Muse

I have ants in my house, so I got some ant poison, and the way that the ant poison works is that the ants think it's a treat and they pick it up and they take it back to their nest and they give it to their queen and it kills her. And then the rest of the ants, I assume, die from grief. I don't know. That's so messed up. Only a human would invent that. Only a human would be like, Oh, ants, you are a minor inconvenience to me, so I'm going to spend years learning how your civilization works and then trick you into committing regicide. I didn't even want to kill the ants, man I just wanted them to go outside That's why I've been giving the ants acid At first they were having kind of a bad trip So then I dressed up like an ant And I was like, nah bro, you're just having a bad trip You just need to go outside I may have also taken some of the acid In fact, I don't even know if I have ants

T-B-T-L

guess what day it is guess what day it is it's friday friday gonna get down on friday everybody's looking forward to the weekend do i look like i know what a jpeg is

i just want a picture of a god dang hot dog am i a hero i really can't say but yes hey where's the freaking

now do some toot now don't get me i will do some toot you know stay patient people stay patient this is gonna be worth it i promise maybe not maybe not but it's worth it to me

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a friday edition of tbtl The show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Well, shit. What are y'all doing?

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center.

I feel good today. I feel good today.

High in the sky above Portland, Oregon, where we had a little light misting of rain this morning. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. It's always welcome by the plants and the vegetation around here, what little of it there is in the particular neighborhood that I live in. We've got a particularly fun show for you on this Friday. It's episode 3,493 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. And if you hear a certain excitement in my voice, it's because there's been some big news in the world of the hosting of the television show Jeopardy. And that guy, Mike Richards, who was appointed as the new host, is now announced he's no longer going to be the host of Jeopardy.

Aloha means hello and goodbye. Goodbye.

He forgot the sage advice of one Alex Trebek. And in fact, he was slipping.

Never let me slip, because if I slip, then I'm slipping.

I was doing a little early morning jog today And I came into my apartment And NPR was still playing on the radio in my apartment And it was the TV reporter Eric Deggans for NPR And he was talking about something about a host And what they need to really do and not repeat their mistakes And I just, a little part of my heart said Could it be? Is it possible that this guy who seemed so uninspiring and also just such a not great public person, is it possible? Could it be that he's not actually going to host Jeopardy? And maybe we played a very small part in that. And then I picked up my telephone and I had, this is not an exaggeration, 10 different people, including friends, family members, loved ones, were all texting me about this. And in fact, that's the story. He's moving on, or at least he's not moving on as the host of Jeopardy, which is kind of cool. If you share my opinion on the matter, which, of course, you should, because my opinion is right and unerring. Also, we tried to talk about this yesterday and ran out of time. There's some interesting kind of financial models around how much a big Hollywood stars are getting paid now because of all this streaming stuff.

People just came out here and was getting hella money.

Daniel Craig is going to get $100 million for these Knives Out sequels. And what I thought was really interesting was he's not leaving it to his kids, he says. That's the part of the story that really intrigues me. Oh, and speaking of big Hollywood types, Larry David apparently goes to Massachusetts each summer. And he got into it with Alan Dershowitz in front of like a corner grocery store in this presumably beautiful little hamlet in Massachusetts. It's all right.

It's all right.

pretty pretty pretty good and reading the details of this kind of tense interaction it does very much read like a scene out of curb your enthusiasm so we'll we'll get to that time permitting we always have time for this young man he's a handsome young stranger he's the longest running cobro of the show who may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships he is andrew cobrowns walsh and And he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend. Good morning. I got a battery, daddy. I saw that on Instagram.

That is to say I have a battery daddy now. It's a carrying case for all of my batteries. It can hold up to 180 batteries. Am I saying batteries a lot? I feel like I'm saying batteries a lot.

I saw a photo of that on the line yesterday. She's good looking, right? Very, very practical. You know, I could probably use one of those around here. There are little, you know.

Why do I say she if it's a battery daddy? Sorry, I just want to call that out before somebody else does.

Because you don't see gender or what we think of conventionally as gender, and I applaud that about you, my friend.

Yeah. But, yeah, I just had a drawer full of batteries, batteries, and it's like, you know me. I'm generally tidy when it comes to that stuff, but there's never a good way to store your batteries. It's true. I sound like a – I feel like I'm in a Battery Daddy commercial.

You need – if you're in that part of the infomercial where you're opening a cupboard and it cuts to black and white inexplicably.

It's all black and white, yep, yep.

As all the batteries fall out.

But guess what? Now there's color on the screen because I have Battery Daddy. But it's true. Like when you buy any amount of batteries, unless you need them all right away, they don't come in packaging that is easy to wrap back up, right? It's either those bubble containers, so you've had to, like, cut them open, or it's, like, at the cardboard back, and so there's no way to close it back up again, and you put it in a drawer, and they spill all over. Like, it really is a thing, and I always, in the back of my head, thought, I'm going to get a cute little solution to this problem. I had seen the Battery Daddy in maybe commercials, or maybe I've gone searching, and this thing is not a good-looking, it's not, like, design-y at all. It looks like something that you would get for your dad as a last-minute Father's Day gift. Or your daddy, possibly.

For the best daddy in the world.

In fact, I'll bet you that's why it's called that. I'll bet you it was designed specifically to move a lot of units, like right before Father's Day or something. It just has last-minute gifts.

But shouldn't it be called the battery dad if it's going to do that? Because as we've talked about extensively on this show, I would say maybe more extensively than is necessary. The difference between dad and daddy. I stopped signing my text to my daughter, Daddy, probably like a year ago. Because, you know, this is when she was a little kid and I'd give her a birthday card or something, you know, Christmas card. It'd be like, love, Daddy. Like that's just you just kind of you're in that mode. And then at some point when Daddy sort of took on a different connotation in the in the popular culture, I was like, yeah, we got to we got to stop that quick. And I did. So I'm thinking if they really wanted to move this as a – I think they got locked in the idea that daddy sort of rhymes with battery or it doesn't rhyme but it works with battery daddy.

I think dad is just a little abrupt. I mean you have scrub daddies. Battery dad. Yeah, battery dad sounds weird. Scrub daddy is a thing. We didn't grow up in a daddy family at all. We never called our parents mommy and daddy. We called my dad hot ass but we never called him daddy. Hot cheeks actually is what we called him. Yeah, old Bob Hot Cheeks Walsh, sure. I don't know. It's how he signed his cards to us. But anyway, so I'm at Bed Bath & Beyond yesterday getting some towels and some other sundry items.

And you wandered into the Beyond? Yes, I certainly did. They had one left.

They had one left. I was carrying my towels around. By the way, good deal on those. I almost bought four towels at $8 a piece, but then I saw very similar towels that I could get eight for $15. Do the math on that.

I did the exact same thing at old BB&B.

Yeah.

It's like first thought, worst thought in Bed Bath & Beyond because you just go to the first end cap, the first large display, and you're like, okay, this seems – I don't know how much towels cost. Eight bucks? Okay. And then if you continue wandering, you're like, oh, wait. No, no. That was the wrong – like whatever it is, knife block, towels, sheet set, you name it. In my experience, I always grab kind of the overpriced wrong one that they've positioned most eye-catchingly, and then I find it where, oh, no, I can get eight towels for four cents. Sure.

Yeah, mine was a little bit opposite of that, in fact. I went back and I found the towel section. No, I mean very close, but I was like in the non-sale section. I was just like buying them. I was like I wanted to be particular about – I'm on like 14 different tangents here, but we always use these.

Well, we know Friday is the longest show.

Yeah.

We know blue is the warmest color.

and Friday is the longest show. So I would just say go for it.

We have a bunch of towels in our house that we've gotten at various places like Ikea. Ikea has these very like kind of thin towels. I've seen them in a million people's houses. They're kind of eye-catchy in that very simple Ikea way, just like a bright color with white stripes. I think a lot of people can probably picture what I'm talking about. And they're fine. I never thought too much about them until, and I don't remember where we inherited this towel from, but somebody brought over a casserole or something. We don't have a lot of casserole parties. I don't know where we got this towel from, but it was like an old school. It almost it almost had a country kitsch kind of vibe to it as far as its pattern is concerned. But it was so soft, Luke. And I realized I haven't had a soft kitchen towel in a long time. So I wanted to not buy these online. I wanted I know you can find better.

You need to rub them exactly weirdly and then put them back if you didn't like them. Exactly. Someone else to bring home to their home.

You need to go into the back of Bed Bath and Beyond where the towels are. You need to take off your shirt. You need to lay a bunch of these on the ground.

For some reason, you go through a beaded curtain. It's very weird.

Yes, exactly. You just follow the smell of incense, and you'll get there. But anyway, so I went back there. I'm like, wow, these are more expensive than I thought. But I really was – I felt like I want to buy the ones that will bring me pleasure. I spend more time in the kitchen than any place else. I can buy four towels for $8 a piece if they – they'll bring me pleasure. I'll be happy I did. It was more expensive than I thought it was going to be. then I take my towels and then I'm looking for something else this is where the battery daddy catches my eye it's the last one left I'm like oh I've been looking at you online you're not very cute you know you're not very photogenic but you get the job done and then suddenly I'm like carrying around these four towels and a battery daddy and now I'm looking for face masks I realize it's probably time to get me some backup face masks and as I'm walking to the face mask area Then I see a big bin full of these towels that aren't quite as nice, but definitely close and were way, way, way less expensive. And I thought, oh, my gosh, if Genevieve was here, she would take these expensive towels and wrap me about the face and ears with it. So anyway, that was basically a free battery daddy out of it. That's kind of true. Yes, that's a good that's a really good point. And I think the fact that it was the last one there might have helped. I wonder if they have a whole back room full of battery daddies and they just put one out.

Terry, go put the one of everything back out so everyone thinks that they're getting the last one. Andrew, I am right now looking at an infomercial or one of those longish commercials.

As seen on TV, two-minuter.

And it is in black and white, my friend. And it is someone opening a cupboard trying to get and finding their batteries are in fast disorganized.

To loose batteries, clutter up your house. Is finding the right size impossible? And why do they always waste precious space? What you need is the Battery Daddy Storage System. The new compact and portable way to organize, store, and protect all your batteries.

I am so getting one of these, Andrew.

Organize master. Battery Daddy uses both sides.

Do you feel like I'm biting your rhyme if I do that?

No, you need one. It comes with a battery tester, too. I already have an old battery tester. Oh, my God. What?

How have I gone this long in my life without – now they have a woman who is blindfolded for some reason. She's wearing like a night – like a sleep mask. I guess she's demonstrating some kind of intuitive nature of this thing, of this battery daddy. This is exactly a problem that I've run into here in this apartment, which part of the problem is I'm not going to live here forever. and so I want you know the general areas like the living room and stuff to be pleasant to be in but like I just haven't put the kind of thought or organization into this place that I would if I were to like buy a home again or something or even rent a home that I knew I was going to be in for a few years so I've got this one and it's also it's an apartment there's not a crazy amount of storage so there's like a a washer uh you know um for it's like laundry like washer and dryer that are stacked on each other and then that's one side of this big closet and then the other side is just like for everything else and when i was newly moved in here i bought some kind of shelving some kind of cheapo shelving at like ace or something and i put it together but it's not an ideal system and what i've been doing for the you know now almost a year that i've been here is just anything that's kind of hardware-ish like if it's a screwdriver or a command hook or batteries I just kind of put them there, but it is a very, very unpleasant looking pile of disorganization. And, I mean, I got to kind of give it up to this infomercial. They're not wrong. No. Like, it's a real waste of space because what you normally do is you take, like, if it's a AAA battery and you buy, like, a big old, you know, giant bundle of them, you're kind of taking them out one at a time. But then you got this, like, really silly, like, piece of packaging that's got, like, two loose ones now in it at the end and stuff. There's got to be a.

Better way, Andrew. Luke, can I tell you, this will be my last point on this story. So I bought this thing yesterday, like I said, on a whim. I've left no details out, so I think everybody's caught up. I come home. I leave the battery daddy and my towels and my tub shroom drain unclogger thing. How would you say that? It's like a strain, a bathtub drain strain. Yeah, well, I don't know what that thing is called, a bath stop. Yeah, I don't know the generic term for it, but this is one of those, again, And as seen on TV, whiz bang ones that's supposed to collect the hair in a new way. We have one for our kitchen sink. Anyway, point is, so I got my three products. I leave them on the kitchen table. I do take a photo. I put it on the gram. And then I go to meet some friends at our Eagles Club, right? And so I'm the first one there. And I sit down next to this guy, Jay, who's a regular at the Eagles. He and I, you know, we're friendly enough. We don't really bro down on a lot of stuff. But I'm sitting next to him and the conversation kind of lulls. So I turn to him and I say, I got a battery daddy today. He had no idea what I was talking about. And he's, you know, he lives a bit of a tougher life than I do, I would say. Not that he struggles. I mean, I just mean that he's a tougher guy, sort of, you know. And he just looks at me like, I don't know. He's just not the type of guy that I have a lot of battery daddy conversations with, right? And he doesn't know what to do with this information. So I show him the photo of the battery daddy and he's just like kind of confused about it. He doesn't understand, like, why do you have so many batteries? And then that leads to a conversation about how many radios I have around my house. Just we just weren't.

I'm really surprised that it didn't. I thought that that story was going to end with. You finally found something to bond with James over, because that does seem like if, you know, if James is maybe a more blue collar guy or he's doing work that's more physical, maybe, you know, construction, something like that.

He does a yard. He does landscaping work is what he does.

So you just might think there were things because one of the things I've noticed about people who are good at doing a lot of the physical stuff that I'm bad at is they get very organized about their tools and about their systems. And that's one of the ways that you're able to be efficient and do a good job is like you have the right tool for the job. You keep it in a certain place. You know, there's it's a whole thing. So I was figuring James would be like, oh, yeah, what did you get the did you get the BD2000 or the 2001? Because actually the 2001, they made some real mistakes with that one. And you're better off with the 2000.

Yeah, no, it wasn't like that. He was a little bit more befuddled. I shouldn't say that the conversation was bad. It just wasn't. I was just kind of hoping to get a more excited reaction about my battery daddy. But it was not there. So that's fine. So we just talk about radios for a little bit. And then Genevieve comes in. And she's the first person to meet me. And I say, hey, I got a battery daddy. And I show her the photo. And she's like, yeah, yeah, I saw it at home. And she's just like pretty like unimpressed by the whole thing. And then I'm like, well, Camaro Kev is like my last shot on this. And then Camaro Kev comes in. He orders his beer. We're sitting down. I say, hey, I got a battery daddy today. He said, a what? And I show him the picture. And Luke, it was the reaction that I needed and that I wanted and that he was the only person who could have given me this reaction. reaction it was like we were 10 years old and i just said i got i got the uss flag for my gi joe toys he was like what he's zooming in and i'm like i'm like it holds a whole bunch in the back too he's like yeah no i see the inset here like he's zooming in so far on this photo that he knows more about my battery daddy than i do and i'm the owner of it well i'm the son i guess um and uh and man he delivered on that because if kevin had been like oh yeah i guess i don't know batteries aren't really a problem in my life that would have really bummed me out i just ordered a battery zaddy

off of amazon and um well it's going to be interesting you know that's that's a service that camaro kev provides generally speaking is enthusiasm which is always welcome i i and and i hope that also you were getting the response from me that you were hoping for yeah because that thing is pretty amazing now i've got i've got other questions see our friend camaro kev aka thunder and our uh our other friend jd jd and thunder are almost like an hour supposedly an hour from now will depart from seattle and start to head south on interstate five to come down here to portland to hang out with me that's right i forgot about that and camaro had i don't want to put his business out there but he had uh today off so that they could get a kind of an earlier start to come

down here but now i know he was at the eagles last night no man he was so responsible and he said he didn't want to be he didn't want to be all tired and drag powder dry he's definitely keeping his powder dry for you i promise you he was he was in in fact i was in a rare position where i was like oh come on have one more around leave your car here tonight we'll drive we'll drive you to pick it up in the morning because you know i i was probably on my third round at this point and uh he's like no no i'm good i just want to you know i don't know if he said keep my powder dry but he was like a he was a very responsible Kevin so you'll be happy to hear that well I mean now that now the goal for me tonight is keeping my powder dry because i've got a whole speech rehearse when they get down here which is like all right my dudes let's have a fun safe sane night tonight uh we'll just you know maybe have a couple drinks keep it relatively chill so that we don't wake up tomorrow in a world of pain and then kind of we're just limping along through saturday so that's the speech that i had i've rehearsed saturday go hog wild oh then saturday just probably end up in jail

Okay, sounds good. So what are you going to do on Saturday, do you think?

Well, that's the thing. What do three good boys in their mid-40s do on a Saturday that isn't just going somewhere and beginning the drinking? Because that's another thing. Camaro Kev is not a day drinker, not into that. And, in fact, I've kind of become less into that as well just because I can't rolling thunder anymore. And so I was going to see if we could rent, like, a little electric boat and go around on the Willamette. Those are all rented Then I was going to try to rent a pontoon boat The only thing available were jet skis And I just didn't feel like reenacting Part of eastbound and down So now maybe we're going to get some E-bikes and ride around Portland or something

Oh that's not a bad idea This sounds really corny but I'm not joking Is putt-putt still a thing? Did it survive the pandemic?

This is a great question I mean there's an Indoor putt-putt place that I've actually taken my nephews to that's not far from here it's also not it's sort of more for kids yeah

indoor that's not a good vibe i i was just picturing like it's a nice day in portland like i assume that there's not a putt-putt place in the heart of the city but i just wasn't sure if you get out a little ways and like that's always a good time a good way to spend some time outdoors i guess also adults go real golfing i just have never done that before right i think john might

golf our friend jd but i don't but like i'm not really a golfer anymore i don't think camaro is And so, yeah, we've got to figure out because then Saturday night we're ordering the fight. There's like Manny Pacquiao's fighting someone, so we're going to watch that. So, yeah, well, I'm sure we'll come up with something. But I'm glad to hear, glad to hear that Kamara was making good decisions last night so that he's not going to just roll into Portland feeling about a half past. What is it? I rolled into Nazareth. I was feeling about a half past dead. Oh, is that the line? Yeah, I guess that is the line. Take a load off, Annie. It's amazing that this is the morning that Mike Richards has been forced to step down from hosting Jeopardy, probably because of the heat that we were turning up on him from this podcast. And we haven't even gotten to it yet, but we've done a tight 17 on the battery daddy. And if Camaro Kev made good decisions last night.

I have been thinking about this Jeopardy story all morning. I've been texting with a bunch of listeners. A bunch of listeners texted the text line. And I've just been going back and forth with them, maybe even like cementing some of my thoughts because I have so many whirling thoughts about this. And I meant to start the show today by saying, I don't want to wait for top stories. Let's just talk about Jeopardy right now.

I literally have it as the first thing we were going to talk about because I was like, this is all anyone who listens to the show probably cares about. And I ruined it. It's kind of all I care. You didn't ruin it. You did not ruin it because you know what? You gave me a gift, which is the knowledge of something called the Battery Daddy, which I'm going to get. I'll let Kevin bring it down if you want to play with it. It's going to be the beginning of a whole new life for me here in Portland, Andrew, because part of the process of not owning a house anymore has been – well, I've been slightly a funk over it, right? Just because I really – I take a lot of kind of personal happiness out of feeling like I have somewhere that I live that I really enjoy being, that I like to be at, and also nobody can kick me out, and no one can say, we have to come do an inspection of your apartment tomorrow. Although, really, it was actually kind of nice. They just send the maintenance person to ask, is everything okay in your apartment? Do you need anything fixed? Which I've got to give them credit. For as much as I run down the management of this place, it's purely to make sure that people don't have, well, at least allegedly, it's just to make sure that everything's working for the residents. But yeah, so as I've moved away from home ownership and into, which I think I've picked a good time, too, because it is really a buyer's market, as you know. It is just, houses are staying on the market for months. people are taking crazy low offers i mean this is the time to buy yeah um and but uh and so like that closet that i was talking about that's adjacent to the washer and dryer it's kind of a metaphor for something it's just kind of it's got an old it's basically got like a shittier version of the aluminum christmas tree that i used to have in port or excuse me in bellingham that i love so much but i was like i want something like that so i like bought it on amazon but it's not quite as good and now it's in that area there's a pile of loose batteries there's a couple extension cords it's just it's such a it's such a far cry from kind of like what i had going on residentially when i was in bellingham yeah everything very tidy and in its place and all

Kind of like all just sort of set up and dialed in, and that gave me a great sense of – a strong sense of well-being. I think it starts here, Andrew. It starts with the batteries, Addy. I put that in there, and then the batteries are organized, and then I just – that's how I start rebuilding my life. So even though it has forestalled our Jeopardy! conversation, it has been totally worth it. Good. I think for me anyway. Maybe not the listeners, but definitely for me.

Good.

All right. That being said, let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, we'll get right into this whole Jeopardy situation. Stay with us. It's TBTL. Hey, let's thank some donors of the day. Folks are making the show possible with their donations to American Public Media. The American public media uses a shockingly small amount of that money to pay us. And then we use a reasonable amount of that money to buy batteries at ease. Yeah, that's right. It's the circle of life. I want to thank Megan Sibbert of Chehalis, Washington. Beautiful Chehalis, Washington. Thanks, Megan. Appreciate you. It's a real, it's a Megan party and everyone's invited, Andrew. Because we also got to thank Megan Vogt of Denver, Colorado. So don't forget about Chase Wiseman. Chase Wiseman is down there in Los Angeles, California, supporting the program. Thanks, Chase. Appreciate you. Go have a sandwich at a Greenblatt's before it goes away forever. Yeah, have a sandwich for us. How about Anne-Marie Otio? What would your guess at Anne-Marie's last name be?

I'd probably go with Otio, too. Otio. But it could be Osho. But I'd probably not. I don't know.

This was ringing a bell, by the way. I think we ran into this last year with Anne-Marie.

Well, thank you for giving again, then.

I know, Anne-Marie. Thank you for not being deterred by our inability to pronounce your name seamlessly. We really appreciate you out there in Maple Valley, Washington, helping support the show. And then Emily Burnett is in Woodinville, Washington. And Joe Butler is out there in Sammamish.

Ah, he did it. Butler did it.

I didn't grow up playing Clue, so that wasn't like a weird dated joke.

It just feels like the butler did it. Isn't that like the classic spoiler? Like whenever I'm pretending to spoil something for somebody, I say Joe Butler did it.

Speaking of which, I actually watched, Becca and I watched two episodes of White Lotus last night.

Oh, yeah? So you're now two episodes in, or that was on top of what you'd already seen? Okay, gotcha.

No, two episodes in. And it was a whole thing, by the way. Thanks to our donors of the day. Appreciate you. We would not be doing this without you. It was a whole thing because speaking of like my new life and various accounts changing and such, I think I'd been using the HBO Max that was associated with the Bellingham place. Oh, okay. And since this is all now finally been kind of worked out, I went to log in and it wasn't – I couldn't log in, but it also was very difficult for me to set up a new account for some reason due to the vagaries of like Xfinity. so i finally get it set up and then we watch one episode and then it ends and i can't get back so i watch episode one of the white orchid on hbo and it's over and i say to becca like you want to watch another one she's like yeah but now what it does is it defaults to whatever is actually playing on hbo which is episode six of the white lotus yeah yeah yeah right and i'm seeing characters and i'm like well they're still around episode six and i can't i'm like i'm like furiously trying to exit out of the screen and it won't like I can't it's just literally like not letting me leave this thing that's just pumping information into my eyes and ears that I don't want to have

Did you do the singing thing? I was so close. I just started making a lot of noise I was like we'll do that during football season a lot on the rare occasion that I have to and luckily it's been rarer and rarer where I have to tape like the Browns game or tape the Seahawks game because the Browns game is on and then if like the TV kind of breaks through or we go to change it to the Seahawks game and it's accidentally already the third quarter. Well, it's not accidentally the third quarter, but I'm accidentally seeing it. I'll just start making a lot of noise. And Genevieve, if she's in the room, she'll do it too. Otherwise, she'll just hear me like I'm off my rocker from the other room. Blah, blah, blah, do-do-do, not seeing anything. This is the not seeing anything song. I've got to start flexing those muscles.

I've got to get those muscles ready for football season. Yep, yep. But no, I didn't do that, but I was quite frustrated, Although I will say, I'm starting to reassess the tweet that Sam Sanders put out that I thought was spoiling it for me. I think he was just making a comment about how with the ring a couple of the characters in the show were being towards other characters. I'm going to give Sam the benefit of the doubt and assume he would not be. sort of spoiling that show for me but it's pretty good i have to say at least i'm enjoying it it's it's very um it's very tense you know it's these this group of people who don't know each other i mean you know they're couples and families but this group of various strangers uh that go out to this uh hotel in hawaii the white orchid and all are dealing with their own kind of situations um and it's uh it's quite good i think and very intriguing but now i'm about to go to california for a week so and i want to keep watching it but uh becca and i made a a pact a sacred pact we're gonna watch this together oh man but there's no way i'm getting through next week without it being

spoiled unless maybe the wave has crested um yeah you know do you not i know a lot of couples do that i know that i'm on the probably on the other side of this but like i just don't i just never have those agreements with these i remember when i moved to los angeles now this is different because So I was moving there like several months before she would move there. So we couldn't. And I think we're watching Homeland at the time. Right. And I think that, you know, we were we were just watching it. But we would talk about it the next day or whatever. But it's like I don't feel like I have to be. I like the experience of sort of like being on the same timeline as somebody. But I don't feel like I have to be in the same room watching it with them. Can't you find some flexibility in your in your blood?

I am sure that I could. I don't honestly I think Becca is Becca is only has only a passing interest in watching television honestly so I don't think it's like she's going to be like how dare you it was actually very fun last night because she's dog sitting of this little like I've never seen a dog like this I guess it's a it's a labradoodle but it's like the smallest labradoodle I've ever seen it's teeny named Holly and so we're watching White Lotus and Holly's hanging out there and she jumps up on the couch which, you know, it was certainly not stimulating my dogological clock, Andrew. Yeah, sure. Anyway, so that was fun. I'm sure if I were dying to watch the show, it would be okay. But it's also fun to have some TV that you watch with someone else because, again, we have to actually focus on that because if left to her own devices, she'll be advocating that we go for a walk and we're outside and that we're being healthy and that we're eating salads. And very little of it involves staring at the television. And I have to, like, prioritize. Like, this is a TV night. This is a couch potato night, dude. Yeah, don't be gross. Exactly. So, anyway, thank you to our donors and would recommend White Lotus. And fingers crossed that I get through next week without it being totally spoiled. Hello and welcome to Top Story. Well, we got a biggie today. I already kind of described this scene to you, Andrew, but it came quite out of the blue for me. I was finishing up my little morning jog, and I walk into the apartment, and I hear Eric Deggans talking about something that I start to piece together could possibly be the impossible dream. that this Mike Richards dude has somehow been ousted from this Jeopardy situation, which was creating so much anxiety for me because I love that show, but I couldn't figure out how I was going to watch him host that show. And then I looked at my phone, and I mean, I don't want to like overstate it, but it felt like Santa came early. Andrew, it felt like a little like Christmas morning. Like, I was like, could it be that we really got rid of this foolio that fast?

Really quickly, do you mean Deggans, Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times formerly before moving to NPR? I just like to always give his entire CV whenever possible. Sure, yeah.

Where was he at before that? Probably like he was at the Orlando Sentinel or something.

I'm not sure about that. I think he's a musician as well. We can get more details on that later. Sure. Yeah, no, same with me. In fact, all right, I'll just admit it. I woke up, I rolled over, grabbed my phone and saw a text from our friend Broadcast Barry to you and me with the news. That was the first I heard of it. Yeah, exactly. And I already had a text from you that said, yeah, just finished my jog and got this news. And I almost wrote like, yeah, me too. Just finished my jog. Literally just rolling over in the morning. Let's leave a timestamp out of this. It's not that late, by the way I've looked at it

Out of respect for you, I will Omit it from this conversation, but it's not like it was

Like 9.30 or something No, no, no, I think I got out of bed around I think I got out of bed around 8.15 today Maybe not quite that, but Anyway Anyway, yeah, and then I You know, a bunch of listeners tweeting, texting And I loved it because

I'll be honest with you. After yesterday's conversation, I was really frustrated because I felt like there's a lot of damning evidence. I have so much to say. At some point, it'll have to cut me off. But there was so much damning evidence. And I was just really bummed that as somebody who doesn't really watch a lot of Jeopardy, knowing that like you, I would actively kind of avoid it if he were the host, because it would just bring up a bunch of like anger in me at how unfair the process was and how he kind of stole the job, basically, and put his finger on the scales in so many ways. And the thing that really – the thing that was my takeaway after our conversation yesterday, which I thought about a lot in that Ringer piece, of course, Claire McNary.

Claire McNary, which – Yeah, Claire McNary. I mean, wow. Talk about some muckraking. Right. Talk about speaking truth to power. I mean, she single-handedly, I think, got – like, lost that job for him.

Exactly. And I think, you know, there's a lot of stuff in there. And I think that, you know, there are some people on my various timelines who are kind of anti-cancel culture crusaders, which kind of irritates me. And, like, I think that those people, I have not seen this yet, but I feel like for those who feel like everything is some sort of a trap we can fall into these days because everybody wants to cancel everybody, they're going to focus on these comments that he made in the podcast, which were not great, by the way. I'm not in any way defending that, but I do think that we truly do live in an age where the level of stuff that he had said, if it wasn't connected to other things like lawsuits in real life and the way he's treated women, could be apologized for in a sincere way, and you can move on from that. I don't think that was the career killer. And I don't think it was. He was canceled because of things he said on his podcast, which I think is going to be the takeaway from this. But really, the thing is, this is a guy who has demonstrated bad, shady business practices in the past with those PPP loans and probably other things. And now he got this job through bad, shady business practices. And that's what sucked so hard about this. And I'm glad that there is some accountability.

yeah i mean this was i was saying yesterday on the show that i didn't think that this was going to take him down but maybe we'd get lucky and it'd be like a year of shitty ratings and then they would like get the memo and and let him go i by my account by what i was reading he hosted literally five shows they recorded them yesterday and by the end of the day he was no longer the

host of jeopardy did they actually record those because in the statement i don't know he said something like so we can't go on with production i i sort i guess i was reading between the lines i sort of took it that like yesterday was such a distraction that he probably didn't record those

shows but i would love to know because did they actually like what happened to those uh contestants are they just gonna wait until like mayan bialik can host is it just is everything on hold did they tape five shows and now they're gonna tape five they're gonna put all those people back in the mix and do it again who won did somebody win a mike richards show that now will never air like i'm i'm i'm very very curious about the kind of like moment by moment of all of this um but also i i had forgotten about this about this uh moment from the simpsons but do you remember when homer becomes the new head of sanitation for springfield through like a series of weird events like there's basically a guy who's like a bureaucrat and and who is doing uh you know doing the job like professionally and competently but because it's very easy and you know this is something you don't know a whole lot about andrew it's very easy to be upset with things like garbage service what do you mean like as a customer or well yeah it's just it's hard to keep everybody happy but it's easy to say they're doing a those clowns down at city hall are doing a lousy job so there was this episode where homer manages to become the new sanitation commissioner of Springfield, but it's a disaster because he's Homer. And so they all want this guy Ray Patterson back who had been the old sanitation. And Becca sent this to me. She was like, is this going to be what Ken Jen does? Let me just

play... Now all in favor of reinstating Ray Patterson?

Yeah!

He's walking out on stage at the high school.

Oh, gosh. You know, I'm not much on speeches, but it's so gratifying to leave you wallowing in the mess you've made. You're screwed. Thank you. Bye.

He's right. He ain't much on you.

I'm wondering if that's... Like, I wonder if Ken even wants the job at this point. I mean, he probably still does. He's right. He's not great.

He's not great. Mo. A little

Bon Mo.

Okay, I'm going to say something kind of frank here, which, because Ken Jen is a friend and a friend of the show, and so I don't want to say anything, you know, whatever. I don't want to say anything divisive. But a concern that I have is that, again, I think Mike Richards not having a concern.

Having this job I think the headlines Don't quite match the reality You know I don't know why I Feel like I'm the one who has it right on this but like I'm looking at the headlines right now And they're all of the headlines sort of focus On things he said on his podcast and I Sort of feel like that's missing the bigger part Of this story but that's the easy Takeaway that's the easy headline and Because Ken Jen does have some Tweets in his past which he has Apologized for and I think Sincerely apologize for I just wonder if this makes it actually harder for him to take that. If that was a consideration for the Jeopardy hiring staff at all, I think this makes that harder. Now they have to even more, like, they have to, they will probably have to find somebody who has absolutely none of that in their background.

It makes me think that LeVar Burton moves to the top of the list, and I don't know if he was just being, if this is just a thing LeVar Burton does every Friday morning, because he seems like just, you know, a force of positivity, but I think he tweeted something like, I just saw this flying through Twitter, was like a beautiful Friday morning to everyone. Really?

That's a weird shade kind of coming from him.

It'd been like retweeted like 37,000 times. And so I don't know. I mean, it seems like a thing LeVar Burton might just literally do every Friday because he's just all about love. But he also might be kind of being a little funny there. If there's a wink there, then it makes me think he does want the job. And if he does want the job, he seems like a natural choice for the reasons you're talking about. I mean, if there's a chance to install a non-white person, In a major position like this, I don't see a person who's not white and who's nationally loved and good at the job, by the way, all of those things. I don't want to center the fact that he's a non-white person as if that's the reason you would give him the job. But it's like, why miss the opportunity to just make TV 5% less white with someone who's also going to do great at the job? Like, what is the downside? And again, I say that with kind of a secret hope that Ken gets it because that would, you know, he's kind of been a friend of the show and it would be cool to think like, oh, our kind of our friend or our acquaintance is like the host of Jeopardy. But honestly, I think you're right. I think it's like, you know, white guy me once, shame on you. White guy me twice, shame on everyone involved.

Right. Right. Yeah. And that is, you know, this whole time, though, I have I've said this a million times, so I'll say quickly here that we don't know the internal negotiations as well. Like I was never 100 percent sure that LeVar Burton wanted it as a permanent thing or wanted it bad enough that he would agree to whatever price tag is on that job. You know, like there are just all kinds of other things involved. The fact that he tweeted this out, like that's the first little hint that I did. Did you find it? Oh, no, I wasn't looking for it, but I take your word for it. But, you know, that's the first that seems to be the first thing that I've seen that clearly says, oh, yeah, he sees this as good news. So therefore, maybe this is something that he does want and is pursuing and maybe was left out in the cold on.

Yeah, I mean, it's like we're trying to read some very incomplete information. Who knows if he's just being funny or if he really wants job. Of course, I don't know him. I don't know what his intentions are. But I just think it's a I just think it's an overall very good day that this that this person who clearly had connived their way into the job and and had just been, by all accounts, really leaving a trail of destruction and like leaving things worse than he found them, at least according to that reported reporter from The Ringer, you know, leaving the Price is Right culture worse than than when he found it. And, you know, basically everything he touched kind of seemed to turn into a less good version of itself.

Yeah, I that's the other big point that I have here. And it's kind of a circular logic that I'm stuck in because I keep on when my brain kind of rests on this topic. I keep thinking what a bummer it is and how surprising it is that they messed up what should have been a historic feel good slam dunk moment for an American television institution. You know, like all of the goodwill around Alex Trebek, the sadness about his loss, the end of that era of Jeopardy brought out such strong emotion about a show that a lot of people felt strongly about, but also that a lot of people had on in the background for years and years and years. Right. And all they had to do was hand this baton in a way that kind of honored him, honored the show. And they were just drafting off of so much goodwill and good press. And then I land on how do you mess that up so badly? And I realized because I was saying that to Genevieve and she was telling she wasn't following the story. And I was giving her the broad strokes this morning. It sounds dirty. I was giving the broad strokes of the story this morning And she said How could they let this happen And that's where my circular logic comes in It's because

They didn't. He did. Like, this was like a one-man tornado. Like, he instilled himself, or installed himself, I should say, as the EP. I mean, he didn't install himself. Like, he got the job. But then he's working from the inside to do this. Well, he went in.

First, he pulled down a statue of Harry Treatment, which was weird.

That was weird. But, you know, and I think that there was one telling thing that we didn't talk about in Claire's story yesterday, which is this idea that there was so much trust of the Jeopardy production staff that Sony didn't often like kind of get involved in a granular level of that show because they didn't really need to. It seemed to be a very hands-off approach from the studio, but that Mike Richards, when he came in, people could sort of feel the long arm of the studio more, essentially that he was more of a company man and you could feel the Sony-ness more with him around. but that means that they they meaning sony or whoever the powers that be are really probably had a lot of trust in him so they just kind of let him do all of this and there wasn't probably a lot of oversight he probably really was the oversight and so when i think how could they let this happen it's almost like who's they it's almost like they didn't have anybody overseeing the overseer it's it really is when you think about it from that sort of like legacy perspective This whole thing is a real goddamn bummer.

It is, although I think that they – at least they made the right decision eventually. Eventually, yeah. Like, I mean, yeah, it was a bummer. You're right. There was a way for this to just be nothing but – well, having said that, whoever you picked, you were going to get – there would be a certain amount of people on the internet that would be grumbling. Maybe if it was LeVar Burton, the grumbling is, well, he doesn't have a strong connection to Jeopardy! historically or whatever, you know. but like LeVar Burton seems the one that there could be the least grumbling about that I can think of and if it was Ken you people would say probably rightfully do we need to install another white guy in one of these jobs that's a 30-year job you know so no matter who you no matter who you give the job to there's going to be a certain amount of complaining but they definitely went with the worst version of all of the things they could have done unquestionably but I am glad too that they didn't just like I wonder what the straw was that broke the camel's back to I mean other then obviously tbtl um well you said you weren't going to watch anymore didn't you well that's i think probably somebody at sony heard that but i i wonder like back to kind of what we were saying about about what happened yesterday did they record any episodes did they come in and did he get into like hair and makeup and then someone came and stopped him and said that we got to have a meeting and it was just like it was this like second it was the update in the ringer that sunk him like i really wonder what the last thing was because there was a lot of bad pub and it seemed like the people who hired him were like we're just going to weather the storm and we're and like we were discussing this yesterday we're just going to push this kind of inoffensive bland guy out there because so many people are watching this show in the background while they make dinner that the majority of the people who watch the show will not notice the difference and there will be a few like super diehards like luke that'll be bummed and won't watch it but overall it won't affect us so something changed that calculation for them and i wonder what that

was well and again i don't think and this is what kind of bothers me my theory on that is because claire's story was able to generate the headline past comments on podcast and again i'm not trying to sweep the comments under the rug the things that were drenched in misogyny and how that was related to real world lawsuits about the way the his productions treat women i mean that's a real thing also there was like some i don't know if you probably saw this we didn't discuss this yesterday i can't remember if it was in the ringer but like uh there was like a jewish joke that he had made about oh i didn't appearances and so um yeah that's gonna go over well in

hollywood that's definitely you really want to try to go anti go hard with the anti-semitism

it was like one of those things that was like it seemed like it was one of those weird passing things that you know probably was said again i'm not trying to forgive anybody for it but i mean i could almost see it being like in this moment back in 2014 he feel you know there are those who feel so strongly that they are not racist that they're beyond it then they say things because they think they can hang that would be my guess it wasn't it didn't seem virulent it just seemed like a weird joke from the 80s sort of like what why would you say that you know um i don't know why i say the 80s but i just spent a time before people were like and maybe considering their words as closely but all of that is to say that's shitty stuff and i'm not trying to forgive that i'm just saying that i don't know that i just still don't think that those comments were the most damning part of this at all but i do think that they're the easiest headlines and in this culture suddenly jeopardy has all these headlines swirling around the headline is past comments set on podcast and And it's just like a much easier to grab onto. I actually. Still, like you, Luke, you have me very convinced. I wish the PPP story, I wish we knew more about that and that that was more of a headline. Maybe investigate that further.

Yeah, that, again, not just to rehash what I said yesterday, but that's the one that I would think would resonate. I mean, maybe you could say sadly, because obviously people should be treated with respect in the workplace, regardless of gender. So that's not again not to low key that But like that one just seems like All Americans can agree you shouldn't Steal PPP money if that's what in fact Happened when we're in a national crisis Like this this is the other Question that I have Andrew is is he Still going to be the executive producer I didn't look At the I didn't actually see his whatever his Letter was whatever his statement was but Like

That's going to be hella weird Yep and my understanding is I read a line In a newspaper based on his statement The line specifically said It appears that he will be Maintaining his EP position Because his statement Which I just read quietly to myself While you're talking Does say we are canceling production for today He's still talking like he is the one Making the decisions for the show

Which let me just say this too For everybody that's worried about cancel culture Mike Richards is still going to make 1.2 million I'm just guessing at that number If this goes down the way that that would indicate Being canceled when you're a cis white man usually still means you make a really comfortable living in a job that a lot of people would love to have yeah absolutely if he was canceled it's it's he was canceled to being the executive producer of wheel of fortune in jeopardy which ain't the worst gig

you could have and also i mean now how does the process go forward how is he at all right well that's what i would be involved in the process i mean they should jettison him from the search they should move him off of this show let him do let him do the the um wheel of fortune or what not wheel of fortune the um yeah price is wheel of fortune is it wheel of fortune or price is right

well wheel of fortune and jeopardy are um they're produced i think by merv griffin or they used to be like they're kind of part of the same production team um and in fact he's in charge of both of them wheel uh price is right is the one he used to work on but that's a different oh i see so it's But yeah, put him on, you know what, it's like put him on some show that does not have the track record and the history and the kind of, not gravitas, but like I'm also kind of, well, I guess if he's still the EP, who knows. But one of the things that I was bummed reading was what people were thinking were going to be his kind of changes to Jeopardy to, you know, zhuzh it up a little bit. And I know that like this is very stodgy of me and no progress happens when people's basic opinion is I want everything to be like how it has been. But I don't want and I guess apparently when Alex Trebek took over that show, there were a bunch of the people who liked the previous version and thought that it was too too jazzy because of like some small things that they implemented, which now just seem, you know, very kind of like old fashioned. So maybe some evolution is OK, but I didn't want that guy in charge of it.

Yeah, yeah, I would agree. He doesn't he doesn't seem to have a great track record for taste.

All right. Daniel Craig not giving his money to his kids or Larry David and Alan Dershowitz having it out on the front porch of a little town grocery store in Massachusetts.

Which one do you pick? Is it Cape Cod? I take the or no, it's Martha's Vineyard, I think. But yeah, I take I'll take the Larry David story. You'll take Dershowitz and make it a true daily double? Exactly.

And actually, you sent me this article, Andrew. I had seen it bouncing around, but I just have such a bad feeling off of Alan Dershowitz at this point. Yeah, of course. That I was like, I don't want to. But then the fact that you read it and sent it to me, I was like, well, there must be something to it because you have good TBTL judgment. That's for sure. And then I read the article and I was like, oh, yeah, this is kind of weird. You know, obviously Alan Dershowitz is a very high-powered attorney and somebody who's got a lot of – he's been around a lot of situations that seem like they could all be the reason that maybe somebody loses some standing in the public debate. C. Epstein, comma, Jeffrey, et cetera. I mean there's a lot of – Doesn't he go back to O.J.? Well, he defended O.J. He was on the O.J. I don't that's a tough one because and that's honestly it's also related to kind of why he is now, according to Dershowitz, been somewhat shunned out on Martha's Vineyard because he also defended Trump during the impeachment. Of course. And what Dershowitz would say about that case and also about the O.J. case is we have a legal system in this country that is not based on if you think the person did or if you think the person is a good person or a bad person. We have a constitutionally sort of set forth legal system and we have to honor that regardless of the specific people that we're talking about who are involved in that system.

Yes.

So he would have said.

I defended O.J. even if I had suspicion that O.J. did it because I'm a defense attorney and I am going to provide the best defense I can to any person who is being charged with a crime.

Yeah, which is – I mean I think that's the oath and the belief of most lawyers. I mean that's good and that is valid. But also, I mean, O.J. was a very complicated situation, too, when you basically just had, it seemed like, unlimited resources to buy all of the best lawyers in the land.

Yeah, and he really did. I mean, there's a reason they call that the dream team. But so anyway, Dershowitz did that. I don't think that that really hurt Dershowitz's kind of, you know, his reputation a whole lot because he was still very much in public life and very much kind of showing up on TV shows. I mean, he's obviously a pretty brilliant dude. I don't think that's really debatable. But he decided he wanted to defend Trump. And that, he said, has caused people to shun him out there on Martha's Vineyard because there's a lot of liberals out there. larry david types apparently dershowitz this is according to page six dershowitz sees larry david at the chillmark general store a local community market and sandwich shop uh where dershowitz historically likes to hang out and greet regulars that also just seems i don't want to say weird because i guess i could see myself doing that someday like if there was a if i lived in a small town and there was a little store and i would like hang out and chat with people but the idea of like dershowitz holding court there or something strikes me as kind of odd yeah that part's weird

Aside from that, though, I feel like I can – I've never been to Martha's Vineyard, obviously. They wouldn't let me in. But I feel like this kind of like somewhat tony but still old-timey New England shop, I feel like I can picture this grocery store really well.

Oh, yeah. I mean, and it sounds lovely. It just sounds like a great kind of place to, you know, while away a Tuesday morning for an hour or two. So apparently Dershowitz is there doing his thing, and Larry David walks up, and Dershowitz says to him, we can still talk, Larry, because I guess they used to be friends. Dershowitz is allegedly a Democrat still. And so he says to Larry David, we can still talk. And then Larry David responds, according to this reporting, no, no, we really can't. I saw you, David shot back, referring to a video of Dershowitz patting former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the back as Trump praised him for berating an NPR reporter and kicking the outlet out of his place. I don't even remember this happening. It was such a whirlwind of bullshit behavior from that administration. But I guess Pompeo, who also, there's suspicion that Pompeo might have been involved in the theft of like a $800 or $7,000 bottle of whiskey that Japan gave the U.S. Oh, no, I did not see that story. Yeah, I can't remember which governmental agency is looking into it, but if you get a gift, if you're a cabinet member in the U.S., the guy was secretary of state, if you get a gift that's over a certain amount of money, like $500, you have to report it. So there's this, I think it's like a $7,000 or $8,000 bottle of whiskey that was given to the State Department by Japan, and no one can find it. And Pompeo's official statement is he has no idea what happened to the whiskey. But anyway, Dershowitz then is telling Larry David that it's OK for him to pat Pompeo on the back because Pompeo was a student of his at Harvard. And so he said, I greet all my former students that way. I can't greet my former students. And then Larry David apparently said, it's disgusting. Your whole enclave, it's disgusting. You're disgusting. And he storms off. Very, like, I mean, can't you just, like, it literally sounds like a scene that would happen between him and Richard Lewis on Curb.

And then, as Larry walks away, Alan takes off his T-shirt to reveal another T-shirt underneath that says, It's the Constitution, stupid.

And there's a picture in this article you sent me, Andrew, of Dershowitz with his It's the Constitution, stupid T-shirt on, which apparently he wears everywhere. That's his way of defending himself. His point being, it's the Constitution. I'm I'm just in. I am just, you know, sort of trying to act out the ideals of the U.S. Constitution. Don't get mad at me because I'm back slapping Mike Pompeo as he's berating as he's being praised by Trump over berating an NPR reporter. It's the Constitution. But, I mean, honestly, I hope this would be great. And I don't know if Larry David has any appetite for this story or not, like being that it's in real life. But they need to adapt this into a scene on Curb. You know what?

They probably will. Because I think they're in production of a new season now. I'm hesitating because it reminds me of something. This is kind of a bummer of a story. But I'm just going to tell it quickly. So, and a lot of people probably know this Because we probably have some

you know, real big Curb Your Enthusiasm fans in the audience, but I watched the first couple of seasons, I think, then sort of fell off the wagon, and every now and then will dip my toes back in. It's real cringe humor, of course, and so, like, sometimes it's hard for me to watch a lot of Curb Your Enthusiasm, but I got into season four recently, and started, I think it started on a whim, and then I kind of got into it, and I started re-watching... I know where this is going. ...whatever season where they're basically recreating Seinfeld. There's a whole season of Curb That is based on a Seinfeld reunion, which becomes a de facto Seinfeld reunion for us, the viewer. But it's a meta statement. It's brilliant in so many ways. But I wow. Here's your second Mike Richards connection of the show. Mike, of course, the actor Michael Richards, who plays Kramer, you know, is persona non grata ever since he was on stage not long after Seinfeld went off the air. And he started screaming the N-word at some people in the audience who are heckling him. And that is one of those stories that I've never fully understood. We didn't know that Michael Richards was harboring virulent racist tendencies. It seemed from an outsider to come from nowhere. It was such a shocking thing in the culture to me. And I also just think about it all the time because I still like Seinfeld. But every time he's on the screen, I think of that moment.

And I just think, like, what lies so hard to reconcile because the character of Kramer was so just so detached from anything that would seem to be political or cultural or racist or, you know, he was almost like a cartoon character. Yeah. Like to think that the person who embodied and he was Stanley Spadowski from UHF. Right. Long before he was. I mean, I remember being like, it's the guy from UHF. So, yeah, to know that that was it's really hard to watch the show Seinfeld now and Kramer comes in, you know, to the apartment in a funny way and everyone's laughing on the laugh track. And you're like, yeah, but boy, I got some messed up view.

Exactly. And and and so anyway, that's watching Seinfeld. But, you know, I still will watch Seinfeld from time to time. And then but then here you have this Curb Your Enthusiasm where it's a reunion episode. And I don't have the timeline here. I don't know when this was made and released compared to when Michael Richards had this had had his, you know, awful appearance where he was screaming the N word. But a lot of time had passed and apparently they thought, OK, we're going to do this and maybe, you know, kind of move slowly, but bring Michael Richards, put him on the screen again. And like they mostly did not address it in most of the season. And I actually thought that was fine. I mean, for me, not that I'm the judge of these things.

So I didn't realize this. So Michael Richards himself was on Curb?

Yeah, on Curb Your Enthusiasm in the season where they're doing a Seinfeld reunion. He's on Curb because he's a cast member of Seinfeld, right? And it's mostly unaddressed until near the end of the series. Larry David is so goddamn tone deaf, man, about a lot of things. He really lets his old man and just privilege shine through a lot. And they end up trying to do a meta statement on Michael Richards screaming that epithet by creating some scenario. I don't even remember the details now, but they create some scenario where a black character on the show confronts him about something. And then it's sort of misunderstood. And then Michael Richards starts screaming at him. And it's so clearly this nod of trying to, like, we're going to make one final joke about this and move on. And while it took me a while to get comfortable just seeing him on the screen and not addressing it, Larry David trying to recreate that and then gloss over it. I'm kind of surprised that Seinfeld himself, that Jerry Seinfeld was was cool participating in this, the way he took that so seriously publicly after Michael Richards had that outburst. I thought this thing was so God damn tone deaf To try to make a joke about What Michael Richards had done and to truly Not under it was so clear Based on the way they recreated this that Larry David and whoever wrote that do not Understand the gravity of What he did and it's not it's not something to Joke about and it certainly wasn't a Misunderstanding it was I was As you might be able to tell I was Pretty off put by that put off Whatever I I'm

not super surprised to hear that jerry was in on that because jerry had michael richards on comedians and cars getting coffee oh he did um yeah i don't know the the timing if that was before or after that my feeling was and and i i think my guess would be that jerry seinfeld obviously has known michael richards for a long time he doesn't think that that's who michael richards is at his core or whatever and also i'm not super surprised this isn't me saying it's okay But like Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld are people who have more money than they will ever be able to spend in. their lifetime they're both in the kind of twilight of their of their relevance i would say i mean i say this as a person who thinks crib your enthusiasm is very funny and i i mean i like larry david uh you know and maybe in spite of some tone deaf things i guess but i both i get a strong read off of both of them that there is a certain point at which they're just they just don't care what people think of them or they don't care what critics would say about them this isn't a defense of them at all but i guess i'm just saying i'm unsurprised well can i clarify one thing i wasn't

saying that i'm surprised that they worked with michael richards again i'm surprised that jerry seinfeld didn't call foul on this particular send-up of that situation the way that in this one scene of curb your enthusiasm they try to make meta jokes about what michael richards did in this very clunky way that made it seem like the whole thing was a misunderstanding that's what i'm surprised that got got through any editorial process and that jerry seinfeld didn't distance himself from because it just seems so tone deaf to me i'm sure that they think it was a

misunderstanding that's the that's the truly upsetting part yeah i think they they probably think on some level you kind of can't say anything anymore and ah he lost it one night and if this would have been 20 years ago there would have been no cell phone camera it just would have been a weird story again i'm totally speculating as to the like what somebody like jerry seinfeld thinks in his heart of hearts and what larry david and i don't know either of them so it's i'm going out on a real limb but my guess would be if they allowed that scene to play out the way you're describing it was because on some level they do think of it as being essentially a misunderstanding

yeah it's a bummer and like just messed up yeah and larry david's last actually this goes back to eric daggins too because i know that curb your enthusiasm uh st petersburg times i believe so um also a drummer um i uh i whatever the last season of curb was they you know they went on a production hiatus for years i believe and then they kind of came back i want to say in 2020 but no that would be the pandemic year we have that lost year i'm going to say maybe 2019 or something curb came back and i remember hearing deggan's um uh preview of it or review of it i guess on npr before i saw an episode he was just talking about he's like it's amazing how he is tone deaf in this modern era like i think the first episode or one of the first episodes of that show that i tried watching of that season was about i don't know he was supposed to participate in a gay wedding of some sort a lesbian wedding but like the jokes were just like so i mean it was almost like which one is the man kind of joke like just so so tone deaf and unfunny and cringy and not like good cringy not the kind of good cringy he does but in a way of just like old man how are you how are you bringing this to hbo in 2019 or whenever the hell that was it was yeah so and i still really like larry david and i think he's really funny in a lot of ways but like i have a i'm gonna say that word i never pronounced correctly asterisk next to him i think take the w you said it exactly right

had to slow things down to get that out uh i was uh while we were talking i decided to put out a fire tweets announcing that i'm also stepping down from the position of hosting jeopardy after also not having hosted any episodes of jeopardy um but the real win was somebody named keith harris who just wrote on twitter a few hours a few minutes ago okay i'll bite what's jeopardy

that's pretty good that's the tweet my friend that's the tweet i also saw um our buddy jake rummel i don't know if you know jake somebody i used to work with at uh cairo radio he's a producer over there maybe still is i think he's super funny on twitter when he decides to tweet it's like few and far between but he almost always gets me okay well i guess that's one way to be and he just said announcement shane harris is the new host of jeopardy i don't know if you recall shane harris was the comedian who was announced as the snl uh oh that was shane gillis oh i messed it up shane gillis i was that's why i should have looked before i did that off the cut i want

somebody to i was the guy who thought that shane black wrote boondock saint boondock saint shane harris we got a real shane problem on this show oh the shane shane shane all right let's do a little music for your weekend before uh we get out of here for the weekend before I start spiffing this apartment up and getting various hosting. I'm getting a lot of wet wipes. I don't know why I'm doing that. I'm going to get a couple of adult beverages. I'm going to get some maybe potato chips or something. I'm a little worried, though, about this weekend, Andrew, because I've been being very – I've been, as everybody likes to say now, I've been eating clean, which I think is the – it actually kind of works as a way of talking about how you're eating. But it also feels like, were we all eating dirt before? Were we all eating things that were just covered in grease? But it just, what do you mean eating clean? You haven't heard that terminology? If so, I didn't investigate it further. Eating clean just means I've been just eating better. I've been laying off maybe the super processed foods or the fast food or whatever. So that's kind of what that means. Like, oh, I've been eating clean. I've just been, like, focusing on vegetables and more kind of whole foods and whatever somebody's version of that is. It's just a way of saying, like, I've been being kind of disciplined about what I've been eating. And I've been generally I've been this is for like three weeks now. Yay me. But I've been sort of eating clean and I've been just trying to make some better decisions and be healthier. And then it's just like hurricane thunder rolling into Portland. And I'm like, I'm already like I'm already bargaining. Like, how do I how do I figure out how to not eat an entire frozen pizza at 12 o'clock tonight?

Thunder really is rolling in to Portland.

Kind of actually. It looks like we could have a thunderstorm here in Portland. It's not. The weather is not looking that great.

And also DJ and Thunder, I meant. So it works three ways. Well, yeah, JD and Thunder, absolutely.

When I say DJ, I'm a big fan. Yeah. Never miss an app.

DJ, Thunder, we the best. So embarrassing. Okay.

What song would you like to play for the listeners, my friend, as we head into the weekend?

Let's keep things complicated. as I wrap up this week talking a mile a minute and getting on various high horses. I've been watching that show. This is a weird pick. Nobody's going to like this except for me and maybe some other people who watch The Righteous Gemstones. But I'm still working my way through that season. It's, I think, a one-season series. And I've been enjoying it. It's kind of hit or miss. But when it's good, it's really good. And about halfway through the season, this is a show with, I mean, it's got everybody, And it's got I'm gonna have to list celebrities. Danny McBride. Yes. John Goodman. Yes. And it's a it pokes fun at kind of mega church culture. And it takes place in the modern era. But there's one episode halfway through that does a flashback to the 80s and to the kind of the kind of birth or the you know, the the moment where the stuff was really breaking big. And there's this flashback where Walton Goggins, who's one of the actors in the show, and Jennifer Nettles are performing. They are adults here, and they are performing this Christian song that they used to sing as kids called Misbehavin. So in the lore of the show, this was a big hit for them as little kids. But now it's the 1980s, and they're adults, and they're going to go on a reunion tour. And so they sing and tap dance to their big hit, Misbehavin. And this was, I was reading a little bit about it. It was written by McBride and two other people involved in the show. And it is, I don't, there is not a word, at least I don't believe there's an English word for my feelings. And I believe other people's feelings about this song, which is, well, Genevieve has this word awful some that she uses sometimes. Yeah, I've seen that. It's both bad and just so catchy. I have been singing this song all week long. I've gone back. I've watched it on YouTube a couple of times. And maybe it's just in the context of the show that I find it so addictive and funny and sticky and all of those things. But I'll try it here. So they are on stage. They're announcing that they're going to start their reunion tour. And they walk out on stage and they start performing this song, which they used to perform as kids.

I'm going to misbehave in. I'm on a windowsill swimming in the creek. Catching crawdads and playing with a stick. I wore lipstick. And I got called shaving. Just two little crunchy kids outside misbehaving. Teacher said don't, but I said it anyway. Misbehaving. Preacher said no, if you do, you're going to play misbehaving. Kicking and a-spitting and a-cussing out loud. Running through the house with a pickle in my mouth. Playin' in the street, look at me outside a-wavin' Just two little kids out there misbehavin' We thought we'd just messin' around Till we met that man in the thorny frown And taught us that tricks that mischief leads to Satan So from now on, there's no misbehavin'

Then they do a little tap number here Oh my god, that's so good, dude. That totally paid off, 100%. I'm so glad that works for you, having not seen the show. I mean, it is, again, the show, I don't know, it's kind of a hard sell, I think. I think it gets off to a slightly slow, kind of broad start. I realized that when I was reading about this, they were writing this, it's like, I'm going to say a nine or ten episode arc for HBO. I would always assume. assume for premiere tv like this every script would be written before you start taping but they apparently produced this on a model where they had like an x they weren't planning on doing a flashback episode but they had an extra day of production on the schedule for some reason so they said well let's sit down and think about something fun we can do for this next episode and came up with what i think to be like the gemstone of the series this oh my god till i

met the man with the thorny crown i thought we were just messing around that's genius work So good. That is a genius line. Oh, my God. That's really good. I would start off, probably this is what happened to you, Andrew. I'd start off listening to that sort of ironically, and then it would get stuck in my head, and then I would have to admit, this is a legit kind of a banger.

I got going shaving.

All right. What do you got? Outside with a pickle in my mouth?

I'm running around the house with a pickle in my mouth.

That's what he said. That's pretty great. I would like to play a song by Remy Wolfe, another song by Remy Wolfe, because I know we just played one. okay she is putting a new album out it's called juno she's released two tracks from that album uh one of them is called quiet on set and the other is called grumpy old man and they are both so good andrew i want to play quiet on set and i also want to mention that there's like a couple of there's a couple of kind of grown-up references on here so just kind of a little heads up on that if you have young kids it goes by pretty fast and it's you know nothing you wouldn't hear about in of rated our movie but anyway can we play a little of this uh remy wolf quiet on set yeah i'm excited

quiet on set i've been taking my bets funny i've been paying my debts love it i've been stealing Comets Quiet unsaid I've been fucked in the head I ain't leaving my bed The world's been killing me dead Killing me, killing me, killing me I just want to protect my energy Ain't got no time for the frenemies Eating my ass like the human centipede Hold your horses, back it up What's better than two girls, two cops What's better than a two-buck, goodnight What's better than fries in a chicken lunch? Hey, guys, should I post made Chuck E. Cheese? Wait, ain't no Chuck E. Cheese in Los Feliz? Wait, there ain't no steeze if there ain't grease unless you're lucky.

I had to let it go to the part where there ain't no Chuck E. Cheese in Los Feliz. Have you ever lived in L.A.? That's like four jokes layered on top of each other. Anyway, that is so good, man. You're going to spend the rest of your day listening to that and Grumpy Old Man.

I guarantee it. I was going to say the rest of the summer, man, because she has a back catalog, too, that I need to get into, right? Like, we played that song, Liz, which I really liked, but it has a very different vibe. I am head over heels over this stuff.

Yeah, this is really catchy and clever and the other one, too. So I'm looking very forward to when that full album, Juno, comes out. So there you go. A little Remy Wolfe. Now we get to the listener's suggestion, which is somebody else I could have picked this week because she's got a new album out, too, Courtney Barnett. This was listener Sam. He said, in honor of your discussion on Small Talk this week, we talked about the seven bad habits that people who are good at Small Talk don't not remember to not avoid, I believe was the structure of the article from a guy whose public speaking book was, I got something to say. Anyway, Sam says, I'd like to nominate the song Small Talk by the one and only Courtney Barnett. It's funny, witty, and just an all-around jam. Keep doing what you're doing. listener Sam in St. Pete where I believe Eric Deggans once worked at the newspaper is he really

in St. Pete or he just

I don't know I thought that was actually part of it

that was great

alright so that's going to do it that's going to bring us to the end of this broadcast week thank you everyone for spending the time with us this week thanks for being part of the show we really do appreciate it we're going to see you on Monday with more imaginary radio until then have a great weekend stay safe take care of yourselves mask up do what you got to do and please remember no mountain too tall And good luck to all.

Do you have any siblings? I got a brother, Blake. He's four years older than me. And I guess he always will be. Yeah, he's clever and he's got a cool girlfriend All the way now that they're engaged So I hope they have kids so I can be a cool auntie Yeah, I'm waiting here for you I'm waiting here for you

What do you think of the ultimate ending? I fast forward get busy pretending that I've seen everything.

I don't like spending time with stupid people.

Power out.