Muse

My name is Dr. Gail Timlin, President of Diet Supplement Industries Incorporated. And people say to me all the time, but Gail, you're not a real doctor. And I say to them, oh yeah, well I graduated with a Ph.D. in Religious Studies at Kent State University. Is that real enough for you? No? Well, how's this for real? I lost hundreds of pounds by taking the best dietary product on the market, Dietoloxapam. But can something so good be legal, you ask? Hey, you ask a lot of questions. Of course it's legal. And I should know, I'm not only a doctor and president of Diet Supplemental Industries Incorporated, I'm also the junior state representative of Rhode Island.

TBTL! That's it, the radio. I'll go on the most popular program of the day. I assume that's still Don McNeil and his breakfast club? Like I ask people, what's in your muffin? Huh? How about me? why don't you ask me anybody anybody ask me what's in my muffin i don't know what's in my muffin

if you two dirtbags ever mess with me again i'll take this to the next level you don't do 22 episodes of celebrity outhouse with lorraine above it without learning a few things dude you

are the best you're awesome dude you are god's gift to the airwaves what have you got to say

for yourselves it's hammer time let the freak out begin all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a thursday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live they've

turned the radio dial with a snarl then one day they tell me they suddenly realize i was talking

to them my name is luke burbank i'm your host hey where's the freaking gabagoo coming to you from the nest broadcast center high in the sky above portland oregon where i have an exciting announcement to make i finally figured out something useful for tick tock gonna be a sit-down comedian on ticky-tocky i've been talking for the better part of the pandemic about how much time i waste looking at tick tock how it's really it's become probably far too regular part of my weekly existence, and yet it has really come in handy a couple of times this week, and I will explain how and why I'll make the case for TikTok, and some of it involves the Canyon County Court in the state of Idaho. So stick around for that, and really, stick around for the whole thing. It's episode 3,492 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Because, whoa, Nelly, The Ringer has yet another article. Claire McNair who's been doing great writing in The Ringer another article about the just absolute shadiness of the new Jeopardy host this Mike Richards dude you're a gross person including hundreds of thousands of dollars in two different basically bail out PPP loan type situations while he was the executive producer of Jeopardy for a business that he's apparently the only employee of

That cash could really get me out of a couple of jams.

So we will take a look at that. I know we've talked about it endlessly on the show, but it's just a story that is endlessly producing interesting information for us. So we've got to stay on that. We've got to flood that zone, my friends. Speaking of money, the way that Hollywood stars are getting paid is really changing.

So you got my money?

A lot of it is about streaming now, A lot of it is upfront money based on what they would have gotten were their movies released in theaters. It's kind of complicated, but it means Daniel Craig is getting like $100 million because he's doing these sequels to the Knives Out films. And he says he's not leaving it to his children. Kids and fantasy. He's not the only famous person, famous super rich person, who says they're not going to leave all their money to their kids. And I, for one, salute that. The listeners will be unsurprised to hear that that's my take on these things As a person with a massive, massive chip on their shoulder About growing up without too much dough And then, speaking of kids

And even some adults

It's Thursday, so we'll do the Blur's Day Where we celebrate the fact that many of our listeners Were born in the last week or two All that, plus this guy The longest running co-bro of the show Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships He is leaving his entire estate to Theo and the professor. We know from the catchy Death Cab for Cutie-esque song that his beard is a face hider, but it goes way deeper than that. My beard is like my girlfriend. 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. I got an interesting email here.

today from listener ben do you remember well first do you remember doing a show yesterday do you remember tbtl vaguely yeah we did do it though yesterday and i think it was near the end we were talking about i think it was listener schaefer who did some math and said back of envelope back of napkin math either either one you can choose um tbtl puts out about 10.2 full days of content a year. 24 hour periods. Yeah, exactly. That got you and I taking the conversation to an even more interesting place, which is what do you think the average length of a typical TBTL is, right? What was Schaefer going off of there? I said my guess would be 90 minutes. I guessed 80 minutes. You guessed 80. That seemed low to me because I thought we almost always turn in something that is 90.

Well, I know it feels long to us and the listeners, but I'm surrounded by clocks, Andrew. I don't know if that's ever come up on the program. Yeah, it's funny. So I feel I have a pretty good handle on how long we've been going.

And I'll admit I don't because it's like one of those things where when you're talking, it just seems like time stands still. I've heard this from listeners, too, yet my part's just going to zing by. So anyway, I got a note from Ben here that says, to satisfy my curiosity, this email just came in last night, To satisfy my curiosity, I pulled the duration tags. I don't even know how to do this, Luke. I'm the damn producer. Once again, the listeners are much better at podcasting than we are. And I actually really do like these analytics. So to satisfy my curiosity, I pulled the duration tags from the last 399 episodes on the RSS feed. Maybe I'm guessing there might be a setting that doesn't let you go back to 400 because that's an interesting number. That's a weird number. So Ben pulled the duration tags From the last 399 episodes Out of the feed And found that the average length Of a TBTL episode is Do you want to give me a drum roll? Can you have it there? I got it here right now 78.9 minutes Whoa Which is close to Luke's guess of 80 minutes

We both went over So somebody else wins the showcase

Oh shoot I think it's Mike Richards Damn Yeah How did he do that? I'm telling you, man, keep an eye on that one. Interestingly, the average episode length increases throughout the week from starts 75 minutes average on Monday to 82 minutes on Friday. That's interesting. Finally, the average publication time. Now, this surprises me because I'm the damn guy who publishes the damn show. The average publication time is 12.30 Pacific every day except for Thursday when it's typically published at 1 p.m. I would have guessed each of those to be about an hour later. I would have guessed that the average is 1.30 Pacific and then Thursday maybe a little bit later because we do get a later start. Like this is – Right, so it checks out. But in reality, like you and I, for the past, I'm going to say year or two, have been starting the show about an hour later on Thursdays because of an APM meeting that is usually on Thursday mornings. That's really fascinating.

And I can also – I can kind of – I guess I can sort of understand to a certain degree why we would go longer as the week moves on. So did I have that right, that Friday shows tend to be the longest?

Yeah, but I guess it increases throughout the week. 75 minutes on average for a monday 82 minutes on a friday i i could i would have also been

unsurprised if the data was that monday shows are long because we haven't probably seen each other all weekend we haven't talked usually something has occurred um in the world or i don't know with football or something that strikes our interest um but maybe it's on monday we're just kind of staring down the barrel of the entire week so we're just kind of being a little more efficient but then by friday it's like it's a friday we're you know hanging out maybe there's a story that's gotten pushed all week yeah or so i like decide we got to clear the books on that so that the friday shows tend to sort of expand a little bit also i think not

to tell your business but i think that mondays and tuesdays are probably tell me if i'm wrong are those the busier days for you in the afternoon those are the days yeah those are both days that

i have a lot of like live wire related recordings in the afternoon uh and so uh that i'm sure somewhere in the back of my mind i'm kind of i'm on a bit of a schedule those days yeah yeah so anyway i find that fascinating that stuff is fascinating yeah i think so too now does ben

want to work at apm i was wondering if anyone's doing those analytics for us currently i was hoping that ben might be able to take over the fantasy football team because he obviously understands stats better than i do we have been pushed down to sixth place in the past two days Luke, we were on the third place shelf there. OK, shelf for.

Months and months with no movement, and now we are just plummeting like a stone in the water. Well, do you want to take up high school bud on his offer?

I don't know how to trade things. I don't know what to trade for. He sent a weird email out that was to the whole group saying something like, everyone is a half run away from being in third place. Who wants to make some trades? Which I took to mean, is it time for me to break up my Jimmy Stewart impression again? Potter's not selling. He's buying. Like, I assume there's something nefarious there because I think high school bud, a.k.a. our friend Joe, is running the league, right? And is he winning the league? Oh, yeah.

He's so far out in advance that I think he's saying, listen, I have some buffer here. If you want some good players.

Potter's not selling. He's buying. Like, he's basically, I think he's offering some players that he doesn't need, but he's going to also get pennies on the dollar for players that will help him next season. It's a keeper league.

What he wants to trade for, this is not how I wanted to start the show, but what he wants to trade for is is trades for the next draft. He wants it. Right. Right. That's what I'm saying.

He is improving his position. Yeah. For next season because he has excess and we have we we have not enough. We the the the hoi polloi, the you know, the proletariat hovering around third place and below. We have little resources He has much resources And he's going to extract What's left of our little resources In exchange for something But ultimately Strengthening his position I mean listen We know this Rent is theft Andrew Obviously

Exactly

And we're just Toiling under the thumb Of high school bud right now In this In this messed up economy That is What's the name of our league again I don't remember Luke He needs a better name That's another thing I'm quitting

The weird thing is I'm turning in my login We are You keep on referring to him as high school bud who is our commissioner but we named our team in honor of him high school bud which by the way don't you think that that should i mean don't you think we should get some like compensation for that like shouldn't we always be maybe one level higher than we actually are just for kind of paying homage to the commission yes very much so i saw i'm sorry

that we're talking baseball uh i'll keep it brief but this is really more star wars than baseball good i uh was watching espn the other night and a player for the yankees whose name is luke i think his name is like luke voight he hit a home run it was a dramatic home run it won the game for them and the chyron the writing on the screen said the evil empire strikes and i wrote on twitter as a person who's also named luke it's fundamentally misunderstanding the plot of that film if you're trying to go with some luke skywalker reference he's not part of the empire yeah that doesn't make sense does it like you know what i mean like luke i am your dinger yeah or you know So there's a lot of ways. Just because the guy's named Luke doesn't mean any old Star Wars reference will fit.

Yeah, yeah. He used a lot of force on that hit. There you go. Absolutely.

Put that on the Chiron, Greg. I mean, honestly, you could be like, you know, Luke Voight. Do Luke Voight? No, it's getting worse when I try. Anyway, my point is like a cursory reading of the plot of Star Wars. The only thing Luke Skywalker was there to do was to try to destroy the Empire.

And also, Voight Where Prohibited would just be funnier all across. I don't really know how that relates. How about just Urban Cowboy? Because that's a movie John Voight's in. Swing away, you urban cowboy. That's there. I think we fixed it. I think everybody would appreciate that on the national broadcast.

Speaking of fixing things, I have a little update on the whereabouts of my blazer that went missing. Oh, you do? Really? Oh, interesting. What's going on? Yeah, I called the – I got the phone number from the guy doing demo in there. I called the owner of the shop, who's very nice, and he said, oh, yeah, we actually – no one had come in to retrieve any clothing for about a week, and so we moved everything to our new location or our other location, which is like half a mile away. So he said it's going to take them a day to sort through all the clothes and get them all hung up, but but it would appear that my clothes have not been like given away or uh you know thrown out into the street or burned or whatever they they seem to be somewhere just at the new location

i mean maybe like did they say yes we see your code or yes it's accounted for they know there's

a there's a currently i assume there's a giant pile of clothing sealed in those plastic dry cleaning things uh that has yet to be sorted and put into some kind of a system that only they

understand yeah okay i'm dubious and not because i'm hoping for the worst i hope i hope for the best for you and your blazer and that you're reconnected um but it's easy to say oh yeah yeah we got all your clothes we're going to sort through them later just does not seem like this is a very professional way to to go through this it feels like part of it

is because this is an environmentally friendly dry cleaner. Oh, this is the old Maine, or what is the toothpaste that you don't trust? Toms of Maine? Yeah, this is the Toms of Maine of dry cleaners.

Well, that's very prominent on their signage that they're all natural, and they have a very, like, a kind of blue, ecologically friendly-looking sign, which was appealing to me, because, of course, it's nice if we can be kind to Mother Earth in small ways. I'm wondering, maybe it's a little bit kind of it's not maybe your traditional dry cleaner or something in that it's the kind of place where you might drop your clothes off and come back four days later and they'd be like we've closed right yeah it wasn't four days though you i how long did you have in there because i thought

you made a reference on yesterday's show that maybe you felt like it was slightly on you for leaving your clothes there for a month but i might have misunderstood what you were well it's been

there have been different kind of there have been different periods of time so i probably i dropped the thing off and then i went on a trip that was probably four or five days and then i noticed i had a missed call from the dry cleaner and that missed call was the very nice woman who worked there had said i'll give you a call when when uh this is done because i had asked her to because i said it's very likely that i'll just forget i ever brought this jacket here so i got a call from them probably five days after dropping it off i then took an additional four days to go pick it up and i just happened to be driving down cooch street and i looked over and i was like oh there's that place where my jacket is pulled over walked up to it and so maybe nine days total had gone by and it was now closed with new limited hours for picking up your stuff that's right it was a special

request you put in i always thought this was a curious part of this story now that i remember it um or that you remind me of it you requested a special call they don't have a system for the phone calls like whenever i drop off clothes at a dry cleaner which i do with some regularity I'm always offered a slip. They always say, do you want a slip, a reminder slip that I can keep in my wallet? And sometimes I say yes, and sometimes I say no. Did they have a slip, or was it because they're green they didn't want to have a slip? They don't have, like, just a regular system of reminders.

They gave me a crystal. Interesting. Which they said works better than a receipt.

Nice. And then you slip it into its place in the crystal palace, and you watch a light show.

Yes, and then it creates a sound bath. Nice. Which really aligns. No, they did. They gave me a receipt, which, of course, I put in the door of my car, and then I got cocky. When I got a call from them, I was like, okay, they're on the case. They've got my number. I'll be able to work this out. My phone number will somehow cross-reference with this blazer. And so I'm pretty meticulous in my car. I don't like there to be a lot of stuff in my car. Yeah, me too. Wrappers, receipts, parts of a straw, et cetera. I'm not into any of that. So, like, anytime I'm stopping to run into the mini-mart or to get gas or anything, I'm always going through and just getting rid of everything that seems unnecessary in the car. That's my boy. It's actually a very satisfying, I'm sorry, catatonic feeling for me, Andrew.

Always drive catatonic. No, that's good. I'm glad to hear it. I would have guessed that about you. I've been in your cars before, and I am the same way. If you are stopping at a gas station and there is garbage in your car and you are not pulling it. Not you. I'm sorry. I sound like I'm finger-wagging at the audience. I don't mean it that way, but just that that is my that is the way I live. My truth is if you're pulling up to a gas station, you look around the car and if there's any garbage, you take it out right away.

And so because of that, I did toss out the receipt. I still I am feeling I'm feeling confident. I got a good vibe off of this owner guy, Nick. He just seemed like he was very apologetic and he explained exactly why it had happened. And he said, let me text you the address of the new location. He texted it to me immediately. It didn't feel. And he called – I mean he was – he just seemed like he was on the ball. So I will – again, it's all about creating a narrative arc on this show, Andrew. And once again, I've expertly done that by screwing up some small component of my life.

Well, I'm actually – I'm glad to hear that then. Because at first it did sort of sound a little fly-by-nighty. But if he's like giving you this much personal attention, good. I have regained my hope.

I've regained my love for TikTok this week, Andrew. And you know why? Because not only did I have to do our cybersecurity training, which is I will hold my fire on that. We've said enough about it other than it's pretty tedious and it takes a really long time. It's one of those web things where you can't speed through it. It forces you to click on things and sit there and wait for it to do its thing. And so what I – earlier this week, what I realized was I'm going to be trapped with this thing. But what I can actually do is have it going on my computer and then I can be over on Tiki Taki. Oh, yeah. Which is already a way that I can easily lose like two hours of time. Well, why not lose two hours of time mindlessly on TikTok while I'm also mindlessly just absolutely nailing this quiz, which I did. It's your lucky day. 100%. You just found a USB flash drive in the parking lot. As I'm sure you did. well i'll admit i didn't quite get a hundred i got one wrong but i was doing that thing where i was trying to answer the questions without reading the questions because i did that too

towards the end yeah like i'm not no please understand what we're saying here listeners we're not talking about not listening or reading the information we didn't do that either the questions are so are so simple that you can just read the question i mean you can read the potential answers not even looking at the paragraph that is the question being posed because the potential answers are like it'll just say throw your laptop into the river yeah uh walk around the coffee shop asking people to please take a photo of your password and then potential answer number three

will be talk to hr no uh not hr in this case it would be notify the it staff immediately

so it's one of those three andrew i mean good luck yeah i mean that's a riddle wrapped in a rubik's cube but we learned a lot though we learned a lot i think the company is better for it so anyway i am i actually have to say that it made it much less uh tedious for me because i was doing something that is fun for me and that i do anyway that i like waste too much time on and so that was that was perfect i had to do something eerily similar yesterday andrew which is did i tell you that i got a speeding ticket in idaho no this was i haven't got a speeding ticket in forever

I had a cop with his lights on behind me yesterday, and I pulled over. I was like, what the hell? But he just kept on going when I pulled over, so that was good. No, I didn't know you got a speeding ticket.

I was driving. This is when I did this. The story was actually in kind of the Oregon-Idaho border. It was when I was staying in the pot district of Ontario, Oregon. Well, I was actually flying out of Boise. And I was driving, and I was driving 72 miles per hour, Andrew. And I come around a bend in the freeway. By the way, the speed limit in lots of Idaho is 80. And then it bumps down to 70 in some places. So I was maybe two miles above the speed limit. I come around a corner and I had allegedly, according to the state patrol officer, I had now entered a construction zone. Now, it wasn't like there was cones out and worker people doing work things. To look around this stretch of freeway, you would have no idea that it was technically a construction zone. There was no construction going on. There were no flaggers. There was nothing. But because of that, it was technically 55. Now, I got to be honest, the whole thing stinks to high heaven to me. Like, it just seems like a speed trap that's set up where you've got a state patrol officer who's posted up at an area where, very confusingly, the speed limit drops suddenly by 15 miles per hour.

Can I ask you a question? Yes. You have a note from your doctor, right, saying that you can't drive 55? Can you show that to the officer, or do you have to show that to the magistrate once you're in traffic court?

The problem is I didn't get it laminated, and it's been in my wallet forever, and all of the ink is kind of rubbed off of it. So it was just like sort of showing him this He couldn't read it and it just apparently didn't have any standing In Canyon County, Idaho I mean, honestly, the whole thing I think is kind of BS So a month ago or so I had to call into court Like traffic court in Idaho Which is also very annoying Because there was like 100 people In this traffic court session And apparently I was like the 99th person So every single person Going before me This is all on Zoom, although I was just doing it on the phone because I was like, I don't want to – I don't really feel like looking at the judge here. I'm just going to call in, and then when it's my turn, I'll explain what happened, and we'll see what they say. So there's actually a prosecutor, and the prosecutor is sitting there. Again, everybody's on Zoom, and the – so the judge will go, this is case, whatever, whatever. It's the state of Idaho against so-and-so. And then the prosecutor, every single time when it was speeding, the prosecutor would say, well, if you're willing to take this class, this online class, It takes six hours. We'll go ahead and erase the ticket or whatever. And everyone's like, sure. So they finally get to me. They've done like 40 people with this exact thing. They get to me, and the judge says, okay, what do you recommend for the prosecution? He's like, well, if this person is willing to take the speeding class or whatever, the safe driving class, we're willing to knock this down to just speeding. Oh, because you had the two counts. Because it was excessive. no there was no he didn't even put a construction zone thing on the ticket oh it was just excessive speeding because it was 72 out of fit over 55 now so i had an excessive speeding ticket as opposed to a garden variety speeding ticket so i had to do this six hour basically our cyber security training of traffic court so that i can just only have like two points taken off of my license or whatever it is in idaho now here is the greatest part of this whole thing i'm talking to the judge and i said you know i go i was a little uh i go this is was a it was a kind of frustrating situation for me because this wasn't marked that i could see it was there were There was no one doing construction. There weren't any cones. Like, it was very unclear that this was a construction zone.

I see. So even though it wasn't like you were in a construction zone, that wasn't like a charge against you, but it was the construction zone that dropped the speed supposedly down to 55. So, okay, that's why you're arguing the I didn't realize it was a construction zone that's not marked. I got it.

Because if it would have just been any other stretch of highway, I mean, first of all, I would have been literally going two miles over the posted speed limit, but it would have been the most minimal speeding ticket you can get. But here was the craziest part Not only was it that I was literally the only person That they didn't just say take this stupid class And then you'll We'll take this off your record The judge goes Are you the Luke Burbank that went to the University of Idaho Like No I'm aware of that person existing What I did not mention to the judge was There's a dude named Luke Burbank in Idaho Who has gotten On me on Twitter Because I had tweeted out a joke about Donald trump and a picture of donald trump and this guy whose name is like the real luke burbanker some bullshit right um uh was just like i forget what he kept saying you know what he did i believe he did use the term beat a dead horse he basically didn't like that i was running down donald trump on twitter uh-huh this is back i want to say like newly into trump's presidency it was a long time ago i actually have the tweet pinned up probably still in bellingham oh you printed it out i printed it out because that was really funny that was from a guy named Luke Burbank who was getting on me about my very innocuous Trump tweet I love the fact that this guy is more famous than you in the eyes of the judge too and what I can't get over is would I have been better off saying I was that Luke

Burbank so anyway so the judge asks you if you're this Luke Burbank you say no I'm aware of him and then what just nothing and then he goes oh yeah because

he goes I think I know that Luke Burbank but it was kind of cryptic he didn't say I think I know that Luke Burbank and that guy's awesome right he didn't say i think i know that luke burbank and i'm glad to hear you're not him he didn't give me an indication as to if i would have been better off being alternate luke burbank you i that would have been a weird lie though even in the moment that one could get out of control really fast yeah i was like i am and you were like oh my god delta tau oopsalom yeah let's

do the cheer but you're like oopsalom i'm not him um but wait could you get could you you'd essentially be lying to a judge in the course of a real like you know legal situation is that bad courtroom like that could really get you in trouble huh i i if you lie during

something that the judge brought up right is the weird part i'm not lying about the circumstances of my speeding ticket i would be lying in a weirdly personal response which again also it struck me as five percent unprofessional like just hey are you that hey are you terry did you still live on 40th i don't know judge you could put me in prison over this should we

keep it professional i don't know i don't know it doesn't seem i wasn't in the moment it doesn't

strike me as being super unprofessional well i'm just mad because i was the only person that they didn't just let agree to take this stupid course which again exactly like our cyber security training andrew i just had to sit there and basically let my computer whir away for six hours you know occasionally clicking on things and whatnot so that i could finally take the test which i got a hundred percent on was it very similar was like you don't even well it was harder than our cyber security because there were some stats like what's the weight of a child what weighs more a pound of child or a pound of breathalyzer no it was like how much does a kid have to weigh before they can move from a car seat to a booster seat what percentage of traffic accidents are caused by drowsiness is it this percent that percent um then there was a bunch of them that were just so obvious they were they were very much like our very much like our you know cyber thing yeah which is common sense but there were more stats and those i guess i just i sort of guessed right enough and just figured like they're not gonna they're not gonna write something where the stat is much lower than i just understood the general point they're trying to make like don't drink and drive so they're not gonna go like what percentage of drunk driving accidents are what percentage of accidents are caused by someone being drunk is it one percent or is it eighty percent and you're gonna go one percent like obviously they want to really drive the point home that this is dangerous and so using that kind of logic i was able to get the 80 that i needed to to pass the test yeah yeah

um i want to say too regarding the the question i got wrong this is gonna sound very defensive and i'm pretty sure i said this exact same thing last year too whatever question i got wrong i do feel like was worded weirdly i remember like rereading it afterwards i'm like oh that's how you're interpreting that all right i didn't really care because i

knew it wasn't going to like prevent me from moving on but i do remember thinking like that's

Thank you.

not how i would write this question for what it's worth yeah so uh but what i was able to do last night i got in bed now normally i might get in bed on the early side and then get distracted with tiktok or other internet idiocy and then i look up and it's now 11 and i'm kind of mad but in this case i was like let me just burn through two more hours of this test of this or this you know whatever training and so i did now here's the big question and i think i already know how this is going to end so monday is my i go back to virtual traffic court and i'm gonna you know i sent in all this information to the court that says i completed the test and passed it and stuff but what i had gotten them to agree to the last time i was on the phone with them was the idea that we could revisit this topic the next time i was in quote unquote court in other words the topic oh because again you had to take the training oh what's that yeah my punishment like i just want this to be off my record right okay yeah i was speeding like i'll pay the ticket but just like i would just take take the ticket off my record and because i did your stupid six hours and paid my thirty dollars also by the way what's the kickback to the i'm not a very conspiratorial person there's got to be a kickback so i mean otherwise what a great racket you run this online thing that involves no humans you i mean this test was written at some point i mean you know there's some it person that has to maintain it but basically there's zero human interaction and i heard 25 people get referred to have to do this thing on that monday alone and you have to pay thirty dollars that that thirty dollars is not part of your fine that thirty dollars is the fee that you have to pay Right to their website, $29.99 or whatever. Like, that is a serious racket, if you ask me. Like, how do you get that contract? And also, what's the kickback to the state of Idaho? Yeah, I don't know. So, you don't know that information, Andrew? I don't know off the top of my head. You've disappointed me once again. You know the exact percentage the state of Idaho gets? But so, this is what, this would be like the ultimate, and I don't expect that it'll work out. I mean, basically what it was, was I couldn't, the judge, the judge basically said, well, you know, if you want to, because I said to him, look. you know, there weren't construction cones. It wasn't clearly marked. I said, so I'll do this quiz. I'll do this thing, which will take. I mean, I'm still going to have some kind of ding on my driving record. But I was like, when I come back on August 23rd for this, can we revisit the topic of dropping the ticket? And he said, well, I guess that's between you and the prosecutor. And I said, OK, so there's a small chance that on Monday when I get on there and I'm like, look, I took the test and I re-explained my case. Maybe having taken the test maybe the prosecutor will be maybe i say i am that luke burbank i don't know but i guess there's like a 0.05 like it hasn't been ruled on yet if that makes any sense what score did you get on the test uh i think in the 90s okay it just says passed oh it just says passed you needed 80 to pass so above 80 i'm just curious if you know like you know if you just squeaked in to pass it

maybe the prosecutor will not take it off your record but if you got like 99 then they're like oh okay this guy he knows his shit that would be great like if they could just yeah and then maybe i get some pictures of me out like picking up trash along the side of the road i was sort of picturing that too maybe attach those like your honor oh look at look at all the good work i've done in the community certainly you can take this off my driving record yeah like really tubing it up like be like no no no i i've learned my lesson about doing disgusting things at work by uh doing some charity work with a group that feeds them. I thought you meant, if I don't like the outcome of the case, just stand up and walk out of the frame, no pants. No, I would not recommend doing that. As your lawyer. As your lawyer. We should take a break. We're 35 minutes into this thing, but when we come back, I do want to continue our long-running and thorough coverage of the announcement of the new Jeopardy host. I believe today is the first Day that this dude is actually taping Episodes even as we speak Down there in Culver City California home of Stage 21 sports bar Andrew My new favorite place to go In LA that's the Seattle that's where I met my friend Gretchen that's the Seattle Sports bar right that's the Seahawks bar No no no no Oh no that's the backstage I'm sorry stage 21 right right backstage Is this oh the backstage is really good Yes yes that's they that place changes Ownership I'm gonna really be bummed And that's in Culver that's by the Sony lot I think Right yes it is totally in fact you know what that's Closer to where this Mike Richards Guy is as we speak recording Episodes of Jeopardy that I'm very on the fence about Watching true story so anyway we'll get into All that coming up in a moment here on TVTL All right. let's thank some donors of the day the amazing long-suffering wonderful generous people who are making this episode possible people like robert lau of dallas texas has robert been in dallas texas all this time that feels new to me that might be new i have some kind of a vaguely california association with robert lau but a lot of listeners don't know this but have you ever

seen those X-Men movies? No. Okay. There's a character. And the listeners don't know that, that I haven't seen. There's a character, I believe, named Professor X. I don't know much about this world at all, but it is played that character is played by Sir Patrick Stewart. See, I got there with the Sir again. Oh, you mean the poop emoji? Yes, exactly. Famous for, I mean, he's known for his role as the poop emoji, but he has also played this lesser known character, Professor X, but he goes into some sort of chamber and I don't know what it's called Luke I really don't know much about these X-Men movies Genevieve has them on sometimes but he goes into like this weird big chamber and he sits in his chair and he puts on this helmet and then like around him in this dome he's like connected to people all over the world he kind of I think he can kind of see where they are or he can connect with them in some way like telepathically that's kind of our relationship or maybe more your relationship with the listeners right you like put on this helmet and you sort of feel like Robert Lau is in Dallas, Texas now? That's different. I get kind of a

sharp pain in one of my lobes and it's like, oh, what's happening? Robert Lau is moving to the southwest to Dallas. Okay. The weird thing is that I gotta go lie down for the rest of the day just based on that disturbance in the universe of our listeners. The weird thing is it's your ear lobe that actually felt that too. Which is supposed to have

no nerves in it. I know. It's very strange.

Shannon Mitchell is also down there in Texas Shannon Mitchell is in Fort Worth Thank you, Shannon Also, Donna Myrdal Is in Fullerton, California Okay, I am very into this Distribution today, Andrew We got Texas checking in We got Fullerton, California We've got Tiffany Peterson In South Orange, New Jersey Home, I believe Of one Chris Gethard Our I think we can say friend of the show, Chris Gethard, who is at our Thing Festival show and who I've just recently talked to on Livewire, by the way, has a new stand-up comedy special out, a fellow South Orangian, I think they call him. I don't think so. That part I did make up. Ann Plummer's in Bremerton, Washington. Got to take a ferry to get there, I think, right? Yes, you do. You sure do. I mean, depending on where you're coming from. If you're already there, you don't. No, or if you're driving up from Tacoma, you don't have to. You could always take the Narrows Bridge, a.k.a. Galloping Gertie. Although this new one doesn't gallop, thankfully. But I think there's a very famous footage of that bridge in the olden days when it's just like there was a windstorm and it's just insanely undulating.

Yeah, it's the perfect way.

But they've got it all fixed up now and you can drive across it, the new version of it, and drive up to Bremerton where Ann is. But the ferry is sure beautiful. I do kind of miss that, honestly, about being down here in Portland. There's one ferry that I've been on down here. It's called the Wheatland Ferry. It goes across a river that's literally the width of Roosevelt Avenue. And it's to get to this part of Salem where Becca's family lives. Her mom lives on this really great, beautiful country property out there. And somehow it's faster. I don't really understand the geography of this area very well, but it is slightly faster to take this $2 ferry across this river. Every time I've taken it with her, I have said, how do they not build a bridge? There's somebody like 16 hours a day has to be riding on this teeny tiny thing that holds like four cars just going across this river. Well, that's good. Why do you want to take that person's job away? Because I'm a taker, not a maker. I want to automate it. I want to automate it. I want to outsource it. I want to offshore it. No, I mean, it's fun. Believe me. I would much rather go on a little ferry than take a bridge. But I just don't understand how economically that has been the answer for, well, Becca's entire lifetime. So multiple decades, right? She's 20, so two decades. No, like 38 years, that's been how you get across this river. And I just think if you add up 38 years of that, building a bridge would have seemed like it would make more sense. But they've obviously got some method to their madness.

But anyway, I miss going on Ferry. It sounds very Oregon Trail-y, doesn't it? Like the game, the Oregon Trail, which did I tell you I played that the other day all the way through? I made it all the way through for the first time in my life. You beat the game? I beat the game, man. I beat the game. You beat Tyson? Yes. He's Tyson.

at the end of Oregon Trail he he is you have to beat the second macho man and then you get to

what the Sandman and then it's Tyson and then I think so I don't I have it all written down somewhere but I know it's a a b b um but uh yeah no there there's like a emulator you can play and it's exactly like I used to play on the what is it the trs 80 what was what was the computer that we used to have the the um whatever the computers that I had in the classroom growing up in the They weren't very advanced technology. You could do two things, play Oregon Trail or make banners on a dot matrix printer. And anyway, I played it the other day and I made it all the way through. I lost, you know, you have five people. I know we have to thank one more person. But I think you have five people maybe in your wagon. And I don't think Genevieve and Professor Bananas made it. And I think that Theo might have broken a leg. I think by the end it was just mean. You can't ride in my little red wagon. Boo-ah, boo-ah, boo-ah, ah. It was sad. It really was. Just seeing those words.

I've never played Oregon Trail.

Wait, really? You never had that in school or anything?

No, I just, I guess they didn't have it when I was in elementary school in that particular classroom. We didn't have a computer at Bagley. And then I moved to Jesus Creek intermittently. Also, it was just homeschooled. I just somehow, that one, I whiffed. That one whiffed out the window of my life. And, but it's obviously like for people our age, it looms very large. Lots and lots of people played it in school And I think in particular If you grew up far away from Oregon It was kind of this Like the Oregon Trail, it felt very exotic And far away I grew up going to Oregon constantly So the idea of the Oregon Trail just didn't It was never as captivating to me as it was I think to people like in Ohio for instance

Yeah, and maybe then you don't even understand Why I would bring it up The ferry thing is you're making your way west On this, you know, with your wagon and then you will get to these rivers and you will have a choice. The choices will differ, I think, depending on the river. But, like, you can just try to ford the river, just like it seems shallow enough, just barrel your way through. I tried that twice. That's where I think I lost Genevieve. Broken axle, too. That was no good. Turns out it was deeper. Like, turns out that you can't ford. You can't ride in my little red wagon. Or you can also have a Native American guide put you, I think, on a raft and take you across. Or you can caulk up your wagon, I believe Oh, so the water can't get in? Yeah, and so anyway So that just sort of feels like Here's this small little piece of water But they still just have somebody just saying Well, come on, put your car on here We'll take you across

You will be unsurprised to hear That I'm always really stressed out For the horses in those situations I know Oregon Trail is not the real world But even in movies and stuff There are these scenes I was reading that George Saunders book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, which is actually about Russian short stories, but it's very good. Would recommend. But one of the stories, I forgot who wrote it, one of the stories is about a woman who is basically in a horse and buggy or a wagon going somewhere, and they're crossing this river, and it's really stressing the horses out because the water is coming up to their neck. and just think about being a horse and not really knowing what's going on and someone's whipping you and you're just like, this is not what I want to be doing, but I got to do it. And you're like, hooves are all, I mean, you're like on ice skates. You're trying to step on wet river rocks. None of that seems fun. And you're just like, I hate Mondays. Yeah, I got a case of the Mondays.

We have one more person to thank.

We got a case of the thank yous. Thank you to Danielle Roberts, who's in Oro Valley, Arizona. I'm sure at some point Oro Valley, Arizona was being explored by folks on horseback or being pulled in covered wagons and such. And all these years later, there's Danielle living there and donating to TBTL. So thank you so much, Danielle, for making today's episode of the show possible. We really appreciate all of our donors. Hello and welcome to Top Story. There's a lot of new stuff emerging around this Mike Richards dude who's the newly minted host of Jeopardy. I actually think maybe one of the funniest aspects of this story now is how much Andrew clearly, somebody named Claire McNair, has it out for him. The author of this Ringer piece? Yes. And then I did a little research on Claire. Claire, her avatar on Twitter is her standing behind the podium on Jeopardy or standing behind wherever a contestant stands. Now, it also says, I think, a million dollars on there. So I don't know if she just got to go to the set and they did that as a joke or if she actually qualified for Jeopardy and was on it. But she's very into Jeopardy. She wrote a book about Jeopardy, kind of like the history of the show. She is clearly somebody who has very, very strong opinions about the show and really loves the show. And also, really, like most people, does not like that it was Mike Richards. But she, unlike most people, does not like that it was Mike Richards.

people she also writes for the ringer and so she just continues to dig up stuff about sort of how unlikable this guy appears to be and just kind of keep putting it out there and every time she does every time she updates the story it just creates a whole new wave of really bad publicity for this

guy i know and as you mentioned i i find this incredibly interesting there's so many dazzling details in this ringer piece in some like and i i you read it all the way through i'm not all the way through it so i'm gonna let you kind of do the bigger outline but actually most thorough

reporting you'll read on any topic like how's it going in afghanistan unsure but i can tell you every second of the random podcast that he was hosting at the price is right i literally fell

as somebody sent this to me last night our friend cat did and i fell asleep reading it and then i was trying to catch up this morning so i'll let you do the broad strokes but i i gotta say i had a lot of questions about like people are mad that lavar burton didn't get it and i you know in the back of my head I was thinking like but we don't know what negotiations were like maybe he was the number one pick but you know they couldn't make it worth his time because he is such a big name like I just felt like there were a lot of questions like that like did he really not get a fair shake or was he less interested or they couldn't match his price you know there's all kinds of stuff that goes into this but this piece seems to address some of those questions doesn't it maybe not that particular one in detail but kind of how the process went and it seems how Mike Richards

really did put his finger on the scale very much so i mean okay first thing that i didn't know until i read this sort of latest article remember last time i i was i was mentioning how the article her previous article was talking about how there had been a minor scheduling conflict and then the staff of jeopardy with one of the guest hosts and the staff of jeopardy had been like oh we can work around that and mike richards had made it into this whole thing that was like oh my god we We got to pull this person's appearance and I'll just I'll just fill in if I have to. And then he went on the air and like did this whole thing of kind of like, oh, don't make me sing. I don't want to be up here. But we had a scheduling conflict. And so, well, that guest host was Ken Jennings. His probably, I would say, arguably his strongest rival for the job. Another thing this article mentions is that Ken Jennings had the highest ratings of any of the guest hosts.

And he was the first guest host, too, which definitely, I think, helped.

One of the ways I think that he kind of scuttled LeVar Burton, I'm going to jump around here a little bit, was because he's the EP, so he holds a huge amount of sway in these things. LeVar Burton apparently only had one week. He only had one day to tape one week of shows. It's got to be the kind of thing that you need a little bit of warm-up time to kind of get in the flow. Maybe even just one day of taping a week's worth of shows, and then you come back, you tape another week's worth of shows the following day. You're naturally going to be so much looser and in the flow the next day.

Yeah, I think a lot of the other fill-in hosts had said exactly that, right?

Yeah, I mean, I can only imagine. And so that was something. And then they scheduled LeVar Burton's week against the Olympics.

Right, exactly.

And then it was preempted sometimes for the Olympics.

And these are decisions that, as executive producer, Mike Richards was able to make. And also, they said that they used a heavily—sorry, I told you I'd let you do all the broad strokes. But just to add to that, they said that it wasn't just their gut reaction. They wanted to use a lot of numbers and analytics and get, like, you know, focus group input. But he, as the EP, got to choose which episodes were sent to the focus group. So he could have sent his own A-plus episodes against LeVar Burton's very first one, which maybe he wasn't warmed up yet.

Or same thing with Ken Jen. Another thing that's in this article that's crazy. So Ken had a category that was kind of like this is before – this is, like, before Alex Trebek was maybe even sick or whatever. Where, because Ken Jen is named the greatest of all time He won the greatest of all time tournament He has, like, there'd be a whole, like, row of questions That Ken Jen would be on camera for And these would be categories that he had, like, made up And questions that he had written And so it was just kind of a way of keeping him in the mix And he's a very beloved kind of figure on the show And so as soon as Mike Richards had his guest hosting stint And once Ken had been kind of swept aside because it was a minor scheduling conflict, the show completely stopped playing those Ken Jen questions that were video questions.

Oh, wow.

So as to, I mean, you could see a world in which that was also Mike Richards trying to just keep Ken's profile as low as possible. Yeah. Because he wants the job and he doesn't want Ken Jen just constantly popping back up during everyone else's appearances, including his own, reminding everyone that he exists.

Yeah, exactly, because it wasn't Mike's predecessor who brought Ken Jen in in that kind of, what was he, like a consulting producer position or something? Yes. And I think this is maybe where I left off yesterday, but I think it was Mike's predecessor who brought him on, and then he leaves his position, and Mike's in charge, and so then Mike can kind of give him. rid of that like you say give them give Ken Jen less exposure the details of this are like pretty

damning well there's two there's like two levels to it one is that the guy just seems like exactly who I thought he was and I was being kind of I think well I don't know I'd have to go back and listen but my sense is in the early days of this I was trying to kind of just be like a little I wouldn't say taking the high road but not being as openly critical as I am now but I always got a slimy vibe off of the dude you really did you called this I was reading this and thinking like

you really called this and because you had you had said before all of these stories came out and it was just like again it was kind of floated it was supposedly leaked to the press that mike richards might be the guy or supposedly was the guy who's going to get the job and all of the criticism hadn't come out yet but you just said that like in some of your professional career you had maybe distantly rubbed shoulders with him or been in the same room i can't remember what the relationship was but you you were very gently saying like it seems like this is the type of guy who would want to put himself in front of the cameras essentially and you were being very

and that's what everyone in this article actually i didn't know him professionally i just knew him because he was my friend jj's buddy oh he was a friend of a friend okay yeah i would just so when i would be in uh down in san diego uh and pasadena we would end up like hanging out like going out doing stuff and i mean he seemed like a perfectly fine dude then but he didn't seem especially dynamic then and then i would just see him throughout like the intervening years i would randomly see him on tv and i think oh he got someone else to let him be in front of the camera but he just never had any kind of special charisma that i could sort of point out or or identify and again some of that could just be jealousy because uh because you know he's on tv and i'm in a bar watching him on tv so who knows that's what i was trying to sort of separate out for myself initially but now there's just like seems to be lots and lots of uh evidence and lots of people who are talking to the ringer at these various shows that he's worked at because he you know he was always trying to get in front of the camera but mostly unsuccessfully and so then he would take some job as a like an executive uh but always with an eye on wanting to be the host so he tried to be the host of the Price is Right when Bob Barker left and he uh didn't of course Drew Carey got that job and still has it and people who were there when he was auditioning described for the ringer that he was very they said he just didn't have any sort of special spark he was just he was competent but bland basically so then he becomes the executive producer of that show and then this is where the other part of it kind of starts so there's like the him just being a weasel and doing everything he can to position himself so he's going to get this job then there's his behavior as a generally sort of like massage apparently sort of a sexist sort of misogynist sort of everythingist so he started hosting this podcast which again who even hosts a podcast i mean that's one of the saddest thirstiest things you can do gross he had some kind of podcast that he would do sort of associated with the price is right when he was the executive producer and he was called the random podcast but dumb and it was spelled d-u-m-b and can tell me if i have this

part right too this is in no way officially connected to the price is right it's just that he wants to start a podcast and so he kind of markets it because everyone's starting podcasts right and that's fine so he wants to start a podcast so he's got i think another person who's associated with the show maybe co-hosting with him um maybe i'm wrong about that detail but it's just like he kind of markets it as a behind the scenes peak in the same way that sometimes tbtl is a behind the scenes peak of livewire right which is sure maybe silly to say but but for real like if you were a big livewire fan and you didn't know tbtl existed but then you found the show So you could say, oh, I get to hear all these stories about how Luke booked a certain guest or something like that. He's just sort of doing his own thing but trying to make it sound like it's a behind-the-scenes look.

Exactly. What he's trying to do at that point is because he's not on air anywhere, but he's trying to continue the Mike Richards brand. So he's like, I'll get a podcast because everyone has podcasts. But he's also trying to leverage. So he's getting – if there was a famous person, Chrissy Teigen I think had been like on The Price is Right. If there was somebody famous who was on there maybe for a celebrity special or whatever, he'd sort of be like, okay, now can you come down and hang out at my office and we're going to record this podcast. So he was trying to kind of leverage whatever relationships he had there and kind of, you're right, Andrew, I think just sort of use whatever he could get to get ear balls based on him having some association with The Price is Right. He was going to use that, but this podcast was just supposed to be – I mean basically like what TBTL is, his podcast where he would have his friends on or had his co-host or whatever. But he was also definitely going to try to catch whatever extra attention he could based on the proximity to the Price is Right or the famous people who maybe were in the orbit of the Price is Right. And so this is where – and by the way, Claire McNary from The Ringer had the, I would say, kind of unenviable task of listening to like hours and hours and hours of this podcast. It's called The Rand Dumb because that was, I guess, the name of –

this he had a show when he went to Pepperdine he had a show like on the like Pepperdine student TV station and it was called random and again dumb spelled D-U-M-B so I mean I guess you know it was it was hilarious 26 years ago and it was such a strong idea Andrew for a for a name for a show that he he had to continue utilizing it for his podcast yeah I know many years later it's funny because it works on two levels which is what that's the thing yeah um and so I mean another thing that that the writer of this piece gets into is she actually starts the piece where mike richards is basically asking ken jen to come beyond this podcast again mike richards just i'm sure being like i have access to ken jennings because i'm uh somehow he did and ken jennings is pretty well known and and one of the things that he's talking about mike mike richards is with his co-host is how bad he is at trivia now it doesn't mean that like to be the host of jeopardy You have to be a trivia master. But if you've literally said I'm awful at trivia, that does just seem to be like not a great resume sort of to have to go into hosting what we think of as the best trivia show on TV.

Yeah. I mean, of all of the things, that one gives me the least concern. Sure. And that's why I didn't start with that. Yeah, you could hear a really charming interview with Alex Trebek at some point in his career after doing the show for 20 or 30 years and him saying, you know, a secret about me is I'm actually really terrible at trivia. Like, it just isn't really part of the job. You know, even the thing is, it's like it's so clear that every job he's gotten, he's taken as a producer, but he has been looking for excuses to try to put himself in front of the camera, generally speaking. And so, like, I'm kind of paraphrasing Linda Holmes of NPR, who was writing kind of a, you know, kind of an NPR think piece about this and how Jeopardy has handled this poorly, by the way, is her conclusion. But like, you know, for him to put out a statement that says, I never thought I would be the host of Jeopardy or whatever he said. And she said, like, but that's so disingenuous. You could say that, like, I'm so honored. But like, you did think about it. You thought about it a lot. you tried to be the host it was like and you wanted to be this a talk show host on any you tried a million and jeopardy is the one you landed not a million but but yeah exactly like he's always

been trying to move in front of the camera he's always been trying to to be the host of some kind of show and it just happened that through this very weird series of things it ended up being jeopardy i promise you he would have been happy to host wheel of fortune yep he would have been happy to host any kind of show like he just wants to do this even though he seems to have no particular talent for it above being able to like read a teleprompter then this podcast this is where uh again i think claire mcnery really really did yeoman's work um yo person's work are we saying yo person now maybe we're just not saying any of that um to listen through yo yo yo person's work to and and then x like kind of excerpting these just lots of things where he just says stuff that's just shitty he's talking to his co-host who's a woman and he's She's talking about her body or how she looks in photos or how he doesn't like women wearing one piece bathing suits. And just like at one point, she says he his co-host talks about how she's she gave somebody a dollar. And I think maybe she was herself at that time on unemployment. This is like maybe when they weren't she's telling a story from previously in her life. Like and he says, oh, my God, you're perpetuating the circle. If you give away money that was given to you by the government, that's the circle of no life. and then his co-host says it was just a dollar and then he says that's the sound of America going down the toilet and then the co-host says I thought that she needed it and then he says she didn't even ask you for it and then the co-host says well maybe so she gets some coffee or get some food and then Richards goes or some crack or some meth I mean and that's like probably one of the more I mean there's a lot of terms he uses around women that I don't even want to read that are just so disparaging like he just sounds like he's not even like look Joe Rogan is a bro but at least he's good at what he does

Or at least you can. Yeah. Not to justify it. I think Joe Rogan, you know, like I don't want to justify anything he says, but you can say, I understand why people tune in for that. You can say, I understand the appeal from a from a kind of entertainment and a spectacle perspective. Spectacles, the wrong word there. But yeah, you don't even understand what would be appealing here. Like, I was reading quotes, too, and kind of, like, pressuring his co-hosts and being like, have you taken nudie photos? And then, like, you know, just, like, again, just, like, nothing that you might not hear some D-bag on Morning DJ do. But just, like, also just, like, it's gross and it's just, you know, again, in the context of all this stuff. It's just not even entertaining, though. Exactly.

Again, you know, Stern, I'm always preaching the gospel of Howard Stern and how he's changed. And, I mean, he has, in a lot of ways, very much changed how he hosts that show. But, of course, he's still Howard Stern, and there's still going to be sex talk, and it's like, you know, I could see him asking someone if they take nudes. Again, my argument would be Howard Stern. Stern has an internal radar or compass for what is entertaining this guy appears to have no internal compass for what is entertaining he's just sort of doing a sad impression of something that he heard somebody else who's more talented than him do um you know and then it's also offensive it's like offensive and not particularly entertaining or clever um so that's all just kind of like and then the other thing is as soon as um the writer for the ringer like reaches out for comment from mike richards and his like whoever you know lawyers a meet like an hour later all

the podcasts are taken down yeah and he really seemed like something he did release a statement saying he took him down and saying that like i read things i said a decade ago they're always putting time stamps on it right like right it's like a decade ago like i don't think i'm that different than i was a decade ago maybe i am actually go back listen to early tbtls i probably

said i wouldn't say today i don't know if there was the only thing if literally it was like this guy was everybody loved him and he was great and the one strike against him was he had hosted a podcast 10 years ago and he had sort of talked about things in a way we don't do anymore and he had apologized for it i don't think that would be well first of all it's not a deal breaker as is although it should be yeah but if it were like the only thing you might be able to say yeah we you know how we talk about people and things evolves and as long as you're willing to keep growing and evolving we're going to try to create some grace for people to grow and evolve this is really i mean it just feels like he's just covering his ass taking the podcast down and covering his ass the other thing though and this is what i am i don't i can't believe this this isn't as big i mean there were lawsuits against him at the price is right for treating women unfairly they would have alleged because they were pregnant etc i don't want to low-key that i honestly think this is the biggest story around this guy that is not getting very much attention he received a paycheck protection program loan for 127 000 in may of 2020 for this company this consultancy that he incorporated in 2018 so i'm assuming that in 2020 he's got this jeopardy job already he's the ep of jeopardy and i believe wheel of fortune because he took over for friedman who was in charge of both of those shows So my guess is he is making huge amounts of money as the executive producer of these two programs, and he also has this consultancy that he is the CEO and sole shareholder of. In other words, it's him. There are it doesn't appear that there are any employees. He gets one hundred and twenty seven thousand dollar loan for that, as well as a covid-19 economic injury disaster loan for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars later that year.

There are so many people suffering and he's just that is this is the worst of that kind of exploitation of he's getting almost three hundred thousand dollars of loans from the government, which I'm again, I can't get into his mind.

But I think a lot of people saw these PPP loans as things you weren't going to have to pay back. So, I mean, and I guess there's a universe in which he has some thriving consultancy with a bunch of employees and somehow that missed, you know, the reporter here missed that point. But that would be really surprising to me. What would appear is that he, like, unfortunately, a number of people realized that because he had this business technically, he could apply for this and he did. And, again, if the timing – it's possible that I don't know every – maybe every sort of moment by moment what his employment status was. But the sense I have is he had to be working at this point for Jeopardy. It would be like me getting a PPP loan while we're hosting TBTL together and I'm doing Livewire. Like it's so dirty.

It's so bad. Yeah, because you could. You could say I'm going to start a business and I'm going to start a consultancy business. Like I, you know, you know this, Luke, I don't think we talked about it in the air, but I did like a little, I consulted on, I'd never do this kind of stuff, but somebody wanted some thoughts on developing kind of podcast audience and loyalty and stuff. And that was kind of up my alley and it was kind of as a favor, but it was a business thing. Like I could have like created like a little business around that, right? And I used to have businesses like this when I was in between jobs, like, okay, this is Andrew's, Andrew Walsh media consultancy, right? And like, OK, I have two clients, maybe. And I did two jobs. But still, as far as the IRS is concerned, this is a little business that I'm running. I mean, that's what he's doing on the side while he's there's nothing wrong with having a business like that. But like that is so I mean, that's I thought the PPP loans were specifically for employees. Did Claire say in this piece that he is the sole or is there is there are you saying that there's gray area about whether or not he's actually got employees?

Here's the exact text from this ringer piece According to the Small Business Administration data Made available A consultancy that was incorporated in 2018 That lists Richards as the CEO and sole

shareholder received a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan for $127,000 May 2020, as well as a COVID-19 economic injury disaster loan for $150,000 later that year.

So it doesn't say anything about employees.

It doesn't say whether or not he has employees, but it's sure fishy to me that he's got a real job at this time, which any of us who got to keep our real jobs were so lucky to continue to have our jobs so privileged and at the time when he is making more than enough money i mean if you have to shut down your consultancy shut it down like if you take a break from sharing that random wisdom with the television networks of america whatever the sort of ostensible purpose of this consultancy was i would be shocked by the way if this consultancy did any real work but whatever like if you have to shut that down because there's a global pandemic why don't you do that instead of getting three hundred thousand dollars of you know subsidized loans from the U.S. taxpayers while you're also making I assume a shitload of money in your regular job

yeah that is so infuriating knowing that there are so many people who applied for those loans who really needed them and did not get them uh that that that well Luke I'll say it that chaps my ass um I have an important question for you about all of this because I think that we could go on forever I'm not trying to cut the conversation short but I want to make no you know what they're

coming to inspect my apartment in 12 minutes oh okay you gotta okay well and we could maybe push

off blurs days to tomorrow if we need to but i wanted to say because i think this is an important question um do you think that the average because as you mentioned sorry i'm going to go back for a second as you mentioned the taping for the new era of jeopardy is supposed to begin today i believe i don't know when they're going to release it but the taping is supposed to begin today yeah do you think that there are enough people who actually matter, as far as regular Jeopardy viewers, that this is damning enough for them to, at the last minute, try to scratch this, or scratch him and redo this? I guess no. I guess that this is the type of thing that gets you and me and some other people who are following this story closely pretty worked up, but it's not enough to actually make Sony go through... I think that if they were to try to backpedal now and you know start a new search or scratch him or say we're going to investigate before we start taping i think that would shine way more light on the story than is on it right now i think you're right

that i'm obviously way way way deep into this story and i'm not the average person who just like sits down to eat their tv dinner and turns on you know wheel and then it runs into jeopardy at seven o'clock or whatever like so i don't know i do think if there was more attention around this PPP loan I think the headline new Jeopardy Host got $300,000 in PPP Loans yeah while he was the EP of Jeopardy yeah I feel like That's a pretty damning headline like and I think That like that one unfortunately the things Around mistreating women You know are sort of Vague enough and there's probably enough NDAs Around them that that he's managed to Tamp that down but The one around like I mean it's pretty straightforward And people are hurting and you're like I mean you know eviction moratoriums are Expiring in places as are jobless benefits uh and uh we're going this dude got three hundred thousand dollars while he still had his high-paid job like i feel like that could get people really mad i kind of hope someone yeah who has a bigger microphone than i do uh goes for that but i think you're ultimately right i think that the the jeopardy folks the sony folks have just decided this is what we're doing we're gonna push forward with this we're gonna just like get through the growing pains and everyone being mad and five years from now it's just gonna seem normal and they might be right i mean they know more about this industry than i do but i'm not gonna watch it which kind of sucks because i love jeopardy but i swear to god yeah if i turn it on and he's sitting there grinning you know yeah cutting it up with the with the contestants during the break you know coming back from the first break and just being like he wins and i don't want to watch it and what i'm wondering is it wouldn't be an enjoyable experience for you you'd be mad though right so i feel like and i I don't think that again I don't know if there are enough I mean probably part of what happened this is really messed up but probably part of what they wanted to do was just upset the boat as little as possible and even though I mean the people who are hardcore Jeopardy fans loved Ken Jen and people who are hardcore LeVar Burton fans loved LeVar Burton they probably decided another white guy who's nondescript and who looks and feels trebek ish in his you know blandness not that i think trebek was bland ultimately but they probably just thought we want to try to we want people who watch this show people we want p2s i'm a p1 right we want p2s to just kind of not really notice that anything is super different and if they look up there and And they see.

a woman or they see a person of color or they see Ken Jen even it's going to feel more different to them than we want it to feel and so we're going to make this very cynical decision to just try to keep it going and and and you know three years it'll just feel like the normal thing in one year it'll feel like the normal thing but I don't want to buy into that like I don't want to watch him I'm what I'm hoping is that enough people just don't like the show for whatever reason I'm hoping that they're wrong and I'm hoping that what they find is that the ratings plummet probably not so much because of people like me who are actively boycotting but just people are just like i don't know it's not the same because he's also talking about instituting these because i guess he's still going to be the ep and there's just a but the you know in the story they talk about these various changes that he's already talking about bringing because because the guy is a moron and so he doesn't understand at a core level what makes jeopardy good for the people like me who love jeopardy so he thinks jeopardy probably needs you know more more flash more sizzle more zazzle Which I don't think the real Jeopardy heads Necessarily are looking for So I'm just hoping that it's a ratings disaster And that they end up firing him Because the ratings are bad

I still think those video clues are too newfangled for my taste Do you know that I almost Tried out to be on the The clue crew or whatever that's called No really you mean not to be a contestant But to be one of the people who asks the video questions

Yeah I remember that casting notice went out I mean it was a long time ago And I I I remember I don't know if I was going to be visiting L.A., but I remember like this was early Internet days, too. But reading about on the Internet and thinking and loving Jeopardy in those days as well and thinking like, oh, I would love maybe it was maybe it was when I had done the beer commercial. So I had like an agent or something. And I just remember when that casting note went out and I, of course, I didn't even audition. But some of the people that they ended up casting are still there, like, you know, 20 years ago. Apparently they hired well Because most of those people are still doing that job And I think that their job is kind of as ambassadors For the show And I know that one of them, Jimmy One of the guys from the prize Or whatever you call it, the clue crew He would like warm the audience up and stuff Like they had jobs at Jeopardy that were not always apparent On the show But anyway Do you know that I almost applied to be blue in Blue's Clues? I did know that actually And I think they made the right call Oh.

Oh, I have an announcement to make, by the way. This is a terrible time to make this announcement. I should have said it earlier. There will be, I don't know, I'm just being like a town crier. There will be no newsletter this week. I don't want people to see that there's no newsletter in their inbox and then worry that they got jettisoned from the email list again or something. There will be no email. Kiki Lolo is on vacation. She offered to do...

a serious message to everybody watching my update right now i want to say that christina offered to

do all of the the newsletter work and video editing uh while she's on vacation but this is the first time she's been able to hang out with her family in years now because of the pandemic and so i do not want her working basically so i'm not doing a newsletter okay everybody cool with that all right good now back to the business of the blurs adrian in portland says wishing a very happy early blurs day to my creative beautiful wickedly talented sister-in-law julie june in portland oregon i feel so ridiculously lucky that you and dylan decided to pack up your tiny home and move here my mom told me that if i wait for things like good things will happen to me dude Our friendship truly is like getting banana bread at work. Hell yeah. Nice.

Sam says, happy Blur's Day to my cousin Julie from France. I'm really looking forward to going to see her next month and also picking up a wheel of the world's smelliest cheese, St. Nectar. Thanks for keeping me on my toes learning German this summer, Julie.

Nice. Happy Blur's Day, Julie.

It sounds like you're going to go ahead and let Sam enjoy the world's smelliest cheese. You're not going to ask for a slice to be sent to you, Andrew?

No. Oh, no, me? I wasn't sure if you were talking to Julie. No, I'm fine. I'm good. Thank you. I got some smelly sausage I'm going to eat. Marie and Emmanuel say, happy belated blursay to Marshall. This is our first time writing one of these, so we don't really know what we're doing, and therefore we're a week late. Marshall, we're super glad we're coming. Co-workers, since it's really fun when you call me colleague in response to my work bestie slack every day, Manu would like you to know that you're fine. I don't get it. I like that they get it.

I wonder if Marshall picked up colleague from you, Andrew. You're a big fan of colleague.

I'm assuming that that's it. Yeah, I stumbled on that. Yeah, and then I, sorry, I kind of, I want to make sure. Should I do that again? Here. No. Okay. It's really fun when you call me colleague in response to my work bestie slack every day. Manu would like you to know that you're fine.

There we go.

Looks like we've had a few different notifications from folks that our friend Leany, a.k.a. Prom Queen, a.k.a. Celine, is having a Blur's Day as well. Levi wrote in and said just in case Somehow nobody else got to it Happy Blur's Day to the brilliant And hilarious Leanie who is indeed Like the coolest person I know love it That's awesome so there was Leanie just so You know there was lots of people wishing you I heard that you had a random Encounter with Leanie And our friend Rachel Bell oh yeah

Did we mention that on the show yesterday or It was funny these and I Yeah these and I went it was a weird like spur-of-the-moment decision it was like it was a monday night it was earlier than we would usually have uh dinner but we just were in the mood to try this um new restaurant that's kind of a few blocks away from us so we're like let's just go and then we showed up and it was a monday so it was closed a lot of restaurants are closed on monday so we're like all right well let's go to this other place um and i'm blanking on the name of it this other place kind of in the neighborhood that we like and it's just so there's like a caribbean place yeah it's a caribbean place what's it called it's named after a drink mojitos mojitos love it great local i mean just Great local little place The owner's awesome And anyway we go But it's kind of a weird time It's like 6 o'clock Which I guess that's not a weird time for dinner But earlier than we'd usually be sitting at that place And then who walks in But Celine and Rachel Bell Who are having their own little date So we put our tables together And had dinner together So anyway happy Blurs Day To Prom Queen And congratulations on the release of your new record Stephanie says, happy Blur's Day to my cousin, friend, and fellow Boss 10 Ross. Thursday is his birthday eve, but due to his time-bandoning tendencies, who knows when he'll hear this. Regardless, I'm glad to be his cousin and glad to have an excuse to get together and eat copious amounts of cake.

Jonna, which is like Donna with a J, says, I want to wish my five Elliot a very happy Blur's Day. Aww. That's so cute. Jonna says, he's a fantastic human, and I'm so lucky to call him my son. He turned 14 this week, and he loves the TBTL sound machine. We're constantly coming up with drop ideas for our family's very own fantasy sound machine. All you have to order is 4,000 of them, Jonna, and you can get them made fairly reasonably. Well played on that marketing ploy to rope in the next generation of listeners. You've uncovered our devious plan, Jonna. Let the birthday fun begin Happy birthday Elliot Do it in the voice Luke Do it in the voice Oh from E.T. Let the fun begin voice Oh let the fun begin I thought I was going to say Elliot like how E.T. says Oh no I don't really have an E.T. impression in my back pocket Plus Elliot's only 5 But Elliot's probably already fed up with the people referencing that Elliot's 14 Oh he is A5

But he's 14 Yeah, it's a numbers game. It's a numbers game, Luke. Yeah. Mike says, if it weren't for Gretchen Rose, I wouldn't be calling myself a 10. Nor would my boy Schaefer down in Austin. She's a great person, and though she is no longer my wife, she's still my best friend. And I want to wish her a happy 40th birthday. Thank you for sticking around on this earth yet another year. I know that your 40th will be wonderful, mostly because you are wonderful.

That is a very mature Blur's Day message. Talk about amicable. Talk about conscious uncoupling.

Take a note, Luke. Yeah. I mean, for us, when we break up the show in our friendship. No, it's going to be ugly. It's going to be nasty.

It's just all the money is going to go to the lawyers. Rold, our buddy Rold says, I'd like to say happy Blur's Day to my youngest five, Valentin. He turns one on Saturday. Okay, can I activate this again? Our family of six are at SeaTac. We are on our way to Arizona to celebrate with his grandparents. We've been in the TSA line for an hour. Wish us luck. We did get here three hours earlier. Good for you.

We're all just like sending that message, that birthday, Blur's Day message from the TSA line. I think that's a good use of time. You know, there's a whole TikTok meme, Andrew, that's like, it's sort of about dads wanting to get to the airport like four to five hours early. What's funny about it, though, is it's always set over the music of the Home Depot more doing music. Oh, yeah. Which I'm sure if I played it, I don't have it right in front of me, but if I played it, you'd immediately recognize it.

No, I do know it. Yeah, I can't quite get it in my head, but I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah.

It's that very identifiable Home Depot, dad's on a project mission kind of music. But it'll just be usually the kids, right, filming their dad just walking very briskly through the airport seven hours before the flight. And then the Home Depot music. It's pretty good. That was rolled, apparently.

Yeah. No, that's good. That's good. There's a new progressive commercial, Becoming Your Parents. That's all about becoming your parents in an airport, in an airline situation. It led to quite a debate. I think we talked about it on the show.

Right. Yeah. What was the issue? Because I think I sided with you on it.

Yeah. Whether or not it's really like becoming your parents if you're up in a plane and you're looking down at your city or town and you're identifying, you're kind of pointing out to your seatmates like, you know, noticeable things from the sky, like maybe your house or a bridge or something. Is that becoming your parents or is that just something that every human likes to do because humans weren't meant to fly and it still fascinates us. I just

I was just booking some flights today because I'm going to be in California next week doing some stories. Andrew, I'm doing a story about search and rescue dogs. Oh, nice. And I'm also doing a story about how apparently there's some evidence that in some places beaver dams actually work to help stop wildfires. Oh. And I'm also doing a story about the origin of ranch dressing. I'm going to the actual Hidden Valley Ranch where it was popularized.

That money could get you out of a few jams.

There's a Hidden Valley Ranch party in my future. Yes, wow. But there was a seat in coach that was at the very front row of coach, which I always like to say is the first class of coach. But it was aisle. And then there was a seat further back that was window. And I chose the further back seat just so I could stare out the window. Yep, see?

And point out things. Exactly. There's one more on here. One more Blur's Day. Ian simply says, happy Blur's Day to Kellen in Chicago. Nice. Happy Blur's Day, Kellen. Happy Blur's Day, everybody. Is this what we go out with? Just me kind of half-ass scatting?

We have actually a recording of Nancy Griffith doing the Tim Heidecker bass groove. So just to keep every day this week always having some Nancy Griffith remembrance, So we have to find out where her world and the Tim Heidecker world overlap.

I do have. I mean, I got a suggestion from a listener of another Nancy Griffith song. But even the listener I'm looking for now even said, like, I know you've been playing a lot. I just mean for your own personal, like, listening, you might enjoy this song.

Because you were vibing with that song yesterday, which I'm glad to hear about. I love that song yesterday. Her endurance. Yeah, me too. But I always assume that. I mean, I've internalized a lot of shame around my Counting Crows love. so because there's just nothing self-aware about that music or about adam duritz at least as he comes off on stage or you know how he appears to be on stage and so um i heard it and i was like yeah i kind of i'm with this but i assumed you would be like this is a little poppy for me but

i'm glad you liked it no i liked it a lot i thought it was um really good and i thought like as a duet i thought their voices really um you know just complimented each other i mean do you want to do this i mean we could so somebody this this was um listener nate who um loves nancy griffith saw saw her at bumbershoot back in the early 90s for seven dollars and uh what is bumbershoot now by

the way i think it's like a uh canceled i don't mean oh i don't mean in the sense of it was inappropriate i mean i think that they actually called it off like it was on its one year i did the radio commercials for bumbershoot i think they paid me it with a ticket oh wow that was when i knew they were running low on cash well that's i think they're only charging seven dollars yeah exactly they should have charged twice that so nate saw nancy griffith at bumbershoot for

seven dollars yeah and anyway there's a song here lone star state of mind by nancy griffith and i'm looking up here um and i think i can call this up if you start to say your goodbyes i'll have this

i will andrew uh i'll thank everyone for listening and remind them that we're going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you i'll try not to get distracted by the fact that there's a Delica driving down Cooch Street, Andrew, which could be interstellar. It looks eerily familiar, and it doesn't have any covers on the fog lights.

That could literally be our van.

I S you not. I think the Delica that we drove just drove down Cooch Street.

Hey, it's alive. It's alive.

It is alive. All right. We'll see you tomorrow, everyone.

And thank you for listening. Until then, have a great Thursday. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. It's been a long, long time Since those hot and humid Texas nights When we went swimming in the tide Like Corpus Christi seems so far away And I'm not talking about the miles And there ain't much I wouldn't give today Just to see one of your smiles But here I sit alone in Denver Sipping the California wine And I've got all night to remember you I'm in a lone star state of my aim I just saw John Wayne on the late, late show

Save the girl and ride away

That cast could really get me out of a couple of jams. It's just, all right, all right, game on. Okay. Game on. All right, so why don't we just get started? There's a Hidden Valley Ranch party in my mouth. Power out.