Muse

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Oh my God, cool. That's the best way to get rich. Yeah, that's my favorite way to get rich. Wait, you guys, you can quit TAC and just, like, get wasted all the time. I'm in, sir.

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TBTL.

This is a show for dogs. About dogs. Starring one dog. And one dirty dog. This is genius. This is genius work.

I'd tell you to get this through your head, but you're a machine. So run this through your data processor. Get lost.

She's irrational. You should. You see what I'm talking about? Is it me? Am I wrong? Just let me talk. May I talk, please? I have something to say. May I say it? Yes, Mark. Okay, would you just let me finish?

Perhaps. Am I wrong? Life's a potty, wipe your body. This is the best moment of TVTL.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome to a Thursday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Why now? What are they doing, and how can you steer clear of it all? My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. I'm an activist and house party enthusiast. Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center, high in the sky, above Portland, Oregon, where it looks like we got some rain last night. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. Real, you know, wait five minutes if you don't like the weather. I've noticed that anywhere you go in America, pretty much, people will tell you that if you don't like the weather, you should wait five minutes or that you will get all four seasons in one day. There are some exceptions to that, but it is a commonly held thing. But it is interesting that we both had 115 degrees in Portland this week. And somebody wrote on Twitter that I think the most snow that the city of Portland has ever received since they started keeping track of it and the hottest it's ever been in Portland since they started keeping track of it. Both happened, I think, like some short amount of time apart. I want to say 19 weeks or something. So, yeah, we're living in unreasonable times, friends. But luckily, I've got a motivational speech to that very subject, which you can probably find on YouTube somewhere. This is episode three thousand four hundred fifty seven in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Got some top stories for you today, including. Well, this is more of a, I guess, news you can use sort of segment, which is. Do you have a bowling ball lying around your house? Beautiful purple balls. It's not recyclable, even if it's made out of plastic. which is i guess what bowling balls are in fact made out of they are not they're not something that you can put in the recycling there's a whole piece in new york magazine about the guy in sunset park in brooklyn who's getting two to three bowling balls a day at the recycling center and trying to figure out what to do with them also there is a new a new podcast in the constellation known as uh this this here uh solar system this here universe of podcasting that we exist in it's by the actor jeremy piven uh it's called uh how you live in jay piven podcast is usually how people with no hope and no future begin when they run out of other options and it really may represent the end of the podcasting medium as we know it or maybe it signals that we should just you know gently lower a pillow over podcasting as an idea just to make you know just to sort of speed along the end just try to make let's try to make podcasting comfortable here in

its last hours now that we know a show called how you live in jay piven exists we'll play you the trailer for that oh and it's a thursday aka a blursday so we will do the blursday messages as 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's doing the work. He's baby-stepping. He's back at it again with the white vans. And he's not ready for podcasting to be done. I'm a podcaster, and I care who knows it, baby. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend. I am listening to the show as I walk my dog, writes listener Kelly in Bellevue. When I heard the listener's suggestion to change the saying from feeding two birds with one scone to thrilling two birds with one scone, while I agree that using a word that rhymes with kill works better than feeding, I feel we should say filling two birds with one scone. That may be an even better alternative. Kelly, yes. Do you think that PETA thought about that, Luke, and then didn't want the, like, image of, like, overstuffing a bird? Do you think, like, filling two birds with a scone seemed like maybe too close to foie gras territory or something? I wonder if they went on that journey. For folks just joining us today, if you— Oh, wait, does this need context? I'm sorry. I thought I set it up perfectly.

Maybe you heard us being promoted on How You Live in J. Piven, and this is your first time listening to TBTL. But, yeah, we've been advocating for using the, or I have, I don't want to rope you into this, Andrew But I've been advocating for using some of the phrases that PETA encouraged us to, I don't know, a year or two ago now December of 2018 Wow, three years ago Instead of beating a dead horse, you say, I don't want to beat a dead horse over this You say, I don't want to feed a fed horse Which I like

That's great

Yeah, because the horse has already been fed, so you don't have to feed him more I'm not trying to feed a fed horse here, guys Now, the one thing I will say about using these is it is a conversation. It is an atom bomb for the conversation you're having. Whatever it is that you were trying to say you didn't want to, like, you know, overdo, you didn't want to keep belaboring, that has now become a secondary concern for everybody in the room because now what we're talking about is feeding a fed horse. For now. Just know that.

But when the revolution finally takes over, then it won't be a conversation stopper anymore. It will be the norm.

Right. Right. But for now, it's just just know that, you know, geniuses are rarely appreciated in their time. So it is for now going to be something that distracts everyone from the larger point. Then the other one is instead of saying kill two birds with one stone, because, like, who wants to do that? PETA had said you should say feed two birds with one scone. Then we had a listener say, well, if it's kill two birds with one stone, why don't we say thrill two birds with one scone, which tracks more closely with the original. And now we have listener Kelly Who has basically gotten us there This is, she is Actually I don't know Kelly's gender But listener Kelly is Now I'm going to say the Thomas Edison of this I have recently gotten on this thing About Thomas Edison not being a good inventor But being a good kind of perfecter Of other people's inventions This is because of one thing I half overheard on public radio Which now forms my entire All of my talking points on Thomas Edison Are from a thing that I half overheard On public radio

Well, most of the shit I know is stuff I half-read in Reader's Digest, so you're still winning. By the way, I went back, because when I got Kelly's note, I thought, was it originally Phil? Like, have we been, like, kind of over time? Was it originally Phil, two birds with one scone, and you and I kind of at some point changed it? But no, I went back to the original list, and it was feed two birds with one scone. Here's another reason I don't like that. They went with feed as a verb twice. We already said feed a fed horse. Do something better with two birds with one scone. Why feed? I think fill is better. Do you remember the other ones, Luke? This was a refresher for me. Instead of be the guinea pig, be the test tube. We want you to be the test tube here. I think that one is probably the weakest. I like this one, though. I totally forgot. Instead of bring home the bacon, bring home the bagels. Why not? That one's good. Why not? And then do you remember the replacement for take the bull by the horns?

let me see if i can make up a better one so you're not going to take the bull by the horns you're gonna um uh teach the bull to play the horns you're gonna um uh let's see uh take the bull to eat some corns i don't know what is it it's

You're going to introduce the gull to Rip Torn. Oh, yes. No, that's not it. Okay, no, that actually, no, that's clever. That's punchy. I mean, I can't believe that's not the original saying. It's take the flower by the thorns. Take the flower by the thorns. Don't take the bull by the horns.

I give that one credit because it keeps the spirit of what taking the bull by the horns is, which is I'm going to grab this thing by the scariest part. Yes, exactly. And so at least you get that. I'm going to take the flower by the thorns here, which, again, is a pretty – that's a pretty good turn of phrase. But if you deploy that casually in conversation, it has now become the focus of the conversation. Yes, yes. Because someone will go, I've never heard that before. And then you'll say, well, I got it from PETA. And then that's where the conversation is. But I do think the reason I was calling listener Kelly the Thomas Edison of this whole – thing is because listener kelly has now i think created the perfect version of this which is andrew i'm not trying to fill two birds with one scone here or actually the way i would say it is oh my gosh this is such a great opportunity andrew we can fill two birds with one scone here

yeah that's great i like it i'm trying to think what if we got off of the idea of scone we could go back to thrill now i'm belaboring this we we got there kelly got us there never mind you're

You're feeding a fed horse here, as you classically tend to do.

I was wondering if there's a different—

I'm going to take the rose by the thorns here and just tell you, Andrew, that you're feeding a fed horse, my friend.

I feel like we could keep thrill because the idea of thrilling an animal—oh, I don't want to finish this sentence because I'm scared of the drops at the beginning of the show. But I like the idea of thrilling a friendly animal. Like, that seems like, oh, you gave that bird a nice thrill. But I don't think that you're going to thrill a bird with a scone. You'd have to thrill a bird with something else. And I don't know what that is.

Yeah. What is it that thrills birds? I guess we should ask Genevieve. Ornithologists would know. Maybe somebody wrote something or maybe there's something in Audubon magazine. Has Genevieve gone full? Has she gone full birder to where she's subscribing to Audubon?

She's wearing this hat that has netting over her face at all times now. And you know what I'm talking about? One of those green rimmed hats that has netting over her face. She wears it all the time. She wears it to bed. She wears it in the shower. I think she's in pretty deep. Now, she doesn't have any. I don't believe she has any. You know what? I'm not sure. She might have gotten some Audubons as a gift recently, and I think she might have a gift subscription at this point.

my grandmother virginia burbank she uh was a subscriber and to audubon magazine and also would get these beautiful books actually that were like these very uh wonderful i guess paintings of birds that was also put out by the audubon society and i have to say it was a handsome handsome coffee table tome yeah and as a kid i remember flipping through them because i mean i'm gonna be honest and you know rest in peace grandma but there wasn't shit to do at her condo in Bellevue now outside the condo was there was a swimming pool which I thought was pretty dope other than the time which I have talked about on the show before I was so phobic around sharks when I was a kid that I would sometimes be swimming in the swimming pool and I would start to convince myself well I would say I know there's not a shark in here but if there was think about how screwed I would be and then I would have to get out of the pool because I would not be able to push the intrusive thought out of my head that there might be a shark in this swimming pool in this condominium

in Bellevue, Washington. You know, I don't know. Hey, that's where Kelly was taking a walk when she came up with the solution to all of our PETA related problems. I, you know, I knew that you had an intense phobia of sharks. I didn't realize that it was literally to the degree that you were

afraid to swim in a swimming pool. I did not know that. I mean, that was probably the one time it happened but it's very vivid in my mind i mean that it happened in a swimming pool yeah that's pretty extreme you know yeah no i was i had a lot more like intrusive stuff and i would say a touch of the ocd when i was a kid which i actually think is is fairly common i mean there are some people grow out of it some people don't but i used to have some you know i used to do things like i would lie in bed well more accurately i would lie on the futon that we got because my dad did some sign work for a futon company that went out of business so they paid him in futons and i'd be lying on this futon and i would be looking at the clock radio that i had that had illuminated numbers on it and i would have to like wiggle my eyeballs so that the illuminated numbers went in a rectangular shape and i'd have to do that x number of times before i could go to bed um you know i became obsessed with uh fears that i was going to overhear my parents having sex so I would listen to talk radio. I'd listen to Sally Jesse Raphael's show. I'd listen to Larry King, all that stuff pretty loud overnight just so that I would drown out any potential sex noises.

You know, I think I had forgotten that. I think you have mentioned that before, but it's amazing that basically I have the job I have now because you were afraid of hearing your parents doing it.

Well, the only thing I'll say about that is I had good reason. I mean, these people pumped out seven children.

True.

So once I figured out how babies were made, and then I just did a quick scan of the room at my house, I was like, well, that's happening a lot. There's a lot of receipts around for all of the lovemaking that's been happening between old Walt and Suze.

I will say this. I mean, not related necessarily to the sex thing or even the OCD tendencies, but being a kid is just inherently scary, right? We just don't know how the world works. We know that parents are telling us some things. We also know that there's a whole bunch of things that we're not allowed to do. allowed to know until we're older or at least that was something you and i probably heard a lot growing up i don't know if me i i think you know i'm not around that many parents when i'm around parents like i'm just going to throw this out here um i don't know if i'm right or wrong but i don't get the impression that like phyllis is the type of person who tells her son gus well you can we'll explain it when you're older i feel like parents are more responsible than that these days and say like you're a kid you can we can talk about this now well you know i mean no well

Well, I was going to say the other thing that's that makes that completely pointless as a parenting strategy is the Internet. Yeah. Like there is just nothing that's not knowable now for any person who's capable of typing some words into a search bar. Like when we were kids, there really was stuff that you didn't know. And if your parents weren't interested in telling you at that time, you would just go around not knowing it. That is just not part of the deal anymore.

But also like – but even if it weren't for that, I think that – and I know every family is different and I'm sure there's just a million different approaches to this. But I think that – I mean I think that I grew up in a pretty repressed household and so like – but you even think about the tropes on TV like growing up again. I'm thinking 70s and 80s shows that I watched. Like the trope was always like, oh, you kind of put off having the talk with kids about sex until you absolutely have to because they're old enough and they're starting to understand it. and now it's super awkward like that was a trope that was like a tv show or one episode of almost every sitcom it feels like whereas now i just don't think that like i at least it seems to me like a lot of the parents i'm around it's like no you don't i mean you're just like honest with kids from the beginning and you don't make it seem like sex is something terrible and dirty like you just explain it in ways kids can understand for their age level but you don't like cordon it off and make it seem like this scary mysterious thing i don't know why am i talking about the way we talk to kids about sex on tbtl why am i doing this why did i bring the conversation here that wasn't my point it wasn't just about sex when i brought this up i just think that there's so much as kids even and even today that like you just don't know you gotta you're just still figuring things out so yeah the notion that of course there's no sharks in the swimming pool but there's still all kinds of things in the world you got to figure out so maybe you got to be a

little cautious sometimes well i do i agree with you that being a kid is really scary and you forget about that i think once you become an adult well maybe i have largely forgotten about that but there like you said there's just you you as a kid you're bad at gauging what the real threat of different things is to you like you know you you definitely think hot lava is going to play a

pretty big role in your adult life and you're me and if any kids are listening i'll tell you it does i can't tell you right now you'll understand when you're older but it does right after heart disease it's the number one killer of americans we'll explain heart disease when you're older

They call it the silent bubbling killer.

Lava. The silent steaming killer.

Yep. So I agree with you that it's like being a kid in the world can be very unnerving because you just – you're not able to really – you just don't have enough life experience to know what is and isn't a real threat. But what you were talking about also reminded me or had me wondering, how is it that birds and bees, how did that become the shorthand for talking about procreation? Give them the talk about the birds and the bees. That's what they were always calling it on those shows you're talking about. That's what everybody – I grew up being, you know, are we ready to talk to the kid about the birds and the bees? That just seems like an odd –

It does have something to do with scones. I feel like – what does P to say on this? I feel like somehow they're involved.

But, you know, isn't that a weird – aren't those weird animals to pick for the example of or for the explanation to kids about, like, where babies come from?

I'm looking this up on the fly, and I didn't realize that caps lock was down. And so my search history now just has, why birds and bees in all caps? And it's disturbing. Let me see if I can get the phrase – What's the internet telling you? The birds and bees is a metaphor for explaining the mechanics. Yeah, we know what it is, but why? Why?

i don't know like you just would think and the other question i have now is and maybe some parents will let us know do y'all still have the birds and bees conversations with kids or has the internet also i'm not just talking about adult content on the internet but literally like i feel like if i was a little kid growing up now all of my questions would be answered by the internet i wonder if if if parents having to sit down i mean parents probably have to explain different things now right right a lot of things there's a whole new list of things that we talk about and consider now when it comes to things like gender and maybe a sexual identity or sexual orientation etc but i wonder if the like do you remember andrew where you got the birds and the bees talk from was it your parents was it a kid how did you gather this information by the way i'm

finding i will answer that in a moment um but i will say that this it's not a simple answer some places say we don't know where it comes from. The L.A. Times has a in-depth kind of plunge on this. It says.

The euphemism was inspired by possibly two writers, one being Samuel Coolidge Taylor, who wrote something in Work Without Hope in 1825. Anyway, there's a lot of citations in here. It doesn't make for great radio, but it also doesn't sound like there's a very specific, like, satisfying answer to that. And the talk. I never had the talk, honestly. I mean, I remember literally at some point my mom telling me that you – maybe telling me and my sister that you just pray a lot and that's how you get babies. So that was responsible. Wow. But, I mean, I'm sure I was pretty young. And then that was all I learned. And then the rest I just, you know, figured out.

So you never got to sit down. No. Because I never got to sit down either. I a friend of mine, this kid named Aaron, his mother, whose name was Monique, and she was a like a hairstylist and she smoked cigarettes and she drove a kind of a sporty car circa 1983 or something. I thought she was the most glamorous person I'd ever seen in my life. What it's funny now thinking about is that she was a single mom just like probably – she was probably 25, a single mom just trying to get through her life, living in a probably fairly humble little rental house somewhere, probably spending – whatever didn't get spent on rent was probably getting spent on Virginia Slims and changing the oil on her IROC or whatever she was driving. But I remember she, Aaron explaining to me the process of what happened in a seven-year-old's way because his mom had given him a book about it. So also, by the way, credit to Monique for also, you know, she had given him some kind of a kid-appropriate book that sort of explained, you know, where babies come from. And I remember him explaining it to me and me saying, absolutely not, they come from God. Like, you're flat wrong, bro. And that was the beginning for me of a lifestyle of being wrong about things but being very confident in my opinion.

I do have a very, like, well, I don't know if it's fair to say vivid because it's going back to probably, I remember what wing of the school I was in. So I feel like this must have been third. I'm going to put this around third grade, maybe second grade. I remember being in the restroom in my old elementary school and using the urinal and there was like a wall of urinals. The fact that we were in a restroom, by the way, does not play into this. This is no this isn't like any body talk coming up for whatever that's worth. I just remember that it was those classic urinals that went all the way down to the floor in true like 1980s elementary school fashion. And I just remember me using the restroom with a couple of other kids who were in there And one of them saying to me, you don't know what humping is? Because everybody called it humping back then And I was like, no And then I think another kid saying, you know It's like when a man and a woman roll around a lot together And I guess that was the talk That was the talk I got And that's what made me such a fantastic lover, Luke You know what's funny is like

I have my sort of set of go-to jokes about having a kid when I was 17 and also going to a very religious school that did not talk about birth control at all. They talked about abstinence. And I always sort of say, well, that's a testament to how ineffective abstinence-only education is, which I think that the – at least my anecdotal experience with it is it was very ineffective, not just for me but for a bunch of kids at my school. but what's funny is we also all knew how babies were made by the time we were juniors in high school right like it wasn't like even though the school wasn't like sitting us down and talking about about reproductive health it wasn't like i didn't understand the mechanics of how babies were happening so i almost feel like i'm being a little bit i don't know i'm like letting myself off the hook they're acting as if just because my school wasn't teaching health classes where they would go through the mechanics of it, that somehow I was like literally in the dark on the

process, which of course I wasn't. Yeah, you know, at some point I was in health classes where I guess some of the mechanics were explained now that you say that. It wasn't like there was never any kind of education around that. I went to public school up through seventh grade and then went into like kind of Catholic schools from eighth on. And I don't know at what age. In fact, I remember such a weird place to take this conversation, but like it kind of goes back to just being a kid and just like not knowing a lot about the world and having to figure it out and figure out like what to trust when adults tell you something and what when you're getting the whole story when you're not. And just like, you know, there can be a lot of anxiety.

around the unknown well i mean that that's even that's twofold if not more uh when you're kind of approaching puberty and there's this kind of a even when i feel like teachers i remember having an assembly in the cafeteria in grade school where they start they gave some sort of presentation i think they might have can't remember if they broke us up by boys and girls or not um but they gave some sort of a presentation to maybe like the two combined sixth grade classes or fifth grade classes or whatever it was. And they explained some of the mechanics. And I think they were trying to say like, these are some of the things you can expect as you go through puberty. But there were still like a lot of question marks around it because everybody is going to, you know, everybody's body is different. It's going to change. But I remember it like adding just more anxiety because it just added like, well, we know a bunch of stuff's going to happen. We don't know exactly how or when it's going to happen to you good luck like it's just like it's

so scary maybe i'm lucky that uh i didn't well i didn't get to go to parts of middle school like i literally my parents just pulled me out of school for that so i don't i can't i have this memory it could be very much the mandela effect that my parents had me come home for one of those health classes like that's the kind of household that i was in where you know you hear about those people that are like i don't want my kid to i'm pulling my kid on the days that they're teaching you know human sexuality or whatever it is i don't think it actually happened to me because i don't think i was in a school that taught that because i only went i basically went to two weeks i didn't go to sixth grade but i did go to public school for two weeks in sixth grade because i had to take the cat test which was like the california achievement test um and so i i basically got to go to public school which is a very weird experience when you're a kid is to basically be homeschooled to just be kind of out in the wind doing nothing, and then for two weeks you get to go be around kids your age just for two weeks. So I remember taking the bus to Hamilton Middle School. I remember taking the CAT test. I also remember getting kicked off the bus, which is amazing that I accomplished that in under two weeks, banned from taking the bus for making fun of the bus driver. Again, coming in hot. What was the burn? I forget the specifics. I remember just being flippant and rude to the bus driver over what – I mean, you know what I was probably trying to do? I was probably trying to make myself seem cool to these kids who had already been in school for six months. And then this rando shows up, and then he's, like, trying to make a real impression with everyone. And everyone was probably like, calm down, buddy. But I remember the bus driver literally pulling the bus over. This was on, like, Linden Avenue. Actually, not far, Andrew, from where that Vacation Bible School was. Oh, yeah. And, like, pulling the bus over, opening the door and being like, off, you, off the bus. That's so – I know you've told that before, but it's just astounding.

Like, how far away from home were you?

Not that far. I mean, I was in the – I was a mile or something.

Still, though. I mean, listen, no matter how bad a kid is, you are in charge of their safety in this situation. And you can't just be kicking kids off the bus willy-nilly, in some cases, miles away from their home.

It was a very different time, Andrew.

They give you a pack of cigarettes and say, good luck, chump.

Yeah, I did. But yeah, anyway, so I don't think I was actually at that school when they were doing the health classes. But I'm pretty sure that had I been, my parents would have been like, yeah, we don't want you to do that. Now, maybe what I'm combining this with is I then ended up going to public school in eighth grade because I got kicked out of Christian school. And that's when I went to Washington middle school And maybe there was Some time in there where they did do those Health classes and maybe I was Kept home for those I'm not really sure My parents more than made up for it by babysitting Addie a lot So in as much As they're to blame for me not understanding Reproduction because they wouldn't let me go to The health class they ultimately Paid they really paid the iron price on that Because they did a lot of babysitting

That is interesting it did end up becoming their problem In some ways

Hey speaking of

That's a terrible way for me to talk about your daughter I didn't mean it that way

Family dynamics, no no no, problem or a blessing Yes, blessing It's been on both sides Of that fulcrum point Over the years, but it's very much in blessing Territory these days It's wild having a 27 year old kid Because like, you know She has a whole, obviously she has a whole life That I have nothing to do with anymore She's just an adult human in the world And, like, I was over at her house for Father's Day, and she was like, oh, yeah, I went to Grandma and Grandpa's house, and Gran had helped me build this whole cool fold-out bed for my Subaru so now she can car camp.

Oh, cool.

And she had been, like – she made this, like, really cool system so she can have a bed in there now and stuff. And, yeah, it's like – it's really something else, having a grown kid, I'll tell you what.

Can I ask you a question about that? I know you want to move on. But, you know, as a as a child.

of two parents sometimes i will mark things in my life when i think oh i am i am now the age my parents were when they had me or something along those lines as a father and especially you have a unique situation since you were such a young parent did you do you remember kind of the year because i kind of i know you were a teen dad i don't remember exactly how old you were but like do you remember like almost mentally noting like oh wow adelaide is now the age i was when

we had Adelaide I think that I kind of missed that one I mean I was clocking a lot of that information as I got older the big thing that that I think about now is and this is sort of answering your question but not what I think about a lot now that I'm 45 is how young my parents were I mean they weren't teenagers my mom was like 22 and she had me but I think about you know oh when this happened in my life and my parents were 27 my parents were Addie's age now yeah like I would been five years old so five years old we moved to seattle mount st helens explodes we're renting this house that i decide to get pick up one of the fireplace the fireplace poker and just jack hammer the shit out of all of the like stone around the fireplace which and they have to work out with this very mean landlord of ours they're 27 when that's all yeah yeah like they're adelaide's age you know yeah so that's part of something that kind of just blows my mind is thinking about how young my parents were when dealing with major life challenges when my little brother passed away you know my parents would have been probably 28 my little brother matthew died you know like oh my god 28 years old you got this young family you're broke you just had a kid who you know not to be like dramatic about it rickensian but like you know they couldn't even get a gravestone for the for this guy because we didn't have enough money for that like i mean it was crazy he was six weeks old he died of sids but like all of this stuff that my parents were going through they were so young when it was happening at least i think of 27 as being so young now 28 is being so young so that's um that's a calculation that i that i now have more awareness of as a 45 year old just oh maybe my parents weren't great at everything also they were children yeah um and i guess this is really a coded message to addy to cut me some freaking and also also you know there's some we

always say this but there's some privilege there too because there are there are also kids way younger than than Adelaide who are um who are still in those situations who had you know who are who are struggling in in starting a family potentially a family that they didn't expect to be starting and whatnot like it's it's nice that you have created a a world for Adelaide where she's not struggling with these things by sending her to sex education she'll never let me forget

Every year, she sends me a card on her birthday that says, one more year that I haven't had a child, but I'm beating you. Starting at age 17, she documents it every year. She's like, happy 10-year anniversary to me waiting to have a child until I'm ready, Dad. Good for her. She said something to me that was very, very touching, actually, when we were hanging out the other day. And I don't think I'm oversharing, but she said, hey, what do you do with the books that you have to read for LiveWare? And I was like, ah, you know, I give them away or I donate them to the library or whatever. I keep some of them and she said hey can you give those to me she goes because someday when I have kids I'm going to be like hey see all these books these are all people that your granddad interviewed oh wow yeah and I was like we never talk about that kind of stuff I try to not be one of those parents who's like you know hey when are you going to make me a granddad or what have you you know it's a little that's a little played but just the idea that she was thinking about like the word legacy is very weird to throw around but the idea that like I'm probably going to be somebody's grandfather someday like i will be i will be a a character in the story that is like oh yeah your granddad luke he did like that time your granddad luke uh interviewed uh the guy from the flaming lips and then they'll of course they'll be like what's the flaming lips and they'll be like uh it's like um well you know ariana grande's child terry grande the famous singer you know terry grande terry like flaming lips were kind of like a terry grande a very long time ago also i sometimes order a terry grande at the coffee shop by my house but they don't have splenda so it doesn't actually taste right to me but anyway just the way that she was thinking about uh wanting to have something that was a way to refer to me to like potentially her kids if that ends up happening i've that's just a context that i have never imagined myself yet yeah i you know i'm pretty used to the context of being like someone's dad, but I am not used to the idea of being someone's granddad or being a character in a story of, oh, when you're, this happened to your granddad, Lou. Yeah. So it was, uh, it actually was very touching and it was, uh, it made me happy to, to hear that, uh, that, you know, she's, she's got, uh, she's got plans to memorialize me through the books that I have. to read to interview various people for my other job. Right. I thought for sure she was just going to sell them at Twice Told Tales. Like I used to do back in the day. Hey, Dad, what do you do with those extra books? I got a job now, but I could always use a little extra cash to get me out of a few jams.

Do you even know how complicated that would make me feel? Because part of me would be obviously kind of bummed that she had just lied to me about what her plans were for these books. But part of me, as a former sketchball who used to take every free book that came into KUOW and then go resell it at half price books I would have to really tip my cap to her on her game like cooking up that story that very like sweet story about like hey I'm you know I will have a whole shelf of these books and then I'll tell my kids hey these are these are things that your granddad knew about because he interviewed the people if she made that up just to get free books from me I mean And honestly, game-recognized game.

It would be pretty good. That's three-dimensional chess right there.

Got to give it to her. All right. We should take a quick break, and then we're going to come back and explain why you shouldn't send your bowling ball to the recycling plant. And we'll play you a two-minute podcast trailer that you won't be able to unhear. How you living, Jay Piven? All coming up here on TVTL. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. This is one of the weirder ways to get into a Top Story on this show. But I'm just going to try to, I hope the listeners can follow along here. So we are in the midst, Andrew and I are in the midst of recording some TBTL summer games shows. We've still got two more slots that are yet to be filled. So if you have an idea for a game, either one that you made up related to TBTL or just some fun thing you saw on the Internet that you think would keep us occupied for roughly a half hour, please do send it in to us and put summer games in the subject line. But yesterday we were recording a round of these summer games. And I casually mentioned this thing to you, Andrew, the story about bowling balls, and it was maybe the most intrigued I've heard you about any any little dazzling deep that I've told you in a long time. Like you, you sounded, you sounded different. You sounded like someone who had just had their flabbergasted button pushed.

You sounded engaged for the first time ever. Is that the word for it? That's the sound. Now, don't get me wrong. What is it?

Not less bored.

Don't let the audience get it wrong. I'm not interested in the whole story. Nobody's got energy for that. There is one specific dazzling detail in this that I did show a modicum of interest in, but I want everybody to know, for the most part, I remain generally checked out.

Okay. So the reason that this is a weird way to get into the story is because when you listen to the summer games, you're going to hear the moment, but this isn't going to happen for almost a month. A month from now, you're going to hear the moment when I told Andrew about these bowling balls and he got less checked out. But now we're actually talking about the story. So future us doesn't know that we have now we're now discussing the story.

We know future us knows it.

Future us knows it. Past us didn't know that future us is going to do it. There. Thank you for clearing that up. so um i saw this article it was in uh new york magazine it was actually a great piece by eleanor cummins and it's one of the more red stories on new york magazine right now no you can't recycle a bowling ball but people sure keep trying uh eleanor went out to uh talk to uh the guy who his name is tom outerbridge and he works at the sims recycling plant in sunset park in brooklyn and every this is what eleanor is writing every day a collection of trucks from brooklyn and barges from queens and the bronx arise arrive at the municipal recycling center loaded with old phone books and plastic sporks metal faucets and glass bottles it's the country's largest recycling facility of its kind um uh you head into tom outerbridge's office and you'll see a few discarded bowling balls that are lined up and ready to roll um when tom outerbridge started Working as the facility general manager More than 15 years ago He started rescuing the wayward bowling balls But he very quickly discovered That he couldn't keep up Because he gets an average of 3-4 bowling balls a day Or roughly 1,200 bowling balls a year

How In just This is the moment How 3-4 bowling balls a day How many people have bowling balls That are being thrown away Well they're trying to recycle them But getting rid of them Why are there so many bowling balls I mean three or four bowling balls a day luke i don't know how many friends or acquaintances you have generally speaking but it's in the hundreds think about just do a quick mental scan of everybody in your life any of them got bowling balls no and also i think this is interesting because we're

talking about new york city now if this was milwaukee yep or somewhere in the midwest that might be kind of known for that bowling lifestyle maybe you could see but i mean new york is a highly urban environment there are bowling alleys but they're they're not on every corner um it's ironic by the way that my favorite bowling alley in in new york is in brooklyn is actually in sunset park where where this recycling place is as well but yeah you're right like i i can't think of one person i know who has a bowling ball um my mom used to have one she had

a white bowling ball you know that we bowled together right we had we won a trophy i believe we came in first place in our uh mother son league mother bowl mother bowl in brunswick ohio i'm

pretty sure wow yeah which is also interesting because brunswick is a major bowling brand it is but unrelated i believe oh seriously yeah i'm pretty sure i don't you might have told this story and maybe i forgot it but that's kind of amazing you want you have does your mom have the

trophy do you have the trophy you know my mom has moved around quite a bit now and has downsized quite a bit. I doubt she still has the trophy, but she's a sentimental person. She might. I'm not sure.

I mean, does it say like Mother Son Champions Brunswick, Ohio 1985 or something? Oh, this was in 2014.

Oh, okay. So it says 2014. She probably still has it. I believe it has one of those little, you know, it's like one of those classic kind of cheapo trophies. Actually, it was big. It was a very tall trophy. I believe it was the I believe it had some sort of almost a – would it be like a laurel wreath kind of vibe at the top, I feel like, in the – like maybe there was a circle.

Well, it was also an official Sundance selection.

It was. Maybe I'm making that part up. I feel like there was a single bowler. I don't think it was like an adult and a child bowler depicted in the trophy, but I believe it was a single bowler.

The statue was just like really specific. It's like a mother with her arm around a small child.

And there's a cockatiel on her shoulder, and it's eating a credit card for some reason.

Explaining to him where babies come from and his prayer. That moment just perfectly captured in a bowling trophy.

You know, it's by that statue where the kid found the hand. Do you remember that from Arrested Development? No. There's some statue that represents, I believe, fatherhood or something, but it's like a statue of a kid reaching up, and he's holding a hand, but all it is is an adult hand. Anyway Okay so back to my story

1,200 bowling balls a year Are coming into this one recycling facility In Brooklyn And I love how this guy Tom Outerbridge This is almost like I don't know if it's a metaphor Andrew Or just a way of kind of thinking About a lot of things in life He talks about when he first got there And he was running the recycling facility He said It was like walking on the beach for the first time and you're like oh look at this shell it's amazing before you realize there are shells everywhere that was him in the bowling ball like the first three that came in he was like holy shit bowling balls and then three weeks later he's like bowling balls it's a constant stream of them um uh this is again more from eleanor's piece people seem to think that because bowling balls are plastic they are the same as like takeout containers but they are not Breaking bowling balls apart and selling the individual components for scrap is not logistically or economically feasible, so they end up just going to the landfill, which is kind of interesting, Andrew. They do make okay trash, Eleanor writes in the piece, citing a former New York City Department of Sanitation official, Benjamin Miller. Bowling balls don't emit greenhouse gases. They don't leach anything into the earth or into the water. So I guess if you're going to have to throw something in the ground Bowling balls are not the worst thing So there's that I also am dubious that people

Think that bowling balls are recyclable I think people are just lazy

Well they could put them in the garbage I think what it is To the degree I don't think garbage is handled by weight In New York City But maybe it's that They think this is heavy Although the jury is still out right On what weighs more a pound of feathers Or a pound of bowling balls Scientists will never figure it out But like I wonder if some part of people's calculation Is this seems like I'm going to get in trouble if I put it in the garbage Because it's like very dense and heavy So I'm going to throw it I'm with you that I don't think people think it's getting recycled I think that they're trying to get rid of it.

Yeah. And they're just like, and maybe part of them, maybe they feel a little bit better. Oh, it's probably recyclable. And they just throw it in there. But deep down, they know it's not. They're just trying not to think about it much. Kind of like when I throw away a couple of batteries. You're not supposed to throw away batteries. I would never do that. What are you supposed to do? Take them to the dump? I think you are supposed to probably collect your used batteries. And I'm talking about like just double A's or C's or whatever. You know, I'm not talking about the rechargeable stuff. Although those would need to eventually be disposed of properly too. But yeah, I don't believe you're supposed to just throw those in the garbage can. And you're supposed to collect them and then, yeah, I think take them to a special processing center at the dump.

OK, quick update or a quick explainer on this sort of what the typical bowling ball that you would use if you just went to the bowling alley and, you know, just went and found one that seemed proper for your hand and weight, et cetera. They range about 6 to 16 pounds. Eleanor writes, these house balls that are filling up the racks at your local bowling alley are effectively indestructible. Since the 1970s, most have been covered in polyester, a durable plastic that's in everything from pillow padding to seatbelts. These things were so hard that they were indestructible, says Del Warren, a former bowling ball designer turned coach. But there's also no performance in them. So the bowling balls that we can use for free at the bowling alley, they're designed to exist forever. They're not designed to be particularly effective as a bowling ball. They just pretty much roll straight If you're lucky they roll straight And the number one thing that The number one reason that they no longer exist At a bowling alley like if they put in one of these balls Is theft It's not that the bowling balls break down The bowling balls are pretty much indestructible But people do steal them Probably the same people that are eventually trying to sneak them into the recycling

Yeah probably

They brought a bowling ball home and they weren't ready for it This was something that I was fascinated by Because I've seen those people You know You don't fuck with the Jesus I've seen those really awesome bowlers who can spin the ball and it does that cool hook thing. They're using what are called reactive bowling balls. And the way that a reactive bowling ball works, so obviously they're getting their own made. You said your mom had one. The reactive balls combine a different plastic called polyurethane with a liquid plasticizer that creates millions of tiny holes in the sort of outer layer of the bowling ball. As the ball rolls down an oiled lane, it absorbs some of the grease or the oil, which is what gives it the hook to hit the pins from the certain angle you're trying to do it. Who knew that the grease was involved in it? I guess I just assumed you're spinning it. This is physics, right? You're spinning the ball in a certain way, and it's going to kick over when it's like velocity towards the pins, I don't know, slows to the degree that then the velocity moving sideways kicks in. I know that's not how that should be described from a physics standpoint, but that's how my brain interprets it.

Yeah, and of course, they're really cracking down now. The bowling leagues are cracking down on using the sticky stuff on those balls, and it's weird that they would just introduce it kind of mid-tournament, but this is where we are. Yeah, I mean, that oil on the lane thing, though, I mean, that's fascinating. I had no idea. And also, but just picture that. I mean, it must be happening on such a micro level, right? I mean, that ball is rolled, you know, well, at least 20 times per game. Actually, yeah, at least 20 times per game. So, yeah, I mean, that oil. Well, not at least. Oh, no, no, no. Of course not. It could be as few as, I believe, 12. No, as few as 13. 13, because if you get strikes all the way through, then you get the three. You sandbag the 10th. What does that mean, sandbag the 10th? You get all three. You get three strikes.

So if you basically bowled a perfect game, I'm guessing that would be because there's 10 frames, right? That seems right, yeah. And you get to roll the ball up to three times in the 10th frame if you're getting strikes.

Anyway, just my point is that is fascinating. And it's not like it's like a sponge rolling down. It's just happening on such a micro level, but that's fascinating.

Yeah, the life of a reactive bowling ball is actually brutally short, Andrew. At a certain point, a ball can't absorb any more oil. Many bowling professionals report a corresponding change in their ball behavior in just three games. To win, bowlers throw a few test runs. They watch how the ball responds to the unique oil pattern on the lane, and they adjust their strategy accordingly. Isn't that wild? Like, I mean, I don't think that the idea is that the bowling ball is itself like, you know, you roll three games. Now you got to, like, get a new one because that would be prohibitively expensive. But I think that each ball is going to react differently to how that lane, how they oil that lane up. And so you can kind of, like, adjust what you're doing accordingly.

Yeah. And then as your ball gets older, because you said you can start affecting it almost immediately as your ball gets older.

The more you're kind of like growing with it in a certain way, it sounds like. I haven't read this, but that's interesting because then you're going to continue to adjust as that ball gets more and more seasoned. Right.

If there's a way to reuse a bowling ball, someone's tried it. People on Pinterest turned them into lawn ornaments. A Reddit user claimed to have used them in target practice. And in 1987, a zoo in Illinois gave them to animals as toys. But they damaged cages, plugged draining holes, and inspired an alarming possessiveness in at least one male lion. That lion was real Homer Simpson. Yeah. So anyway, I guess the takeaway from this is. Don't give a lion a bowling ball. Don't give a lion. Never give a lion a bowling ball. Never give a lion a bowling ball.

That is fascinating. Hardly. I don't know if you specifically said this in the somewhat weird intro to the story about the time-space continuum and how this kind of – we stumbled on this yesterday. You said specifically during the show that we prerecorded that we'll air later, you said, yeah, I saw a story, but it just didn't seem like good TBTL material. But then I reacted to it in the moment, and now this is great TBTL material.

Yeah, it is. I'm glad that you reacted that way, Andrew, because it put me over, tipped me over into wanting to talk about it. And I think our listeners, again, really the credit goes to Eleanor Cummins, who wrote the great piece in New York Magazine. So go check that out. Andrew, my friend.

What's going on? What's going on?

Well, I'm just staring down the barrel of playing you this How You Live in Jay Piven trailer.

Okay. Yeah, let's start with this because I love the name. Like, so far, all I know is Jeremy Pivens has a podcast, and it's called How You Live in J. Piven. I got to say, every time you say that, it makes me chuckle. So, so far, I'm not negative on this. You unironically like that. I do, yes. Unironically. I'm not joking. I think that's a funny name for a podcast. I think it's good. It actually grabs my attention. And, you know, how many podcast names fly by me in any given day that I will never, you know, probably even try out. But like there's something about that name that is so silly and goofy that it makes me want to check it out for real.

OK, hold on. I am sending you and I'm sending it to both your phone text and your email account so I don't miss anything. I'm sending you the actual logo, the photo for the podcast of the picture of Jeremy Piven on it. And I want to know if seeing it written out in any way, it's taking a minute. The Internet is like, I don't know if we're allowed to transmit this. Did you get this on the dark web?

Let me ask you this while I wait for it to come through. Is there a picture of Piven Nifsozi wearing sunglasses?

He is not wearing sunglasses, but he is wearing prescription glasses. He is smoking a cigar. And it's all lowercase, how you live in J. Piven. And he's in front of like an old timey microphone, which tells you that podcastery is about to happen, my friend. and there is a certain uh smugness uh to the photo that it what he's got an eye he's got like a he's

he's got a jeremy piven does ira glass on the cover of cigar aficionado that's exactly the

three worlds that are great point i almost wonder if they didn't have him wear those glasses so that he would bear a certain kind of subtle uh a comparison or whatever he would look a little bit like Ira like he's wearing a blazer I mean if you squint you could and you took the cigar out of his maw you might be like oh is that Ira Glass like there's a there's a there's a similarity I'm

telling you this is exactly if they asked Ira Glass to be on the cover of Cigar Aficionado this would be it only there's a little bit too much of a the the grin is too wide and toothy I

would say um when I told you we were going to do the story today you were like man you really hate Jeremy Piven and in fact I believe what you said was all you know about Jeremy Piven is that I

really hate him no i know other things about him but when i think of jeremy piv and i think of you right away and way way way back in the early days of tbtl you and jen really piling on and about what you thought what a big d-bag you guys thought he was because he basically he bowed out of some huge broadway show because he claimed he had um he had mercury poisoning from eating too much sushi yes and that's and i always think of that i and it was it wasn't spider-man afraid of the dark but it was some huge it was some huge broadway hit that i'm not thinking of right now but i always remember you guys just being like you didn't get mercury poisoning you just didn't

want to finish the run yes i had forgotten about that until you brought it up and that was originally why we were kind of down on him i think the reason that jeremy piven's existence rubs me slightly wrong is because i actually really liked him uh the first few times i saw him He's in singles, and he has a very memorable moment. Wait.

it's singles right it's not uh reality bites sometimes i blend those movies together in my head because they're from around the same era i think it's in i think he's in singles and he plays this kind of like slightly oddball like um front you know cashier guy at like a pharmacy or something and then also you know what i really liked him on is he was sort of like ellen's friend on the show ellen and i thought they gave him some good lines i actually really liked that show ellen back and you know, back in the back in the day. So like I and and, you know, the whole thing with Jeremy Piven was that he was a little bit of a schlub. That was kind of his vibe is, you know, had a receding hairline. He was, you know, he was not super fit guy. He was. And I guess that was I liked his character. He was a little bit like I said, a little bit of a schlub. But I thought he was funny and likable. And then at some point and everyone's allowed to go through whatever personal transformation they want to go go through but at some point he just kind of reinvented himself and he got all fit and he got a hair transplant and then he was ari gold on entourage and and he went from being kind of this schlub to being like the coolest guy on the show or at least a very kind of he went from being a real beta to being a real alpha and i was it on tbtel

were we just talking about him recently because i'm having this really weird deja vu i think i

might have mentioned him in the context of people who famous actors who I think had a hair. Yeah, okay.

Because, yeah, because it came up. I'm remembering you said, I mean, for example, he was the person who played the character of George in the kind of meta Seinfeld pilot episode. And so, therefore, if you're playing somebody whose whole thing is you look like George Costanza, yeah, that's an everyman schlubby kind of guy.

And, you know, like I said, everybody, whether they're Whether they're Piven or whether they're just living, Andrew, they get to do whatever they want to do and people get to present themselves however feels comfortable to them. So I'm not like – like who knows? The chances are decreasing by the hour. But maybe at some point I'll actually get my bleep together and get back in good shape and we'll be proud of that and I'll want to like be posting pictures of that or something. Like I don't know. It's not fair to Jeremy Piven that I want him to stay in the lane of being a schlub, but it seemed like at about the same time that he came out of his cocoon that he emerged from the Crystalis and became the modern version of Jeremy Piven. It seemed like a lot of kind of not great behavior followed and a lot of just kind of being very – he just gives off this strong vibe of being very, very self-satisfied. It's also hard to know how much of that is the character of Ari Goldie played on Entourage and how much of that is really him. But I will say he seems to have, you know, kind of worn the mask long enough that it now fits. So let me, without further ado, play you just a little bit of the trailer for How You Live in J. Piven. This is filmed, I assume, like in his house or something. It's a video on YouTube. I also have the sense that this podcast is really going to be a podcast that has a video component, like as in, you know, they're filming it as well. which i guess is like how i mean the joe rogan show is an audio podcast but also something they film i guess this is probably more the norm than my old like you know 19 or my my 2000 actually no it'd be more like my yeah my 2010 idea of what a podcast is um it's still i still don't think of something on video as being a podcast even though 99 of the rest of the world does but anyway here's

a little how you live in with jay piven oh hello jeremy piven here i'll mention that he is wearing

a smoking jacket uh and so he's like a yeah he's wearing like a smoking jacket he's in his house uh he was reading a book and he kind of did that move that i have done about a thousand times where it's like oh i didn't see you there so he's got a cigar too so he's just starting with the oh i didn't see you there um and now he's uh on the stairs walking on the stairs talking about what

this podcast is going to be living rooms for years not in a creepy way performing for you you know let's back it up here i've been in your living rooms for years not in a creepy way performing for you you know me from movies like serendipity old school and of course ari gold entourage maybe you've seen that or maybe you've been in a cave in kabul what maybe you've been in

a cave in kabul does he mean kabul kabul i think yeah like um i'm unclear on what that what that what city he's talking about but anyway um continue school and of course ari golden entourage

maybe you've seen that or maybe you've been in a cave in kabul i know what you were thinking we need another podcast said literally no one ever but

has anyone has anyone used that format andrew of said literally no one ever

And as somebody who's made the joke many times that the world has too many podcasts and probably will continue to, it's just like so far everything he's said has been some sort of a cliche of a joke. And I'm not saying that I have not made these jokes myself or won't make them in the future, but he's building his entire promo around these most cliche things to say about, oh, I've been in your living room. Not in a creepy way. Music takes a pause there. Like all of this shit is real tired. And the, you know, the kind of the fact that he's saying it in this sort of like overblown sleazy way and it's self-satisfied is not helping.

Yeah, like these are all the life cycle. I think the life cycle of like a joke or a way of describing something is unless you're the person who invented it, unless you're the person who invented said no one ever. Then you're going to be like me where you saw it at some point and you thought, oh, that's clever. And then you used it for a while and then eventually it was being used constantly and widely and repeatedly. And then you thought, OK, I think that's been used enough. And then you just moved on from it. That's the that's how this typically goes. But it would appear that Jeremy Piven is still rolling out some of these some of these old chestnuts.

Well, if you don't mind me saying, I actually think it's pretty funny. Not now.

Now, here's the question. See, I just laughed genuinely at that because there has been enough time. Enough time has gone by that I'm ready. It's like fashion. It's cyclical. I am ready. What is the movie where they said, well, technology, it's cyclical? There's a movie where somebody says that. Oh, it's like technology, it's cyclical. You're right. Which makes me laugh so hard.

I think you brought that up before. That's funny. I actually am not ready for not to come back. I never thought not was funny. And I think that, you know, it was only supposed to be funny in how stupid it was. You know what I mean? That came out of Wayne and Garth, right? Like not. And so it's funny how then it became like something that these doofuses said then became something that all of America as doofuses really did say. And I've always hated that construction. But it also is just another version of the construction of said no one ever as the record scratches out the music.

You know what's funny is everything that Jeremy Pevin has said so far in this trailer is something that Michael Scott would say, the character of Michael Scott would say if he was launching a podcast. Like that's what's so beautiful about The Office and their kind of sense. Are you now thinking of a world in which Michael Scott, like Steve Carell and the character of Michael Scott does a podcast and how great that would be as high art?

I'm just picturing I wish that I wish that they could call him into service to actually redo this trailer word for word. But as all the work coming out of. Yes, I'm just picturing all of this coming. This is going to be my coping mechanism for the rest of this tape is picturing Michael Scott saying it. All right, here we go.

We were thinking we need another podcast said literally no one ever. But how about this? It's called How You Live in J. Piven. I get to interview my friends, like the great Jamie Foxx, who drops the gloves, says whatever he wants.

Even when Ray came along in the Oscar, right, I did.

So this is him, obviously, like, sitting, interviewing, and it's all video, of course, him interviewing Jamie Foxx, who is a delight and a national treasure. And I bet you would be very fun to listen to for an hour. I'm not even kidding. The Oscar at my house.

I gave it to my management. I said, take this shit. It's a different kind of power. Like, I almost started talking in an English accent when I got it. Ray was more about the guy.

I get to interview people that I'm fascinated by, like the great Mark Cuban.

Now, I want to mention, he said the great Jamie Foxx and the great Mark Cuban. They're both great. And Lord knows the listeners of this show know that I have about four probably like ways to describe people or things. It's not that I'm some great creative person when it comes to. I'm sure that – I mean I literally said the other day on the show, I described exactly how the first like four minutes of every single show goes that I'm hosting and it is just a – it's just a giant template, template rather, and a template. A template. So I'm – It's the white stuff.

It's the white stuff. Another word for snow.

So I'm not trying to act like – I'm not trying to act like I am this font of creativity who is just constantly reinventing the wheel. I'm pretty much just doing the same thing every single day. But I do feel like if we were recording a sizzle reel for TBTL, what I would probably try to not do is describe the first two guests with the exact same word.

Because also this is clearly written, too. As we're ours if we're doing a promo. And edited. Yeah.

So you had time to – you could have gone back and said, oh, can we say the fascinating Mark Cuban?

They don't call him one take J for nothing, Luke.

when is mark human going to be president i don't know you know it's not my dream job man i'd rather have another eight episodes of entourage

I'm going to take that to mean that Mark Cuban was on Entourage at some point. Yeah, he must have been. Probably, which would have kind of made sense.

I have real relationships with these people, like my guy Common.

The first film I got to do was with you, man. Smoking Aces, and that was one of the best experiences I've had.

I saw you on stage at the House of Blues, and I immediately called up Joe Carnahan, the director, writer, and I said, Joe, we found our dude.

Man, thank you, brother. Thank you.

listen thank you now now give me a job yeah man um i find that to also be kind of poor form to tell common that you got him the gig on the movie because like what how's he supposed to respond to that yeah yeah like if you do someone a solid i mean like it's it's sort of it's it's sort of framed as like jeremy piven talking about common's talent and like oh i knew you were so talented the first time i saw you the first time i saw you on that microsoft commercial um you know doing an inspirational rap about cloud computing i knew you were the guy no but like that's also just a way of kind of letting common know that you were the reason he got to be in the movie

which i feel like is a little douchey kind of taking credit for some um his acting success if that was his first did he start that by saying that was my first acting gig yeah i believe so i

think i think that's um that's what he was saying to sit with the incredible tiffany haddish my

vagina is a house like everybody can't come inside your house don't throw house parties my grandma taught me how to value myself as a woman right right and there's been 39 motherfuckers in my

house boom beat up uh sorry i should have told people there was going to be a swear but also uh uh boom is an interesting response to that statement from tiffany haddish that doesn't

i mean that doesn't bother me i don't know that i would i don't know what else i would say you

You would quit the show.

No, but I might say Boom.

I believe if Tiffany Haddish started telling you about her sexual life, what did you feel deeply? I guess I should give him a break on that. That's one where, you know, how do you respond to somebody sharing that information?

Yeah, he's just – that doesn't bother me. He's just giving – you know, he's giving her her space.

Okay.

I've been on the road.

I've been doing stand-up, and I really feel like – Oh, this is another thing. Okay, so we transition from Boom to him saying he's been doing stand-up, which is like – Based just on this video, I don't feel like that is playing to Jeremy Piven's strength.

I've been on the road. I've been doing stand-up, and I really feel like all roads lead to the How You Live in J. Piven podcast.

Let's go.

Oh, okay. So that's one of the things that jumped out at me was that he's been doing stand-up, which I was unaware of. Also, and on this day, Andrew, of all days, when the health of one Biz Marquis appears to be very dire.

Oh, no, I didn't know that. What's going on with Biz? Yeah.

Well, there was a lot of talk on social media yesterday that Biz Marquis had passed away. His family released a statement saying that he is alive, but he is in a pretty serious medical condition and is being taken care of. Yeah. Oh, shit. So, I mean, this is, I guess you could say a very weird coincidence that we're playing this today. But what is this off-brand Just a Friend that they are playing under this part of the video?

The How You Live in J. Piven podcast. Let's get into it.

How You Live in J. Piven premieres July 14th with new episodes dropping every Wednesday on Apple Spot.

So instead of, you know, I picked the wrong key. Instead of it being like, I can't even do it. It's like how Vanilla Ice got away with using the bass line from Under Pressure. because instead of going dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun, his went dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun or something like it was like one note off, this is literally like the exact same song, but the last note goes up instead of going down,

which is very strange to me. Dropping every Wednesday on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to rate, review, or subscribe. It really helps us. You can also watch us on YouTube. Just search How You Live in Jay Piven. Let's get into it.

I don't want to get into it. You're not interested in getting into it? I don't want to get into it. I know that he said we should do that, but, yeah, I came in with –

What about the great Mark Cuban?

I was – wait, I thought Jamie Foxx was great. I got it all written down somewhere. I was really wondering if maybe I – not that I wanted to be difficult, But I was really, you know, hoping to keep an open mind and maybe hearing this in a way that maybe you didn't, because I don't have I don't have a lot of feelings about Jeremy Piven one way or the other. I just think it's funny that like you had kind of one sided beef with him back in 2009 or whatever. Oh, and by the way, oh, I looked up that I looked up the show and I already read it's like steer the plow. Does that ring a bell? Some speed the plow, speed the plow. That's what it was. Sorry.

That's what that's what he had to end up kind of quitting because of supposed mercury poisoning, which, again, that's just like that's a almost 15 year old story that I only know through the lens of you, Luke, before I met you. So I don't even know if I'm clinging on to the right details of that story. But, yeah, no, I wanted to keep an open mind when you played this. I actually like the name of the show. I stand by that. But everything else after that really took a nose dive like fast.

yeah i mean it'll probably be the number one podcast on itunes for it will be for like a

week or whatever that's the way it works 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't be having so much fun just remember that life is this one You can be nothing but one day

Luke, you may have noticed that I have not sent you the Blur's Days this week. There's only a bunch more people telling me I'm right about VBS. No, I ran out of those. But I only have a few here, so I figured I'll just take care of it and you can be our sound machine guy. How do you feel about that? I love it.

And also, by the way, I want to just tell you, everything's coming up burbs. While we were talking about Piven, I was inspired to tweet out a tweet with that logo that I sent you, with that art. And I wrote, I'm honored to have witnessed both the birth and death of the podcast medium in my lifetime. And I got that beloved like from Julie Rovner. NPR health correspondent, Julie. And noted quirky enthusiast. Once you get Julie Rovner smashing the like on your tweet about Jeremy Piven, Andrew. Well, I'll just put it this way. Let's get into it.

All right. First Blur's Day comes from Ian, who says, happy birthday. Nope. I already messed it up. Happy Blur's Day to Justice. Want me to take these? No, I got it. I got it. Get in my head. Let's get into it. Ian says, happy Blur's Day to Justice. he is the 10 who wrote the iTunes review that is on tbtl.net Luke you know that right if you go to tbtl.net every other show like in the format of APM's kind of web thing there's always some quote from often they're like from a famous person it's like a blurb to describe the podcast to get you interested in it and ours is from a tbtl listener just credited as tbtl listener the best way to waste the maximum amount of time while being marginally informed of current events. That was apparently written by Listener Justice on iTunes, and now we are profiting off it, so thank you for that, Justice.

Wait, so I know. I've met Listener Justice. Do we have two Justices?

I don't know. Is either one Justice Sheffield? I met her.

Listener Justice came to travel a vast distance to come to a live show. It was in Chicago. Actually, you know what it was? Because it was Live Wire with Reggie Watts that happened to be at the Lincoln Theater in Chicago. And Justice came. She came all the way in from Wisconsin for it. Ian here.

Unless we have a different Justice. Ian here is using the pronoun he when describing Justice unless that's a typo on my part.

Wow, so we have two Justices. That's two more listeners named Justice than I would have ever expected.

Now I'm very nervous. I hope I didn't mess up. I hope I wasn't editing this and knocked off an S. But I'll read it as I have it. and just trust the system. Ian says, Happy Blur's Day. Trust the process. Happy Blur's Day to Justice. He is the 10 who wrote the iTunes review that is on tbtl.net. Happy Blur's Day. Have fun wasting time this summer. Nice. That's from Ian. Allie says, Happy Blur's Day to Jamie in Mississippi. Hey, Jamie in Mississippi. Allie says, She's a total dream, a fantastic 10. TBTL at the Sunstroke house is my favorite memory three cheers for jamie now that's also just i mean that's like after the game

like after the you know the super bowl when you see all of the players from opposing teams just like shaking each other's hands and hugging and just being like we went through this together because if i remember right ally was second place in the listener the new listener competition or whatever we were calling that thing the thing that jamie actually won which is why we ended up at her house alley i believe had gotten second place yes that's absolutely right and i love that there was no hard feelings she wasn't trying to undermine jamie she was there with her lovely family and was like was just you know i just thought that was sportsmanship at its absolute best it was it was a beautiful thing to see happy blurs day jamie from alley and your

tales luke and andrew kind of doing a radio voice here i think that piven tape got into me dig it let's get into it let's get into it how many times are we gonna say that as a joke before

it's just because it's no longer a joke and we're just saying it because it's a nice it's an easy

transition i'd say give it a week here i have a little weird story for you do you want to hear a weird little story 60 seconds less that sort of involves get into it i can't remember if i think you were doing this consciously because of a format we had at one point on the show where you didn't want to say let's take a break but you did say let's do this does this ring a bell or maybe it's just something that you say a lot let's do this i think i probably i do think that's one of

my verbal crutches or conversational crutches i'm trying to think because i do for live wire we do a lot of playing tape that was recorded like live in the theater but then i record a new Intro to it and I think I will say I don't know if I say let's do this for that but I say A lot of times I say Take a listen to this or alright let's do this Yeah I do think I say that sometimes

I feel like there was a time On TBTL where that was maybe the last Thing you said like let's do this but now You will often still say it like Well let's do this let's take a break and we Come back blah blah blah and anyway every Now and then I find myself talking to myself and I'll say let's do this And then I think of you that's all that's my Story I'm so glad but it'll be like a small thing like I'll just be puttering around the kitchen and I'll be like hey what should I do make the ice or make the coffee and I might think okay let's do this and then I start making the coffee. You're like

should I recycle this bowling

ball? Alright let's do this. Let's do this. Alex in Seattle says I'd like to wish a happy Blur's Day to my girlfriend and TBTL progenitor Sarah. Sarah has truly been an inspiration this past year she tolerated our home becoming an online classroom, continued to pursue her art, photography and music practiced her Spanish, cultivated a jungle of plants in our apartment, and got an A-plus on her calculus test. Congratulations on the A-plus and making it through this year, everybody. Congratulations to Sarah and happy birthday. I don't know why I said everybody that. Sarah says happy birthday to me. Pardon me. Sarah says happy birthday to my Architen friend, Lauren. Oh, we know them. Yes, we do. Looking forward to more Portland adventures this summer. Have a great day celebrating with the brown cat.

That's from Sarah to Lauren. Hey, Andrew.

You don't have to say everything that you think. I got to go drop off a brown cat. I'm not saying that I didn't also have thoughts like that, but I didn't say it. It's okay. Sometimes even on a podcast, it's okay not to say these things.

Andrew, you know my motto on this show for years that I have to live up to, which is let's get into it. When I have a thought about brown cats, we've got to get into it. Let's get out of that. Let's get into this. Let's get out of this.

Let's get out of this. That's the TVTL. That's how the TVTL listeners, that's their experience of listening to the show.

Oh, let's get out of this.

That'll be the new blurb on the podcast page. It'll say, TVTL is like an escape room. You definitely want to get out of it, but you just don't know how.

All right, final one here. This is Kevin in Charlottesville. How about, can we retitle the show, What's That Stank with Burbank? Better that I wrote down, Piven on a Prayer.

Just a thought that came into my head earlier.

No, that's great. We've got that. Where's my bell? God damn it. Where's my bell? Piven on a Prayer.

All right. Finally here, Kevin in Charlottesville says, My daughter Annie is turning nine this week. Annie is quite a kid. She is progressing very well with her pre-teen eye roll and general snark for anything that we think is cool. She often DJs breakfast from her iPhone playlist, the same EDM songs with slightly different beats. It was wonderful the first 126 times. Happy Blur's Day, Annie. Happy Blur's Day, Annie. That's awesome. Yeah. There you go. Happy Blur's Day, everybody.

That was a fun show.

It was. My eyes are watering for laughter. Pivot on a Prayer is a great show title.

Okay, there it is. Genuinely delighted in me.

Okay, any ideas of what we should go out with?

For a song.

Let's see here. We could go out with Shonen Knife singing Top of the World.

Okay. A Carpenter song. Yeah, this is. We've been talking a lot about Carpenter's covers of late. Oh, I can't remember if that was in the shows that have now been put on the internet or if that's in the future. Is that a future us problem?

That's a future us problem. I believe in one of the upcoming shows I...

mentioned this compilation, which I've mentioned many times before, from the 90s, called If I Were a Carpenter. It came out in 1994 and it featured a bunch of alternative music artists covering Carpenters songs, and Top of the World by Shonen Knife is one of those tracks.

Love this song. I don't think... I didn't grow up with a huge relationship with the Carpenters, so I don't know if I knew this was a Carpenters song until after I heard the Shonen Knife

version. Oh, really? Interesting. My dad was a big Carpenters guy. God, if I were a

Carpenter. Yep. And you were an Andrew. Alright, thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. Until then, have a great Thursday. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

I want the world to be It's coming too Especially for me And the reason is for you It's because you are here You're the nearest thing To heaven that I feel I'm on top of the world Looking down on creation And the only explanation I can't find It's a love That I've found Ever since you've been around Your love Could be On the top of the world

Top of the world Top of the world Top of the world

Power out