had a brilliant idea for an invention that i i couldn't remember i couldn't i can't remember what it is right now but i remember thinking how did how has nobody thought of this i was probably drunk or possibly dreaming though because i cannot remember what it is at all anymore so oh well there it goes my millions of billions of dollars because of this fantastic invention gone. Hopefully you'll fall asleep

while we're driving, and you'll doze off, and when you reach into that level, when you reach that level of sort of REM, you'll say the invention aloud and then I can steal it from you. Is there any chance

that we could work in another stop where we go to a hypnotist, and they can draw this out of my head?

What if you just fall asleep and you just go, Flamin' Hot Milk.

What? That was the invention? Flamin' Hot Goat Cheese.

I'd eat that.

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 righty. I actually, this is one of the rare times where I've got some hot email leads. Andrew, do you want me to get into those? Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, get go with one. No, no, do it.

Any email that possibly supports me being right immediately becomes a hot email lead for me.

Yeah, that's why you were probably checking the email this weekend Although, of course, thank you very much I have it here, I have Jack's email Is that what you're thinking of?

Yeah, because I am And I'm just annoyed right now at our stupid TBTL email Because it's occasionally, and for no reason It will give me an error message It says, your website is being strange Which it did, and now it stops So I actually have the email here in front It's from listener Jack Is this our friend Jack? Yeah Who makes the amazing art pieces, often involving our visages.

If so, if not, we have two Jack Taylors in the audience. So, yeah, no, I believe this is Jack.

Hey, Jack. Thanks for checking in, man. How are you doing, by the way?

Hope you're doing okay.

So we've been having this conversation for the last few days about the question of what a baseball game that happened in the midday in Seattle, a professional baseball game, what that was called back in the olden times. And if you don't mind me just quickly summarizing, Andrew, this is because you heard our man, Rico Riz, talking about a business person special. He said back in the day we would have called it a business person special. This was in modern times.

Yeah, and I said to the radio, no, you wouldn't have. You would have called it a businessman special, thinking that he was updating the language, and maybe rightfully so. But I was like, oh, that's probably not an accurate statement. Probably back in the day you would have just said businessman special because that's what I had always heard.

And that's what the internet says Pretty much every ballpark And every team was calling it for the longest time And so I said It was weird though because I have this memory Of hearing business person special Like that's what I know it as Which is just weird And the reason I would know it as that would be because that's what they were calling it When I was a kid listening to the Mariners And sometimes attending those games That's the other thing I specifically attended a good number of those games Because they were basically free to get into In the summertime And you kicked a guy like a hoodlum to get a ball I did, I kicked a guy right in his hand So that Peter could grab Actually, maybe Peter kicked him and I grabbed him I know that I have the ball still somewhere It's probably in the attic in Bellingham Me and Ellis Burks Are tied together For life from that ball Just like you and who hit your ball Ryan Court Just like you and Ryan Court Anyway, I said there's no way we'll ever know the answer to this As to what they were calling it back in the day because, I mean, who would have that on the record? Well, Jack found something that's sort of adjacent to this. It's not the Mariners or Dave Niehaus calling it a business person special, but it is an ad or an article in the Seattle P.I. from 1995. This is so cool. It mentions that the Mariners are experimenting. I'm just reading directly from the P.I., experimenting. The Mariners' business person's game against the New York Yankees today will start at 3.35 p.m. instead of the usual 12.35. Club officials want to see if the later starting time will boost attendance. Now, maybe the Seattle P.I. had gotten hip to more inclusivity and maybe the Mariners were calling it something different, but this feels like it's going in the direction of me not being crazy.

Oh, absolutely. If this was your memory, which I apologize for being so dismissive of it first. No, I didn't feel dismissed. But I was like, oh, there's just no way they did that. But you had the strong memory of it that I didn't realize kind of how strong it was in the moment and then finding this. And again, I love that Jack grabbed this. I don't know if he got it from microfilm or what, but it's not like... LexisNexis. Yeah, like something like this is definitely a scan of the actual text of the article, which I absolutely love from 1995. So, yeah, no, this is this is definitely trending in the right direction. I mean, for me, it's case closed. Like, I don't think we need more evidence. Here it is in the Seattle Post intelligence or the Mariners business person's game. Like, there it is.

Yeah. Well, I think that we can all agree it was business person's game. And I invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos. Yes, I think we don't need to do any. Please do no further research on any of these topics, people. Let's just leave it alone. Right, right. We were wondering the other day if kids are learning typing in school, like if it's a thing they need or if maybe they've just developed. By the time a kid gets to school, like my little nephew, Abe, who's, you know, been in school for years now. He is, even though they live in a yurt and even though they're like pretty relatively unplugged from technology out there because the Internet's not super strong. and they just run around in the woods all day and fire BB guns and run chainsaws, his natural abilities around my phone or watch are uncanny. Like, if he has my phone, and this is from when he was like three or four, if he was holding my phone for more than five minutes, he's somehow rechanged all the fonts, he's done all this crazy, or if he has my watch on, he was wearing my watch this summer When I was out there And he had figured out like 30 things the watch does That I didn't even know it did Within like 10 minutes I guess my larger point is Sometimes kids have a lot of facility with this technology And I was wondering if kids were just showing up at school Already kind of fluid typers Because of just the way that the world works now Well my sister Hannah Checked in on this and said We teach typing Starting in second grade With home row and proper finger placement So there you go. And then we also had somebody, I think, tweeting at us about this, right?

I think we had somebody tweeting. I don't have the tweet in front of me, but I do have this text message from I don't think I know who this person is who's texting me. It might be listener Mike, who says, my seven-year-old takes typing in the Lake Washington School District as part of her regular curriculum. She hates it. Goes on to say, she has taught herself how to use the dictate feature of word to circumvent. Oh, my God. I have no idea how to access this function. Uh, isn't it Sursum vent? Um, and yeah, and I, so I don't have them all in front of me right now, but I heard from probably at least five or six people this weekend saying, yeah, they're teaching this, they're teaching proper typing in school these days.

But by the way, I just said, oh my God, not because if it is Mike, whoever it is, their kid using the like, you know, speech to text, but it's like, of course, like I'm, we're talking about typing like in 10 years, probably nobody's even going to type.

well won't they I mean it's tough because I've been using um text to speech on my phone for a while now just out of convenience and then uh since I broke my finger and text well that's my a different hand but typing hasn't been as easy so I've been sending like some emails via my phone like talking into it it's awkward because like well I'm also a sucker for kind of formatting like You have to say out loud Hey Luke, can we Record the show a little later tomorrow Question mark You have to put all the punctuation in there And then if you're doing an actual email Or anything on a computer that isn't a text You have to say, what would you say, carriage return Indent, bullet point I feel like you still need to know how to type

I think That's the technology now But I just Or literally there will be a technology at some point where we just think of the words and then the words show up on the screen you know like so i guess it's funny because i was just like assuming that like in a thousand years kids will be typing and it's like god like that's such a short-sighted that's me just thinking that the current technology we use is how we're going to keep doing it and it's just like i just don't think that's the case of course i think there'll be a better version of speaking text that won't have all that stuff that you're talking about that formatting it'll just somehow know or you can do some settings and then probably at some point there'll be something that's even more advanced than that, I would guess. Yeah, it's hard

to predict how far technology will come because in a certain way like, I mean obviously things technologically have moved incredibly quickly in our lifetime but the keyboard that we are using now

still has its roots to the typewriter and like you said the reason the the layout is what it is is because old-fashioned typewriters would get stuck if popularly used letters were and the fact that we're still in a certain way like yeah technology has come a super super long way yet you still have these holdovers that come that that kind of you know make their way into the future along with everything else so it's really hard to predict that well that's why that's a

good point that is a good point um so anyway the good news is the children of america are being taught how to type properly by the teachers of america including my sister hannah can i read

just a couple of emails here i got some quickies but i they're really stacking up so i like to just um give these their their day in court uh heather in bothell for a day for a lifetime or am i confusing that nope you're for a day and for a lifetime heather for a day and for a lifetime in Bothell. Gather, yes. Gather's in Chicago, I believe. Let's see. We were talking about your Roomba, who you've named Randy, right? And you were talking to him the other day. And then I said, oh, are you anthropomorphizing it? Or maybe you asked that question. And I said, I don't know. If you're treating it like a human, that would definitely be anthropomorphizing or giving it human characteristics. But is that all living things? Are you treating your Roomba more like a dog? And if so, is that anthropomorphizing Singers are a different word for that. Heather says, I, like Luke, talk to my robot vacuum. Iris. Nice. Like she's a dog. And I've also found out that she doesn't respond via voice commands, like quiet during a Zoom call. But side note, she should give it a couple of years. It'll have a keyboard on the back of it, and you can type quiet in QWERTY. It's not anthropomorphism, though. So that's anthropo, which means human, and then morphism, which means changing into. It's cynomorphism. Sino, if I'm saying this correctly, C-Y-N-O means dog, and morphism changing into. Cynomorphism. I got really excited because I thought I made that word up, but then I Googled it, and it has a reference in Popular Science Monthly in 1892. So I guess I missed the coinage of the term by 129 years. Power out Heather in Bothell. Luke I have a prediction I said I'm not a Futurist but I have a prediction That I bet you a million bucks Will come true sometime in the next year You will reference this email and you'll Say Andrew what was that word that Heather And Bothell said that we're Treating our Roombas like and I will not remember It but for now I've already forgotten It sinomorphism if I'm saying It correctly sinomorphism

I am I Lost Randy for Like 30 minutes the other day like he was doing his thing he got stuck somewhere i didn't think anything of it went on with my life and then the next day i was like oh he's not back on his little thing this little cradle or whatever recharges and i couldn't find him i went i looked in every room in the house i looked under the couch i looked in the closets i was like is it possible he literally escaped from the apartment but it turned out that he was like underneath this box in the closet that was like very it was as if he was hiding from me but I really had the thought for a moment is it possible to lose a Roomba in an apartment that is closed like is locked and also did yeah did he escape I wondered if he had somehow randomly gone out the door like when it was open when I was leaving or something but no I found him he's he's doing a okay how funny

would it be to put a bunch of like lost Roomba flyers on telephone poles around Portland though Like, have you seen, this is Randy. Have you seen Randy? That'll pop up in Brooklyn. Like, if you see Randy, don't frighten him. Does respond to treats. Doesn't know his name.

If anyone, if anybody wants to put up any of those signs where you tear a piece of paper off of it, tear a few pieces when you put the sign up. Because once something has a few pieces torn, I'm like, well, someone's, somebody's interacting with this. This seems popular. I should tear one of these things off. This is a very popular sign.

that's an interesting theory I'm going to read another couple of these here go quickly here Katie says I'm like behind on shows so I'm not sure how the experiment is going and this is my Instagram experiment Luke where I kept on saying that I really wanted to get into bow hunting but I need to buy the proper equipment to see if my phone was listening to me and then it would target ads towards me been doing that for a couple of weeks now and I have not gotten any targeted ads however Katie says, I want you to know that I'm suddenly getting Instagram ads for bows and arrows.

No way.

Previously, all my ads have been for fancy beach towels, shoes, and vacation spots. I didn't want to tag you in case it messed up your experiment, but I think it's working. Instagram might not be listening to you talk, but it appears to be listening to my podcarts. That's from Katie. Wow. I've gotten emails from people who.

very definitively say listen i work in this i don't have them in front of me but they say nobody has said i've worked in this field but they seem to be pretty knowledgeable about it and say trust me the phone is not listening to you constantly it would just take up one person said it would take up way too much bandwidth for your phone just to be constantly recording you and sending all of your conversations to instagram central like it just doesn't work that way i guess

the recording the recording feature or that factor i hadn't really thought of but yeah that would That would just take up a massive Because there's no way for it to just Send the information I guess it could send the information and then delete it So it's constantly re-recording over the same part Theoretically

Yeah, but it's just How is the data being captured Even if it's speech to text Or whatever, back to that But anyway, I don't know But a lot of people are kind of like, you're killing me here with this Your phone is not, or Instagram at least Is not recording you all the time But other people say it is I I've gotten zero ads for solar power chainsaws, by the way. Yeah. And I have my honestly and I have been yelling. I have been yelling about bows and arrows towards my phone. And if it didn't pick up, somebody said, like, it's very clearly that this the reason this all came up was because I was getting these very specific ads that were targeted towards post covid vaccinated, post covid vaccinated people after I got my first shot. But everybody's saying or a lot of people are saying that probably has more to do with location data and the fact that somebody tagged you in a in a photo that Genevieve posted from the location, et cetera, et cetera, which that makes more logical sense, I guess.

All right. The end of the email music tells us that the email segment is over. Yes. Meaning the end of the show is nigh. And we're going to go out with that C-Y-H-S-Y song, that famous C-Y-H-S-Y song, or at least it's by Alec, the lead singer of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Yes. What is the song called again? It's called D-Forgiven. D-Forgiven. All right. This is a recommendation from listener Jamie. So we'll go out with that. Thanks for listening, everybody. We do hope you can tune in next week and hang around for the TBTL-a-thon 12. And also, if you're in a position to do so, kick a little money our way to keep this thing going. That would be awesome. Anyway, we'll be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. Until then, have a great Monday. Stay safe. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Red was the pillow Underscolored sheets Dead as the minnow I'll shine a light, my thirsty sea I will forget the peace

Forget the touch That was always too much That was never enough to survive

Power out.