Muse

First of all, I love it. Quick question, though. Am I panicked about the fire, or am I being brave for everyone else?

The fire. It's a fire sale.

Oh. Okay, I didn't, um, well, let's give it a shot. Oh, my God! We're having a fire sale! Oh, the burning! It burns me! Evacuate all the skull children! Ah! Oh, man! This isn't a fever! Sing, Greg! Can't even see where the knob is! End scene.

Um, would you like to try that a little simpler? Maybe.

No. TBTL! in this brochure it says this tour is crunk what does that mean this zany radio team have developed

a unique style of frolicking on the airwaves are you out of your mind you're putting your entire future in the hands of the man who put radio on the internet a year ago this is exactly what greg kinnear was doing but now he has an oscar for sliding doors three colon jingle all

the door all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a thursday edition of tbtl the show it just might be too beautiful to live you're entering a world of pain my name is luke burbank i am your host is it too early good fish sandwich coming to you from the nest broadcast center high in the sky above portland oregon where it is absolutely gorgeous right now but that's because it's still morning it's going to be warm this afternoon and portland has nothing on other parts of the country hope everybody is doing okay staying cool staying in the shade it is going to be ridiculously hot in some places it's going to be very hot going to be very uncomfortable for everybody make sure you uh stay hydrated if you're going to exercise try to do it indoors or maybe before the sun is at its full powers like I did this morning a little jog where I two things happened that were well one I guess was maybe not I wouldn't say so interesting but I did run into my my low key enemy on the bridge and like the guy with the ponytail who is extremely committed to being right up against the railing of the Hawthorne Bridge. And he'll be darned if he is going to take a step to his left to make room for anyone else. So we had another little run-in today. I don't know if I was rude or not. Maybe I'll get Andrew's opinion on my reaction to seeing this guy again and having yet another standoff. And the other thing was somebody rode their bike past me and they were playing tbtl on their phone like aloud and i realized it was tbtl as this person was now already past me they had no idea that they were listening to tbtl while riding their bike past the person who is part of tbtl so if you were riding your bike along the shores of the willamette river by tom mccall park today listening to tbtl get at me because i would have happily sign an autograph or whatever else because i know your mind would have been so blown okay that was my morning so far here's the rest of our morning together it's episode three thousand four hundred and forty seven in a collector series let the fun begin today is the 75th anniversary of the first ever mobile phone call i'm trying to use that phone i did not realize that they had, I mean, they weren't exactly, you know, sleek. But they had mobile phones in cars 75 years ago. So we'll take a look back in history. Then going from kind of old technology to, I guess, newer technology,

Spotify has launched something called Green Room. It's their version of Clubhouse. They suddenly realized I was talking to them. I'm inherently suspicious of things like Clubhouse and Green Room because I think who'd want to listen to a few people just jibber-jabbering away? And then I realize, oh, that's what this is. So hopefully there's some market for that stuff. Also, Foo Fighters, they've held one of the shows, and they're having another show where you have to be vaccinated to get in. And they have made some very powerful enemies, my friend.

How dare you?

people even say that ricky schroeder and also one of the guys from right said fred are clapping back everybody so we'll talk about that also it's thursday aka a blursday messages all of that with this guy the longest running cobra of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he is a soulful rocker from new hampshire 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.

Do you remember on yesterday's episode of TBTL? Maybe the one that the biker was listening to as they passed you on the bridge today.

I couldn't tell what the episode was, but I'll mention I heard your voice. I recognized your voice first.

Ah, I can see that happening.

You hear my voice more. I do, and sometimes my own voice is disorienting. If I happen to catch it on the radio, like a promo or something is playing, and I'm not aware that it's about to happen, I will have this moment of going, that guy sounds pretty familiar. And then it'll, you know, takes about two seconds and I realize, oh, that's me.

That guy sounds pretty handsome. Well, you have, yesterday on the show, when you said hello to me, it was a rare moment where I had nothing to say to you at the top of the show. And I basically made the equivalent of a fart sound, which wasn't really helpful to you, the listeners, or the show as a whole. Today, I feel like there's too much to talk about. I want to follow up on several of the things that you mentioned just right now in your intro. But do you mind, I apologize if I'm going to filibuster here for a second, but I read via the Seattle Times editorial board editorial today in the newspaper, not an institution I usually find super interesting or certainly agree with much. I totally missed a news story about Washington government and politics that I find totally fascinating. I mean, can I have three minutes to run this by you? Yes. Okay. It's dry. It's not usually TBTL-esque material, but I think it's really interesting. And you, I'll bet you, you already know about this because it started a few months ago, actually. Did you hear the story about how our governor, Jay Inslee, signed two competing bills simultaneously with a pen in each hand? No, I didn't hear about this. This is a true story. So here's what happened. And I'll try not to get in the weeds of what the actual legislation was, but there were two pieces of legislation that came out of the legislature, right? And they both had to do with kind of establishing— Sounds like a lot. It must have been a busy year.

Yeah, right. But not to be one of those the clowns in Washington guys, but we really have reached a point on the state and federal level where it's almost impossible to pass any legislation.

Yeah, although I think—well, whatever. I don't know enough about it. I actually think Washington's legislature had a really busy session, actually. But whatever. In this particular case, though, the the these two kind of competing bills were similar, but only one aspect of them were competing. But it had to do with establishing broadband in parts of the of the state where there isn't broadband and like kind of letting local governments establish broadband there. And there's just like one part of it that is different, but both of them are pretty good bills. Right. So they both come to the governor's desk. Usually if the House has a bill and the Senate has a bill, they would reconcile them. Right. And then send them to the governor to sign. But this time, for whatever reason, I don't know why the legislature didn't reconcile them and they just sent two bills, the House bill and the Senate bill, the House bill being just kind of slightly broader. OK, maybe slightly more aggressive. And so they both end up on the governor's desk. Now, he has several choices, right? He can probably most governors would send them back and just say, figure it out. Send me a bill and I will sign it. He could have done that. He could have just signed one and rejected the other. He even though – and this is where the two-pen thing comes in – he could have signed them both, but whichever one he signed second would officially have precedent because it was the – it would be the latest bill. Yeah, and the law is the most recent bill takes precedent over older laws, right? I should say laws, not bills there. So he has all – he also could have just like vetoed them both, like whatever, but no point in doing that. But what he decides to do, instead of doing any of those things, he decides, I don't even want to take the more passive approach and sign one and then the other, because that's making too much of a decision here. He literally put a pen, he's right-handed, he put a pen in his right hand and his left hand and signed them both at the same exact time so that he did not have to choose one over the other. Now, of course, the editorial was slamming him for this, saying that's not exactly great leadership. And I tend to agree. I like Jay Inslee. I don't usually like the editorial board of the Seattle Times. I've been looking around for a statement from his office about why he made this decision. I couldn't find it. I just kind of got deeper and deeper into these two broadband bills, which we don't want to do here. But is that not fascinating? The Secretary of State, Kim Wyman, so now it's her job to put these laws in the books, and she doesn't know which one to put first and which one to put second, the second one having more precedent. And so she sues the governor's office and the court just, I think, kicked it back to her in the past couple of days and said, I think they didn't they didn't even rule on it. They just said, we're not taking this up. Kim Wyman, secretary of state, you deal with this. And what she ended up doing was she put in the bill that came. She put them in order in which they came out of their respective houses.

So in other words, the one that came out last is the one that will be the official law for Washington.

Exactly. And that's the House bill. So, you know, that that is so bizarre, though.

I don't want to I don't want to agree with any of those dinguses who are wearing masks that said this mask is as ineffective as my governor. Right. But I have to admit, I don't really understand the logic of that. I mean, the idea of being the governor of a state is you do got to make some calls. So you put your best broadband people on it, i.e. whoever in your administration looks at these issues, and you get them to make the recommendation of what they think is the best approach to this, and then you sign that one last, right? I mean, that feels like something out of an, like, Ernest Saves Congress movie, where they find a loophole where Ernest P. Worrell – know what I mean, Vern? I signed them both at one time. They're both the law. Like, it's like that's like that's like a gimmick from a child's movie about legislating.

Right. And yeah. And again, like if anybody in our audience who knows more about these things actually, you know, maybe the governor and the governor's office have released a statement that that says why he decided to do it in this manner. Let me know. But it doesn't it doesn't it's not a great look.

So anyway, that is not because, again, I don't think I mean, I didn't vote for Jay Inslee. One time I voted for Rob McKenna instead of Jay Inslee, which I like Rob McKenna as a person. He is such a likable dude. I think his politics and my politics are not aligned. But I guess I was just going off of like he seems like a very reasonable person to me, even if we disagree on some issues. And I kind of regretted that. I mean, although Jay Inslee won. So it was kind of inconsequential.

Was he attorney general? Was that who the general was?

I believe at the time maybe he was attorney general running for governor. And I just always thought James had kind of a lack of charisma. It's weird how much my opinion of him went up when I learned he was a member of the Ingram High State Championship basketball team of like 1969 or something. Like that shouldn't – that is really unrelated to being the governor. But it just made him seem cool to me. I love it. Like I'm not even kidding. And also, I mean, truly, like when he ran for president and he tried to put climate here, we started the show with me mentioning that it's going to be like 10 to 15 degrees hotter than ever before in recorded history in certain places in America today. And, you know, Jay Inslee really staked his whole presidential run on climate and he didn't get very far, but he did make it part of the I sort of respect that. My point is I have developed a good amount of respect for Jay Inslee as a leader, so that's why it's weird to me that he did this move. And, yeah, maybe there's some technical thing we don't understand, but that seems like the opposite of governing. It really does, right?

Anyway, so what if we start every episode of TBTL now with, like – first of all, I can't even say the name of the show anymore. I'm losing that ability. What if we start every episode of TBTL now with some sort of just like local political story, especially if it's just like legislative action and inaction? Would that be a good kind of phase?

Can we call it How About Those Clowns in Washington? We'll just call it Don't Praise the Machine. Don't Praise the Machine, our extremely hyper-local political segment where we just get into the absolute weeds on some kind of HB-123, Which is never going to make it out of committee

Maybe we should slide back into our comfort zone Which is so you met When you talk about running into your nemesis on the bridge I picture baby Maggie on the Simpsons This is two Simpsons references in a row

This guy has eyebrows like baby Maggie's nemesis

Right, what happened?

This guy is clearly on a schedule Because this is the second time I've run into him I generally am out there about the same time of the morning And it was, I mean I ran into him 20 feet From where we had our previous standoff And this time it was kind of Somebody had emailed me Now for folks that missed the episode Where I first brought this up This bridge, the Hawthorne Bridge It has a very wide sidewalk Not very wide It has a fairly wide sidewalk That is for both cyclists and walkers Or joggers or what have you But it's a little tricky because There's a natural tendency if you are walking, particularly during the pandemic, and you want to give someone some room or there's a couple people walking side by side, you have to cut over into where the bike folks are. And this is not like a painted line on the ground that's hard and fast. There's just a couple of little like painted indicators at either end of the bridge on the sidewalk, right? so it's kind of a little bit up to interpretation but basically if you are one of the runners or walkers and you move into the bike lane the problem is those cyclists are sometimes riding like really fast particularly ones on these gde bikes which god bless i listen i'm probably just jealous because i don't have one but like there's some there's got to be a point at which if you have a motor assisted bike maybe not the sidewalk maybe don't maybe the sidewalk's not the place for you if you're going 30 miles an hour but that's sort of another conversation the point is that there is a tendency to want to stick really close to the edge of the bridge the the side that faces the water if you're walking because it means you're the furthest from these bikes that are going really fast so anyway a couple maybe a week ago or something i'm running and i just decided the first day i ever decided you know what i've been going around everyone else for long enough I'm just going to stick on my line here, and other people can scooch over by two feet. It's fine. It's not a big deal. On that morning, I encountered a guy with a ponytail. I don't know why that's such a big part of the story for me, but it just kind of is. And this guy is probably liking his. I've now had two looks at him, so I can give you more dazzling deets. He was slightly unshaven today, does not appear to be experiencing homelessness, wearing jeans, hiking boots. I assume walking to his job Maybe that's in downtown Portland or something He doesn't look like he has an office job Because he was in like a t-shirt and jeans But he's on a schedule of some kind Anyway The first time I encountered him He just stopped walking Just planted his feet And I realized oh I'm either going to run into him Or I'm going to have to go around him So I just went around him And then I was mildly mad at him for the rest of the jog This morning I saw him from a little ways away And I was like, is that the guy? And then you know how I knew it was the guy, Andrew? Because he stopped. He folded his hands, like, in front of himself. But then kind of turned to the – really, like – and then kind of turned to the side. Like, not fully – like, he didn't – kind of like if you're trying to go in through a doorway and there's somebody else or maybe you're in the airplane.

You're trying to get out of the aisle and do that thing where you kind of turn to the side so you take up a little bit less room. He did, like, a version of that. So he folded his hands. I actually took it as a fairly peaceful gesture as far as somebody who's also doing something that I find to be kind of a dick move. So he was like – what I read in his body language was this is my thing. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but this is the hill I'm going to die on. So I'm going to stand here. I'm going to clasp my hands. I'm going to move my body ever so slightly sideways so as to mean you don't have to go all the way around the total circumference of my body. or the width of my body, but you're going to have to go around most of it, and I am not moving off of this point.

The fact that he sort of protected himself. Now, listen, I'm not going to, you know, I'm as far away from this.

Oh, I don't think he was covering up his junk. I think he just didn't do this.

Oh, no, I didn't mean his junk. I just mean like you said he kind of folded his hands. I mean, there is a chance, and I'm starting to believe this, although, again, I only know the parts of the story you're telling me, so I'm not trying to sound like I know the scene. But, you know, I'm starting to think that this person, when he's walking down the sidewalk is having a lot of the same thoughts you are just that he's feels very vulnerable there are a lot of people running past him and brushing past him and maybe some joggers are ruder than you and maybe even brushing him some bikes are zipping by and he's just basically feeling kind of frustrated and vulnerable himself and so this is kind of like

he's just trying to stop and make himself small he well i mean he wasn't i i don't think you're totally off with that assessment but i don't think it's quite as i think you're right i think he has probably in walking the streets of portland become frustrated at having to constantly move around other people whether it's joggers walkers cyclists and so he has just decided that his move is going to be that he just stops and stays where he is so that everyone else can go around him but he's not going to get into the game of going around other people or maybe he similarly doesn't like the idea of going over into where the cycle cyclists are because they're going really fast whatever it is he is and i'm with you that he thinks about this a lot this isn't an accident this isn't a thing he doesn't know is happening this is very much a thing that he has decided he is going to do and i i think you're right i wonder if it isn't from some sense of powerlessness now if he were trying to make himself small i feel like what he would have done is he would have stopped he would have kind of waved to me or said something like i i just gonna keep going

Like he didn't – it was somewhere in between him being like a total beta and him being like a total alpha because he's alpha-ing me in that he's just standing there and he's like, I am not going to move. You are going to have to move. That's an alpha move. But then he's not flipping me off or giving me the one-finger salute or holding a physically aggressive posture, which is a little beta-ish. So I don't know what's going on with this guy But I The good news was I wasn't annoyed at this It was more like it made me laugh Because I just Now it's like okay this is the dude This is the dude who will not move If you encounter him on the Hawthorne Bridge I'm like so here's what I did do And maybe it was rude I don't know But I didn't even try to like press the issue I just knew instinctively Like once I saw him and I realized he stops This is the guy I was like I just got to go around this dude Okay fine So I go around him But then I start laughing. I start cackling as I am sort of even with him and passing him just like I don't say anything. But my laugh was saying, get a load of this guy. And then I just continued on my jog. So I don't know. Was that that seem rude? Does that seem unnecessary? I didn't say anything to him. I don't have any plans to say anything to him. But I do have a plan to laugh maniacally every time I have to go around him.

That's one of those things where, first of all, I can very much relate to that, by the way. So anything I'm about to say, don't take it personally. Like it, that reminds me a little bit of my polite car nature where like you're doing something you, you have to release the tension that you're feeling, you're annoyed in some way, but all it's doing is making you look like the crazy person. Just like I'm the one walking through a parking lot yelling polite car and everybody's like, oh, wow, he's having an episode. Let's give him some room. Now, now I'm just hoping that it wasn't the TBTL listener who saw you jogging and laughing maniacally. I hope it wasn't the person who's listening to us on their phone as they –

I really want to hear from that person. Me too. That was wild. I couldn't believe – and then it was like by the time my brain put it all together, like I said, I heard your voice. Then I heard another voice, and it was a little quiet. So this is also in keeping with the TBT listener. It wasn't like they were blasting everybody with it, but it was – they weren't wearing headphones. So it was the kind of thing that they were playing while on their bike, but loudly enough that they could hear it, but not so much that it was like super annoying to everybody else. But when I put it together that it was us, I almost said something, but they were already a bit ahead of me. Let's be honest. I was kind of winded. And also I thought that might be a little thirsty. Yeah.

Chase him down.

Sir.

Sir.

Actually, it was a woman.

Ma'am. Ma'am. Ma'am. That's my podcast. Here. That's my podcast.

You're like in Terminator 2. You're like the robot chasing him down the L.A. river. Yes, exactly.

So, yeah, but this guy is, you know, how do I put it? I'm now, the good news is my relationship with him, in as much as we have one, has now migrated into he seems quirky to me, which is a much better place to be than this guy's just being an a-hole. And I also just have to kind of remind myself, everybody is doing what they're doing because of, like, what they've been through, where they're at. you don't know anyone's backstory you don't know what's been going on for anyone up until the moment when you encounter them out there in the real world i was listening to ashley c ford on a long reads podcast episode and she said something like this is kind of not this is sort of related but unrelated she said who is she is she a writer she's a writer she has this new memoir out called somebody's daughter that's getting lots and lots of attention um because it's very good oh we had on live wire um i've just become a real fan of her work uh she was worked at buzzfeed and has done a bunch of different things but um uh she said something in that interview to the effect of i'm going to get it slightly wrong but she said basically like people i wish i could remember it exactly right because it really struck me um but she basically said people are what people are putting out into the world is what they feel safe putting out into the world or the way people react to things is how they feel safe in other words somebody might seem like they're being rude but it's probably because that's the thing they feel unsafe and that's what's making them feel safe or how people basically the way people are responding to things that that is a that's a a function of what they've been through you know and and what their life experience has been and what they're afraid of and etc etc so it's like for me to assume this guy is just being a jerk I just don't know his backstory and what I know is that this is his thing what I also know is it takes me no time to go around him funnily enough I went around two other people on that same bridge but this is the guy that's on my nerves because it's a thing with him you know what I mean like there was two other people walking and there were no bikes and I just went around like it didn't even occur to me to try to like have a standoff with them but anyway this guy now I kind of hope I see him each morning that will become a thing and then I can go around him then I can laugh maniacally.

Maybe it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship You can give him a flower Put a flower right in the barrel of his iPhone

Well, if iPhones still had earphone jacks You can put it right in that earphone jack Yeah, I have similar thoughts And I guess I'll stumble around with it for a little bit But this is the type of stuff that I say a lot to Because I'm somebody who is out in the world Making weird, petty judgments of people all the time Whether it's somebody cutting me off For somebody in their SUV blocking the crosswalk as I'm trying to cross the street and I have to decide whether I'm going to go behind them or in front of them, you'll be surprised to hear I almost always go in front of them, even if it puts me more at risk because I want them to wait for me. But it's one of those things where I'm not being very cool there and I am just summing you all up. Oh, you're driving a big SUV. And then all of a sudden I know your whole back story and you represent everything I don't like. Like, if this guy on the bridge was, like, a really buff, like, you know, like, if he looked like one of the guys playing volleyball and Top Gun and was just kind of sneering at you or had a face that made it look like he just, you know.

If I could hear the Joe Rogan podcast emanating from this. Right.

Exactly. And you just, like, you'd be like, this guy has never had to move for anybody in his life because everything is just handed to him because he's handsome and buff and, you know, he has all these. Like, you know what I mean? You and I are both, I think, very quick to go there to take a couple of take a couple of indicators and then drop somebody's backstory and decide whether or not they're our mortal enemy or our best friend, you know, in the point five seconds that we're passing them on the street. And, you know, I'm extremely guilty of that. And what you said is absolutely right. You just don't know anybody's GD journey. Right. You have no idea like you have no I mean this person if you were to meet this person at a you know some sort of a meet and greet sure like you and you had no idea like if you weren't a jogger you never saw him in the on the road before you just met him he probably is somebody you'd get along with and you'd like and you'd have a laugh with or something but instead you've met him in this scenario so you're just seeing him in this light.

Right. No, absolutely. That's a good reminder for me and maybe for, you know, the listeners, the ones that need it to just try to cut everybody as much slack as you can. It's just, you know, and particularly if it doesn't if it doesn't hurt you at all, you know, like that's the thing. Like, it's not a big deal in my life to just to just go around this guy. So that's what I'm going to continue to do. Plus, it's great hashtag content for the show. Speaking of which, we come back with the top stories. Talk about Spotify's new version of Clubhouse And all the other things That we have on the list

Oh I have some Seattle City Council news too Of course It's very complicated but don't worry It'll only take about 45 minutes to untangle What's Sally Bagshaw up to this time I think she's at the UW

The main reason I want to talk about this Cell phone anniversary story Or this mobile phone I should say Because they weren't cell phones at the time Is because Andrew I want to play you some of the most Primo Primo 1950's The Future Is Now Mobile Telephone Industrial Film from Western Electric Recording that you've ever heard My friend. I can't wait. It's actually 1940's Bell Telephone Mobile Telephones Film That is like, I almost thought that They made, like someone made this these days And just ginned it up to look like it was from the 40's because it's really right Out of Central Casting. So So we'll do that coming up in a moment here on TVTL.

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

Our Top Story today is the 75th anniversary, Andrew, of the first ever mobile phone call. June 17, 1946 was the first time somebody, I guess, made a phone call from a moving vehicle. Now, whatever our complaints are about the cell phone coverage that we have here in 2021, got it pretty good compared to what the capabilities of the first wireless networks were. This is from this great piece that this guy wrote for like an engineering website. Let me see if I can find this guy's name. I don't have it right in front of you. I'll get it before we're done here. This guy who is an electrical engineer himself Wrote up the history I think it was from A website called Today's Engineer Okay

I read Yesterday's Engineer but I'm always behind the time

I was so poor as a kid Andrew That we could only afford last week's engineer By the way The comedian George Wallace I love him he's a great follow on Twitter Basically everything he writes on Twitter Is a version of the same joke but it always kind of gets me like he wrote a joke the other day we were so poor growing up we could only listen to either cool or the gang it's so dumb but i love it uh this wireless network uh could handle only a small volume of calls a single transmitter on a central tower provided a handful of channels for an entire metropolitan area um uh let's see here the equipment employed vacuum tubes it weighed 80 pounds it filled most of the vehicle's trunk and drew so much power that it would cause the

headlights to dim that sounds like some of the systems camaro kev talks about or was it his friends who had in the had the sound systems in the trunk oh yeah and mine too was that a thing

at all in in ohio for you growing up like there was always i mean for us it was there was two people one uh josh newton aka badger he had this dodge daytona with a crazy system that was all like had gone he had gone to um you know his dad was a doctor so it's like doing all right uh he had gone to like car toys or whatever and they put in all these like a giant like a bazooka tube i think is what we called it at the time and we would just roll around in this daytona playing PM Don Blasting PM Don So that was a thing And then also Seth Brolight was like the local whiz Of fixing he could fix Any he just understood electronics And electrical things So if you had any stereo problems he could fix it But I felt like everybody in my friend group Was in at some part of the spectrum Of like getting a new pioneer Stereo put in or a Blaupunkt or Trading somebody for some set of speakers it was a whole thing for us when we were like 16 17 18 was that a thing in your

friend group not in my friend group but I know what you're talking about and I know that people did that and I remember one kid Shane who was really my friend Tony's friend like he was really into the electronic side of that kind of stuff he was always like making cases and speakers for his guitars and he had some sort of like weird rig in his trunk but like he was also making stuff like out of shoe boxes as well i remember like he would like just get these used speakers and make whole walls of speakers out of like your speaker sets out of shoe boxes and what have you but um anyway that wasn't really i remember driving around in like sean riley's car and just like every now and then he'd have to hit the speaker on the door to get to work yeah yeah camaro kev and i even though

i grew up in seattle and he grew up in lake stevens we had kind of similar friend groups and and And that's, I think, why he and I hit it off so much when we initially met, because it's just like he's got a bunch of his versions of Josh Newton and Seth Broly, and they've all got stories about, you know, like janky stereo systems and cars that you had to hit the starter with a stick to get the solenoid turning over. And just like everything was, you know, there's some similarities there. But the first actual call, it was a guy was driving through St. Louis. this is interesting to me because they don't have a lot of other details but it's just like basically in the article it says this was the result of decades of engineering work at bell labs and western electric um so it's funny to me that this guy apparently you know he had this trunk full of cell phone of mobile phone equipment and vacuum tubes etc his headlights are dimming what was the call i wish we could know what was so important because by the way the monthly fee for this at one point they had this going in about a hundred cities not in the in the in the 40s when this yeah in the 40s eventually when this thing was up and running so by 1948 there were 5 000 subscribers in the u.s wow to having mobile telephone abilities the monthly fee was uh was equal to about 207 a month and it was five dollars a call that's adjusted for inflation so like that was not a cheap service but there were 5,000 there were 5,000 people in america who were like yeah this is this is worth the investment or companies in america um i'm just curious what this guy who was driving through st louis decided he needed to make a call about

right wait i'm sure it's a test call do you remember we talked about this not all that long ago do you remember what the first words on the like landline telephone were that alexander Graham Bell said isn't it famously don't we famously get that wrong oh is it did we learn that this was not a true story I thought it was like he told his assistant like get in here or

something along those lines right yeah I don't remember the exact details but I feel like it's one of those things that we like you know because I think it was was it possible his assistant was named Watson yes that that sounds right to me it was like Watson get in here or something right But wasn't there – I just have this vague memory of us like reading a story that says it's actually something different or in fact like he didn't even invent that. It had been invented before Alexander Graham Bell, and he just kind of marketed it better, which is, I guess, a thing that they say Edison was a big thing with Edison, too. Like, Edison didn't really invent a light bulb. He just took existing technology and kind of modified it and made it better. Like, that was Edison's real genius. Anyway, this is a film from 1940, or the 1940s, I should say. Bell Telephone Mobile Telephones, okay? uh and i don't know this hopefully it works as audio it certainly works as video it's just a shot of a highway somewhere presumably in like i don't know the midwest and uh i mean even the

music yeah it's like come on here comes a trailer truck out on the open highway miles from the nearest town let's say important for someone to get in touch with the drivers of this outfit how can it be done watch

so it's two guys sitting in a truck driving down the freeway somewhere the guy reaches down and grabs like an old school telephone receiver that's like mounted under the kind of dash of the truck

zl43592 this is joe hello joe this is bill where are you boys now on route 30 headed for centerville about 25 miles out that's fine we got a special can you pick up some stuff for the ajax

company it's at the charleston depot by the way everything in this video is the most made-up thing we're nearing four three one two three mockingbird lane okay i need you to pick something up from the ajax company like they nobody went that like they were not that hung up on verisimilitude in these days as far as the namings of any of these fictional places think you can handle it

sure can bill we've got enough room for it fine joe take care of it right bill where do you call

these names joe bill well now those are real names those are their real names you can't make stuff

up like that joe and bill no he hangs the phone up better make a right turn on the 117 the boss

wants us to make a pickup at the charleston depot all right this is like going to be lost on the listeners because they're not watching it but the pause like the acting in this kind of cracks me up because the guy like so the guy who answered the phone is not the driver even in those days they knew. Bad idea to be operating the phone while you're driving. So you've got a guy driving the truck and then you've got the guy who's been dealing with the phone call from the boss. And so he reports to the driver, you've got to take a right on 117. And then there's just like a long, weird pause for the guy who's playing the driver before he says, right.

That's the one where they had him read that line a million times and they said, now just throw this one away. And that's what they went with. Right, exactly.

They're like, we got it. You know what? We're good. Let's just do one more for Lloyd's. I used to work with this guy that would always say that, and I think it was a reference to Lloyd's of London, the insurance company. I don't know why one more take would be for Lloyd's, or maybe that's a... Like an insurance take, right? Yeah, an insurance take. One more for Lloyd's, and that would always mean, okay, we're finally done with this. And then you're right. Usually, that's the usable take. But anyway, so here we go again.

All right. There you have it. A practical example of modern communication.

By the way, how much of this is going to come back as TVTL tape? Hopefully a lot. There you have it. A modding example of practical communication.

Here's a job of road construction on the outskirts of a big city.

By the way, I know everything was slower. Like, the vehicles were slower. And also, by the way, it was an even more horrible, racist, patriarchal, like, all of the things that we have to note when we look back fondly on the 1940s. But damn, aesthetically, things were so much cooler. Like, just the truck these dudes are driving is so cool looking. Yeah, yeah. You know, again, not a great place to be if you're not a white man, the 1940s. but boy they really i mean the outfits the the lines on the vehicles the hats the whole thing like man what i wouldn't give to go to a baseball game at like the polo grounds in the 1940s that'd

be quite an experience such activity is constantly shifting and is seldom near a regular telephone yet there is often need for one okay i'll call george george another real name

so now this guy's at a construction site and he has to call uh the the home office because they're having a problem with one of the pieces of machinery this was something i also didn't realize but i guess in these days andrew you when you would place a phone call i don't know if this would be the same if you were just at your house but like you would tell the operator you would start the call by telling the operator the phone you were on i mean this was the days when you had to call the operator and say, can you connect me to Hawthorne 539 or whatever, right? So there was a switchboard person who would have to actually like manually connect you to the line that you were trying to call. But I found, I didn't realize that you, people would report the line they were calling from. Yeah, me neither. And again, maybe that's just because this was a mobile telephone, but it's not part of the movies usually. Here he goes.

this is wj6 it's 9233 give me Adams 2 6635 Lee Construction Company Barton speaking hello George this is Matt say they're having plenty of trouble out here with the engine on the grater

say they're having plenty of trouble out here with the engine on the grater Do you think people, like, if you just randomly walked up to a person in 1946 and started having a conversation with them, do you think they talked like that?

I know for a fact that people talk differently because, and I was shocked by it because I always thought it was like, well, it was the production standards and the directing and acting of the time. But I remember where I was when I heard this. I was driving to work in Los Angeles, and on Morning Edition, it was the anniversary of, I believe, Watergate. And they played some vintage audio of a call-in radio talk show at the time. And all of the callers, Luke, talked very proper. Now, they're being influenced by what they're seeing in their media at the time, but everybody who called in, they didn't sound like us.

Yeah, I mean, I find it so kind of, like, mesmerizing. I mean, obviously, it's just second nature. Like, they didn't have to remember to talk this way, right? Like, this is just what came out of your mind. I wish we still talked this way. It was so cool.

Lee Construction Company, Barton speaking. Hello, George, this is Matt. Say, they're having plenty of trouble out here with the engine on the grater. Yeah? What's the matter with it? Well, nobody seems to know for sure. Johnny says he thinks it's a fuel pump. Might be it that. Tell you what I'll do. I'll send Stevens out to check it over before we have real trouble. Anything else? No, that's all. Okay. So long, George. Goodbye.

Can we start ending our calls with so long, Andrew? Yes, we can. So long, Luke. I love it.

This is mobile telephone service. In this service, conversations travel partway by radio, partway by telephone lines. In order to reach vehicles traveling the highways between cities, a number of transmitting and receiving stations connected to telephone lines are spaced at intervals along the highway so that one will always be in range of the moving vehicle.

It's interesting because that doesn't seem to be hugely different than how it is now, although I guess there's probably some more satellite technology. Although, I can't believe I'm going to even speculate on this. This is a terrible idea. My guess would be that the satellite component of our cell phones is more about GPS and knowing where the phone is as opposed to messages because I get the sense that to beam a message up to a satellite and back down somewhere else is very expensive and there's a limited amount of room for that, which is why – I don't know. Did you guys ever use sat phones when you were working at NHPR or anywhere else?

No, remember Corey, our buddy Corey, the engineer at APM, wanted to send us with a sat phone and a satellite uplink system when we went to Australia.

That's what we say now for our colleagues that now work for the New York Times, which is all of our former colleagues. Rest in times, Corey. Rest in times.

He wanted to send us with a sat phone, but it was so unbelievably expensive. Believably expensive. Yeah, so we went without.

Right. That was a big thing at NPR when you'd get sent out sometimes if they really thought that, like, when I went to the Michael Jackson trial, for some reason, they decided it was sat phone worthy. And we had this whole giant, I'm sure, I mean, this would all be done on my cell phone now via, like, any number of apps, right? But in those days, it was like you had to bring this huge, giant suitcase, which had some kind of device in it that was like literally would talk to a satellite.

And then beam it down to NPR so that I could be in Santa Maria, California, but but but be in full fidelity since there wasn't like a radio station or an ISDN nearby. And I just remember that being a sign that they were like they'd prioritize your story to the degree that they were going to part with one of their precious sat phones for it.

Yeah, I want to get to the part of this tape where one of them says, say, George. Yeah, Bill. Couldn't have this been an email? Actually, I was thinking that with the truckers, though. Like, they're making it seem like there was no way to get a hold of truckers on the move. Like, they're called CBs, and I'm pretty sure they were using them then. Well, that's what I'm wondering about.

I mean, I guess the upside of this over a CB is that the person placing the call doesn't have to have a CB. Right, right, right. So you could just call the person wherever they were, and you don't have to have that set up. But you're right. I don't know. So my guess would be, yeah, that radio technology, like CB technology, had to exist before this whole thing, right?

I'd also – I know we have some truck drivers who are listeners because they share their stories of poop boxes and whatnot on our voicemail line. I would love to know if you've been driving for, let's say, the past couple of decades, if not the past few decades, how much cell phone technology has changed the use of the CB? because, you know, it was always like a fun, exciting thing. If you had like a CB scanner, you could listen in on other people's other people's conversations. And they were all kind of quasi public because of that. And like you could, you know, scroll around like that was a fun thing. I feel like that that spectrum must not be as rich as it once was.

By the way, according to Britannica.com, CB radio originated in the U.S. during the 1940s. 40s when the FCC created the Citizens Radio Service for regulating remote controlled units and mobile radio telephones the commission made CB radio a special class of the service so it sounds like CB radio and these mobile telephones were actually kind of coming around at about the same time and even in that film we were just playing it sounds like these mobile phones they used maybe I don't know if it's the same band as cb radio but they used a combination of like radio waves and then telephone lines

okay that's so it wasn't like i wouldn't have guessed that yeah i would have thought cb radio

would have been around since like you know whenever start uh who was it uh marconi who plays the mamba oh that's marconi right one of the weirdest lines what's that what is that

reference i mean i know who marconi is but what are you talking about with the who plays that's

Because we built this city on rock and roll from, I believe at that time they were called Starship.

Does this come up all the time and I keep forgetting it? This sounds like something that you've probably told me a bunch and I just never remember.

I mean, I think I've mentioned it in passing because I just think it's one of the oddest lines in pop music. I guess the whole song is kind of about rock and roll and to some degree radio. And they have that fake traffic report in the middle of the song. But one of the lines in We Built the City on Rock and Roll is, Marconi plays the mamba.

It says Marconi plays the mamba Listen to the radio, don't you remember We built this city

I would say probably one of the few References to Marconi In a number one Hit pop song from the 1980s Gotta be a really short list Of times when

Don't you also feel like this song, we went on And then I wrote a bunch It was an exhaustingly long Pointless newsletter where I broke down the lyrics Of Huey Lewis and the News's The Heart of Rock and Roll Don't you feel like these are kindred songs The Heart of Rock and Roll is in all these cities And then this one is we built this city on rock and roll And growing up I assume that they were Probably both singing about Cleveland Even though nobody was singing about Cleveland

My guess is that no I mean They're similar But different because The beauty of the Heart of Rock and Roll As a song Is that it name checks So many cities that if you lived any of those cities and you were a kid like I was you thrilled at the mention of Seattle

now we built

the seat on rock and roll is it's a love song to San Francisco I believe that makes sense

they hate Ash Perry

because that's where they're from yeah yeah and so they're saying and in fact the fake traffic report is all set in San Francisco and it says something like it's a beautiful day in the city by the bay like it's like basically it's a love letter to the city of San Francisco so that's By the way, apropos of basically nothing, I saw this clip the other day. I know Michael Jackson is obviously an extremely complicated figure, you know, as a human being and also as a musician and how we should feel about his music. And I don't exactly know the answer. of that but i will tell you i saw a clip pop up on tiktok of i think the like we are the world recording i thought of this because of huey lewis and god bless huey lewis i'm probably a sweet guy but it was this moment in the song where michael jackson does a line and then huey lewis does a line and then cindy lopper does a line and i think this is like you know before the era of autotune So it just kind of is what it is But Michael Jackson's voice When he does his kind of little run Is one of the most pure, beautiful, in-tune Incredible things I've ever heard And then Huey Lewis goes for it And it just sounds like wet shit And then Cyndi Lauper goes for it And it sounds like wetter shit I mean, that's no fair to have to go after Michael Jackson Right, nobody wants to follow that And it stood out Because I don't think you can hear the backing tracks They all have headphones on Like this is in the recording session So you're just This is why I think it stands out so much Because you're just kind of hearing their If I remember right You're just hearing their voices really in the clear And it was like whoever I don't know what the exact I know Quincy Jones was involved in that song And I think maybe Bob Geldorf or something But I don't know Who decided that they should have Huey Lewis Try to do this high part But it's doing him zero favors

I bet you it might be sweetened up in the final version, too. But, yeah, and also, you know, Huey Lewis, he's got that gravelly voice anyway. So coming after Michael Jackson, that's quite a contrast. And then you're making, you know, according to what you're saying now, he's also just not hitting the notes, which is terrible. Well, it's too high for him.

It's like there's ways to there's ways to harness, you know, everyone's voice has its own charm and there's ways to harness the charm of his voice. I love Cyndi Lauper. Like girls just want to have fun True Colors I'm a Cyndi Lauper stan Don't get me wrong But this was just You're not setting them up for success With the way that the tune of the song goes Right after Michael Jackson did what he just did

Right But I was going to mention Do you know that Huey Lewis Did you read that profile about him He has a Meniere's Is that what it is? The hearing loss Which has basically knocked him out of his love and his career That's an interesting

Yeah, which is really sad And I don't know if there's I don't I my guess would be these two things are unrelated like he didn't sound like woefully out of tune. He just isn't Michael Jackson.

Yeah. Because this would have been, you know, probably long before this was starting to affect him. It just reminded me of that.

I'm trying to see if I could actually even find. How do you feel? I mean, this is a genuine question. How do you feel about us playing anything from Michael Jackson on this show?

you know probably i mean if you want to play this for the sake of um for the for the sake of you know illustrating what we're talking about i think that's fine uh generally speaking i you know i don't think we should probably play his music like to go out with or anything i don't think that's something that is you know it's just it's not really worth celebrating at this point this is

this is really fascinating andrew we finally got there on this show apparently the line that huey lewis does in we are the world was written for prince and he backed out at the last minute what the hell prince speaking to quest love on the quest love supreme podcast huey lewis said i got prince's line because prince didn't show up on the whole deal he didn't show up at the whole hey george prince didn't show up on the whole deal yeah say they're having a terrible time getting Prince to show up on the whole deal. Huey Lewis went into detail on the session. It was unbelievable, he said. You don't get to meet all those people in a lifetime or a career, and Ray Charles was there. I couldn't even introduce myself to Ray Charles. I just hung back and watched him. I was just totally in awe of Ray Charles. I couldn't stop my leg from shaking. I was so nervous. That's amazing. Which is really kind of cute to hear. It's nice to hear these famous people also being excited about meeting someone like Ray Charles. so Huey Lewis records his thing I'm just reading from the ultimate prince ultimateprince.com thinking he was done Huey Lewis was in the green room and then he heard that producer Quincy Jones wanted to see him I come walking back into the studio and Quincy Jones goes smelly sing him the line by the way Quincy Jones's nickname for Michael Jackson was apparently smelly I mean wow this may be the most informationally packed the most densely informationally nutritious show we've ever done andrew okay quincy jones's nickname for michael jackson was smelly which is insane uh he says smelly sing the line then michael jackson sings the line then i sing it he goes good you got it and that was prince's line that i got it but the lyric it but if you just believe there's no way we can fail comes in the bridge between michael jackson and cindy lopper it didn't matter to Huey Lewis at the line was at the top of his vocal range.

I just went for it, he continued. He sang it. I sang it back. It's kind of like a fog for me. I was so nervous. Now this makes me feel bad that I was roasting Huey Lewis. He was just trying to be a mensch.

Yeah, no, I mean, you weren't roasting him. You were acknowledging what you heard, and it's like he's acknowledging what the result was as well. This is a great story.

That's wild. I love it. I'll be deploying that little dazzling deet at parties for the next one to five years. So if you bump into me and I try to bring it up, just, you know, that's my love language.

You know what somebody should do? Somebody should write, like, a little New Yorker cartoon or something about how awkward it's going to be at dinner parties once everybody's socializing again and nobody remembers how to talk to each other. I'm sorry. I just – I have, like, on my Instagram, like, I have – I've signed up for, like, a lot of, like, kind of – like, I followed the New Yorker cartoons, of course. Why wouldn't I? But then I also I just follow all kinds of like people who submit to the New Yorker. And so there are a lot of just I just follow a lot of New Yorker style cartoonists. Right. And I usually enjoy it a lot. But it's just like they're not even in the peak anymore. But like two or three weeks ago, it's just like every cartoon was the same joke that I don't really. And listen, I'm I think I'm a I'm a shy guy. I'm an introvert. I prefer to stay home. Like, I do believe that there are probably some entrenched kind of social things that have happened to our social brains, social things that have happened to our social brains. I'll be giving a talk on this at the TEDx of Tacoma later. Let's be honest, TEDxX. Yeah, TED. Well, it's actually TEDxXX. Ooh, explicit. I signed up via my favorite website, Parler, spelled incorrectly. um but uh anyway like is it i just don't think for the more social people like it's going to really be like i don't know how to show i just think the joke is bad and beaten they've really

fed that fed horse is fed folks the horse is fed please yeah there's a version of that going on on tiktok and you know we sort of started today by saying you don't know anyone's journey and i shouldn't be i shouldn't make assumptions about people because they're sort of conventionally attractive and of a certain age but there does seem to be a version of that i guess you could say observation or joke that's going around tiktok where these very conventionally attractive women are are detailing like it'll be it'll have some kind of slightly awkward line it'll be like you know it'll be printed on the screen and it'll be like that's a thing i just actually said at a bar you know point being i don't know how to interact with people anymore and i'm kind of like you know you're 26 you're beautiful i bet you weren't taking the but you weren't taking this that seriously in the first place i don't think you're lacking for social connections again i'm making a million judgments about these folks that are based on exterior appearances and and i could be totally wrong but i i will admit that like this whole idea of like somebody who strikes me as a a person who probably had an okay time in life i know that that's not related to anxiety like People have anxiety for different reasons than if they're, like, beautiful and 26 years old. But this co-opting or this way that everybody was a total nerd and is totally – has anxiety, I will admit that I sometimes wonder about that as it relates to people who have 4 million followers on TikTok and are Charlie DeMello or whomever. It's like – it's very much possible, I guess, that they're struggling as well, but sometimes I wonder about that. Let me say one other very quick thing before we get to the blurs days, and that is somebody had emailed me about my guy, my run-in with the guy on the bridge. Somebody had emailed me who is visually impaired, and they said that when they were in – I want to make sure I'm describing this right. They basically said that they, through being visually impaired, had moments where they'd be out in public on the sidewalk where they would be – it would be a little hard for them to navigate things because of their vision. And that sometimes what they would do is just stop to kind of let everything kind of settle around them and to make their – and their point was this person could be dealing with a visual impairment and that could be why he's taking this approach. That's certainly possible. I will say he didn't have anything outwardly that would indicate that to me, you know, didn't have glasses on or a cane or anything that that would typically signal something like that was going. He also seemed to recognize me from pretty far away. Like, I think he was like, oh, this is that dude from last time. So this guy, from what I could assess, seemed to, you know, his vision seemed to be, you know, I don't know what you'd call it, functional.

so you could wear a sign that says like i have a million dollars i want to give it to the first person who asks and then like attach fix that right as you um right yes and then i'll immediately

know what everyone's like visual abilities are exactly or just take a stack of books

and drop it on the courtroom floor and see if the person wearing the neck brace turns their head. That's also something I learned about the law.

Then you freeze the ginger ale into ice cubes, and you put it in the safe overnight. You win the violin. I don't know about that one.

I don't know about the frozen ice cubes.

That's from Donald J. Sobel, the guy that wrote Encyclopedia Brown. Oh, yeah. He also wrote these things called Two Minute Mysteries that I loved when I was a kid. And they were, I guess, a little more grown up in that they all had to do with sex. No, they just were kind of, you know, it was this inspector. I want to say his name was halogen inspector or something that my mind interpreted as halogen. Do you ever do that as a kid, too, where you're just reading a book or a series of books and you're just mispronouncing or misreading the name of something? But it just becomes whatever it is in your mind. And then someday you're like, I bet you it's not halogen. But I've always thought it was because there was like a J and an I and an N in there or something. Yeah, Luke, I did that as a kid. So this inspector, there's this bet between this renowned violinist who I believe is blind in the story and somebody, and it's the bet over this very, very valuable like Stradivarius violin. and it's that the guy can't sneak into this room with the violinist sitting in the room and like I mean the problem with this mystery is it like there's about four different points where you're going like why would that be the bet but what it comes down to is the guy had tricked the violinist or at least it seemed that he'd snuck into the room and switched these ice cubes for ginger ale or whatever but in fact he had just they had been ice cubes made of ginger ale that had melted overnight And so he had replaced, like the thing was, I snuck into the room and I replaced your cup of ice with a cup of ginger ale or something. I see, okay, right. No, it was ice cubes that were actually ginger ale, so when they melted, then you had a glass of ginger ale. Which again, it's just like, I don't know why this violinist is getting into these kinds of bets. It seems like there's almost no upside for him in that.

And this, I think you might have told me this before because I think I've said the same thing. that reminds me of the famous rolled doll story which i think became a twilight zone where um or something like the twilight zone where a woman kills her husband with a frozen rack of lamb is a rack of lamb big enough if it was frozen to anyway it's a big piece of meat that's frozen and she bludgeons her husband with it and then um and then i think she reports the crime that her husband has been attacked and as the police officers or investigators come to investigate she is cooking that meat and then serves it to them and they can't find the they can't find the

murder weapon oh clever how clever there's a right way to rock and a wrong way to roll you can't just listen to your soul just remember that life is number one You can be having so much fun Just remember that life is much fun You can be nothing but wanting

All right, I'll kick things off here, Luke. All right. Anastasia says, wishing a great big Blursday to Julie. She says, sweetie, happy birthday. What you do is so important. from your 10 friend, Anastasia. That was a decent impression of Maria Bamford

doing an impression of her mom.

It's all about the rhythm. It's about the timing, the syncopation.

Yeah, man. I feel like, I mean, Maria Bamford talks, you know, she has the speaking voice that she has, but gosh, it's never not funny to me when she shifts into a different, you know, whether it's being one of the girls that she went to high school with who sort of made her feel uncomfortable or her mom. It's as if Maria Bamford's entire life has been a bit with this voice that serves to make when she shifts into, like, other people's voices so hilariously funny to me. Terry says, Happy birthday to my 10 pal Aaron Taylor. Whether we write so often that our letters cross in the mail or we're radio silent for a month, I am thankful every single day that you are my friend Happy birthday Aaron I'm forever grateful that you were born Oh nice

I let a last name sneak in there You ever notice I take out all the last names To keep it more personal But I let one sneak in Maybe because Taylor also could serve as a first or even middle name Sure

Also it's I love the regularity of their writing That a month is a long time Sometimes you and I don't talk for a month Andrew Is that true? No it's never happened Literally it's probably never happened Since we became friends Even since Since we became friends Yeah Before you even were

on the show no i would say not even two weeks i mean we will take a couple of weeks off and place hey speaking of which sorry to do this during blurs days if you got summer games ideas please send them to us because we're going to be recording a bunch of summer games but i don't think we have ever gone more than probably 10 days without at least like texting each other about something

yeah no i i think so too even when you're on vacation i mean you'll snap something and send

it to me yeah i'm usually drinking somewhere and then i start thinking of my friend andrew

Sometimes I send you, while you're on your jog, randomly, I'll just send you three photos of water bottles asking you which one is your favorite something about buying one.

I couldn't tell if that was a joke or not. No, I want to buy— I like the first one, by the way. Yeah, that one's called Rotata. You just mean from a kind of design standpoint.

Yeah, they're all the same. They're all from the same company, but they're kind of expensive. How much would you pay for a water bottle? I shouldn't even talk about this on the show after the TBTL time because I feel like I'm squandering money if I buy one of these water bottles, but they're like $40. Does that seem excessive to you? It seems excessive to me. They're very design-y, though.

Well, I mean, not if... I don't think it's excessive if it's well-insulating, and if you're going to use that to hydrate yourself throughout the summer, and it sounds like you've been going to the gym again, taking walks maybe. I have to tell you, right here, Andrew, I got that dang gigantic thermoflask. Oh, yeah, that one's big. Drinking water out of it right now. I don't know how much this thing was. Maybe more like $25, but it's been worth it for me. So, I mean, as long as you use it, I don't think paying $40 for a refillable water bottle is excessive.

I think it is excessive. I'm trying to just, and I haven't bought one of these things yet. I can get a more affordable one. But the thing is, like, I was water bottle-less. I was without a water bottle for my entire life until you and I went on our hitchhiking trip. So was that three years ago now? I believe it was three years. And I just picked up this, like, Rubbermaid water bottle at Safeway just as I was prepping for the trip because I'm, like, I'm going to need water and a refillable water bottle. Welcome to the 90s, Andrew, in, like, 2017 or 18 or whatever it was. Well, I have, you know, used this. This thing has been at my side almost 24-7. Like, literally, it'll sit on my nightstand at night. I have it here at my desk during the day. I've used it almost 24 or it's been within reach of me 24-7 for the past three or four years. I feel like if I spend money on a and I paid $7 for this, now I'm just looking at these and I'm like, these are kind of stylish. They're from a company called Corkicle, which I'd never heard of before. I was like, I like that style. Then I saw the price tag and I was like, oh, I don't know about

that. This is where you and I are so different. Yeah. Like I for like I've been whatever when I want to make some kind of personal improvement in my life, I usually start with what's the equipment that I will need. And I tell myself that if I have that equipment, then the change of lifestyle will be more doable for me. And so, you know, like I would be like if you're going to say, oh, I'm going to go to the gym more. I'm going to take more walks and I'm going to try to make sure I'm properly hydrated. I would absolutely buy that Quirkical thing because I would feel like It was a tool that was going to help me with My thing you seem like the opposite like you like To work with whatever you have and not get out And not get out ahead of your skis as They say because that's just Your brain is just different than mine yeah and in this

Case I'm not even it's not even tied to a Change or an improvement in my life because it's Just in the water bottle I Have now isn't even broken I'm just sort of sick Of it and that's that's what my problem Is it's not like if I get this I'm going to go To the gym more like you know what I mean it's just like I already am using a water bottle all the time. I just kind of want a nicer one so that when I'm, you know, here in my studio where nobody can see me, I can feel like a cool guy. I'm talking myself out of it.

Yeah, but there's a value to that. You do not spend money profligately. Did we decide if profligate, I always thought profligate was to be like you're just wasting money left and right, but is that one of those ones that's, or is that skin flint that's the opposite of how we use it?

Profligate, I had to look it up because I don't know, but recklessly extravagant. Yeah.

You're not profligate with how you spend on yourself. And also, Andrew, we can't rule out the fact, the possibility that if you get a nicer water bottle, I will go to the gym more.

That is true. Hey, Luke, you want my old water bottle when I'm done with it? You seem like a guy who would enjoy using somebody's used water bottle that they've had for four years. Sure. It hasn't been four years, has it? Was the hitchhiking four? Probably. We did this the other day. I know. It's been a while. All right, Farron says, it's Lisa's birthday. By the way, I want to let you know, I was going to try to do some of these in the old-timey 1940s voice, but I realized this is kind of a longer one. I just don't think I got what it takes, but maybe we'll try that later on. Farron says, it's Lisa's birthday Friday, and I've run out of, of course, this is, I believe, this is Lisa Lee, who, oh, last name.

We just met Lisa and Farron on our road trip in Oceanside. It's Lisa's birthday Friday, and I've run out of very witty birthday things to say over the years. And I also didn't get enough sleep last night. So can you just tell her that I reminded you it's her birthday, and you don't need me to tell you why she's so cool. Tell her I appreciate getting to be her plus one last month, as well as all the many times over the years. That's a great friendship.

Those two have a real meet-cute that we found out about Andrew. They I'm going to get some of the details wrong, but basically they were they attended the same show might have been. They might be giants. They attended a rock show. They didn't know each other. And I think they ended up somebody took a picture of somebody else's head and then they were both commenting on it. And somehow they basically figured out in the comment section of some music blog or whatever that they had been at the same show. and then Lisa invited Farron to go to a different rock show. They didn't know each other, but they met up and they went to the rock show and they've been friends ever since. I've got about 60% of that wrong, but that's generally what happened.

It's so sweet, though, for real. That's a good friendship. Happy Blurs Day, Lisa.

Yeah. Kirsten says, please wish my sister, who I call Sancho, a very happy blurs next week. See, the problem is I need to – just reading it in the voice isn't enough. I wish I had more kind of like, I don't know, the lingo. I need the lingo is the problem. And all the lingo I have from that era is mildly sexist. It's always about like legs being called gams or getaway sticks.

Right, right.

Kirsten says, please wish my sister, who I call Sancho, a very happy blurs next week. She is the best sister, mother, daughter, and pastry chef in the West. And I love her so. Can't wait to give her so many big hugs next month. Cute. Sancho. I wonder if that's like a, I think that's a Sancho from Don Quixote reference. Maybe Kirsten's sister, Sancho, was like her right-hand person throughout life?

Maybe. I like, I'm honing in on, you know, I was getting ready to hear best sister, mother, daughter, pastry chef in the world. And then it became West. And I was like, you know, that's kind of, there's more honesty there. You know what I mean? If it's like the world, then there's some hyperbole, obviously. But in the West, you're just like, oh, okay, I assume that's Western United States, maybe. Or maybe the Western world. I don't know. But either way, the specificity makes it more believable, I believe. Doesn't Don O'Neill have a saying about that? I'm sure he does. Christy and Michael say, happy Blur's Day to our great friend and dedicated TBTL10, Amy. You're an amazing educator and a wonderful friend. can't believe it's been 27 years since the three of us met at Seattle U to begin our teaching careers thinking of you on your blurs day and okay let me stay can I just take this line over let's swell it up let's think about this thinking of you on your blurs day and as you rest and recover we love you that's from Christy and Michael to Amy and I think that I read it perfectly yeah Three Red Storm alums.

Oh, is that what they're called? Well, they changed their mascot a while ago because it used to be racist. Now they're the Red Storm. Or the Red Hawks?

That sounds very intimidating. Red Storm. I think it's Red Hawks. Do you know that I have a problem with the University of Washington fight song, the whole bow down thing? I don't like it. I don't either. You don't either? Have we talked about this? No, but I think it's kind of dumb. Bow down to Washington Like you're actually You actually want people to bow down to you It just seems so retrograde

Yeah it's a little like Okay fine we beat you at soccer You don't have to bow down to us Bow down? Come on it's 2021 I think they're the Falcons by the way I got a lot of things wrong on today's show They're the Red Hawks The Seattle University Red Hawks

Like a red storm sounds like That sounds like something really bad That sounds like a group. That sounds like a hate group.

That also sounds like a podcast Steve Bannon would host.

Yes, that's what we're circling around, exactly.

Also, I was so wrong about the case of the glass of ginger ale. I don't think it was in the Two Minute Mysteries category. I think it was actually in an Encyclopedia Brown book.

Still, though, I'm this close.

It was Encyclopedia Brown's dad, Chief Brown, was investigating the situation. I had the Stradivarius part right, but anyway, just to clarify that before we get to our last Blur's Day message for the week, which is, of course, Dusty in Kentucky, who would like to wish the happiest of seventh Blur's Days to my... daughter, Isla. She's an amazing travel buddy, a great storyteller, bold in defending truth and justice, and a joy to everyone that knows her. We love you, Isla. That is so cool. That's so cute. In fact, you know what? Let me dig this out of the old audio banks. Nice. Really cute. Very cute. Alright. I guess that's going to wrap things up for today's show, Andrew.

That sounds good.

We've done some good work here today I'm proud of us

There's a band called Happy Birthday I used to like a couple of their songs I'm trying to think Do you have a better idea? No, that's a band called Happy Birthdays? Happy Birthday Although now I'm getting a little bit concerned That Spotify doesn't have YouTube's going to shut this down Oh, here it is, yeah Girls FM was one of their songs That I remember liking This goes back like 15 years or something I think But, yeah, we'll go with this if this is okay with you. Yeah.

I have a super sweet song that I'm excited to play tomorrow for you for music for your weekend. Oh, nice. Which I think you'll really like. So, all right. That's going to do it for today. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. Until then, have a great Thursday. Stay cool. Stay hydrated. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

Everything is repeating so bad. Tried to tell me, but I couldn't understand And the truth is that only I can And it's gone now, baby Gone now, baby I'm always on the same frequency Girls are men, girls are men And everybody's looking like a girl to me Girls are men, girls are men Baby, baby, are we all the same What's on our mind repeating it every day All that's made of is heavenly shapes And it's gone now, baby, gone now, baby See them play like the infinite band

Tried to hear them but you couldn't understand

Power out.